Series: Silver Spoon MC Series by Nichole Rose
Total pages in book: 43
Estimated words: 38632 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 193(@200wpm)___ 155(@250wpm)___ 129(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 38632 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 193(@200wpm)___ 155(@250wpm)___ 129(@300wpm)
Unlike the rest of the hospital, there are no murals or happy paintings here. Everything is subdued, designed for function and expediency more than comfort. The sight tugs at my heartstrings. No hospital is a place for small children and infants, but a critical care unit like this is even less so. The nurse's station in the center is brightly lit, but the individual rooms are darker, allowing the children inside to rest as quietly as possible. Those I can see are all tiny, most not even out of their toddler years.
Carly leads me around the nurse's station toward a room on the right. Wires and machines run this way and that from the metal crib in the center of the room. My breath catches in my throat when I see the baby sleeping peacefully in the center. My heart beats against my breastbone in jarring thuds I feel all the way into the soles of my feet. Her shock of raven-black hair…her pale, porcelain skin…those long, long eyelashes…. She looks just like Siobhan.
I move toward the crib on silent feet, my gaze riveted to the angel inside. She's so tiny. I can't even make sense of the jumble of wires hooked up to her. She has oxygen cannulas in her nose with a thin tube running down her right nostril. Tape and a board hold IVs in place on her arm and right leg. A pulse-ox monitor wraps around one tiny toe. Even with the oxygen, her lips have a blue tinge to them. Her skin is all but translucent, her ribs visible with every labored breath she takes.
My eyes water at the sight, a lump rising in my throat.
"She's sedated," Carly says, coming up beside me. "It helps keep her comfortable."
Comfortable for what? I want to ask…but I don't. I already know.
She's dying.
Defiance rises swiftly, stirring in my soul like a battle cry. She's just a baby, an innocent little girl who just lost her mom and her dad—even if he doesn't deserve to be mourned. God or fate or the universe has taken enough from her. The world doesn't get to take more from her. It doesn't get to take her. I won't allow it.
She's mine to watch over now. And I'm not going to lie her die.
I'll save her, Siobhan, I vow silently, tears slipping unchecked down my cheeks. I promise you; I'll find a way to save your baby girl.
Chapter One
Tate
One Week Later
"You're calling early," I say, hitting the button on my navigation menu to answer Jason "Cash" Montoya's call. It's not even six-thirty yet. At this hour, he's usually still wrapped up in his girl, Hadley, unaware the rest of the world exists. Since he fell in love and got married, he tends to stay that way. He's head over heels for his pregnant wife.
I give him grief about it at every available opportunity, but the truth is…part of me envies the hell out of him. Waking up alone is getting old. But I've been married to my job for so long I haven't ever put much time or attention into looking for a woman to share my life with. I keep putting it off, figuring I'll get to it one day. Except one day never seems to come.
The simple fact is, there isn't anyone in Silver Spoon Falls who interests me enough to want to change my life. If she's in Houston, I haven't run into her there either. So I keep my life the way it is, unwilling to change it just because everyone gives me shit about being single at my age. I spend most of my time dealing with overwrought parents and critically ill children. What free time I have is spent with my MC brothers, dealing with our pain in the ass prospect, or catching up on sleep. I don't have time to dive into dating…especially with someone I don't see myself settling down with.
When I meet the one for me, I'll know it. Until then, I'm perfectly content single. My dad, world-renowned photographer Sage Grimes, was older than I am now when he met my mom at a photoshoot in New York. He knew right away that she was the one. I grew up watching them fall in love time and time again. My dad kissing on her all the time drove me nuts as a kid. Now that I'm older, I appreciate it a helluva lot more. They're blissfully in love and don't care who knows it.
I figure if I can't have the kind of love they have, I don't want it at all.
After all, settling isn't what I do. Neither are half-measures.
There's a reason I'm one of the best pediatric heart surgeons in the country at thirty-six years old. I go after what I want, and I don't stop until it's mine. Cash would call me a stubborn pain in the ass. I prefer driven, motivated. I may have grown up with a silver spoon in my mouth, but my parents' money didn't get me where I am today. Did it help? Of course. I know I had opportunities and privilege a lot of others didn't. But I put myself through medical school. I built my practice from the ground up. I didn't accept my dad's money when he offered, or anyone else's. I wanted to make a name for myself on my own, just like my dad did.