Newborn Needs a Dad by Dianne Drake Read Free Book Online

clothes and peace of mind. And I’ve already found the handmade baby clothes.”
     
    “I’m done for the day,” Gabby said, plopping down onto the exam table in emergency room one. In the past two hours she’d seen one scheduled patient, one walk-in and done a regular pelvic exam on one of the staff nurses. It wasn’t an overwhelming schedule, which was fine with her. Working again felt good. She’d missed it, and she was glad to be back in any capacity.
    Neil, who was sitting on a chrome stool across from her, looking all rigid and uncomfortable whilst reading an outdated medical journal, glanced up, took off his reading glasses and tucked them into his pocket. “Did you have a good first day? It wasn’t too much for you, was it?”
    “Good first day, yes. Too much, no. In fact, it was a little slow.”
    “Like I said earlier, you’ll learn to appreciate those lulls since they don’t come too often.” He put his journal aside, and stood up. “Look, are you up to a quick dinner? We’re not busy right now. Fallon is down the hall stitching up a kid who took a header off his bicycle, and that’s all we’ve had this past hour. So I was thinking about going across the street to the café before I have to come back and spend the night in emergency on call. You’re welcome to join me, unless you have other plans.”
    “Plans? My plan this time yesterday was to go back to Chicago and get my condo ready to sell. Now here I am, working in a place I’d never heard of until…” she glanced at her watch “…twenty-nine hours, forty-two minutes ago. Meaning no plans, and I’ve love to join you.”
    “So, what do you eat?”
    “Lately, everything I can get my hands on. A little light on meat, but other than that no dietary restrictions, no self-imposed taboos. Just point me in the direction of food and I’ll show you what I eat.”
    “Then you’ll love Catie’s Overlook, because they fix alittle bit of everything.” Neil hurried down to exam three to check on Fallon, who was coming along nicely with her patient. In fact, the procedure was finished and she was at the lollipop stage—the hardest part of the ordeal, trying to get her young patient to choose between red and green. Neil took a look at the stitches, wrote an antibiotic prescription, gave the boy both the red and the green, and sent him home with his mother. Then off with his white lab coat and on with his denim jacket. A quick gesture to Gabby and they were on their way.
    “So what’s the specialty of the house?” she asked. Heading down the hall, his strides were long, and his heels clicked briskly on tile floor. She liked that confidence in him, liked the way he held the door open for her but didn’t overstep his bounds by taking hold of her arm as she half expected him to do. “And are the portions huge? Because I eat a lot these days. I tell myself it’s because Bryce is going to be an athlete and he’s storing up the calories early.”
    “Bryce?”
    “My son. I’m calling him Bryce Evans, after my father.” She sighed wistfully. “That was the first decision I made after I found out I was having a boy. A fitting tribute, I think.”
    “I take it your father’s not with you any more?”
    Not her father, not Bryce’s father. Things should have been different. “Not any more. Just when I was ready to make the big move, he made a bigger one. Too young, too soon.”
    “I’m sorry, Gabrielle. I get the feeling you and your father were close.”
    “We were.” Stepping up onto the curb, she stopped for a moment as Bryce kicked, and laid a hand on her belly. Then she smiled. “But it’s an amazing circle of life, isn’t it? I lose one Bryce who meant the world to me, and another one’s about to enter my life who means even more.”
     
    What an amazing woman. He didn’t think he’d ever met anyone like Gabrielle Evans before. Confident, self-assured. Maybe a little too defiant with her self-reliance, probably a reaction to