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She stood before him, holding the extendable handle of a medium-sized wheeled duffel bag in one hand and the straps of a shopping bag in the other. Not a lot of stuff. “That’s it?”
“I left anything I didn’t need on a daily basis in the trunk of my car.”
“What about the crib?”
Her attention shifted to the old white portable crib parked beside the old, sunken, about-to-collapse bed. “It’s the motel’s.”
Good. His back ached just looking at the damn thing, with its high sides and mattress an inch above the ground. He took the handle for the duffel bag from her and hefted it onto his shoulder. Then he handed Joy over and lifted the shopping bag weighted down by a quart of OJ, a box of maple and brown sugar instant oatmeal, a jar of peanut butter, and a half-loaf of bread. He banked an urge to hurl the meager contents into the nearest trashcan and go get her some real food. No wonder she’d passed out. Turning in her key took no time—apparently she’d been paying by the day, which probably qualified as an extended stay compared to their other guests.
Silence reigned in the car while he backed out of the parking space. What was she thinking?
“This is a nice car seat,” she said once he’d merged into the rush hour traffic. “How much do I owe you?”
Mystery solved. She was still thinking about being in his debt. Shit. “What, for that old thing? Nada.”
“Hunter, I’m not an idiot. It’s brand new.”
“It just so happens I needed a rear-facing infant car seat.”
Now her conceal-nothing face turned cautious, and he wanted to kick himself.
“You have a baby?”
He heard all the unspoken questions that went hand-in-hand with the one she’d voiced. A wife? Girlfriend? Baby-mama? What am I doing in this car with a guy I barely know? “Nope.” One near miss his disastrous first year of college was as close as he’d come to fatherhood—and as close as he intended to come until the time was right and he had his shit together. Life had taught him a few valuable lessons that year. “Beau’s got a baby on the way. He and his fiancée Savannah are expecting their first this summer.” There. That ought to put her voiced and unvoiced questions to rest.
“Oh. Please tell him congratulations for me.”
“Will do.” He took the freeway and drove past the very spot where he’d first met Madison and Joy. Barely a month ago, but it seemed like eons. “How’s Joy liking the ride?”
“She’s out.”
He heard the smile in Madison’s voice. And the fatigue. “Sounds like you’re not far behind.”
“Hmm? No, I’m okay. Just a little dazed.” The hum of the engine nearly drowned out her tired laugh. “I feel like I haven’t been outside in forever.”
“Hospital time moves slower than regular time.” Hell, just wheeling a crashing patient into the ER could seem to take a thousand years. “On one hand, it’s boring being stuck in a room for hours. On the other, it’s hard to get any rest with doctors and nurses coming in all the time, checking up on you.”
“Sounds like you’ve spent a lot of time in hospitals.”
“I’ve been an EMT for seven years, so I’ve seen my fair share.”
“Seven years?” Surprise laced her voice. “You must have started young.”
He shrugged. “I started at twenty as an EMT-Basic and kept moving. A few years later I earned my Paramedic cert. The rest, as they say, is history.” He’d perfected the short career summary. People rarely asked for the long version, and that suited him fine. The long version involved some pathetic missteps early on, and as a general rule he preferred not to talk about them.
“Wow. At twenty I was working at Subway, taking a class here and there at community college, and trying to plan out what I wanted to do with my life.” She gave a self-conscious laugh and looked out the window. “I’m still trying to figure it out. Did you always know you wanted to be an EMT?”
Madison would, of course, be the exception to the rule, and he considered giving her an easy answer, but her humorless laugh still echoed in his ears and told him it might be good for her to know she wasn’t the only person who’d ever found herself in less-than-ideal circumstances as a result of less-than-perfect judgment.
“Hell, no. EMT was a default choice. One I’m still trying to live down. I come from a long line of doctors. My daddy’s a cardiologist. My older sister’s a pediatric surgeon, and by God, I was supposed to be a doctor, too.”
“You weren’t on board?”
“I was fully on board. Kept my GPA up in high school, aced my college entrance exams, and got accepted to a six-year med program at Tulane.” He paused to let the bitter taste in his mouth subside.
“What happened?” She asked the question softly, and he could feel her dread and sympathy all the way from the back seat.
“Nothing devastating. Nobody got ill. Nobody died. Just a bunch of bullshit, really, but that’s all it took to derail my big plans. About a month into my first semester, a girl I’d dated over the summer called out of the blue and informed me she was pregnant, and I was the father. Her Catholic university evicted her from student housing and revoked her scholarship as soon as they discovered her condition. Her parents weren’t exactly welcoming her back home, and she didn’t know what to do.”
