Father On The Brink

“Katie?”

Cooper’s voice came to her softly from the other side of the room, and she lifted her head to find him slowly approaching. When he stopped beside her bed, he extended a hand to brush her hair back from her forehead. He completed the gesture with such familiarity, she doubted he even realized what he was doing. Then he dropped his hand to Andrew’s head, cupping it softly over the baby’s scalp before stroking his finger over one of the infant’s pudgy cheeks.

“How are you two doing?” he asked quietly. “That wild ride in the ambulance didn’t jar you too much, did it?”

She shook her head and whispered, “No,” the singleword reply all she could manage for the moment.

“The nurse here…” He gestured over his shoulder toward the dark-haired woman in the hospital scrubs. “…she said she needs to check you and Andrew out. Think you’re up to that?”

“Sure.”

He straightened some, then hesitated for a moment, as if he didn’t like what he was going to say next. “Um, listen, I’m really sorry, but I’m going to have to run out on you for a little while. There are still some snowbound people who need help, and I’m in a position to offer it.”

“That’s okay, Cooper,” she said softly “Hey, you did the important thing. You gave me my son.”

He grinned at her, a crooked, very endearing grin that set Katie’s heart to flip-flopping madly. “Yeah, well…I think you had more to do with that than I did.”

“Maybe Maybe not.”

He covered her hand with his and squeezed hard for a minute before releasing it. “I’ll come back tonight to see how you and the little guy are doing.”

She nodded.

“Can I bring you anything? Make any calls for you?”

She knew he was referring to her husband, whom she had earlier assured him was always impossible to locate when he was traveling on business. She handled the question now as she had then, and simply repeated, “Thanks, but I can take care of that myself.”

“If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.”

“Then I’ll just bring you a strawberry milkshake, how’s that?”

This time Katie was the one to grin. All night long, she had screamed out a number of insistent, often colorful, demands for a strawberry milkshake to help her through her labor. And as far as she was concerned, the idea still had merit.

“A strawberry milkshake sounds wonderful,” she told him.

“You got it.” He brushed an index finger tenderly over her cheek, an action so soft and quick, Katie almost thought she imagined it. Then he was gone, and she watched as the door swung closed silently behind him, and wondered why she was going to miss him so much once he was gone from her life.

“This won’t take long.”

The nurse’s voice brought Katie’s attention around. Reluctantly, she surrendered Andrew, and watched closely as the other woman swaddled her son in a flannel blanket and settled him in a clear, plastic bassinet.

Then she turned back to Katie and said, “We’re going to have to take Andrew to the nursery for a little while for—”

“No.”

The quietly uttered objection stopped the nurse short. “What?”

“You can’t take Andrew anywhere. He’s staying here with me.”

“But—”

“He’s staying here with me.”

There must have been more fortitude in her voice than she thought she had been able to manage, because the nurse nodded once and said, “Okay. I’ll have the neonatologist come examine Andrew here.”

“Thank you.”

“Now, let’s see about your blood pressure.”

Obediently, Katie extended her arm, then remained silent for the rest of her exam. The neonatologist came to look over and measure Andrew, deeming him fit and hearty and perfectly capable of facing up to life. When it was all over, the nurse presented Katie with a sheaf of papers in a rainbow of pastel colors. Most of them simply required her signature. But one of them—the one she had known was coming but dreaded nonetheless—required information for Andrew’s birth certificate.

Automatically, she filled in the blanks that requested the pertinent information about herself, but she hesitated when she came to the line that asked, Father’s name. She wondered helplessly how she could avoid identifying William as Andrew’s father, wondered, too, what would happen if she just left the line blank or filled it in with the word unknown. Would William still have a strong case for taking Andrew away from her if she failed to identify him as the baby’s father? Would the act of identifying no one at all— thereby making herself sound promiscuous enough that she didn’t even know who had fathered her child—make it easier for William still?

Katie was still pondering her dilemma when, as if prompted by providence, the nurse in the raspberry-colored scrubs said the magic words for her.

“That husband of yours is quite a guy.”

Katie’s head snapped up, and she stared at the other woman. “What?”

The nurse stared back. “That guy who came in with you,” she said with an indulgent smile. “You know…your husband. I mean, I only got to talk to him for a minute, but he seems like a great guy. He’s been so attentive since you arrived, fussing over you like a mother hen, ordering everyone in the hospital around like a general. He obviously loves you and the baby very much.”

“But Cooper’s not…he and I aren’t married.”

The nurse nodded knowingly. “Well, maybe the birth of his son will bring him around. Men usually start to settle down when they have a child to think about. I’ll bet the two of you tie the knot before long.”

“But…”

Katie wasn’t able to complete her objection, because an idea exploded in her brain when she understood the other woman’s misconception. It was an idea she really had no business entertaining. An idea she tried to squash the second it fired to life. Really, she did. Because the idea she had was unthinkable. Reprehensible. Immoral. What she had in mind was no way to repay all the kindness and patience Cooper had shown to her and her son. He may very well have saved both their lives last night. There was no way she could allow these people think the two of them were romantically linked.

There was no way she could inscribe his name on the line where the birth certificate application asked for the name of Andrew’s father.

But as if they had a mind of their own, Katie’s fingers gripped more tightly the pen in her hand, and she watched with an almost detached fascination as they wrote out, in big, block letters, COOPER DUGAN. The next lines, however, stopped her short. Father’s Social Security number. Father’s age. Father’s place of birth.

Okay, she could probably guesstimate Cooper’s age to be late thirties. And, considering his accent and the manner in which he spoke, she thought it might be reasonable to assume he had been born in the area—the area being either Pennsylvania, New Jersey or Delaware, which at least narrowed the search to three states. Probably. But Social Security number? That was a tough one.

“Um,” she began when she realized the nurse was waiting for her to finish completing the documents, “I can’t seem to remember…uh…Cooper’s Social Security number right now. Is it okay if I finish filling this out when he comes back?”

The nurse shrugged. “Sure. No problem. Just as long as we have it before you check out.”

“Okay. I promise.”

The nurse turned to leave, calling over her shoulder as she went, “Ring if you need anything.”

“I will. Thanks.”

The moment the door swung closed behind the nurse, Katie’s mind lurched into action. She had to get out of here, she thought frantically. As soon as she could do so without raising too much suspicion. Never mind that she was still exhausted from the birthing experience. Never mind that she was still in pain. Never mind that she had just done something heinous to a perfectly nice man, making him legally responsible for a child that wasn’t his.

Never mind that the act of fleeing would ensure that she never saw Cooper Dugan again. At least in disappearing, he’d know she had no intention of forcing him to acknowledge that fake responsibility.

None of that mattered. Only Andrew mattered. Whatever she had to do to keep him safe, to keep him with her, Katie would do it. She could not—would not—lose her son. She could give up anything else. But not him. Never him.

Someday, somehow, she hoped Cooper would understand what had driven her to do what she’d done. Someday, somehow, she hoped she and Andrew would be in a position to explain. But until that day dawned, Katie had no choice but to disappear. It was the only way she could ever be certain that William wouldn’t find her and take her son away.

Disappearing with Andrew, however risky, however chancy, however frightening, was the only alternative she had. It was for the best, she tried to assure herself further. All she needed was a little time to figure out what she was going to do. Everything, eventually, would work out just fine. Unfortunately, she knew assurance would be a long time in coming.

“Oh, Mr. Dugan!”

Cooper spun around quickly at the summons, sending the balloons he clutched in one hand bouncing into a frenzy of colliding color, and causing him to release completely the huge, stuffed bear he’d held in the other. Only through some fast dancing and shuffling did he manage to save the bouquet of red roses he also had tucked under one arm, and the strawberry milkshake he balanced along with the balloons.

He didn’t react in such a way because he thought someone was calling out to him—no one ever referred to him as Mr. Dugan—but because that tiny little part of Cooper that would remain a frightened child forever feared his father had risen from the grave, and was barreling down the hospital corridor toward him, brandishing his belt with the big, gold buckle gleaming.

Naturally, Cooper remembered almost immediately that his father was nowhere around. Nearly fifteen years had passed since Mike Dugan’s death, even more time than that since Cooper had last run out on the sonofabitch, shocked by the blood on his own knuckles after he’d broken the old man’s nose. No, it was the nurse Cooper had met earlier who approached him now, the one who had been seeing to Katie. With a shuddering sigh, he swallowed his terror whole, and forced himself to breathe as normally as he could.

“Yeah?” he said when the nurse was beside him. He congratulated himself for the steady timbre of his voice.

“Mr. Dugan, I need your Social Security number.”

Still a bit shaken, Cooper recited the numbers from memory without questioning the woman’s request.

“Date of birth?” she asked.

Again, he surrendered the information automatically.

“Place of birth?”

“Gloucester City, New Jersey,” he told her.

Suddenly, it dawned on him that he was offering snippets of his personal life to someone whose name he didn’t even know, and revealing them for no reason he could fathom. He also noted belatedly that the nurse was writing the information down.

“What’s going on?” he asked her as he bent to retrieve the wayward teddy bear. He straightened, and as he rearranged his loot, asked further, “Why do you need all that information?”

The nurse, still scribbling away, replied without looking up. “We need it for your son’s birth certificate.”

Certain he’d misunderstood, he sputtered, “You…you need it for what?”

Finally, the nurse looked up from her clipboard, her expression bland. “Your son’s birth certificate,” she repeated. “Your…um…your girlfriend left without completing the form.”

Cooper shook his head hard, trying to wake himself from what could only be a bizarre dream. “My son…?” he repeated quietly, the words feeling more than a little strange on his tongue. “My girlfriend .. ?” he added in the same tone of voice. Then the rest of the nurse’s statement hit him. “She left? Katie’s gone? Where? What the hell is going on here? She just had a baby. How could she leave?”

The nurse stared at him as if he were something she’d normally vacuum up from the carpet. She pulled her clipboard toward her, and crossed her arms over it and her chest. Then she cocked one dark eyebrow at him, and he knew he wasn’t going to like one bit whatever she was going to tell him.

“Ms. Brennan checked herself out of the hospital this morning. If you had been here to meet her like you were supposed to, you would have realized that.”

Cooper had intended to be there earlier this morning. Not because he’d thought Katie was going to be leaving, but because he’d wanted to check on her and Andrew and make sure they were okay. Actually, he’d planned to return the night before, but he’d wound up making runs until nearly midnight. By then, hospital visiting hours were over. So he’d waited until this morning to come by. Hey, he’d needed the sleep anyway. And judging by the strange reality to which he’d awakened, he obviously still hadn’t gotten enough.

“Let’s start all over here, okay?” he asked hopefully.

The nurse opened her mouth to say something, but he lifted a hand, palm out, to stop her.

“Yesterday,” he said, “right around lunchtime, I arrived at this hospital in an ambulance with a woman who had just delivered a baby. Am I right about that?”

The nurse nodded. “Of course. You—”

He held up his hand again, and the nurse bit off whatever she had been about to say. “And the woman’s name was…?” he asked, letting the question trail off so that the nurse would answer it for him.

She pulled her clipboard away from her chest and glanced at it only slightly before telling him, “Katie Brennan.”

He released a sigh of relief. “That’s right. Katie Brennan. And her son’s name?”

The nurse studied the clipboard again. “Andrew Cooper Brennan Dugan.”

Cooper nodded his head as she revealed the first three names, then quickly switched to shaking it at her recitation of the last. “No, that’s not right. It’s Andrew Cooper Brennan. Period. No Dugan. His name ends at Brennan. Right?”

The nurse turned her clipboard so that Cooper could view it. “No, she said she wanted to have both her last name and yours as part of the baby’s legal name. So it’s Andrew Cooper Brennan Dugan. Says so right here on the birth certificate application. Ms. Brennan did get that much filled out, anyway.”

“Let me see that.” The request was just a formality, as Cooper had already snatched the clipboard from the nurse’s hand.

“Hey!” she objected.

But he ignored her. For there, enhanced with Katie’s delicate, scrawling signature, were the documents in question, filled out exactly as the nurse had told him they were. Katie had named Cooper as Andrew’s father on the birth certificate application. In black and white and triplicate. For all the world to see. She had made her son his son, too. In the eyes of the law and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, anyway.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” he muttered. “Why would she do something like this?”

“Check out early?” the nurse asked, obviously misunderstanding the question. “Because she has no insurance, that’s why. I mean, your policy will cover the nursery charges, of course, because the baby is your dependent. But since you haven’t married the baby’s mother,” she added, placing emphasis on the last part of her statement clearly to indicate her disapproval of Cooper’s moral misconduct, “the bills for her portion of the hospital stay will have to be out-of-pocket. So she checked out early to save you both some money.”

“No, I mean—”

“Naturally, she didn’t want to leave without the baby, so she checked him out, too,” the nurse continued, ignoring Cooper’s interjection. “Since you didn’t show up to meet her this morning, she took a cab home. And frankly, Mr. Dugan,” she added, “I thought better of you than to do something like that.”

“But…” Cooper’s voice trailed off again, before he completed his statement. His head was buzzing with confusion, and all he could do was stare at the hospital chart in his hands.

“Your girlfriend was all ready to go when I went in this morning,” the nurse continued. “Her doctor wanted her to stay longer, but since there were no complications with the delivery, and since she and the baby were perfectly healthy, and since it’s not at all unusual to be released so quickly, nobody had a problem with letting her go.”

“But…but…but what about me?” Cooper finally asked, his mind still reeling as it tried to process so much misinformation. “I might have had a problem with it.”

The nurse snatched back her clipboard. “Then you should have been here this morning when your girlfriend was ready to leave.”

“But—”

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go file these forms.”

“But—”

“Go home to be with your new son, Mr. Dugan,” the nurse told him as she sifted through the collection of forms. “And not that it’s any of my business, but you might want to think about marrying that woman. Make yourself a proper family. Do the right thing.”

With that, Cooper found himself alone, without the nurse in the raspberry-colored scrubs who had become the booming voice of moral integrity. And even though he had done nothing wrong where Katie and her son were concerned, even though Katie was the one who had overstepped the boundaries of reason and propriety, Cooper felt guilty and duly taken to task. Why? He couldn’t begin to imagine. But for some reason, he suddenly felt as if he were the one who needed to set things to right.

For some reason, he suddenly felt like he really should do the right thing and marry Katie, thus making his son legitimate. Thus making the three of them, as the nurse had said, “a proper family.” Even though Katie was still a virtual stranger. Even though Andrew was in no way his son.

The only problem was, Cooper had no idea where the other members of his newly formed family could be.

Four

Normally, Cooper couldn’t get out of the supermarket fast enough Normally, he stood in the check-out line shifting his weight restlessly from one foot to the other, and shaking his head in amazement at the headlines that screamed out from the tabloid racks about alien Elvises, mutant gerbil children and man-eating dieffenbachias. Normally, all he wanted was to escape the legions of slow-moving blue-haired ladies, screeching, whiny toddlers and single guys like himself who knew of no other aisle outside the frozen food section.

But he hadn’t been feeling normal for some time now, and today he didn’t mind lingering behind the woman ahead of him in line. And not because of her cascade of blond hair or the slim, tanned legs extending from her tight cut-offs, either, although he had noted those things about her right off. What held Cooper’s attention now was the woman’s baby.

He had no idea how to gauge the age of the infant strapped into the carrier that had been settled in the seat part of the grocery cart ahead of him. Nor did he have a clue as to the baby’s gender. It could be a two-week-old boy or a seven-month-old girl for all he knew about babies. Hell, before today, the only time he’d been this close to one had been the night he’d delivered—

But he wouldn’t think about that. He wouldn’t think about Katie and Andrew Brennan and the fact that the two of them still haunted his dreams nearly two months after he’d last seen them. He wouldn’t think about how he’d gone back to Katie’s house in Chestnut Hill—at least, what he’d thought was Katie’s house in Chestnut Hill—only to find it inhabited by an elderly couple who’d called the place home since 1958, and who had never heard of any family in the neighborhood named Brennan.

He wouldn’t think about the fact that there were no Brennans in the Philadelphia phone book that had a Chestnut Hill address. Nor would he wonder yet again why Katie had given the hospital a phony Las Vegas address as her own. God knows he wouldn’t recall yet again his concern about being named Andrew’s father on the baby’s birth certificate. And he wouldn’t think about the fact that he had absolutely no hope of ever finding Katie or Andrew again to demand answers for all the questions that would trouble him for some time to come.

Instead, Cooper focused again on the baby in the grocery cart, who stared back at him with a steady, unblinking gaze, eyes huge and brown and mesmerizing. Then the baby smiled, a wide, toothless grin that crinkled its eyes at the corners and wrinkled its little nose, and it stuck its tongue out at Cooper and uttered a heartfelt, and very wet, “Spthibble.”

The baby’s unabashed commentary made Cooper laugh. He hadn’t even realized he’d reacted in such a way until the leggy blonde turned around and began to laugh, too.

“He likes you,” she said. “He doesn’t usually smile that way at strangers.”

Cooper glanced up long enough to acknowledge her comment, then looked back down at the baby. “It’s a boy, huh?”

The woman nodded. “As of the last time I changed his diaper, anyway.”

Cooper smiled. “How old?”

“He’ll be five months next week.”

“Cute kid.”

“Yeah, I think so, too.”

“Is he a lot of trouble?”

The woman chuckled. “Oh, yeah. The whole time I was pregnant, all of our friends with kids kept saying, ‘You can’t imagine how much your life will change once you have that baby.’ And my husband and I kept saying, ‘Yeah, yeah, we know. We’re ready for it.’” Her chuckle turned to laughter. “We had no idea. You really can’t imagine what a huge life change it is until you have one of your own.”

This time Cooper was the one to nod.

“But he’s worth it,” the woman said as she stroked her son’s cheek. Her voice oozed affection, and her eyes shone with happiness. “He’s just so wonderful. You can’t imagine that part, either, until you have one of your own.”

“Yeah, maybe…”

His voice trailed off, leaving unfinished whatever he’d intended to say. The cashier barked out a total to the woman in front of him, and he watched as she wrote her check, picked up her purse and began to roll her cart away. Seemingly as an afterthought, she turned around to Cooper again.

“Thinking of having one of your own?” she asked with a smile.

He shook his head resolutely. “Nope. Just curious.”

She laughed again. “Better watch yourself. That’s what I used to say.” And with that, she turned around again and exited the supermarket.

Cooper watched her go, finding some solace in the fact that a person could have a child and still be interesting, attractive and happy, not to mention maintain a sense of humor. For some reason, he’d thought all that would dry up once a person became a parent. Wasn’t that how it usually worked? You had a kid, you bought a house in the ’burbs, and you started worrying about aphids and driving a minivan. You picked up weight and lost your hair, and you started saying things like, “Turn that music down” or “When I was your age” or “Finish your broccoli—children are starving in Europe.”

Yet there went a woman who, if she hadn’t been married, he probably would have asked out. She didn’t seem like a mom. She seemed like…fun. She was even kind of sexy. Go figure. Who knew?

It was a thought that came back to taunt him that evening when he answered the knock at his front door and opened it to find Katie Brennan standing on the other side.

Just like that.

For a moment, he could only stare at her, half convinced she was nothing more than a mirage, a simple refraction of light resulting from the bloodred sun that hung low in the sky behind her. Immediately, however, he realized she was not. Because if she was a mirage, he would be seeing her as he had the last time, and this Katie was entirely different from the one he had met two months ago.

For one thing, she was much thinner—too thin, really. And her hair was a bit longer, though it lacked the luster and softness that had been present before. Her face was paler now than it had been even in childbirth, the skin drawn tightly over high cheekbones and a narrow nose. And dark circles stained the undersides of her eyes, making them appear even larger and a stormier gray than they had before.