When a Man Loves a Woman (Indigo) (12 page)

Two hearts had finally merged into one, bound by an eternal love.

Chapter 12

It was a little past one in the morning when Vic awoke to the squalling cry of a baby. She sat straight up in bed and listened intently. “Baptiste, who’s that?”

A.J. had already roused from his sleep and smiled as he looked at his shredded pajama bottoms, which lay in a heap on the floor along with Vic’s clothes. “The newest members of the family,” he answered and got up. He went to the dresser to retrieve another pair of pajamas.

“Who?” Vic yawned, rubbing her eyes.

He grinned. “Brianna and Chloé.”

Vic shot off the mattress and headed straight for the door.

A.J. called out to her from behind. “Honey?”

“What? What?”

“Baby, don’t you think you need to put something on?”

Vic looked down at her naked body. “Oh, Lord, I forgot.”

A.J. came over and gave her a quick kiss. “Take your time and get dressed. We’re just down the hall.”

She took the quickest shower of her life and hurried to the room two doors down where she found Baptiste. He’d already gotten the girls’ bottles and was just about to feed them when she entered. “How? When?” she ecstatically asked, lifting one of the infants from her crib.

“Hmm…late yesterday afternoon.” He told her the details of his conversations with Zach and Valerie and also how Gail Bishop, the social worker with Child Protective Services had contacted him after speaking to Valerie’s mother, who had absolutely no interest in taking in Brianna and Chloé. At his request, the twins had been placed with him.

“I still can’t believe you’re a licensed foster parent.”

“Well, I am.”

Vic finished feeding the baby she held, listened for a burp, and snuggled her against her chest. “Okay, who do I have here?”

A.J. knelt beside Vic who was seated in a rocker. “You’ve got Brianna, but the girls and I decided to call her Bébé. We call Chloé CeCe.”

A.J. lifted CeCe from her crib along with her blanket and sat in a matching rocker next to Vic. “Hey there, sweetheart,” he crooned against her ear. He wrapped her tightly inside the soft material, placed her high on his shoulder, and began humming a soft tune.

Vic watched in sheer amazement at their interaction and how quickly CeCe responded to Baptiste. Now she truly understood that being a pediatrician wasn’t simply a job for him. It was his calling.

“And Valerie’s doing okay?”

“She’s doing great. Honey, I believe she’s going to make it.”

“I pray she does. She’s been through so much. I’m going by and see her later today.”

“I think she’d like that.”

“Baptiste?”

“
Oui, mon amour?
”

“You’ve always wanted to be a doctor, haven’t you?”

“From the time I was six, but it wasn’t an easy road getting there.”

“I don’t understand.”

A.J. chuckled. “I could best be described as a militant growing up. I almost gave the sisters at my high school a stroke.”

“How?”

“Refusing to cut my hair for one, and being stubborn for another,” he admitted, laughing out loud. “Sister Theresa would cringe every day when I entered her class and she saw my hair hanging down my shoulders. Plus, I was known to get into a fight or two in my younger days.”

“No,” Vic replied mockingly. She’d heard the family stories of him and the fights that had caused him to be suspended from school on more than one occasion. “What happened to make you change?”

“Father David. He became the principal the year I entered high school. One day, he took me inside his office and asked me what I wanted most in life, and I told him.”

She chuckled. “So you stopped your Black Panther ways?”

“Not at first. My
mère
had died the year before, and I think one of the ways I dealt with her death was by becoming a rebel. Anyway, Father David must have seen something in me. So, he talked with Pop and asked if he could serve as my mentor. After that, he arranged for me to shadow some physicians he knew at a local hospital a couple of days a week.”

“It worked, huh?”

He smiled. “Yes, it did. I saw that in order for me to become what I wanted to be more than anything in the world, I had to change, so I got rid of the hippie look—some of it, at least—buckled down, studied hard, and the rest is history.”

“Angelique,” Vic said happily, referring to A.J.’s late mother, “would be so proud of you.”

A.J. nodded. “I certainly hope so.”

Vic chuckled a while later. “See, I always told you, you were stubborn.”

“I’ve never denied that character flaw, but I learned you do what you have to do if it’s something you want badly enough.”

“Why did you give up your position as chief of pediatrics?”

“Because of T-One and T-Two.”

Vic shook her head, confused. “I’m not following you.”

“Baby, I’d reached the top of my career when I got that position. Plus, I was swamped with administrative work and wasn’t able to do what I became a doctor for in the first place—help little people get well.”

“Trust me, I understand what you mean. And you never wanted to be in private practice?”

He shook his head. “Never. After I graduated from medical school and finished my internship and residency, I practiced a couple of years with the World Health Organization.”

“Really?” Vic said in awe. That piece of information was something new to her. “Why?”

“It was a chance for me to give back and use my training to help others.” He shrugged. “I doubt I would have ever developed an interest in public health if it hadn’t been for the stunt K-Mart and I pulled during our last year of medical school.”

She tried to hide her laugh, but failed. “All right, what did you do, Baptiste?”

“We did to a classmate, Ralph Peterson, what I was planning to do to you.”

“What’s that?”

“Fake a quarantine.”

“What?” she said, trying to quiet down her laughter.

“I’m serious,” he admitted, laughing just as hard. “Talk about anal retentive. Even as easygoing as K-Mart can be most of the time, Pete managed to get on his nerves, too. So, we decided our friend needed a little distance away from everyone for a few days.”

“Baptiste, y’all really didn’t do that, did you?”

“Yes, we did. One day after class, K-Mart and I found Pete and told him that he’d tested positive for encephalitis. After that, we locked Pete up in a room and rationed his food, and he ended up eating like one meal a day. He was so messed up by the time it was over with he spent a week in the psych ward.”

“Oh, stop. Man, you are lying.”

“No, I’m not. If you think I’m making this up, just ask K-Mart.”

“Did anyone ever find out?”

“Oh, yes, and as our punishment, the dean made both of us volunteer at a local health clinic until we graduated. That’s how I started working with drug-addicted teen mothers and their babies.”

After they settled down, Vic lovingly looked over at him. “That’s how you met T-One and T-Two, isn’t it?”

A.J.’s look of humor fled, and a somber expression took its place. “Yes. They were brought into the emergency room one night. They were the worst cases of child abuse and neglect I’ve ever seen,” he uttered softly, his voice thickening. He glanced at Vic. “But you know what?”

“What?”

“Despite the agony they were going through they held hands and wouldn’t let go of each other. Anyway, I stayed at their bedside. I’m not sure how many days now, but I had to be sure they’d make it through.”

She lightly stroked the side of Bébé’s face, who had drifted off to sleep. “Then what?”

“I left the hospital one day, headed straight down to Social Services, and applied to become a foster parent. Once I looked into their little eyes, I fell in love with those two munchkins. Their mother’s parental rights were being terminated anyway, and within six months she was dead. They would have ended up in foster care one way or the other, and I wanted my home to be the one they came to.”

“Oh, Baptiste…”

“They required a lot of care at first.”

“What kind of care?” she asked, curious.

“They’d suffered so much abuse and trauma they hadn’t learned to talk.”

Tears rolled down Vic’s face. “What did you do?”

He blew out a hard breath. “I knew I couldn’t give them what they needed and work, too, so I resigned my position the day they were released from the hospital and brought them home with me.” He shifted in the rocker until he faced her. “Honey, remember the day we first saw Bébé and CeCe?”

Vic nodded.

A.J. stared down at CeCe, who was now fast asleep, and cradled her closer to his chest. “I felt the same way about them as I did when I first saw Taylor and Tyler. Somehow I knew they’d be a part of my life.”

Vic sobbed softly, remembering that she’d felt the exact same way, but hadn’t wanted to scare him off by voicing her feelings.

He proceeded to tell her the fear he’d felt when he made the offer to Valerie to care for her babies. “This is my life, Honey. Living and working in the community, trying to help little ones…it’s who I am. I realize taking care of Taylor and Tyler is a big responsibility, and now we have Bébé and CeCe—”

“Taking care of all of these babies is what I want, too, Baptiste.”

* * *

“Baptiste, you hear that?” Later, around eight that evening, Vic lay atop Baptiste’s bed, staring at the ceiling.

“Yes. It’s called quiet.” A.J. was stretched out beside her, elbow bent and his head resting on his palm. “They must all be asleep.”

After they’d gotten Taylor and Tyler off to school, Vic and A.J. had come back home and spent the morning with Bébé and CeCe, becoming more acquainted with their personalities. In between the girls’ feeding and naps, they had become more familiar with each other. Neither of them had a desire to halt their passion. A.J. discovered that if he slid a pillow underneath Vic’s hips while he made love to her and nuzzled a particular spot between her ear and neck, she shattered like a pane of glass.

Vic rolled on her side to face him, her eyes roving over him, her hand stroking slowly over his crotch. “You think they’ll give us twenty minutes?”

“God, I hope so,” he groaned and covered her mouth with his. He deepened the kiss, but was interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell. Pulling away, they both sighed in frustration before A.J. stood and answered the door.

Zach strolled in a few moments later and took a seat at the dining room table. “Did I interrupt somethin’?”

“Yes,” Vic chuckled, winking at Baptiste. “We’ll resume later.” She focused her attention on Zach. “Listen, you hungry?”

Zach patted his stomach. “Naw, just left from over at Alcee’s house. Mama Z fed me today, but I could stand some dessert. Whatcha got?”

“Boy, you eat more than Baptiste.” Chuckling, Vic shook her head and headed off to the kitchen.

After Vic left, Zach leaned back in his chair and released a frustrated sigh.

“What’s wrong?” A.J. asked, concerned.

Zach ran a weary hand across his face. “The boys from the lab came up empty-handed trying to identify the paint chips. Damn, I need to find the car Scooter and Valerie drove that night.”

Returning from the kitchen with a slice of homemade apple pie on two plates, Vic had overheard Zach’s comment. She gave one plate to Baptiste and the other to Zach. “Zach, I heard what you told Baptiste. Maybe I can help.”

Zach didn’t stop eating. “Help do what?”

“Help you find the car,” Vic replied.

Zach frowned in confusion. “How?”

“Hypnosis.”

Zach lifted his brow. “On who?”

“Me.”

“Honey—”

“Baptiste, come on now and listen. Hypnosis might help me remember more about the accident or something about the car that Scooter was driving.”

“But, Honey, you said yourself you only got a glimpse of the back of the car before it drove off.”

“I know, Baptiste, but hypnosis might help me remember something I saw.”

A.J. shook his head.

Vic braced her hands on the table with her eyes narrowed. “Baptiste, I know you’re not sitting here telling me I can’t do something.”

“You’re right,” A.J. retorted and shot to his feet. “I’m not sitting.”

“Baptiste,” Vic uttered in a warning tone.

A.J. shook his head, again, rubbing at the base of his neck. “I’m sorry, baby, but I’m just not feeling you putting yourself through hypnosis.”

Vic glanced over at Zach. “You just said you needed to find the car, right?”

“Yeah,” Zach drawled.

“Come on, Baptiste,” Vic said with a pleading look. “It wouldn’t hurt for me to at least try, right?”

“Honey, you’ve been through a lot—”

“I know what I’ve been through, Baptiste, but baby, I made it. And right now, two other people are involved as well. One’s fighting for her life and the other is fighting to save it. They’ve gone through more than I have. They need my help, and I plan on giving it to ’em.”

Zach glanced over at A.J. from across the table. “Brother-in-law, Baby Girl might be right on this one. I told ya the other night the missing link to all of this is that car.”

Vic looped her arms around Baptiste’s neck. “Baby, if you hadn’t stood with me, I wouldn’t have made it. Stand by me on this one.” She cupped his face in her hands. “Please.”

“Brother-in-law, if it makes ya feel any better, there’s been times when the police have used hypnosis to help victims remember information that their memory suppressed.” Staring intently at A.J., Zach added, “Let me at least check into it, okay?”

A.J. released a sigh so inaudible he barely heard it himself and sat heavily. He begrudgingly relented, in part because he knew once Vic made up in her mind to do something, nothing short of death would make her back down. He also knew that she was right. They had to identify the car. He pulled her onto his lap, wrapping his arms around her waist. “Make no mistake, I’ll be right there.”

“You took it,” Tyler yelled from in the bedroom.

“Did not,” Taylor shouted back.

Zach shook his head and laughed. “Thought Thelma and Louise would’ve been asleep by now.”

Vic chuckled and gave Baptiste a sultry look. “We hoped so, too.”

“So, is this what I have to look forward to?” Zach asked, wiping his mouth with a napkin.