She shrugs and says, “I think so.”
My chest tilts, settling into a terrible kind of balance. I look over at Rowan to see if it will change his mind that she doesn’t know, that those triplets might belong to someone else entirely, but all I see is a tenderness that’s almost unrecognizable coming from him.
I glance to Sean, and see something flicker in his gaze—a realization, a decision. Suddenly, it’s clear to me. We aren’t letting her go.
Nurse Nicole knocks at the door and enters the room again, the discharge packet and prenatal program information in her hand and a smile on her face. She operates just like Sean—confident and calm, but with that special thing that only women can share between each other.
“Nurse Nicole, Miss Abel is going to come back in two weeks for a viability and growth scan. Can you walk her through her next steps?” I ask her, taking an initiative that I can tell makes everyone but Nurse Nicole tense. She nods with a bright smile directed to Willow, and I thank her.
When we exit the room, Sean snaps at me, “Why did you tell her to come back? You know as well as I do that we need to talk to admin.”
“She’ll be back, will she not? It might not be with us, but she needs another appointment regardless,” I snap back, and that shuts him up.
We take the long way toward the staff lounge, shoes quiet on the polished floor. The hallway narrows here, lined with black-and-white portraits of the hospital’s founders—men in stiff collars and women in starched uniforms. I’ve passed them a hundred times without seeing. Tonight they feel like judges, watching us file past with our mouths shut.
Rowan’s stride is clipped, his jaw tight. Sean’s slower, but his hands are gripping the chart so hard, his pen in his mouth and his eyes on her bloodwork, that I half expect the muscle to tear through his sleeves.
I break the silence when we get in the elevator. “Okay, I’ll start,” I say, pitching my voice low. “What bothers me is we keep talking like protocol’s the point. Like recusal is the answer. But that’s not what’s in your heads.”
Neither answers. Rowan keeps his eyes glued to the doors like he could make the elevator move faster with his mind. I lean forward and knock the chart out of Sean’s hands so it clatters onto the floor noisily. “Ah now,what thefeck?” he croons, bending down to pick up the sheets.
“Say it,” I press. “Say what we’re all thinking.”
Sean’s eyes flash. “That we can’t treat her?—”
“No,” I cut in. “Not the polite version. The truth.”
Rowan turns, his gaze dark, steady. “The truth is those babies could be mine,” he says, voice rough. “And I’ll be damned if I hand them over to a stranger with a chart.”
Sean swears under his breath, raking a hand through his hair. “Christ.” It’s not an admission exactly, but for Sean, it is.
“She deserves the best care she can get,” I say again, needling him, staring into his eyes like I can brainwash him. “That’s us. Whether admin likes it or not. Whether she likes it or not.”
The elevator dings, and the doors open with a flourish into the hall in front of the lounge. Sean nods. “I don’t want to walk away,” he finally admits.
“Neither do I. Rowan?” I look to Rowan, who doesn’t say anything but shakes his head, his thumbnail between his teeth.
“So there it is,” I finish. “None of us is done with her. None of us is willing to walk away. You can dress it up in ethics or rules, but when it comes down to it, we’ve already made the decision.”
Sean exhales, the fight still in his shoulders but the truth hanging heavy between us now.
Neither of them argues, and that’s as close to a handshake as we’re going to get.
9
WILLOW
I pickthe café for a meeting because it’s neutral. Public enough to keep everyone on their best behavior, private enough that a corner table and the hiss of the espresso machine can muffle hard words. At lunchtime, light spills through the big windows and makes dust look like glitter.
They arrive together, giving each other furtive looks and whispering out the side of their mouths. White shirts, sleeves rolled. No coats this time. Daylight doesn’t flatter them so much as unmask them.
Sean spots me first. Warmth blinks on in his face like someone flipped a switch, and the relief that runs through me is ridiculous. He lifts a hand, then remembers himself and tucks it into a pocket.
Declan carries the air of a weather front. Bigger in daylight, somehow, with broad shoulders and blue eyes that sweep the room and then land on me like I’m something to safeguard. A good instinct in an exam room. Less comfortable across a café table.
Rowan hangs back half a step, controlled, as if he lined up each molecule before he walked in. His jaw works once when he sees me and then goes still. Ocean-calm over riptide.
“Thanks for meeting,” Sean says, taking the chair across from me. He doesn’t sit until I nod. Gentle. Careful. “We wanted to…sort this the right way.”
