Grumpy Doctor’s Holiday Twins (Forbidden Doctors #17)

26. Ethan

26

ETHAN

I drove faster than I should have, given the road conditions, but I had to get to the hospital. When Melody called me so frantic, I knew something was very wrong. She sounded panicked and she was always even-keeled and calm. It was completely abnormal for her. My heart felt like it would explode with worry.

When I pulled into the emergency room parking lot and saw John's large SUV parked near the entrance still running, I knew it was bad. I raced toward the entrance and shut the door to his vehicle, then told one of the orderlies to park it and bring me the key. Inside, things seemed to be running as normal, but I heard Melody crying and moved in that direction. What was normal in an ER was only normal for the doctors, not for the patients and their families.

My feet gravitated toward the sound of Melody sniffling and stutter breathing, and I watched a nurse pushing a dialysis machine in the same direction. Anxious tension coiled around my chest and throat as I walked through the door first and saw Melody's distraught expression. I knew as a nurse, she wasn't fully educated enough to understand everything, but she knew enough, and the fear in her eyes was very real.

"Babe," I breathed, and before I could get any other word out, she crashed into me. Her sobbing made her body shake, and I pinned her against my chest firmly. "Shh, it's okay. I'm here," I soothed, but there was no comfort for this mother's heart. I looked down at her little girl lying in the hospital bed looking weak and frail. Holly's skin was yellowish, indicating jaundice, and her eyes were dark and sunken. She appeared anemic too, which was odd.

A condition simultaneously affecting her liver and her kidneys, as evidenced by the nurse with the dialysis machine, was extremely rare. I held the woman I loved while the nurse got started hooking Holly up to the machine, and John glared at me like he hated me. And I never pulled away from Melody at all. This was too intense for me to care what he thought.

"What's going on?" I asked him, and he shook his head. His eyes shifted to the tablet in his hands that he scrolled—probably Holly's chart and any tests they'd had done so far.

"She's so sick," Melody whimpered, and her grip on me tightened. I knew if Holly was well enough, Melody would be cradling her, singing to her, not this. Not her urgent, desperate clinging to me.

"John, let me help." I guided Melody to a chair which I pulled up closer to the bed. She didn't want me to let her go, but I placed kisses on her forehead and said, "Rest, babe. Let me work.' I wasn't on shift. I wasn’t even an ER doctor. I was probably breaking some law by even thinking I could diagnose what was going on since I was intimately involved with the patient's mother, but there wasn't a man alive who could stop me.

Melody slouched into the seat trembling and mopping her tears with a very used tissue. I stood by her side while I reached for the chart John held, but he didn't pass it over.

"White cells are bottomed out. She has a kidney infection, but that's not the source of the renal failure. It's the cause." John rattled off facts as if he were emotionally detached, not the girl's uncle. I couldn’t take time to admire that about him, though, not when Melody was so scared.

"You've done a CBC?" My mind raced. In a child this age, there were so few reasons for jaundice. It happened at birth sometimes, but Holly was two, or maybe three. I didn't know. No one had told me. "CBC will tell us?—''

"Bilirubin, yes. Off the charts. We're getting the dialysis, but something's affecting her liver." John's forehead creased as his eyes darted back and forth across the screen. I glanced at Melody, who sat with one arm hugging herself, the other hand on her lips, rocking. She was muttering a prayer or something and it broke my heart.

"Bilirubin? And no white cells?" My mind went into overdrive. I rubbed my forehead and felt the deep creases. I tried to think of anything else that might point to a diagnosis. So few things fit this description, and we were clearly in a race against time to figure this out.

"It's autoimmune hemolytic anemia," John blurted out, and while that fit, they'd have seen this on the test.

"Not if the Coombs test came back negative." I pinched the bridge of my nose knowing if the pathologist had seen that, we wouldn't be standing here right now. "G6PD deficiency," I told him, though it was a long shot.

"There was no trigger. She's so young, and her G6 was normal. It's not that. Ethan, we have to figure this out." John tossed the tablet to the bed, and I scooped it up, now feeling alone in this room as my focus zeroed in on Holly's file.

Fatigue, belly ache, jaundice, renal failure. I read through the list of symptoms in my head, and they were so familiar, I felt like it was on the tip of my tongue. I couldn't place it. This felt so surreal and so overwhelming. I even blocked out Melody's sniffling and soft prayers.

"PK deficiency," I told him, grasping at straws, but even as he rejected my idea, my stomach roiled.

"Not PK deficiency. Her levels are fine. The pathologist said the structure of the red blood cells is?—"

"Can I speak to you?" I said, feeling my throat clamp down. It wasn't a lump in my throat. It was like I swallowed a bite of food that refused to go down while someone was actively choking me with both hands wrapped around my neck.

John glanced at Melody, and his brow furrowed more deeply than I'd ever seen it. He pursed his lips, and I swore I saw lightning bolts in his eyes.

He jerked his head, and I followed him into the hallway, lightly touching the scar on my left side. It'd been there since I was five years old. My own trauma of being hospitalized and treated for something very rare haunted me. I heard the blood whirring past my eardrums and felt dizzy.

"Yeah," John grunted. He looked annoyed for having to leave the room, but what I had on my mind was going to shock him. It shocked me.

"It's spherocytosis…" I suddenly felt numb, like I couldn't think or put together coherent sentences. This condition happened in less than two-tenths of a percent of the population. So rare, in fact, that I almost died of it when I was a child because no one knew I had it. Neither of my parents had presented with it, though Dad was a carrier of the gene. This couldn't be a coincidence.

When I said the words, John's expression shifted to concern, not anger anymore. "That's extremely rare, like less than a one- percent chance." He was shaking his head even as I yanked up the side of my shirt to show him the scar.

"I was five… John, I have this condition. I have to take supplements for it and I get tested regularly in case of relapse." Why was I telling him? Why wasn't I speaking with Melody about this? "John, is there something you need to tell me about that little girl?” I asked, too afraid to just ask him if Holly was my child, if those twins belonged to me. To think Melody could have slept with another man who had this exact same rare condition was astronomical. My heart knew the answer.

"I think you need to ask her. I need to get her typed for a transfusion. Tell the nurse to stop dialysis. She needs fluids and folic acid now." John infuriated me. He was switching to doctor mode again and shutting me out, and I needed answers.

"Without testing her first? Are you insane? That dialysis might save her life." I found my hand clenching the tablet so hard the screen cracked, and John looked down at it briefly.

"Talk to her," he growled, then he turned on his heel and walked away, and I had my answer.

The very fact that he was willing to risk his niece’s life by removing dialysis during renal failure meant he knew Holly did have this condition. And if she had hereditary spherocytosis like me, it meant she was mine. There was no other logical explanation. I slept with Melody four years ago, which meant these twins weren't two going on three. They were three and a half, and she was pregnant before she left, even if she didn’t know it.

I ran a hand through my hair and clamped my eyes shut tightly. This couldn’t be happening. Melody wouldn't hide something this important from me. She couldn’t. I couldn’t believe that about her.

I stared at the open door and thought I might scream, or cry, or vomit. Or maybe I'd do all three things. Just when I felt like we were finally on the same page again and ready to heal, I got the shock of my life. I couldn't breathe.

"Ethan! John! She's not breathing. Her heart rate!" Melody shouted just as the alarms started sounding and I raced back in. Father or not, this little girl was about to die if we didn't do something fast.