Read Online Nearlyweds by Beth Kendrick - Free Book Online

molehill, but I know my child, Dr. Maye. A mother has a sixth sense about this sort of thing. And I can’t bear to see my little boy—”
    “Was it a barking cough?”
    She considered this. “No, I’d say it was more of a rattly cough. I could hear it in his chest.”
    “Mm-hmm. No fever,” I concluded, glancing at the thermometer. “He was coughing up blood, you said?”
    “Well…” She fiddled with the silver chain around her neck. “He was definitely coughing up fluid. Last night.”
    I made a note of this in the chart. “What color?”
    She hesitated. “What color?”
    “What color was the fluid? Green? Yellow? Brown?”
    “Oh. It was yellow, I guess. Kind of clear.”
    I jotted this down. “Okay. Have you noticed anything else unusual? Diarrhea? Rashes?”
    “His face was very pink when we came in from sledding the other day. Oh God, what do you think it is? Whooping cough? Bronchitis? Pneumonia?”
    I smiled patiently, no easy feat given the fact that this was her third unscheduled “emergency” this month. “It may just be a cold.”
    “Oh no.” She threw up a hand. “You didn’t hear him coughing last night. The poor darling was fit to die.”
    “Well, he is a bit congested, but he’s up to date on his shots, and since he’s been immunized against whooping cough—”
    She lifted her chin. “Are you saying I don’t know what’s wrong with my own child?”
    I kept my expression bland. “Has he been coughing so hard he vomits? Does his face change color?”
    “No,” she admitted.
    “Okay, then. Try a vaporizer in his room tonight. Maybe some mentholated ointment.”
    Her eyes widened in horror. “Aren’t you going to give him antibiotics?”
    “Not yet. I’ll call you tomorrow, and if he’s not feeling better, we’ll try a different approach.”
    “But he needs a prescription! I know my baby and—”
    “Dr. Lowell will be on call tonight,” I said firmly. “You can let us know if he gets worse or has any trouble breathing.”
    “He’s having trouble breathing right now!” she cried, gathering up Carter, who was happily blowing spit bubbles and helping himself to a fistful of goldfish crackers from his mother’s pocket. “No offense, Dr. Maye, but you’re fresh out of medical school, aren’t you? I’d like to see someone with a little more experience.”
    “Dr. Lowell’s with another patient.”
    “I want antibiotics, and I want them now. You obviously don’t understand what it’s like to be a mother.”
    No, I didn’t, I reflected as I trudged through the fresh snow to my beat-up old Toyota. Maybe if I did, I could understand the primal urge that drove Kelly Fendt and, for that matter, Renée to intervene even when it might do her children more harm than good.
    I climbed into the driver’s seat, turned the key in the ignition, and waited for the engine to warm up. My black loafers were soaked through with melted snow, and the hem of my gray pants was dirty from the parking lot slush. This was my wardrobe now: sturdy shoes, tailored pants. Ugh. When I firstmet David, I’d been wearing a black sequined tube top and an obscenely short camouflage skirt at a bar in Boston. I’d just finished my first semester med school finals, and my roommate and I had decided to kill our few remaining functioning brain cells with alcohol.
    I’d been shimmying on the sticky bartop at the Cat and Canary under a strobe light, blissfully ignorant of the years of Talbot’s and Ann Taylor stretching out ahead of me, when I tripped on a shot glass and stomped on the bartender’s hand as he served up a frosty glass of Guinness.
    “Sorry,” I’d breathed, crouching down to examine the damage. “Did I break your proximal phalanges?”
    He’d tried to smile through his wince. “Nothing a cast and six months of intensive physical therapy won’t cure.”
    I winced and prodded his fingers. “Can you make a fist?”
    He’d rolled his eyes. “What, are you a doctor in a red