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I ran as fast as I could through the automatic glass doors, glaring at the nice receptionist for no other reason than I needed her to take me seriously. “I need to see Dr. Mankowski now!”
She smiled that kind but blank look commonly found with receptionists around the world and shook her head. “I’m sorry Miss but this isn’t a hospital.”
“Don’t you think I know that? I have an appointment today and my son had an asthma attack on our way here so get the doctor now or I will skin you alive with my bare hands. Go!”
“I’m sorry ma’am, but—”
“Go! Now!” I wouldn’t be so rude normally but this woman was really getting under my skin.
Dr. Mankowski stepped out of a door with a frown marring his boyishly handsome face. He capped off the Steven Martin look with distressed denim under his white doctor’s coat. “What’s all the commotion?”
“Your receptionist was just telling me that you don’t treat emergencies here and that I should find a hospital while my little boy can’t breathe.”
As expected, the doctor frowned at the perky brunette as he strode over to me. He leaned over to Beau, who was half out of it from struggling to breathe.
“What seems to the problem, Beau?” he said in his calm, doctor voice.
Beau raised his head, sleepy blue eyes barely open. “Can’t breathe, Dr. Mank.”
He grinned and relieved me of my son’s weight. “Let’s take a look and see if there’s something we can do.” I followed behind him on wooden legs, wondering if this would ever end. Would there ever come a time when I wouldn’t have to worry if the next breath would be his last?
I stood with my head resting on the door while the doctor listened to his lungs. “Is there more I can do to stop these attacks?”
“You’re doing everything you can, Ms. Vanderbilt. There is no magic treatment when it comes to asthma. Today the problem is this,” he told me, holding the nebulizer up between two fingers.
“These things are great until they aren’t. They may as well be disposable because if the batteries aren’t perfectly charged, it won’t dispense medications evenly.”
A rush of fury raced through me. “So today’s attack was the fault of the stupid treatment?”
He grinned a smile that lit up his whole face, shaving at least a decade off his face. “Exactly.”
“How can that be? That nebulizer is supposed to be state of the art. Why even bother? Can’t they make these things infallible?”
Dr. Mankowski removed a prescription pad from the pocket of his lab coat and scribbled on it. “I’ll give you a prescription for another, top of the line portable nebulizer just in case, but I’m hoping you won’t need it soon.”
“And this one isn’t going to fail? Is it any better?” I was beyond frustrated. I took the prescription from the doctor and stuffed it in my bag. “So, does that mean we’re still doing the stem cell treatment today—or not?”
“Yes, we are. As long as you don’t mind waiting so we can monitor Beau for a while.”
I shook my head because I would wait as long as I had to if it meant Beau would get better. “Of course.”
The doctor left us in the waiting room and I couldn’t help but think about all the things I’d done to protect Beau from the ravages of asthma. We both ate a whole food, plant-based diet to limit his exposure to allergens, made sure he did deep breathing exercises to strengthen his lungs and airways. I even kept plants in the house to provide clean oxygen. So far none of it had worked to cure him of this disease, and I felt like a failure.
It was bad enough that failure was a common occurrence for all single parents, but to feel like I’d contributed to his pain somehow was worse and I fell into a well of self-pity. Even when they wheeled him into a sterile room for the treatment an hour later, I was still beating myself up. Not just over Beau, either.
When it came to Cross, I was afraid I was falling back into old habits. Beau had been conceived during a wild and wicked weekend spent with the wrong kind of man. I decided then to get over my obsession with bad boys, which effectively meant I’d given up on men.
Until now.
Until I decided to fall for a man who was all wrong for me in so many ways, starting with the fact that he was still in love with his wife. His dead wife. Of course, he hadn’t told me so in so many words. But he didn’t have to.
Overhearing Cross tell Beau about his lost family answered so many questions for me. His retreat whenever I tried to pry any information from him; his disappearance after our super-heated sexy sessions in bed. That was all he wanted from me. And I’d been so lonely, I willingly fell into his arms whenever he showed up on my doorstep. It was a lose-lose situation for me, which meant it was time to get my head on straight and stop thinking like a silly little girl.
The same thing Daddy had always accused me of being.
***
By the time we left Dr. Mankowski’s office, the sun had long ago set and the sky was clear yet dark save for the large face of the moon splashing light on the road. Beau was asleep in the back seat, not at all restricted by the seatbelt I’d fastened him into.
