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CHAPTER ONE

FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS

JAX

T he ringing of my cell phone pulls me from the only sleep I’ve had in the last thirty-six hours. I’m tempted to throw my phone out the nearest window and go back to sleep, but I can’t, because my girls are at home with the babysitter, and if it’s an emergency, I’d never forgive myself. I dig my phone out of the pocket of my scrubs and answer without checking the caller ID.

“Hello?” I answer groggily, trying not to yawn, and failing.

“Jax? Are the girls okay?” Penelope’s voice rings out over the line and I wake up a little more fully, adrenaline spiking at the sound of her concerned voice. There’s no reason that the girls shouldn’t be okay.

“Nell? What do you mean? What’s going on?” Don’t panic. If it was an emergency, the babysitter would have called.

“Jax, Alice called and said there was an emergency. She asked if Jake and I could come to the house, and we absolutely would have, but we’re on the air. I excused myself from the opening segment to try calling her back, and now to call you.”

“Okay, thanks Nell. I’ll call the house and see what’s going on.”

“Keep me posted?”

“Of course.”

I scrub a hand down my face and brace myself for the call to the house. I haven’t been able to keep a babysitter; things are fine when Mom and Dad are able to watch the girls, but they’re traveling right now, James and Mandy are on their honeymoon, and Jake and Penelope are in the city for the week. Mackenzie is fine, it’s Alice that’s the problem. Mom would call her spirited. My romance novel reading brother James would call her a hellion. In fact, he did, the last time he was left in charge of the girls.

I call it terrorism.

And I fought actual terrorists before the girls were born.

I dial the landline, the relic that hangs in my kitchen, but my girls have access to it if they need it – they both know how to dial 911, and know the numbers for everyone in our family. I wait, and finally Mackenzie answers.

“Mackenzie,” I do my best to inject my voice with patience. “What’s your sister up to?”

Heaven help me if she says…

“About four feet!”

I pinch the bridge of my nose, hold the phone away from my ear and blow out a ragged breath. I’m going to pummel my brothers the next time I see them. They taught the girls that joke the last time we were together and now it’s Mackenzie’s favorite response. And her delivery is perfect, I can’t fault her for that. But I’m in no mood.

“Mackenzie Claire,” I grumble, quickly losing whatever grasp I may have had on my patience.

“She’s fine, Dad.” I hear the frustration in my oldest daughter’s voice and scrub a hand down my face. Score one for dad. “She’s coloring and watching Uncle Jake and Aunt Nell’s show.”

“Mackenzie, if everything’s fine, why did she try to call Aunt Nell?”

“Because…” she pauses. It’s a loaded pause. Like she’s not sure what to tell me. “Cassie’s boyfriend is here. And when Alice reminded her of the rules she put Alice in timeout.”

Ugh.

My little stickler for the rules.

My pager goes off, signaling that I have a patient to check on. A patient who’s been laboring for six hours and making no progress. The only reason I’m still here, trying to get a few minutes of sleep in the on-call room.

“Hang tight Mackenzie. I’ll be home soon, okay?”

“Okay, Dad.” The dejection in her voice has me thinking, not for the first time, about making a change. I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep missing nights at home with my kids. I have good kids. The best kids. But they’ve run off more than a few babysitters with their antics, and I can’t keep looking for new sitters.

Stepping into my patient’s room, I look at mom in the bed and dad standing nearby. “I have an emergency at home. The babysitter…it’s a long story. I have to run home. I’m calling Dr. Wood and informing him of your condition. He can deliver if I can’t get back here in time. I am so sorry.”

“Go, Dr. Hutchinson,” Mr. Rodriguez puts a sympathetic hand on my shoulder. Mrs. Rodriguez agrees, and assures me that she’ll be fine. This is their third child and they have their own babysitter horror stories that they promise to share at another time. In the meantime, I call my partner Dr. Nathan Wood and tell him to get ready in case I can’t find anyone else to watch the girls tonight.

I pull into my driveway fifteen minutes later, beside a car that wasn’t here when I left. Taking a deep breath so that I’m not too angry when I confront the babysitter and her boyfriend, but angry enough to get my point across, I walk in and find my daughters in the living room, just as Mackenzie said – watching the latest episode of On the Field. Neither one watches for the baseball analysis, only the chance to see their aunt and uncle (but mostly their aunt) on TV.

Mackenzie looks up as I come in the door and points a stern finger toward the kitchen before dropping her nose back into her book. I enter the kitchen to find the two high schoolers making out against my kitchen island, and I get it. I was a teenage boy at one point in my life, but I can’t have the person responsible for my children’s lives being distracted by her boyfriend when she should be keeping my daughters alive.

I cross my arms over my chest and loudly clear my throat which proves ineffective. One more time. The boy springs away from Cassie and I almost feel guilty for the wounded look on her face.

Almost.

“Out. Now. I’ll pay you for the two hours you were here, but that’s it. And don’t expect to hear from us again.”

Once they’re gone, I sink into the couch and Alice scrambles onto my lap, laying her head against my chest and wrapping her arms around me the best that she can. I nuzzle my nose into her hair and smell the sweet orange shampoo I used on her this morning. I drop a kiss on top of her head and hug her tightly to me.

“Sorry I scared her away,” Alice yawns and snuggles closer to me.

“This one wasn’t your fault, baby girl. She broke the rules, and you tried to remind her of them.”

The last few before Cassie? All Alice’s fault. Between her picky eating (faked), her bedtime routine (exaggerated), and her insistence that she have her glittery pink stuffed cat (imaginary), three babysitters have given me the “it’s not them, it’s me” speech. Translation: your youngest daughter is an emotional terrorist and I don’t get paid enough to deal with it.

But I wouldn’t trade Alice and her antics for anything.

Except maybe a decent babysitter.

Her favorite babysitters are on their honeymoon. Her second favorites, Jenna and Marcus, are in Montana. Just as I’m about to give up and settle in for the night, the doorbell rings. I open it to find Nate and his wife Erin on the doorstep with a pizza, a bag full of board games, and what I think is a bag full of ice cream sundae supplies.

“Erin heard our call,” Nate shrugs as he walks past me to greet the girls. “She insisted.”

Sure she did.

Nate has a soft spot for my kids. I know he does. He heard my desperation on the phone and I’m sure it didn’t take any convincing from Erin for them to come over.

“Besides, while I know I could do a stellar job with Mrs. Rodriguez,” he’s humble too. “She’s your patient. Go. We can handle this.”

I head back to the hospital and check on Mrs. Rodriguez. She’s close. Finally. I scrub in and get ready for the delivery. Tears sting my eyes as I hand Mrs. Rodriguez her baby girl. I love this job. I love bringing life into the world. It’s a far cry from my days as a combat medic. Days spent dealing with death and destruction.

I came home, fast tracked a residency and got myself board certified as an OB/GYN and I’ve never looked back. Now I bring new life into the world, instead of losing men and women to the scars and wounds of war. While the nurses work on baby girl Rodriguez, I check in with my patient before cleaning myself up and heading home to my girls.

Where I walk in to find complete chaos.

Alice is on a couch cushion in the middle of the living room floor, Mackenzie is perched on the arm of a couch, Nate grins at me from where he stands on a dining room chair, and Erin is nowhere to be found.

“Daddy!” Alice shouts when she sees me. “The floor is lava! Be careful!!”

A pillow is flung at my head by my older daughter and I catch it before it can knock my glasses off my face. I kick off my shoes and step onto the pillow to protect myself from the lava.

“Toss me another one, Kiddo.” She dutifully throws me another pillow and I promptly split my feet between the two and slide myself down the hall to my bedroom, shutting the door behind me. I need a few minutes to catch my breath. Maybe take a quick shower, definitely change out of my scrubs. Stripping off my pants and shirt, I toss them in the laundry basket near my closet door and step into the silence of my bathroom and right into the shower, letting the hot water pelt my body.

I just need a minute to breathe. To collect myself before I have to leave the solitude of this space and be Dad again. I love my daughters, and I’ve been solo-parenting for seven years now, but there are days that I wish I had a partner to come home to instead of always looking for a sitter, or dropping the girls off with family. I think, not for the first time, about how much easier this would be if I could share the emotional load with a partner. Someone I could tag in when I’m spent. But I can’t, so I tag myself back in.

After showering, I change into my trusty flannel pajama pants with tiny snowflakes all over them – part of a matching family set that the girls insisted on last Christmas, and I’m powerless against them – and a tee shirt with the logo of Mackenzie’s favorite English Soccer team. Nate meets me in the hallway when I step out of my room, with a promise to handle bedtime while I try to sit down and eat. I feel like I haven’t seen my girls all week, and don’t want to be apart from them for too long.

“Thanks man. Let them sleep in my bed, okay?”

“Will do, Jax.”

Erin cleans the kitchen as Nate takes the girls down to my room to tuck them in and read a story while I eat something for dinner. She puts a plate of food in front of me and I find myself overwhelmed with gratitude for these friends who’ve become like family for me and my girls; friends who love my girls as if they were their own.

“How’s Mrs. Rodriguez?” Nate asks, sitting down beside me after ten minutes or so.

“She’s good. So is baby girl. How on earth did you take care of bedtime so quickly?”

“Your girls love me, what can I say? I’m glad to hear everything went well. We’ll take off now. Enjoy your weekend.”

“Thank you both, so much. I honestly don’t know what I would do without you.”

“It’s our pleasure, Jax.” Erin comes around the island and takes her husband by the hand, leading him toward the door and locking it behind them as they leave me in the silence of my house. Turning off all the lights, I head back down the hall to my room, where the girls are tucked in, sound asleep in my bed. Crawling in beside Mackenzie, I gather both girls close to me, and fall asleep with my whole world wrapped up in my arms.