LITMIR.BIZ

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      Devlin had wanted her told sooner, and his parents had been on his side. The Palmers had wanted to wait, insisting she wasn’t ready for such a massive revelation. The doctors, therapists and counselors wanted to respect the family’s wishes, but had been growing more insistent with each stage in Jodie’s improvement, after the setback of the serious infection she’d had just after DJ was born.

      This was part of the problem. It had all happened in stages. It wasn’t as if she’d just opened her eyes one day and said, “I’m back. Catch me up on what I’ve missed!”

      All through the coma there had been signs of lightening awareness, giving hope for an eventual return to consciousness, but it had been so gradual. First, she followed movement around the room with her eyes, but couldn’t speak. It seemed so strange that she could have her eyes open without real awareness, but apparently this was quite common, the doctors said.

      Then her level of consciousness changed from “coma” to “minimally conscious state.” She began to vocalize vague sounds, but had no words. She started to use words but not sentences. She began to move, but with no strength or control. For several days she cried a lot, asking repeatedly, “Where am I? What happened to me?”

      Once she’d understood and accepted the accident and the need for therapy, she’d become utterly determined to make a full recovery and had worked incredibly hard. Every day, over and over, in her hospital room, in the occupational therapy room, or the rehab gym, they all heard, “Don’t bother me with talking now, I’m working!”

      Barbara Palmer began to say, about the baby, “Not until she’s home,” and her therapists cautiously agreed that, emotionally, this might be the right way to go. Let her focus on one thing at a time. Don’t risk setting back her physical recovery with such a shock of news.

      How did you say it?

      How the hell was he going to say it now?

      You were five weeks pregnant at the time of the accident, it turns out, although we’re almost certain you didn’t know. You gave birth, a normal delivery, at thirty-three weeks of gestation, when your state was still defined as coma, just a week after you first opened your eyes. This is your beautiful, healthy baby girl.

      He said it.

      Somehow.

      Not anywhere near as fluently as it sounded in his head.

      “Sh-she’s yours … Jodie,” he finally said, stumbling over every word. Yours? No! He wasn’t going to sabotage his own involvement. “She’s ours,” he corrected quickly. “I didn’t know what to call her. I thought you’d want to decide. So she’s been DJ till now, because those are our two initials. Is that okay? Are you okay? This was supposed to happen on Tuesday, at your appointment, with your doctors and therapists and people on hand to answer all your questions. To—to help you deal with it.”

      The words sounded stupid to his own ears. Deal with it. Doctors and counselors could help someone deal with a cancer diagnosis, but this was in a whole different league.

      Her eyes were huge in her face. She couldn’t speak. She was slightly built, which made a stark show of her current shock and vulnerability. He remembered thinking her funny and gawky and oddly impressive when she was sixteen and he was eighteen, and dating her friend. Impressive because she looked as if a breath of wind would blow her away, but, boy, did she get on your case if you treated her that way.

      She’d been just the same in the hospital and during rehab, once she could speak and move. She’d insisted on her own strength and her own will, and proved with every step that she was as strong and determined as she claimed. She fought her family on it all the time, because she was seven years younger than her next sister and she’d had a serious brush with meningitis as a child, and the whole clan had babied her ever since.

      Well, for once she wasn’t fighting or insisting. She was too shocked. He’d half expected a protest or a denial. You’re messing with my head. It can’t be true. But she didn’t say anything like that. She believed him at once, which made him wonder if there was a tiny, elusive part of her brain, or a lacing of chemicals—hormones—in her body that had known the truth.

      Her conscious mind, though, and her sense of self, had been completely in the dark.

      “I have a thousand questions,” she blurted out.

      “Of course. Ask them. I’ll tell you everything as straight as I can.”

      “I can’t.”

      “Ask them?”

      “Do this.” She tried to stand up, but her legs wouldn’t carry her.

      “Sit,” he insisted. “You don’t have to say anything. Or do anything. Let me talk, if you want.”

      “Okay.”

      So he talked, keeping it a little impersonal because that felt safe, and leaving out a few things, because he couldn’t hit her with all of it at once.

      He told her about the signs of labor, the quick delivery they’d all been praying for, to ease the stress on her body. Told her DJ’s length and birth weight and head circumference. Told her proudly that the baby had Jodie’s own strength. Despite her premature birth, DJ had been stepped down from the NICU into the lower-level special-care unit within a couple of days, and had come home from the hospital in less than two weeks.

      “Home?” Jodie croaked.

      “Here. And your parents’ place. She spends a lot of time there.” More than he was happy with, to be honest, but he hadn’t wanted to fight them on that at a point when Jodie’s full recovery had still been very much in doubt, and when his own future wasn’t fully resolved. Would she ever be able to take care of a child? If she could, did that mean he’d go back to New York?

      “Why are you here? In Leighville?”

      She was asking the wrong questions, wasn’t she? He took in a breath to suggest this to her, but then changed his mind.

      Ah, hell, there was no script for this! She should ask whatever she wanted to, in whatever order it came. And if she didn’t have an instant, overpowering need to hold DJ in her arms, he should be glad of the reprieve. He couldn’t stand the idea of losing his daughter, not even with generous custody and access, when the bond between them had grown so strong.

      “I’m still working at Dad’s law practice,” he explained, trying to stay practical and calm. “He’s in no hurry to get back into harness. I expect he’ll decide to retire. I’ll head back to New York … Well, that’s open-ended at the moment. All decisions on hold, I guess. My apartment is rented out. I have a conference coming up in Sweden in early October, followed by a couple of months consulting in London.”

      “You were supposed to be back in New York by last Christmas. Was it your dad’s health that changed your plans?”

      Shoot, didn’t she understand?

      “They found out you were pregnant before I even had the plates put in my leg.”

      “How?”

      “Blood tests, part of assessing your condition. When they told me …” Again, how to say it?

      “You knew you had no other choice,” she supplied for him.

      He couldn’t argue. Not the words, anyway. Maybe the edge of—what?—bitterness, or anger, in her tone. He hadn’t had any other choice. Not then. He wasn’t going to abandon his child before it was even born. He wasn’t going to deprive her of a father, when she might never have a mom. But it was different now. “I don’t want another choice,” he said. “This all needs time to work out, and that’s okay.”

      “You said you didn’t plan on ever having kids.”

      “You remember that?”

      “Over dinner. You had steak with pepper sauce. I had strawberry mousse cake for dessert.”

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