Back To You (A Remington Medical Contemporary Romance) Read online

  Tess waved an impatient hand, and Charlie forced herself to think back. “Okay, okay. I guess it was when we had that big MVA come in to the emergency department. Remember, the bus crash?” God, she’d done sutures until she was sure her hands would fall clean off.

  It took Charlie a beat to realize that Tess’s eyes had gone unnaturally wide. She leaned across the table, and wait, what was that weird look on her friend’s face?

  “Charlie.” Tess’s voice dropped, suddenly serious. “That was six weeks ago.”

  Charlie’s laugh felt odd in her throat. “No, it wasn’t. It was…” She concentrated. Counted back very carefully.

  Oh, my God.

  Charlie jerked back, her shoulders thumping against her chair and her heart crashing against her ribs. Tears, hot and immediate and so, so stupid, sprang to her eyes, but no—no, no, no—she couldn’t possibly be pregnant.

  Except it all added up. The queasiness. The mood swings. The fatigue she just couldn’t shake. If a patient had come in to the ED with these symptoms, the first thing Charlie would do was order a pregnancy test.

  This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t.

  She’d known Parker for less than a season. She was an intern, with a grueling residency in front of her, and a demanding career after that. She didn’t even have houseplants, let alone a plan to have kids. Yes, she wanted to have a baby or two someday, but not now.

  She couldn’t be pregnant.

  “Tess…” One of Charlie’s tears sprang free, rolling down her cheek and plopping unceremoniously onto the sleeve of her doctor’s coat, and Tess reached out to grasp her hand.

  “You don’t know anything for sure yet. Let’s take this one step at a time, okay?”

  Unable to do anything but, Charlie gave up a shaky nod. But her head was swimming so fast, she didn’t know what that first step even was. Should she take a test first? Tell Parker? Try to rule out another cause for her weird symptoms?

  “I don’t know what to do,” she admitted in a whisper.

  Thankfully, Tess had enough calm for the both of them. “First thing’s first. We’re going to steal an ultrasound machine.”

  Charlie stood outside the door to the third floor supply closet and contemplated throwing up. Of course, since she’d already emptied the contents of her stomach fifteen minutes ago, she knew it would be not only improbable to repeat the process, but also useless.

  She could puke all she wanted. It still wouldn’t make her any less knocked up.

  Or any less terrified.

  Scraping up the closest thing she had to courage, Charlie pushed her way over the supply closet’s threshold. The door had one of those narrow, vertical windows in it—not ideal for privacy, but at this point, she couldn’t wait any longer unless she wanted to be in danger of exploding, or, worse yet, crying in front of a patient or an attending. Her chest squeezed at the sight of Parker at the far end of the L-shaped space, and she slid her hands into the pockets of her doctor’s coat to hide the fact that they were shaking.

  “Hey! There you are,” Parker said, pushing the bin full of IV kits back over the wire shelving unit in front of him and turning to kiss her. “That colectomy was so freaking cool. I even got to…what?” Parker’s expression changed as he took hers in. “Charlie, what’s the matter?”

  “I’m pregnant,” she blurted, and damn it. She hadn’t planned to let the news fly out so gracelessly. Then again, she hadn’t planned on ever saying those words without sheer joy attached to them, either.

  Parker blinked slowly. “You’re…what?”

  Charlie knew she couldn’t say it again without bursting into tears, so she simply looked at him until he said, “Holy shit. Are you sure?”

  She gave her nod an encore, reaching into the pocket of her doctor’s coat to pull out—oh, God, oh, God—the picture from the ultrasound Tess had done on the way down low.

  Parker took it, his lips parting in obvious shock. “This says you’re already ten weeks.”

  Tears formed in her eyes, her throat threatening to knot around the words she knew she had to say. “I know. My periods aren’t usually regular, and I spotted about six weeks ago. I thought it was just my weird cycle and all the stress and running around I’ve been doing lately, but I guess it was implantation bleeding. We were so careful, I never thought…”

  Charlie trailed off, but only for a breath. “I never thought I’d get pregnant, and honestly, I’m so rattled right now, I can’t even think.”

  “Okay.” Parker lowered the grainy, black and white ultrasound photo, slipping it into his pocket before stepping in toward her. “I know this is a lot. More than a lot,” he amended. “But we’ll figure it out.”

  “How?” Charlie’s voice broke over the word, but that didn’t keep the rest from spilling out of her as if she’d been shaken up and uncorked. “We’re interns, Parker. I just turned twenty-six! Having a baby right now would be…God, I’d have to take four weeks of maternity leave, minimum. It would put me so far behind, it would be like starting the program all over again. And then to go through residency, with an infant? I’d never get any sleep, ever, and you can forget about my being able to spend any quality time with the baby. And daycare is insanely exp—”

  “We.”

  The single syllable was enough to make her stop short. “What?”

  “We would have to take leave, and figure out how to pay for daycare, and, yeah, we probably wouldn’t get much sleep for a while. But you didn’t get pregnant all by yourself, Charlie. I’m in this with you.”

  “You want to have a baby with me, right now?” Was he nuts? It sounded as impossible as moving a mountain range.

  “The timing isn’t what I would have picked,” Parker qualified. “But this is us. Me and you. Sometimes you’ve got to trust more than just what you see.”

  Fear squeezed Charlie’s belly, followed quickly by a hard shot of doubt. “This isn’t skills lab, Parker.” For God’s sake, she was pregnant.

  But Parker wasn’t just calm. He was smiling. “This is exactly like skills lab, babe. I know it’s not an ideal situation, and okay, it’s also not what either of us planned. But I’ve got you, no matter what. So, to answer your question, yes. Even though it would be really hard, if it’s what you want, I want to have a baby with you.”

  Charlie knew she had options, and that continuing with the pregnancy was only one of them. While she was glad for the ability to choose, something deep in her heart told her that terminating—even under the circumstances—wasn’t what she wanted, nor was putting the baby up for adoption. Parker was supportive, and certainly calm when she wasn’t. But Charlie was nothing if not smart. Organized. Resourceful. She could do this. She could.

  Still… “I’m scared,” Charlie whispered. It was a massive understatement, but seeing as how they were standing in the back of the third floor supply closet with both of their pagers ticking like tiny, electronic time bombs that could go off at any second, it would have to do.

  “I know. Believe me, I’m scared, too.” Parker reached up to cup her face, leaning his forehead against hers. But he didn’t look scared. He looked perfect, so solid and strong and right there in front of her, and Charlie melted against him.

  “I don’t have any idea how to do this,” she said, and Parker thumbed away her tears, looking right into her eyes.

  “Do you want to keep the baby?”

  She might feel as if her thoughts and emotions had been put into an industrial-grade blender, but of this one thing, she was sure. “I do.”

  “Well, then I guess you could start by marrying me.”

  “What?” The word barged past her lips on a gasp, followed quickly by, “That’s crazy.”

  Parker smiled that crooked little half-grin that had made her fall for him on day one. “We’re having a baby together, sweetheart. It’s not that crazy.”

  Okay, so he did have a point there. Not that Charlie’s logical side wasn’t brimming with all sorts of rebuttals.

  She plucked the first one out of the queue. “I don’t want you to propose out of obligation.”

  “Good, because I’m not. This might be faster than we’d have done it otherwise, but I’m proposing because I want to marry you.”

  Which brought her right to Logical Argument Number Two. “We’ve only known each other for three months,” she pointed out.

  “That’s true,” Parker agreed. “But let me ask you this. Do you feel like you know me? Like, really know me?”

  “Yes.” Her answer flew out unchecked, but she meant it. They’d spent hours doing nothing but talking on many more than one occasion, late into the night when they should’ve been asleep; plus, they were side by side all the time at work. She couldn’t possibly not know him at this point.

  “And do you love me?”

  Although Charlie had never said it out loud before, she didn’t hesitate to now. “Yes. I love you.”

  Parker paused for another brief, brilliant smile. “I love you, too, Charlie. I know this isn’t what either of us planned, but I also know we can do this. Yeah, it’s going to be tough, but there’s no one I’d rather be tough with than you. I don’t want to pressure you. If you don’t want to get married now, or even a couple years from now, I’ll still be here to support you and this baby. But if you do, all you have to do is say the word. I’m proposing because I want to marry you.”

  Charlie’s heart went haywire beneath her scrubs top. Getting married after being together for only three months was crazy. It was impulsive and hasty and totally outer limits.

  Yet some tiny part of her, deep beneath her Kevlar-reinforced logic and her voice of reason, whispered that she did love Parker, in that forever sort of way she’d always imagined she’d love the person she eventually married,
and she believed he loved her, too. He clearly had her back even though he had to be just as scared as she was.

  And as crazy and impulsive and hasty as it seemed, she did want to marry him.

  So she said, “Okay.”

  Parker’s brows lifted in hope. “Okay, okay?” he asked, and a small laugh came out of her, involuntary, yet oh so sweet. Without waiting for her to answer in words—and probably because her laugh had answered for her—Parker dropped to one knee.

  “What are you doing?” Charlie asked, her laughter growing as he scooped up her hands with his own.

  “I’m proposing properly. If we’re going to spend our lives together, we need to start out right.” Squeezing her suddenly shaking hands, he continued. “Charleston Becker, I love you, and I want to spend my life with you. I want to fall asleep beside you every night, and wake up next to you every morning, no matter what, forever. Will you marry me?”

  Tears of a different sort formed in Charlie’s eyes, but she didn’t even fight them as she nodded and squeezed him back.

  “Yes. I will marry you.”

  “Oh, good.” Parker grinned. “Because our shifts end in an hour, and city hall is open until five.”

  9

  Present day

  Charleston sat back and took in the quiet that had settled into the attendings’ lounge. Jonah and Natalie had left for The Crooked Angel for after-shift drinks, as promised, about an hour ago. They’d renewed their invitation for her to tag along, doing so genuinely enough that Charleston knew she could without any hint of third-wheel awkwardness. But just as she had this morning, she’d politely passed. She blamed it on wanting to stick around to keep an eye on her surgical patient, although it was a stretch. Mr. Irving’s appendectomy had gone without a hitch, and it had been a textbook procedure, at that. He’d be released first thing in the morning unless something wildly unexpected went down overnight. Still, getting back in the OR had given her a much-needed hour of stress relief, and she was going to milk it for all she could.

  Especially since working with Parker today had left her almost as hot as she’d been bothered.

  Zipping her leather messenger bag with far more force than was necessary, Charleston slung the thing over her shoulder and aimed herself at the door. Okay, so Parker was still gorgeous enough to make her libido do a full gainer into a pool of yes-please-right-now-and-thank-you. But he’d dazzled her with that sweet and flirty demeanor once before. God, he’d been so charming, bringing her coffee and studying with her in those small pockets of downtime between two and four AM, then changing the coffee over to orange juice after she’d found out she was pregnant. He’d burned so bright, holding her hand in front of the justice of the peace and promising to always love her. Then, when things had gotten tough, he’d done the complete opposite of loving her. He’d burned out.

  He’d left.

  But you left, too, came a whisper from deep inside Charleston’s brain, bringing her up short before she got more than five steps down the hallway outside of the lounge. She might not have been emotionally available after she’d miscarried at fifteen weeks, the rest of her countered, but she hadn’t literally left the building. The program. Their marriage. The entire freaking county. That honor had gone squarely to Parker.

  Except now he was back. No, that wasn’t quite right. He was back with a passion, more focused and intense than he’d ever been as an intern the first time. Although Charleston had been able to tell with half a glance that he’d hated it, Parker had not only done everything she’d asked him to, but done it efficiently and well, even after she’d shut him out of the OR. He’d run labs, watched her work up patients, examined charts, and answered every last one of her questions, properly and in detail. He’d clearly studied his face off, and his experience as a paramedic had taken the skills he’d once been learning and sharpened them well.

  He was still an intern, though, and he was brash on top of it. Which wasn’t always a bad thing even though it wasn’t her thing…unless you didn’t have the experience and the knowledge to back it up. After all, you had to know the rules to break them well. Parker didn’t know enough about medicine yet to qualify, and even if he’d been Hippocrates himself, Charleston wasn’t sure if she could trust him.

  What if he really is different now?

  No. “He’s going to quit,” she said to the empty hallway around her. She knew Parker. She knew what he did when things got tough. He ran. She’d work with him until he did, as promised, but putting herself at risk of being duped again? No fucking thank you.

  Charleston made her way toward the elevator, her boots sounding off in muffled thumps over the buffed linoleum. She passed the skills lab, realizing that whomever had been in there last had left the lights on. Out of Type-A habit, she detoured her way over the threshold and headed for the panel of light switches a dozen paces away. But the sight of a familiar figure sitting at the very last station made her feet slap to a halt.

  “Oh!” At her exclamation, Parker looked up from the work in front of him, and Lord, those eyelashes and that slow, sable-colored stare were downright criminal. “Sorry,” she said. “I was on my way out and I thought someone left the lights on by accident. I didn’t think anyone was still here.” Well, anyone other than her, anyway.

  Parker slid a hand over the dark stubble on his jaw. “I know it’s late. Boldin and Young headed out for a few drinks, and Vasquez went off to do…whatever she does when she’s not here. But I wanted to get in some hands-on work since you and I focused on other things today, so I stuck around.”

  Her curiosity sparked hot enough to veto her caution. “What are you practicing?”

  “Suturing techniques.” He gestured to the table in front of him with a gloved hand, and wait…

  “Are those pigs’ feet?” Charleston asked, her legs auto-piloting her closer.

  Parker nodded. “Yeah. There’s a butcher on Fairmont Avenue who saves them for me. As a paramedic, I started IVs and did workups all day long, but we didn’t do sutures, so I’m rustier than I’d like to be.”

  She eyeballed the tidy rows of black nylon sutures, both interrupted and uninterrupted, that marched up the four pigs’ feet on the lab table. “They don’t look too bad,” she said, and Parker laughed.

  “You are direct. I’ll give you that.”

  “Sorry.” The prickle blooming over Charleston’s cheeks told her she was almost definitely blushing to the point of visibility.

  But he waved off her apology. “Ah, don’t be. This is more for muscle memory and needle control than actual technique. I know nothing really mimics the real deal quite like the real deal, but I also know the practice will make me a better doctor eventually. That’s all I care about.”

  “Clearly, since you’re here at”—she flipped her wrist up for a quick peek at her watch—“eight PM on a Friday night after working an eleven-hour shift.”

  “So are you,” he pointed out, and she replied without a second thought.

  “I don’t mind. Being a good doctor is all I care about, too.”

  Clamping her teeth over her bottom lip, Charleston forced herself to stop talking before she kept talking. Telling Parker what she cared about was far more personal than she’d meant to get with him, even if it was the truth. Between those dark eyes framed by even darker lashes and the way he’d turn his whole body toward her whenever she spoke, talking to him felt far too easy. She’d learned that the hard way once. Going for a repeat wasn’t on her agenda.

  She rummaged for a getaway line, a polite “well, have a good night,” forming on her lips. The words jammed to a halt, though, at the sight of Parker doggedly working through the sutures he’d resumed stitching into the pig’s foot in front of him. His brow furrowed with determination, his hands steady even though they moved slower and less steadily than they would once he got more practice and learned a few tricks, and realization crashed into Charleston all at once.

  Parker’s intensity had always been there, yes, but this dedication, this sharply honed purpose, was new. Right now, even when he was just practicing in the skills lab, he looked as if he meant what he’d said when she’d challenged his commitment.