LITMIR.BIZ

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turned her assessing gaze on him. “Wow,” she said, shaking her head. “And all this time I’ve been telling Jessie you couldn’t possibly be as big a jerk as she was making you out to be. I stand corrected.”

      Her keen blue eyes locked with his in challenge. Her face—an attractive mix of natural beauty and intelligence—in full view for the first time, Lewis lost track of the conversation for a few seconds, moving his focus to her chocolate brown hair and pleasingly trim figure. Her confident stance as she berated him. Her statement of “all this time” registered bringing him full circle to wonder why a professional adult female, who looked to be closer to his age than his daughter’s, would befriend a little girl.

      “If he makes me go I’ll run away,” Jessie said to Scarlet as if Lewis wasn’t standing right there.

      “No you won’t,” Scarlet said firmly.

      Good. Another adult on his side.

      “You did,” Jessie accused.

      What kind of nut job shared that information with a confused little girl?

      “Did you not listen when I told you what a dangerous and stupid move it was?” She took Jessie by the shoulders and turned her. “Look at me, Jess.”

      Jess. So familiar. So caring.

      The vulnerable expression on his daughter’s face as she obeyed, gave him his first opportunity to see beneath her tough-teen anger and defiance to the scared little girl she’d hidden away so effectively, from him, but not this stranger. Why?

      “You have what I didn’t. You have me.” The woman dug into the pocket of her lab coat, pulled out a business card, and wrote something on the back. Then she held it out to Jessie. “On the front is my work number and on the back is my cell phone number. You can call me anytime for any reason. I didn’t offer earlier because I didn’t want to interfere between you and your dad.”

      As it should be.

      “You are not all alone, Jess. You have your father and you have me.” Scarlet glanced at him before continuing. “And if, while you’re on vacation, someone tries to make you do something you don’t want to do or in any way makes you feel uncomfortable and your dad won’t come up to bring you home, I promise I will.”

      Oh no she would not. “My daughter will be driven to and from Lake George by her grandparents. And she doesn’t need your telephone numbers because if she needs to talk to someone anytime for any reason, she can talk to me.” Lewis grabbed for the card.

      Jessie thrust it behind her back.

      “This entire situation is getting out of hand, Jess,” Scarlet said. “You need to tell him.”

      Lewis stopped and looked at her. “Tell me what?”

      “What’s said between us stays between us,” Jessie yelled at Scarlet. “You promised.”

      “That was before you got yourself picked up by the police and threatened to run away.”

      “You mean you know—?” Lewis started only to be cut off when an urgent voice came through the overhead speakers. “Scarlet Miller to the emergency room. Stat. Scarlet Miller to the emergency room.”

      “Saved by the hospital operator,” Scarlet said with a wink to Jessie. “Talk to your father,” she added before turning her back on him and walking away.

      CHAPTER TWO

      SCARLET JOGGED THE short distance to the large nurses’ station in the center of the busy emergency room. “I’m Scarlet Miller,” she said to the Scarlett she’d given the flowers to a few minutes earlier. Dr. Jackson and Jessie came to stand beside her.

      “They need you in trauma room three,” a nurse replied. “Pregnant teen. Walked in alone already crowning. No identification. No prenatal care. Unsure of gestation but estimated to be around thirty-three weeks. Dr. Gibbons called for a NICU team.”

      “And my staff must have been called into the high risk multiple birth scheduled for this afternoon.” Triplets, one in distress, being delivered by Cesarean section at twenty-nine weeks. Scarlet removed her lab coat and handed it to Jessie. “Looks like I’m it. Please call the NICU and speak with Ashley,” she directed the unit clerk. “Tell her I’m here and to alert Dr. Donaldson and Mac from Respiratory Therapy that I’ll have them paged if I need them. And ask her to send down an incubator.”

      “What can I do to help?” Dr. Jackson asked.

      “Would you please have someone turn on the warming table and get me a disposable gown, gloves, and heated towels?”

      “Done.” He turned to Jessie. “Wait for me in my office. Do. Not. Go. Anywhere.”

      Scarlet entered the room and introduced herself to the staff, “I’m Scarlet from the NICU.”

      A young girl with short black hair maybe fifteen or sixteen years old lay on a stretcher. Two nurses held her bare pale legs bent and open. An older heavyset doctor stood between them.

      The girl cried out, “It hurts.”

      Scarlet quickly washed her hands, hurried to the head of the bed and took the girl’s hands in hers. “Breathe through the pain,” she said. “Like this.” She demonstrated.

      The girl looked up, her eyes wet with tears, her face red, her expression a mix of pain and fear. “I can’t do this,” she said.

      “You can, and you will,” Scarlet answered. “Squeeze my hands as hard as you can. You won’t hurt me.”

      “Here comes another one,” she cried out.

      And as she squeezed Scarlet’s hands, the memory of experiencing this very same situation when she was around this girl’s age squeezed Scarlet’s heart.

      “Bear down and push,” the doctor instructed.

      “Push, push, push,” Scarlet encouraged. “Just like that. You’re doing great.”

      When the contraction ended Scarlet introduced herself, “My name is Scarlet and I’m the nurse who will be taking care of your baby when it’s born.” She used the corner of the sheet to blot the sweat from the girl’s forehead and upper lip. “What’s your name?”

      The girl hesitated but answered, “Holly.”

      “Why are you here all alone, Holly?” Scarlet asked, fearing the answer. “Tell me who to call. A family member? A friend?”

      A panicked look overtook her face. “They don’t know,” she said. “No one can know.” Scarlet recalled her own seventeen-year-old desperation, hiding her growing pregnant belly from her high school classmates and family, dealing with the overwhelming, all-consuming fear of someone finding out, of giving birth, and of where she’d go afterwards and how she’d care and provide for her baby. Without a job. Without a high school diploma. Without the help and support of anyone.

      How naïve she’d been, actually looking forward to running away, to finally having someone she could love who would love her back.

      But that dream had been ripped away when she’d gone into labor months earlier than she’d expected, when her irate, powerful, and medically connected father had accompanied her to one of the many hospitals he worked with, when she’d awoken three days later with little recollection of what’d occurred after her baby had been whisked away other than her weak cry echoing in Scarlet’s ears, only to be told her infant had died. According to one of the nurses—who’d had trouble looking her in the eye—she’d been so distraught when she’d been told about her baby’s death she’d required sedation, and so as not to upset her further, her father had arranged for private burial. Without allowing Scarlet to see or hold the baby she’d carried inside her body for months, to say goodbye or gain closure.

      And her father had never revealed the location of the grave,

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