The Switch (15 page)

“Very funny.” She rolled her eyes at him as they walked out into the bright, if frigid sunlight. All of the questions made her head spin.

The spinning nearly took flight when Danny stopped at her car door, pulling her close for a leisurely kiss before nudging her into her seat and sending her home.

Tia put her family search on hold after her visit to the hospital. Christmas was that weekend and though there were still a thousand and one things she needed to do, she and the girls took a break and headed to the fire station Wednesday afternoon.

She found Danny kicking back in a chair in the kitchen with a can of soda and a book. “Been slow?” she asked.

He looked up and grinned, opening his arms to accept a hug from Samantha as she threw herself at him. “Hey there, kiddo, how was school today?”

“We watched movies and had a party and exchanged presents and ate lots of junk food. It was fun and I got a Barbie.”

“Very cool! You’ll have to show me next time I’m over.” He looked past Samantha and met Tia’s gaze.

She shrugged. “Nothing new to report.”

“We’ll find another way.” He set Samantha down and crossed the room to Tia, reaching for her. When she shied away, as she always did in front of the kids, he put a hand on her shoulder and held on, then turned to Samantha. “Hey, bug, do you have a problem with me kissing your mom?”

Samantha shook her head and giggled. A grin split her face.

“Good.” He turned back to Tia and quirked his brows. “You heard her.” Then he pulled her into his arms for a jolting, but all-too-brief kiss hello.

Since Samantha cheered at the kiss, Tia kept her few mild protestations to herself. She forgot them when his lips touched her anyway. “Hey, there,” she said when she had a chance to catch her breath.
 
His deep blue eyes mesmerized her.

“Hey, yourself.” He slid his hands down her arms to latch onto her fingers. “I wish I could come over for dinner and a movie tonight, but I’m working through Christmas.”

“Holiday pay?” She wondered how long it would take her to say more than two words at a time.

“That
will
be nice, but more important, most of the other guys needed Christmas off to be with their kids.” His eyes bore into her soul. “You mentioned you plan to stay in town, so I hoped I could get you to come here for a while, share your family with me.”

She swallowed at the thought of spending the holiday with Danny. She was surprised at how much the image appealed to her. Finding she had her voice back, she gave him the rundown. “My parents are coming for presents and breakfast—which should make thing chaotic and less than merry,” she said this last under her breath so the girls wouldn’t hear, but Danny still could. “Then we’re going to Lee’s mom’s for a late lunch so the girls can play with their cousins and be spoiled by their other grandparents.”

“That leaves the evening open to visit me, doesn’t it?” His voice was just this side of husky, sending a thrill all the way to her toes.

“If you aren’t out rescuing people from car accidents or from heartburn caused by too much Christmas dinner that the patient is sure must be a heart attack.” The second scenario had come straight from his Thanksgiving runs.

“I’d like that.” He looked into her eyes for a long moment and she thought he would kiss her again. Instead he seemed to pull himself back, released her and turned to Samantha. “You should see the new toy we got on the rig. It’s so cool!”

Tia watched him take Samantha’s hand and lead her to the ambulance with only a glance back over his shoulder. She wondered if Samantha was destined to become an EMT the second she reached eighteen. Watching her enthusiasm, Tia smiled at the inevitability.

* * *

Danny stood at the order desk at McDonald’s, Tristi tucked up against him, laughing and babbling while he watched Tia and Laura talk. He’d arranged this meal for everyone to get together, the first of many, he hoped. He wanted to allay Tia’s fears that she stood between him and Laura. Though she claimed it didn’t bother her anymore, he knew on some level it did, and he wanted her to be comfortable with everything. Besides, they were both important to him, and he wanted them to be friends.

He picked up the tray of food he’d ordered for Laura and returned to the play area where they were eating while Samantha climbed through the plastic tunnels. “So, did you miss me?”

“You’re interrupting our conversation,” Laura said. “I was going to tell her about the water weenie incident.”

He rolled his eyes as he set the tray in front of her. He
hoped
she was kidding. Why did women think they had to discuss every embarrassing choice a guy made as a kid whenever he dated someone new—or was it just Laura who was like that? “Then I’m right on time. There are disadvantages to letting you meet my girlfriend. I’m so happy to have you alive again, your penchant for stirring up old trouble slipped my mind.” He’d gladly put up with her behavior since it meant she was alive to annoy him, but he wasn’t sure enough about Tia’s commitment to their relationship not to worry about her reaction.

Danny picked up a chicken nugget and handed it to Tristi, glad when she grabbed on and started chowing down.
 
“So, did you manage to stop by the school and see your old coworkers?” he asked Laura. He sat across from them and settled the baby on his lap.

“Yeah, it nearly caused a riot—it made me late getting here. Some of the students saw me and came to investigate—everyone wanted to know if the news reports were true. Anyway, it took a lot longer to get away than I expected. They have, of course, filled my position.” Her mouth formed a moue of disappointment before she moved on. “The district doesn’t foresee anything else opening up soon.” She ate some fries and took a sip of diet cola.

“So how’s the process of becoming undead working out?” Danny picked up the nugget Tristi had dropped on the food tray and handed it back to her.

“It’s coming. I almost have the paperwork together. Still, it’ll be after the new year before the court rules that I’m alive. Then I’ll have to contact everyone and send them the appropriate paperwork proving I’m only impersonating
myself
and not someone else. Sometime next summer I may even have it all straightened out.” She looked at Tia. “It’s been a mess, and bound to get worse. How are things at the station? You’re still cooking for the noon news, I hear.”

“Yeah. It’s going well.” Tia told her about the dishes she planned for upcoming segments. “Danny’s always happy to help me test the recipes.”

Laura laughed. “I bet! He’s always had a bottomless pit. I think it got even worse when he became a firefighter.”

“Hey, I’m a growing boy,” he protested. He noticed how relaxed and easy Tia was with Laura and felt his shoulder drop a little in relief. It was going to be okay, even if he did end up the butt of their jokes.

Turning her gaze back to Tia, Laura nodded toward him. “He’ll probably still be saying that when he’s fifty and has a paunch.”

Danny touched his stomach, offended she’d even suggest he’d ever get paunchy. No way he’d let it happen. “You’re killing me here,” he said when Laura laughed at him.

By the end of the hour all of them sat easily together. Tia seemed reassured, Laura was taken with little Tristi, and Samantha sparkled and shone in the attention slathered on her. Danny thought his world was nearly complete.

* * *

Tia had tried tracking down the doctor listed on her birth certificate—and learned he was dead. She wasn’t having much luck with the nurses and other OB staff from that time, either. “I’m never going to get anywhere with this search if no one will talk to me,” she told Danny as they snuggled in the living room after putting the girls to bed one night.

“Give it some time,” he soothed. “I’ll find the lady in the cafeteria soon, or I’ll find someone else with the information you need.”

“I hope so. I’m starting to think this whole thing’s impossible.” She rubbed her eyes and put her head on his shoulder. He had such nice, broad shoulders.

 
He slid a hand down her arm, then up again. “It’s taken you twenty-eight years to get to this point. You don’t have to find all the answers overnight.” He caught a lock of her hair in his fingers and began playing with it. “Did I ever mention how much I love you hair? It’s so bouncy, and gorgeous.”

She laughed in surprise. “No, you never mentioned it before. Though I have noticed your strange tendency to play with it.”

“I can’t help myself; it begs to be touched.” He tugged on it, then pressed a finger to the bottom of her chin, tipping her head toward him. “It’s like my fascination with you—I don’t think I’ll ever grow out of it.”

“Those are some pretty serious words, there.” Tia felt warmed and tingly at the thought.

“Yes, they are.” He stopped her next question with a kiss.

Lights flashed and sirens filled the air as Danny grabbed the Broselow bag and checked to make sure they had a Pediatric Emergency Tape in it. They would be at the accident scene in less than two minutes and the reports coming in had adrenaline rushing through his veins, his mind whirling at top speed. Working on children always made him nervous.

Danny sent up a quick, silent prayer as the ambulance slowed at the scene and as soon as it stopped, he jumped out, trauma bag in one hand, Broselow in the other. “Where’s the kid?” he asked the officer approaching the rig, and when directed, hurried to the place where the little girl lay fifteen feet from the edge of the road. The five-year-old had dark, almond-shaped eyes, and curly black hair. Her face contorted with pain and she whimpered as he knelt beside her.

“Hi, my name is Danny. What’s yours?”

She didn’t answer; just opened terrified eyes and cringed away from him.

“I’m a paramedic. Do you know what that means?” When she shook her head, he explained, then told her what he was doing as he began a full toe-to-head checkup, looking for breaks and bleeders. By the time he got to her head thirty second later, she had told him her name—Emily—but her face had gone ashen and she kept closing her eyes sleepily.

The icy wind whipped past them and through his heavy winter clothing as he knelt beside her. Someone had thrown an adult-sized coat around her, but Emily still shivered on the cold ground. He was pleased she didn’t seem to have any significant external bleeding, but her femur appeared to be fractured, and she complained of pain in her stomach. Neither was a good sign, and she was going downhill fast.

“Get me a traction splint and a pedi backboard,” he called when one of the firemen from his team came over. Chris waved that he understood and headed back to the rig at a jog.

Danny grabbed a bystander to hold Emily’s head in alignment and put up a prayer of thanks when the C-collar he’d grabbed fit her. All the time he spoke with her, asking her questions, trying to keep her awake. Her pulse dropped so he could barely feel it at her wrist and he rushed to put in an IV and enlisted another bystander to hold the bag of saline.

He helped James splint the broken leg and pull traction to get it back into alignment and relieve the girl’s pain. Finally they were ready to move her to the backboard. A glance at his watch told Danny the whole process hadn’t taken as long as he thought, thank goodness, but with her shock and the cold, speed was the byword. The quicker they reached a trauma center, the better.

He wished her veins had been bigger. She needed more fluid as fast as possible. They loaded the little girl into the ambulance and he started prepping for the second IV. “Start a bolus,” he called to James, “and get me some D-25.” He may have been jumping the gun on the glucose, but when a kid her size started to decompensate, pushing sugar and fluids as fast as possible was imperative.

“Come on Emily, fight,” he growled under his breath as the ambulance zoomed down the road to the hospital. He worried about internal bleeding, and he knew the pain had to be crippling from the broken leg, but her slow and shallow breathing made it so he couldn’t administer morphine or fentanyl if he didn’t want her to go into respiratory arrest. He double-checked her leg to see if she had broken a major vein there, but saw no evidence of swelling from blood loss.
 
Her stomach, on the other hand, was growing hard and distended, which indicated internal bleeding.

Danny pushed the glucose into one vein while James continued to bolus fluids in the other, trying to rehydrate her as quickly as possible. The second set of vital signs looked somewhat better than the first, but were still far too weak.

Danny called into the ER, wedging the cell phone between his shoulder and ear as he counted Emily’s breaths. He kept the conversation with the nurse on duty brief, then dropped the phone on the bench behind him and got out the intubation equipment. “Her breaths are too far apart. We’re going to lose her.” His heart raced and his hands shook, but he injected the medication that would keep her from gagging on the tube and slid the ET tube into her trachea as he’d done for so many patients in the past. “How’s the bolus coming?”

“Almost done.” Sweat dripped from James’ brow. He glanced out the window and sighed. “We’re here.” The ambulance slowed and pulled into the entrance to the ER.

Reaching the ER didn’t mean their work was over, however. The patient rooms were nearly full and Emily’s injured mother hadn’t arrived yet. The staff scrambled to keep up, so once they got her moved to the regular bed, Danny and James stayed, fighting to help the little girl as she continued to go downhill.

* * *

Back at the station an hour later, Danny showered, then headed for the kitchen. The internal bleeding and damage had been too serious. Though they’d rushed Emily to the operating room within five minutes of her arrival at the hospital, the little girl had died on the table before the paramedics had been able to finish their report.

Danny flopped into a chair and rubbed his face, trying to hold back the tears threatening to pour down his cheeks. He kept seeing Samantha’s bright, laughing face in his mind, seeing it darken with pain, as she weakened before his eyes.

How did he deal with this? His heart ached and his eyes stung as the tears began to flow again. He’d thought he’d gotten them all out of his system in the shower, but he found it wasn’t the case. He stood and walked out the back door into the cold night. He wanted nothing more than to hold Samantha close, feel her vibrant life in his arms, to remind himself she was okay, even if another family mourned the loss of their little girl.

Since he couldn’t leave the station, he pulled out his phone and dialed Tia’s number.

“Hello, Danny? What’s going on?”

It was late to be calling, he knew. “I need to talk to someone about normal stuff. I suppose Samantha’s in bed.”

“Ages ago. Is she the one you called to talk to?” There was a hint of amusement in her voice.

“No, well, I wouldn’t mind saying goodnight to her, but if she’s in bed, that’s fine. I’m more than happy to speak with you instead.” He tried to make his words sound teasing, but wasn’t sure he succeeded.

“I heard her giggling. She thinks she’s being sneaky, reading under the covers, like she’s pulling one over on me.” Tia chuckled.

Danny smiled. He could see Samantha with her little princess flashlight, the covers over her head. The flashlight would be tucked between her shoulder and head as she turned pages in the book and giggled at funny drawings and lame puns. “I’m glad you’re letting her stay up a little later than usual.”

“Pretending like I don’t know she’s still up means she won’t be in here in ten minutes complaining about how she can’t sleep. At least she’s in bed and quiet. More or less.”

“You’re an awesome mom.” His feelings for her expanded in his chest, filling all of the empty holes. He couldn’t imagine a future without her in it.

“Lazy is what I am. Now, what’s eating at you?”

He smiled despite himself. She’d come to know him so well. “We had a bad run tonight. We lost a kid.”
It’ll haunt me for months.

“I’m sorry. It must have been awful.”

“I keep seeing Samantha’s face.” He paused, trying to hold back the emotions. He didn’t want to crack again. “How would you feel about a breakfast visit tomorrow? I think I need to see her.” He ran his hand over his mouth. “That probably doesn’t make sense.” She and Tristi had more than wormed their way into his heart. Along with their mom, they were quickly becoming the most important part of his life.

“No, it’s fine. Come. Feel free to join us anytime. Really.”

“Thanks.” He fought down the lump in his throat, then decided a change of subject was necessary. “How’s your search coming?”

“I’ve reached a dead end,” Tia said. “I don’t think I can do any more research on these other women by myself. I’m going to have to get a private detective.”

“Can you afford it?” Danny had noticed how careful she was with her money. Either she didn’t have much to spare, or she was extra frugal about how she spent what she had.

“My budget isn’t limitless, but I think I can afford basic information. I’m hoping I can get what I need for a thousand or less, but I can double it if necessary.”

“You’ve been researching PIs?”

“Yes, eighty an hour plus expenses seems to be the minimum rate. The thought makes me cringe.”

“Let me check around and see if any of the guys knows some reliable, honest guys you can call.”

“I’d appreciate it. I don’t know where to start.” She told him which cities she’d pinpointed, then changed the conversation to Tristi’s first foray into crayon murals—which would come off with a little elbow grease, thanks to special crayons and advanced wall paint. The new artwork on the side of the sofa was another matter. This discussion morphed into each of them sharing stories from their childhoods.

The pager tones called Danny away from the phone half an hour later and he ended the conversation to respond to a possible heart attack. Thanks to their talk, he felt ready to tackle the next challenge.