Two Weeks (The Baxter Family #5)(40)

“Yes.” Aaron looked a little more hopeful. “I keep thinking God will just allow it to happen. And we’ll have a baby of our own.” He thought for a minute. “Or maybe there’s something else we need to look into. Something we’ve missed.”

“I’ll have Peter get with you.”

“Okay.” He found a slight smile. “I had to talk to someone. It’s just . . . I feel like I’m alone in all this. For now, anyway.”

The two said goodbye and Aaron was halfway down the hall when suddenly Brooke stopped short. She’d almost forgotten! The business cards in her white coat pocket. She spun around. “Aaron!”

He turned and started walking toward her. Other medical personnel passed on either side, but Brooke didn’t see them. She could only think of the lawyer from earlier, the father of her sick little patient. When Aaron reached her, Brooke pulled out one of the business cards and handed it to him. “Here.”

Aaron took it and stared at it. “Alan Green? Attorney?”

Chills ran down Brooke’s arms. She couldn’t see the complete picture now, but she could feel it. God was up to something. “He’s an adoption attorney.” Brooke remembered her conversation with the man. “He said if there was any way he could help me, to let him know.”

A flicker of hope lit up Aaron’s eyes. “An adoption attorney.”

“Yes.” Brooke’s shrug matched her smile. “Might be worth a call.”

She smiled as the two of them parted ways again. But it wasn’t until four hours later when Brooke climbed behind the wheel of her Volvo that her breath suddenly caught in her throat. She grabbed the lawyer’s other card from her pocket and looked at it. No telling why Alan Green had given her two business cards this morning. Or how he possibly could’ve known she’d have a reason to use them both.

All in one day.

But as Brooke drove home she could feel the pieces coming together. And all she could think about was a precious girl who was coming back to the crisis pregnancy center tomorrow afternoon. A sweet waif of a beauty who had told Brooke she couldn’t imagine raising a baby.

No telling what the teenager would choose to do. Brooke had to believe the girl wouldn’t get an abortion. She could definitely keep her baby and raise it. But just in case, Brooke knew exactly who should get the other card.

A girl named Elise Walker.





12




Lucy heard about the sick baby as soon as she checked into work that day. A little girl born three weeks early, addicted to heroin. Brooke Baxter West was one of the doctors on the infant’s case. Her notes said it all.

It will take a miracle for this child to survive.

Every time this happened, Lucy thought the same thing. Why would God—if there was a God—let a drug addict have a baby? When she and Aaron couldn’t? It was still on her mind as she headed for the NICU.

Baby Nathan was doing better, gaining precious ounces. He’d been alive in their care for nearly a month now. Lucy paused at his bassinet and checked his vitals. Then she moved across the unit to their newest patient.

The little girl was long and thin, her skin red and hot and blotchy. She was on life support, oxygen and a device to help her heart beat. On top of that a morphine drip had been started—like baby Rio had needed way back when. The pain of withdrawal was excruciating for a newborn. Morphine was the only way for a baby to survive it.

“Poor little girl.” Lucy ran her finger over the tiny sock on the baby’s foot. Heroin was one of the most difficult drugs in all the world to beat. The President had declared the opioid crisis a national emergency because users were dying each day, on the streets of every city in the nation.

Still, Lucy couldn’t fathom taking deadly drugs while pregnant. Once in her training she had heard a former heroin dealer being interviewed. “The goal is to come as close to death as possible without dying,” the man said. “That’s the life of an opioid addict.”

But that mind-set during a pregnancy?

Lucy sat in the chair next to the sick newborn. How could a woman feel her baby kicking inside her and then shoot up with heroin? As if the life and future of her child didn’t matter at all. The fact that the drug was going to cause the baby pain and harm and possible brain damage and death—of no concern to the mother.

Of course, like other addictive drugs, heroin altered the mind. So most pregnant users had probably lost the ability to make a decision for anyone but themselves. So sad.

Lucy couldn’t fathom any of it.

She closed her eyes and remembered baby Rio. He had survived those nineteen days on the morphine pump, come out of what should’ve been a death sentence. Maybe life with his grandmother was working out. There was a chance Rio’s mother had stayed clean and had reentered her little boy’s life. It was possible. But the odds were against it. Lucy had asked Aaron once if they should follow up, find out how Rio was doing. Whether he was still with his grandmother.

But in the end they had decided against it. What was the point? The state cared about the parents, not the children. At least that was how it seemed so often. Lucy would’ve done things differently if she ran the system. If the rules were hers, she would have much stricter guidelines for birth mothers.

A door opened and Lucy saw Brooke enter the unit. She smiled at Lucy and then checked on a few babies before joining her near the sick little girl. “Another heroin baby.” Brooke sighed. Her voice was heavy with sadness. “I’m surprised she made it through the night.”