“Justice, he feels so hot.” She cradled the baby’s head to her chest and rocked as Jonas sniffled and cried softly, rubbing tiny fists against his eyes.
His heart turned over as he watched the baby and reacted to Maggie’s fears.
“I know,” he said, “but don’t worry, all right? Everything’s gonna be fine, and I’m gonna get someone in here to see him even if I have to buy the damn hospital.”
Someone out in the waiting room was crying, a moan came from behind a green curtain and nurses carrying clipboards hurried up and down a crowded hallway, their shoes squeaking on the floor. They’d been there an hour already, and but for a nurse checking Jonas’s temperature when they first arrived, no one had come to check on the baby.
Maggie forced a smile. “I don’t think buying the place is going to be necessary.”
“It is if it’s the only way I can get somebody’s attention.” He shot a glare over his shoulder at the hallway and the hospital beyond. “Damn it, he’s a baby. He shouldn’t have to wait as long as an adult.”
Maggie sighed and smiled a little in spite of her obvious fear. “I’m glad you’re here with me.”
He stopped and stared at her. “You are?”
“God, yes,” she said on a choked laugh. “I’d be a gibbering idiot right now if you weren’t here with me, pacing in circles like a crazy person and threatening to buy hospitals.”
He walked toward her and went into a crouch in front of her so that he could look at her and his son. He dragged the backs of his fingers across Jonas’s too-warm cheek and felt a well of love fill his heart. The baby turned his head, looked at Justice and sighed. A tiny movement. A small breath. And dark blue eyes looking into his with innocence and confusion.
And in that instant, that one, timeless moment, Justice finally completed the fall into an overpowering love for his son. It had been coming on him for days, and maybe it was all instinctual. Like a cow in the spring that can pick out her own calf from the herd.
Nature, drawing families together, bonding them with an indefinable something that in humans was explained as love. A love so rich, so pure, so overwhelming, it nearly brought him to his knees. There was absolutely nothing on this earth that Justice wouldn’t do for that boy. Nowhere he wouldn’t go. Nothing he wouldn’t dare.
“It’ll be all right, son,” he whispered, his voice breaking as his eyes misted over. “Your daddy’s going to see to it.”
Maggie reached for his hand and held on. Linked together, a silent moment of complete understanding passed between them, and Justice couldn’t help wondering how many other parents had been in this room. How many others had waited interminably for help.
“This is ridiculous,” he said. “There should be more doctors. More nurses. People shouldn’t have to wait. I swear, I’m going to talk to the city council. Hell, I’ll donate an extra wing to this place and pay to see it’s better staffed.”
“Justice…”
“What the hell is taking so long?” he muttered, squeezing Maggie’s hand to relieve his own impatience. “I don’t get it. What do you have to do to get seen around here, bleed from an eyeball?”
“Well, wouldn’t that be festive?” A woman’s voice came from right behind him.
Justice whirled around to face a doctor, in her late fifties, maybe, with short, gray hair, soft brown eyes and an understanding smile on her face.
“I didn’t see you.”
“Clearly, and as to your earlier question, I’m sorry about the wait, but I’m here now. Let’s take a look at your son, shall we?”
As the doctor walked past him toward the baby, she took the stethoscope off from around her neck and fitted the ear pieces into her ears. “Lay him down on the gurney, please,” she said softly.
Maggie did but kept one hand on Jonas’s belly, as if to reassure both of them. Justice stepped up behind her and laid one hand on her shoulder, linking the three of them together, into a unit.
“Let’s just listen to your heart, little guy,” the doctor crooned, giving Jonas a smile. She moved her stethoscope around the baby’s narrow chest and made a note on a chart. Justice tried to read it but couldn’t get a good look.
Then she checked his temperature and looked in his eyes. Finally, when the baby’s patience evaporated and he let loose a wail, the doctor looked up and smiled.
“What is it? What’s wrong with him?” Maggie reached to her shoulder to lay her hand over Justice’s.
“Let me guess,” the doctor said, hooking her stethoscope around her neck again before scooping Jonas up in capable hands and swaying to soothe his tears. “This is your first baby.”
“Yes, but what does that have to do with anything?” Justice asked.
Jonas’s tears had subsided, and he was suddenly fascinated by the doctor’s stethoscope.
“Babies sometimes spike fevers,” the doctor was saying. “Not sure why, really. Could be a new tooth. Could be he didn’t feel well. Could be growing pains.” Still smiling, she handed Jonas to his mother and looked from Maggie to Justice.
“The point is, he’s fine. You have a perfectly healthy son.” She checked her chart. “According to this, his temperature has already dropped. You can take him home, give him a tepid bath, it’ll make him feel better. Then just keep an eye on him, and if you’re worried about anything at all, you can either call me—” she wrote down a phone number on the back of her card “—or bring him back in.”
Justice took the business card she handed him. He glanced at her name and nodded. “Thanks, Dr. Rosen. We appreciate it.”
She grinned at him. “It’s my pleasure. But if you meant what you were saying earlier, the hospital could use the extra wing and I’ve got lots of ideas.”
Justice stared down at her and found himself smiling. There was so much relief coursing through his veins at the moment that he would have built the woman her own clinic if she’d asked him to. And he had the distinct feeling she knew it. As it was, he tucked her card into his breast pocket and said, “Give me a few days, and we’ll talk about those ideas.”
Her eyebrows shot straight up in surprise, but she recovered quickly. “You’ve got a deal, Mr. King.”
When she left, Maggie leaned in close to Justice and he slid his arms around her and their son, holding them tightly to him. He rested his chin on top of Maggie’s head and took a long minute to simply enjoy this feeling.