Back in August, we’d been at dinner, my gorgeous husband sitting across from me in the Italian bistro looking a bit self-conscious in the clothes I’d picked out for him, when he was called away. When he leaned over to give me a kiss goodbye, one of the waitresses sighed as she walked by. Several people turned to watch him leave, and I knew it was because I’d gotten him out of his jeans and cargo pants for once. Ian had three modes of dress: casual, which included the aforementioned denim and the pants of many pockets; work, which meant Dockers, khakis, not a huge step up from the casual and dressed for events which included suits; and of course his seldom seen but never forgotten Armani tuxedo. What I had wanted to do for a while was to get him to embrace a more upscale street style that included trousers that fit, that were not at all baggy, dress shirts with those, or lightweight sweaters in the fall, and not having to wear regular socks, but instead those that basically lined the inside of the shoe.
“I look dumb,” he announced when he came into the kitchen where I was having a glass of water before we left for dinner.
I nearly choked. He was stunning even with the scowl. “You look amazing.”
The leer came fast. “Yeah? Good enough to screw?”
“You always look good enough to screw. That’s not the point.”
His slow wink, accompanied by the head tip that indicated the stairs that led up to our bedroom, was not subtle. “We could just stay in.”
“Get your gun,” I directed him, “and let’s go.”
Even the gun, on the holster on his belt, didn’t detract from the outfit, and since he had to wear a jacket into the restaurant, no one noticed. Mine, in my ankle holster, was out of sight as well.
I was enjoying standing at the bar with him, waiting for our table and listening to him grumble about how I’d cheated.
“I’m sorry?”
“Don’t I’m sorry me,” he muttered, leaning in close as the bar area got tighter, hand on my thigh. “How long’ve you been training our stupid dog to do that?”
I snorted. “He’s not stupid.”
He rolled his eyes.
We had been at the park, and I bet Ian that for date night I got to pick out his clothes if our werewolf, Chickie, could put the basketball through the hoop.
Ian laughed in my face. “Oh, you’re on,” he crowed. “And if I win, we spend date night at home with pizza and beer and you in my lap.”
“Ian, I will sit in your lap anytime you want,” I assured him, and his catch of breath made me smile. Clearly, I still had a very carnal effect on my husband. I prayed that would never change. “But I want you to wear what I want, so… do we have a bet?”
He shrugged.
“Yes?”
“Yeah, sure,” he scoffed. “You’re on.”
At which point I turned to Chickie, bounced the ball, and said, “C’mon, buddy, nothing but net.”
Ian watched as I bounced it three times, then tossed it to our dog, who leaped up, hit it with his nose, and sank the basket easily to the cheers of all the other players on the three courts.
There was no response for several moments as Ian stood there, mouth agape, staring. Of course, he finally found his voice.
“Are you fuckin’ kidding me?” he yelled.
More whooping, and one of the women I’d seen many times playing with her friends yelled over that Chickie—because she knew his name—had gotten so good.
As in consistent. As in I’d been practicing.
“You cheated,” Ian accused me, clearly offended. “That’s not fair. I’ve been hustled.”
I shrugged and he came after me, and I couldn’t outrun him on a straightaway, but this was a court, and there was zigging and zagging and then off the court, around tables, over tables, the same with trees and bushes, and finally I told Chickie to “get him,” and Ian was tackled by a hundred and twenty pounds of not-so-ferocious wolf-hybrid. If anyone asked, though, he was a cross between a husky and a Caucasian Ovcharka. And there were in fact those things in there, and the Caucasian Shepherd dog—another name for them—even more than the wolf, accounted for his size, but the wolf was the part that made him stealthy, kept him silent before an attack where a dog would have barked. Dogs gave a warning to get you to go; a wolf moved in slowly, silently, and caught you off guard. Many, many trespassers had been caught by Chickie and subdued before Ian or I even got there.
Where we lived, there were four homes that shared a common gated backyard, and at night—if you were stupid enough to be someone he didn’t know and you were sneaking around—that was bad. The last time something happened, there was a guy who came over the fence to talk to one of Mrs. Sasaki’s granddaughters who were visiting with their folks for the summer. The girl was fourteen, the guy was twenty-one, and maybe to some people that was okay. Or if the parents knew him and there was nothing going on physically until the girl, or boy, either way, turned eighteen… sure. I didn’t personally agree, but I had some archaic thinking about some things, as my friend Aruna reminded me many, many times.
The thing was, though, the granddaughter, CeCe, had met the guy on Navy Pier, and then he appeared in her backyard. To her, not creepy. To Chickie, who Mrs. Sasaki had introduced her to, but of course not the stranger… this would not stand.
Ian was sprinting when I reached the top of the stairs on our tiny back deck that led down into the grass. For the hundredth time, I thought that our deck needed a makeover.
“Such a good boy,” Mrs. Sasaki was praising Chickie as he danced around the man lying supine in the grass. Chickie had, according to CeCe, come out of the darkness like a wolf or something and slammed her admirer down. For his part, the man was winded, yes, terrified, without question, but otherwise unscathed.
“Oh, that’s why you had us all meet this lovely dog,” CeCe’s father said as he crouched and gave Chickie scratches and rubs. “You’re a good boy, yes you are.”
CeCe was horrified and embarrassed. Ian had the guy sit on Mrs. Sasaki’s bottom step as he called in and ran the guy for warrants, and I had Chickie come sit by me. He eyed the intruder, but he was no longer looming over him.
“I have a warrant for stalking,” Ian reported, turning to look up at CeCe’s father. “I think we got lucky here.”
“We certainly did,” he agreed, walking his daughter over to me and Chickie. “Give the dog some love, honey, while I arrange to have a steak delivered every day for the rest of his life.”
I talked him out of that as CeCe went to her knees in the grass and hugged my dog. Ian warned the guy if he moved, Chickie would tear off his nuts, and while it was overly graphic, CeCe’s father seemed pleased by the threat, and Mrs. Sasaki told Chickie what a good boy he was all over again. She had treats for him in the house, pieces of steak she fried in bacon grease, which thankfully he only got on occasion. At least I thought so.
Ian came back with zip-ties and took the guy to the locked gate of the common area to wait for Chicago PD. He was very relieved to be leaving Chickie’s immediate vicinity.
“You know he can cross this whole area in seconds,” Ian assured the stalker as they walked away, and he wasn’t wrong. So when Ian came after me and Chickie caught him in a flying tackle, leaving him gasping for breath, lying face up in the grass, I stood over him and cackled.
“How long did it take you to train him to—don’t lick me, you stupid dog.”
“Not long,” I assured him. “And maybe if you stopped calling him stupid, he’d do these things for you as well,” I finished smugly.
He growled at me. Chickie tipped his head the way dogs do when they’re not sure what you’re about.
“Are you planning to back out on the bet?” I goaded him.
“Hell no!”
“Excellent,” I said, offering him a hand up.
He grumbled all the way home.
Dinner had been lovely up until the time he was called away by Eli, who needed backup at our boss’s house, of all places. I went home alone. On the way I got a call from Ian that said he was taking one of the guys from his old unit to the hospital, and I shouldn’t wait up because he was going to be late. I didn’t offer to go because Ian wasn’t like that. If he wanted me there, he would have said.
I went to bed around one and still no Ian, so I texted him goodnight and headed up. Somewhere around three, I got jostled, and when I rolled over to check on him, he had his back to me.
Ian had specific ways to communicate that had nothing to do with him talking. If he got in bed and attacked me, well, that one was pretty easy to read. Sometimes he would wrap around me tight, spoon me, and that only occurred because something horrible or sad happened and it hit him that he could lose me, or someone lost their love, or any of a million things that prompted him to come home and hold me tight enough that his body would know I was there, safe in his arms, as well as his head. But if, like now, he got into bed, bumped me but then when I turned, he was rolled away from me, this was his way of saying that he needed me.
Moving the blankets, untucking them from around me, I slid over to him, gently kissed the nape of his neck, heard the soft sigh I was after, and then put an arm around him and pressed my body to his.
After so long that I nearly fell asleep, he said, “Two of the guys in my old unit were killed.”
“I’m so sorry,” I murmured into his hair. “When was this?”
“A couple days ago.”
I knew it wasn’t his old team leader, Mohammed Qureshi, or his wife, Stacy, would have called me. We were close. During the pandemic, we texted and got on FaceTime, and when things had reopened, before the variant reared its ugly head, we had met for lunch or drinks or taken our dogs to the park, which was fun, as she had a Chihuahua and I had a werewolf.
Before Zahra O’Reilly got pregnant, she would have normally been the third musketeer, walking her beagle, Stanley. She still had us over, because she trusted me and Stacy, but as for going out places… she wasn’t ready to do that. Not carrying a new life inside her. Before Covid, she and I had loved to shop together, along with one of my oldest friends, Aruna Duffy, who had been the pregnant one then, but now she preferred to keep her social distance from strangers to even more than six feet. But she, like Stacy, would have called me if she’d lost the love of her life.
“Collins and Baker—you met Collins at the airport that time—they were both killed in Dakar on some––”
“That part’s not important,” I soothed him, clutching him tighter.
“No,” he agreed, pushing back against me, needing me to assert more power and hold him tighter.
“Is there a funeral?”
“The warehouse where they… it blew up, and no one could…” He trailed off, and I pressed my face into his shoulder. “Hunt, he’s the guy I was at the hospital with, he tried to go in for Collins, but after the explosion and with how hot the fire was burning, there was just…”
“So your buddy is pretty much broken at the moment.”
Quick grunt of agreement.
“And you’re feeling guilty for not being there?”
He cleared his throat of unshed tears. “No. Baker took my place on the team, and we were trained the same, did the same job, and he was a helluva lot younger than me.”
But I knew better. Whoever Baker was, he wasn’t Ian Doyle. And not that Ian was Superman, and he carried a lot of ghosts with him as well, but Ian brought people home. Zahra could attest to that.
“There’s gonna be a thing on Saturday, like a wake, and I wanna go, and I need you to come with––” His voice cracked, going out on him, and I threw my leg over his hip, tightened my arms, and held him as he shuddered.
“I won’t leave your side,” I whispered into his hair.
And only then did he exhale.
It was not what I expected. I imagined a somber event, but there were people talking and laughing and swapping stories. There were long silences after a particularly good tale was told and then the toast, “To Collins,” or “To Baker,” and everyone drank.
I met George Hunt, who I was surprised to learn was the bodyguard for my boss’ daughter, Hannah Kage.
“Why does a marshal’s kid need security?” I asked him as he sat in a chair on the patio in the shade, looking a bit ashen and bruised as well as haunted almost, but—Ian pointed out—in one piece.
He scoffed. “You have no idea. That kid’s a trouble magnet.”
“Really?”
He nodded, taking a long pull on his beer.
“She always seems so poised when I speak to her.”
“Oh, she’s amazing and confident,” he assured me. “She’s gonna be president someday, mark my words.”
I smiled because he clearly adored her.
“But,” he added sharply, “she’s a trouble magnet.”
“Like how?”
“Not a little baby bunny walking around all innocent so people think she’s prey or something. That’s not what I mean. Unfortunately, that kid ain’t afraid of nothin’.
The issue is that because she thinks she’s a superhero, she sticks her nose in things that are bad, and other times, a situation that seems completely normal ends up going completely to shit.”
“Huh.”
He nodded. “One time she went for glitter and ended up busting a ring of guys selling counterfeit purses out of the back of some store.”
“Oh, I remember that,” I said brightly. “Ian had to go pick her up.”
“Yeah, see? I mean, it’s lucky her father is who he is so he can pull her out of that crap, and now of course, she has me.”
I smiled at him.
“I have GPS on that kid because I don’t trust her.”
“And why does she merit that kind of protection? I mean, outside of the whole trouble magnet situation.”
“’Cause Aaron Sutter is her uncle, and she’s normally helping him do something like chair an auction or whatever. Plus she’s usually wearing some stupid amount of jewelry that a lot of people would love to get their hands on.”
“Oh, that’s right. I remember a benefit at the Field Museum years ago, but I had no idea she chaired those things. I thought she just attended.”
He shook his head after taking another sip of his beer. “Nope. She is the party now.”
“And how did you get talked into being her bodyguard?”
“She picked me,” he replied, like it was physically painful. “So many other upright shiny citizens for her to choose and Miguel Romero—that’s Sutter’s chief of security—he informs me, yeah, Hunt, you have the pleasure of watching over Hannah Kage.”
I smiled, because under the irritation and scowl, I heard his fondness.
“You know, lookin’ back, I should’ve known from the relieved looks on the rest of those fuckers’ faces that I was in for some shit.”
“So basically, you have a GPS tracker on her? Does she know?”
“Hell yeah she knows,” he growled, sitting up, his color improving as he spoke of Sam Kage’s daughter. I suspected he was more than just fond of her. He either had sisters she reminded him of or she was the one he never had. “I told her if she leaves the house, ever, without it on that she and I are done.”
“That worked as a threat?”
He smirked at me, and it was smug and the scoff was loud. “It’s the only threat I have that actually works.”
“Would you really do it?”
“And leave her to her own devices out in the world? Are you insane?”
I chuckled, and he looked at me like I was nuts and then laughed himself and took another sip of his beer. Easy to understand why Ian liked him. He was very similar to both the man I loved and my boss. Hard protective shell that guarded soft, gooey insides. George Hunt had a good heart. I hoped there was someone caring for it.
Looking around, I saw a table away from the others, next to the railing, and Zahra was there with Stacy and a few other women. The table was round, and the women I knew and loved were sitting together under the canopy of some sugar maples.
Striding up, I went first to Stacy, leaning over and kissing her cheek that she tipped up for me, and then went around her and crouched down next to Zahra’s chair.
Instantly, her hand went to my shoulder.
“Hi, sweetie,” she greeted me with a smile.
“How is baby?” I asked, tipping my head to her belly. I never touched any pregnant woman’s stomach since Aruna and Janet, both, told me how invasive and creepy it was when people did it to them.
“Baby is using my bladder for a punching bag,” she grumbled, wincing.
“I’m sorry,” I said, looking at a plate that was barely touched. “Not hungry?”
“It’s hard,” she murmured, and her eyes flicked sideways to two women standing by the railing, one with crossed arms, listening and nodding to the other with red-rimmed eyes and a wad of tissues in her hand.
“They must be the significant others of Baker and Collins,” I said softly.
“Yes,” Zahra told me. “The one not talking, the blond, she’s Baker’s wife, and the one who looks furious, that’s Collin’s fiancée. They were supposed to get married over Thanksgiving weekend.”
I nodded.
“You know I never get people that want to combine holidays with anniversaries and shit. I think you’re asking for trouble. Why would you want to put that pressure on yourself? It’s never made any sense to me.”
“Well… maybe,” I offered, “that way you can’t ever forget. One of the guys I work with, he got married on Valentine’s Day so always, yanno, he’ll remember that day and never forget his anniversary.”
She nodded. “But now, every Thanksgiving, including this coming one, she’ll think, I should have married the guy I loved but he died so it never happened.”
I groaned.
“Oh, I’m sorry, am I depressing you?” she deadpanned.
“Well, yeah,” I teased back.
She chuckled. “What the hell, man? How can we do anything but laugh in the face of something so horrible.”
And she was right, of course.
I had so much respect for people who loved soldiers. I myself had managed only for a short time before I had confessed to Ian that I couldn’t do it. I didn’t have it in me. It would kill me to be that scared all the time, to be that worried all the time, and I knew enough about who I was that it would change me into someone I didn’t want to be. But giving him ultimatums was not the thing to do. It wasn’t my place. I would never do that to anyone, make them choose between me and their dream. It was neither fair nor right. I was very lucky when I told Ian that I couldn’t do it, couldn’t sit at home and wait and wonder, that he had already made his choice that leaving me didn’t work for him either.
At home, later that night, I was quiet, and he’d noticed.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked after he came back from throwing a tennis ball for Chickie, standing at the bottom of the stairs that led up to our tiny back porch.
“Nothing,” I murmured, looking out at the dark green grass, the ancient oak trees, and feeling how warm it still was at nine at night. Everything seemed cast in blue shadows, and with how humid it was, my skin was sticky.
“Tell me,” he ordered, climbing one step at a time, like he was stalking me.
“I just wonder, do you ever think, I wish Miro was stronger?”
“How do you mean?”
I shrugged.
His smirk then, the one that creased the crow’s feet in the corners of his eyes and did deadly things to his lips. “As much as you may want me to be, I’m not a mind reader.”
Sitting down on the porch, I stared at him, stopping his ascent toward me. “Do you wish I could have been amazing like those women today? That I could have had it in me to let you keep being a soldier?”
He scoffed. “I was done with being a soldier, you know that.”
“Yeah, but you felt guilty when you found out your friends died.”
“Not guilty,” he assured me. “Not anymore. I used to think like that. I used to be sure that I was the only one who could do my job, but it’s not true. Especially now, having been out of it for the few years I have been, that slows you up. You have to have those hair-trigger reflexes, and that’s just not me anymore.”
I nodded.
“I do a lot of talking now. I convince people to do what I say, and I have to tell you, there’s a lot more sense of accomplishment now.”
“There is?” I asked hopefully.
He sat down beside me and leaned sideways to kiss my temple. “What’s this really all about?”
“Tell me why it’s better,” I pleaded.
He shrugged. “I don’t hold a gun on someone anymore to get them to comply. They do what I want because they trust me.”
It was true. Everyone trusted Ian. The fugitives he brought in trusted him not to hurt them. The men who followed his orders trusted that he had their best interests at heart, and his friends trusted that he always had their back.
“I can’t imagine being in a firefight anymore. I’ve become much more of a negotiator. I would want to talk to everyone and find a solution.”
“But you were happy being a soldier too.”
“It’s true,” he agreed, “I was. There was a lot of personal pride and satisfaction that came with that choice.”
My heart sank.
“But think about this,” he said, slipping his hand over my bare knee. “If you hadn’t told me that you needed me with you all the time and not a world away, I would have never discovered that there was more to me than just the power in my body and how fast or accurately I could shoot.”
I turned to look at him and noted that he was staring out at the same yard as I had been minutes before. “When Kage made me step up, take on a position I had no idea if I could do, that was scary as hell, but because he believed, and even more importantly, you… I tried.”
“You’re really good at your job, Ian,” I apprised him. “Not that you need me to tell you, because you know already.”
“I do,” he replied smugly, and I had to smile; the eyebrow waggle made it impossible not to. “And I want to keep moving up, and I hope that’ll be here, in Chicago, but if it’s not, it’s not. I have things I want now, and all those dreams include you, so… you created this new creature that I am, so you have to take responsibility.”
“I do. You know I do.”
“Okay, then,” he rumbled, leaning back, putting an arm around my shoulders and clutching me tight. “Don’t ever worry about me not being a soldier anymore.
That’s not me. I want everyone home, safe. The missions are secondary to that. My whole frame of reference is different, and that can’t ever go back.”
“I’m really happy about that.”
“Yeah, well, I’m pretty happy about that myself.”
And it was good to hear, because I needed the words every now and then, to know that grounded and happy and home was Ian Doyle’s new normal.
When Zahra had her baby, toward the end of January, we went to the hospital and found that not only had the baby not yet arrived, but there was a problem. The baby was breech, and her doctor recommended a C-section that she did not want. Apparently she had told her husband that she could still try and have the baby the regular way, but the doctor had stressed that she did not recommend that. Her sister said that women had been having babies for thousands of years, and whatever position the baby was in, it would be fine if she pushed like regular, as she was preparing to do. Her mother said that she should have the C-section, as it was the safest for her and the baby. Her father had pulled up WebMD on his phone and was listing all the things that could happen, and did she even know what abdominal incision the doctor was going to make? And what about the uterine incision? What if the baby was accidentally cut?
I was surprised they let me and Ian in to see her, and while Ian made a beeline for Danny, Zahra’s husband, I bolted to her bed.
She grabbed my hand tight as soon as I was close enough.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her, only able to see her lovely dark eyes above the mask.
She explained everything really fast, as her mother and sister asked her who I was. “He’s my friend,” she snapped, overwrought having been there for eight hours already. Apparently they had first tried to turn the baby. That had not worked. “I get that I have to have the C-section,” she whimpered. “But my doctor is stuck across town and won’t make it in time.”
“Where is he?” I asked, pulling my phone from my back pocket.
“He’s flying into O’Hare, but he won’t make it here before they have to take me into surgery,” she said, starting to cry. “I want my doctor, not this crazy bitch who wants to filet me.”
I glanced over at the OB-GYN standing with two nurses, and she came over. “I’m a very good doctor,” she told Zahra, “I have done this many times. It’s very routine, I assure you.”
Once she walked away, I looked down at Zahra. “It’s not routine, it’s your baby.”
“Yes,” she gasped as Danny joined us, taking her other hand.
“Honey, we’ve got to go in.”
“No,” she lamented, turning back to me.
“What’s the doctor’s name, and where is he coming in from?”
She took a steadying breath. “From San Diego, and his name is Dr. Krauss.”
“Got it,” I said, glancing at Danny. “Hang in there, okay?”
He nodded.
The phone rang on the other end, and then, “What?” Jack Dorsey asked, not greeting me, just annoyed.
“Really?”
“It’s Sunday and I’m here. What do you want?”
“I need you to get a Dr. Krauss off a flight in from San Diego for me and bring him to Northwestern Hospital as soon as you possibly can.”
There was a pause.
“What?” I asked, sounding just as irritated as he had.
“Who is he?”
“My friend’s OB, and she’s scared and she has to have a C-section.”
Heavy sigh.
“If Becker or Kage say anything, it’s on me.”
“Damn right it’s on you,” he grumbled, but I heard the familiar tapping of computer keys. “Okay, flight lands in three minutes, I’m sending—Callahan, what are you doing right now?” There was a moment of silence. “No, I don’t want you to go get me another chili dog, I need—come here!”
I put the phone against my chest and squeezed Zahra’s hand. “It’s gonna be okay. We’ll get your doctor here.”
The relief on her face was everything. I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to Danny.
“Thank you.”
“No worries,” I told him.
Unfortunately, at that moment, Danny’s family showed up. His mother agreed with Zahra’s sister that she should be able to deliver naturally just fine. His father was one of those types who wanted to wait in the lobby. Danny’s sister, Dianna, was a midwife and started to explain why all of this was wrong and terrible for Zahra and the baby, and Dr. Edmonds, the ob-gyn who was supposed to fill in for Dr. Krauss, announced that they really had to go. The nurse said the doctor had another C-section after Zahra’s and there was a schedule to keep.
Zahra started to cry, Danny was breathing through his nose, and that was when Ian yelled.
Ian could yell really, really loud.
“Clear the room,” he ordered, and between his stance, the star hanging from the chain in the middle of his chest, the steely death glare in the dark blue of his eyes and how wide his shoulders were—everyone bolted for the door. Even the doctor and two nurses left, which was kind of funny.
Danny took a breath. “No one listens to me like that unless I’m in another country,” he said with a loud exhale. “How’d you do that?”
Ian tapped his badge. “People don’t know what they should or shouldn’t do in those situations. It’s like, I might mouth off to a cop, but what can I get away with, with a marshal?”
Danny nodded. “I’m thinking I might need a new job myself.”
And that was it, Zahra was bawling, because that was her wildest dream. Seeing her husband every day.
Normally, the drive from O’Hare to the hospital would have taken about forty minutes. With lights and sirens, it was done in twenty. Josiah Redeker was driving, and by all accounts, he should have driven in NASCAR. Ian loved riding with him whenever he got the chance.
Dr. Krauss looked like an orchestra conductor. Silver-gray hair hit his shoulders, his eyes were deep set, and the lines on his face told of a life well lived, especially the deep ones in the corners of his eyes.
“Oh,” he said when he reached Zahra’s bedside, really well dressed in a cardigan sweater over a long-sleeved dress shirt, trousers, monk strap dress shoes and a newsboy cap. I liked his style immediately. “Are we ready to have a baby?”
Zahra nodded quickly.
“Well then, let’s do it.”
She exhaled a shaky breath, and he took her hand and leaned over close.
“My dear, I have never lost a mother or baby in over twenty years, and I don’t plan to start with you. And while no procedure is ever routine, I promise you that my team and I have brought many, many beautiful babies into the world.”
Deep breath then, and I saw her calm as he straightened up.
“Well, I guess I should have listened to you when you said you felt like you had a bowling ball wedged under your right boob.”
She scowled at him, and he chuckled.
“I’ll see you in there,” he said, and then turned to Ian and not me because, I was certain, he was the one with the badge showing. “I’d like to leave the airport like that from now on. Will you see what you can do?”
“I’ll get right on that, sir,” Ian assured him.
“See that you do,” he said jovially, and then he was off to change and assemble his team.
Zahra thanked me, Danny thanked me, and then a team of new nurses were there, and they all had happy, colorful-looking scrubs, and maybe it was my imagination, but they came in and light seemed to follow them.
“You see,” Zahra said, taking the hand of Dr. Krauss’s scrub nurse, Liz.
“I do see,” I agreed, and Liz smiled at Zahra and told her everything was going to be fine as they wheeled her out of the room with Danny still holding her hand.
“I’m a really good doctor,” Dr. Edmonds assured us when we stepped into the hall.
“No doubt,” I told her. “But you know how it is, you want who you know.”
She was fuming and whirled around and left.
“Bedside manner much?” Callahan commented, shooting a look after her and then turning to me and smiling. “Redeker is waiting in the parking lot, revving the engine on the car, but I thought I’d check to see if you needed us for any more taxi service for the night.”
“You’re a riot,” I assured him, clapping him on the shoulder. “But thank you.”
“Becker said that women about to give birth fall under our purview, so we’re good.”
“He’s a soft touch,” Ian griped as he walked by me. “And I’m gonna tell him that tomorrow when I see him.”
Neither Callahan or I believed him.
On the Sunday before Valentine’s Day, Zahra invited everyone over to see the baby, now that she felt like a person again. To me, she looked incredible. Everyone was masked, as usual, and even though Danny’s mother was grumbling about that, to get in the house and be able to stay, those were the rules.
I didn’t want to hold the baby. She was way too delicate. I hadn’t held Sajani, Aruna’s daughter, or her new son, Oliver, born a year ago, until they were both six months old. They were way too squishy and soft and boneless. What if I folded them funny or dropped them? I couldn’t even handle the idea of that. Ian, for whatever reason, was way better about babies than me. He held Oliver before he even got his first bath and had actually yelled at the lady who had tried to take him out of the room to bathe him. I had gone to pick up Sajani to bring her to see her mother, because Aruna didn’t want Liam’s mother driving at night. She was apparently not good in the dark anymore, neither was his father, and his siblings were all busy on a Monday night. So I went to get my goddaughter from her grandparents’ house. Liam had to run home to get the correct hospital bag for Aruna because he had a total brain fart and grabbed the wrong one on his way out the door. His smelly gym bag made it to the hospital instead, which left Ian with Aruna.
A nurse had come in to take Oliver for his bath.
“Wait,” Aruna said softly, pointing at the woman. “You don’t have a hospital badge.”
“Oh, its fine,” the nurse said, hands on the rolling bassinet that they put the babies in. “I just left it in my locker, but everyone knows me on this floor.”
“Yes, but they say not to let anyone without a badge take––”
“It’s fine,” the nurse assured her, and from what Ian reported, she had a tone.
That information had to be taken with a grain of salt. Ian thought everyone had a tone that he didn’t know, but Aruna had backed him up.
“It’s not fine,” Ian barked at her, coming around Aruna’s bed fast, his hand with an iron grip on Oliver’s bassinet. “Nothing about this is fine.”
“All you’re doing is slowing me down for––”
“I don’t give a fuck,” Ian roared, and that was it.
The nurse gasped and ran out. Aruna was laughing and trying not to because she had a gas bubble, and those apparently hurt like a mother after you give birth.
Oliver, who had, Aruna told me later, been listening to Ian while in utero for months, did not stir from either Ian’s outburst or his volume. He slept on, and his hearing, as it had already been tested, was perfect.
The head nurse came in then, with the first nurse in tow, ready to tear Ian a new one for yelling at her subordinate, when Ian lifted his sweater and showed her his badge.
“I have one,” he said drolly, and tipped his chin at her, “and I can see yours clear as day. I don’t see this lady’s, though.”
At which point Hilda, that was the head nurse, did a slow turn and, Aruna said, pinned the other woman to the wall with a stare that should have killed her. Dead.
The other nurse was dismissed from the room, and Hilda turned and smiled at Aruna. “I’m going to bathe your little one now. Would you like Dad to come with us?”
“He’s not Dad, just a very caring uncle,” Aruna corrected her.
“Oh,” Hilda said, smiling at Ian. “Good. We know he’s already got a great support system, then.”
Ian gave her a grin and followed her out, taking video of Oliver’s first bath on his phone and answering unsurely that yes, probably, the kid was going to get circumcised. “Does he get drugs when they do that?”
“It depends on what the parents want.”
Ian thought drugs. Definitely. It turned out Aruna and Liam agreed when it was time, a day later, for Oliver to have that done.
“Doc said he’s got a perfect penis,” Liam had told us proudly when we visited them at home. “That’s my boy.”
But Ian had held Oliver in the hospital, and again when we went over there a day after they got home. Little Brian, that was what Zahra and Danny had decided on, was older than Oliver had been, but I still wasn’t about to touch him. Ian lifted him easily and grinned down at him, and when I glanced around, several people were admiring the big strong man holding the teeny-tiny baby.
“Do you want to have a baby?” I asked Ian later when we were outside on Zahra and Danny’s much larger back porch, complete with furniture that had to be strapped down with how windy it was.
“I can’t have a baby,” he teased me. “I’m a boy.”
I shook my head. “I’m being serious.”
He grimaced. “If I say no, are you gonna leave me?”
“No, I’m not going to—for crissakes, Ian, it’s just a question.”
He sighed deeply. “Well, then, if I get a say… no, I don’t want a kid.”
“Why wouldn’t you get a say?”
“Because whatever you want, whatever will make you happy, I’ll do. And if you want a baby, and it’s your baby, then I’ll love it.”
I grinned at him.
“I would point out that we have our hands full with our fur baby, who has learned to take a running start now to get up the trees and––”
“Holy shit, did you see that too? What the hell?”
“He scared that squirrel into a coma. It fell outta the tree. I thought the poor little fucker was dead.”
I had too until it came to life, squawking, in my hands. The fact that Chickie had taught himself to scale trees was utterly horrifying.
“Okay, so… are we good?”
“Yes, we’re good,” I assured him, moving over beside him to wrap my arms around him and kiss the side of his neck. “I just never want to be the reason you didn’t get to do something you wanted. I don’t want to take fatherhood away from you.”
“Didn’t we talk about this before when you first took the Custodial WITSEC job? I’m feeling very déjà vu about this conversation.”
“No, I know. But we’re not in the same place as we were, and sometimes things change.”
“Have they changed for you?” He asked.
I shook my head.
“Me either and I think that’s because I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything. I mean, I have a werewolf, I get Sajani and Oliver if, heaven forbid, anything ever happens to Aruna or Liam, I have all the boys we’ve put into WITSEC and then pulled out and, you know, every time I help one of the new guys out, I think, that’s fatherly, right? I mean, fatherhood isn’t really just one thing.”
“Very true.”
“Just like love is different for everyone.”
I nodded.
“I don’t tell you I love you every day, but you know.”
“Do I?” I asked, dropping my arms, moving slowly away from him.
“Oh, screw you, Jones, you know I fuckin’ love you!”
The look on the face of the woman standing in the doorway was priceless. Part surprise over the volume of the statement, a little bit of wishing she was anywhere but there, and of course, a grimace of a smile, because the declaration was sweet in its way.
“Shit,” Ian groaned.
“Yeah, I know you love me.” I snickered.
And audience or not, he charged over, pounced, held tight, and kissed the breath right out of me. It was Ian’s way, after all.
