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“Because it was Evelyn Partridge who rescued me. She saved my life don’t you know?”
“I only want to be Mrs. Doctor Love,” I tell him, wrapping my arms around his neck.
“Okay, baby,” he croons. “Just be on call whenever we need you?” he asks, running his hand over my belly, murmuring “Dr. Love” to himself, as though it’s the first time he’s heard it like that.
Extended Epilogue
Three Years Later
Mark
“I just don’t think I can make it, sorry,” I confess to the director of yet another hospital on the other side of the country.
“Patients need your help!” I hear the strained, swollen moneybag voice on the other end of the line pleading with me, but by now it’s usually always the same response.
I hear our little Jane and her older brother Josh in the background of my world, reminding me where my true responsibilities lie.
There’ll always be someone to try and save everyone else.
I did it for twenty years, don’t need to bust my gut trying it all over again.
I’ve got my own family now, my own responsibilities.
I hang up calmly and silently before Evelyn hears. I know how she likes to worry I might go dashing off again to save some poor soul at the drop of a hat like she’s been training to do.
And against all her dad’s supposed ‘wishes,’ she’s gonna be the best damned doctor I’ve seen in twenty years.
No bias on my part though.
Maybe, Nick, me, and Evelyn could go all in? Make the best practice the country’s ever seen.
Maybe even a hospital?
Easy tiger. Stick with just getting the girl for now.
And keeping her.
Giving her everything she deserves.
“Who’s on the phone, hun?” she asks, breezing through with a folder in her hand and scooping up one of the scrambling babies at her feet.
I scoop up Jane while she nabs Josh as if he’s air under her hands. Following her, to the changing table, I know from my sense of smell that they both sorely need it.
“Nobody special,” I tell her, pecking her lips and feeling her body shiver a little.
Not because it’s cold, but because every time we touch it always feels the same.
Like the first time.
She’s set her folder down, ignoring my questions about where she’s at with her own studies.
I already know she’s the best doctor. The most specialized kind.
A mom. A wife and a thousand other things that go along with having two toddlers along with a full-time at home half-baby himself husband.
I’m just curious though, but Evelyn never likes to tell me every little thing about what she’s working on or where she’s at with her studies saying family time is more important.
“You miss it yet?” she asks me, a large steel pin between her teeth as she expertly changes Josh’s cloth nappy with surgical precision.
I make a face as I stab my own thumb from Jane’s.
Again.
Every damned time.
“Miss what?” I ask, sucking blood from my thumb before I let her finish for me.
Not because I can’t change a real diaper.
Just because she does it better, and the kids know it too. Always wanting mommy to change them when it’s time.
For obvious reasons, I guess.
“Maybe stick to open-heart surgery, Mark,” she coos, pecking my cheek, scooping up both our bambinos and her folder before making for the living room.
“That came out wrong!” she calls over her shoulder, and I feel the smile on my face cancel out any doubt I might have just had.
Giving someone a new valve or three inside their chest is one thing, but pinning a child’s cloth diaper at three a.m. without a second glance?
That’s a skill in itself.
I follow her through to the living room, the open fire blazing and the cribs already rocking, as if waiting for our little babies in anticipation.
Once they’ve started to settle, I take a seat beside them.
A scene I’d always imagined but never thought would ever come true.
Mom and dad, babies.
“You okay, hun?” she asks me, and I know she’s still worried about her own comment.
“Never better,” I assure her. “Perfection,” I hear myself say, grinning again at the sight in front of me. Taking in her curves and willing the kids to sleep soon so I can grab hold of them again.
“I don’t have to keep up with the next term,” she says with a small smile.
I raise my brow in question. “Uh, you probably do if you want to graduate,” I remind her seriously, wondering if her dad’s been at her again about becoming a doctor.
But her face furrows.
“Maybe what I want now, is to just be a stay at home mom with her husband,” she says adamantly.
I hold both my palms up in surrender, letting her make her own choices in this life. Promising to support her, no matter what.
“You’d make a helluva doctor, though,” I say to myself, not even trying to tease her. Because it’s true.
