“Slow cooker it is.” He threw some sauce in with the meat, turned it on low, and put the lid on it. “I have to work some nights this coming week. Can you feed yourself?”
“Yeah. Or I’ll go to Mom’s, get a visit in. Between work and school, suddenly weeks go by without seeing her, and she likes to rub the belly.”
Owen laughed. Then he frowned. “Isn’t she going to your appointment with you?”
Becca made a face. “Dad…”
“What?”
“Never mind.” Then she sighed heavily. “No, not never mind. Look, I’m taking Hayden to the appointment. That’s why it’s today, so he can go and not miss school or work.”
Owen dropped the lettuce on the counter. “What?”
“I told you we’ve been talking. He wants to be involved. A bit.”
“That’s not how parenting works.”
She ignored that barb. “It’s just an appointment. And he has a right to be a part of the pregnancy.”
Owen grabbed his sandwich and shoved it into his bag. He’d promised to be supportive and have Becca’s back, but the “a bit” grated at him.
“Dad—”
“Thanks for being honest with me,” he said, stopping and looking right at her. Eye contact. “I appreciate it. I do. But that’s all you’re getting.”
“Thanks for being honest,” she parroted back.
He gave her a quick hug. “I gotta run. If he dodges the appointment, text me and I can meet you there.”
“He won’t.” She said it with all the innocent confidence an eighteen-year-old could muster, her chin jutted proudly in the air.
Owen wanted desperately for her to be right.
But when she was, when she texted him a picture of her leg next to a skinny-assed eighteen-year-old boy’s leg, sitting together on the couch in the waiting room at the clinic, the feeling that swept through him wasn’t relief that she hadn’t been stood up. It wasn’t any kind of pain or worry that this would end badly for her, either.
It was regret that he didn’t have an excuse to go and see Kerry, to maybe hang back and apologize if he could get the words out of his mouth in the right order. The need to see her and fix things pulsed inside him, thick and complicated. He’d wanted to use his daughter’s appointment to get into the midwife’s good graces. Ah, hell.
He would see her in a few weeks at the first interagency working group meeting. Somehow that thought didn’t make him feel better. If anything, it chipped away at him. The chances of him making a good impression on her at that meeting were slim to fucking none and he knew it. He just couldn’t get his act together around Kerry.
When he arrived at the station, he parked his truck around back, checked the schedule to see who should be in, and then went into the ambulance bay to keep an eye on the team hand offs from one shift to the next. On weekend shifts he tried to avoid doing the office admin work that often kept him behind a desk, so when the team was all set for the day, he hopped in his supervisor SUV and headed up the peninsula, putting himself in the field for a bit.
His loop took him into Lion’s Head, and as he pulled into the centre of town, a call came in from dispatch. An unconscious woman, injury unknown. A soccer team practice near the lighthouse. He was the closest vehicle, and an ambulance was ten minutes out.
“10-4,” he acknowledged, then flipped on his lights and siren.
He saw the group as soon as he turned the corner. He recognized one of them, Lore D’Angelo, a bartender and former troop of his. She was waving to get his attention, and he stopped right in front of her.
“Report?” He asked her as he hopped out and grabbed his gear from the back.
“Bailey fainted. We were running hill repeats, got to the top, and she keeled over. She’s a good runner, Owen.”
He nodded, listening to her, but his gaze was locked on the crowd, his focus on getting to the middle of it. The women parted for him, revealing Bailey Patel unconscious on the ground—and Kerry kneeling next to her, her fingers on the younger woman’s wrist and neck.
What are you doing here?But it wasn’t the time or place, and the answer was obvious. Becca’s appointment must have been with Jenna, and Owen felt like an idiot for wanting to shove himself into the middle of that.
The midwife was dressed like the others, in running shorts and a long-sleeved technical shirt. She had one sleeve shoved up her arm, revealing her watch, and she only spared him a cool, split-second glance before she looked back at her wrist. “Pulse is strong and regular, skin is pale and cold.” She rattled off a vital signs report that included observed respiration rate and a rough oxygen assessment based on extremities colour, which hadn’t changed. “She’s been unconscious now for three minutes without stirring. We called 911 right away because she’s never had an incident like this before, according to the rest of the team.”
Three minutes was a long time, especially for a patient who didn’t have a history of syncopal episodes. The strong pulse was a good sign, though. Owen set down his bag and snapped on a pair of gloves, checked her pulse for himself to confirm Kerry’s assessment, then grabbed his pen light. “Hey Bailey, can you hear me? What happened, kiddo?” He checked her pupils, and as soon as he flashed the light in her eyes, she stirred with a weak groan.
