Read Online Saving Dr. Ryan by Karen Templeton - Free Book Online

which only tangled up her emotions even more. “How I managed not to lose the baby, I do not know, because I started yelling at Jimmy like a crazy woman, telling him to get out of my house and to never come back, that our marriage was over, that if he ever hurt one of my babies again, I would kill him. I had no idea….”
    She shook her head, still disbelieving after all this time. “He took the car, eventually landing in some bar he’d never been to before, where he got stinking drunk and picked a fight with somebody he shouldn’t’ve. Guy hit him back, Jimmy’s head caught the edge of a table when he fell. By all accounts, it shouldn’t’ve been enough to kill him….” Her stomach was shaking up a storm; she willed it to settle down.
    After a moment, Dr. Logan stood and approached the bed. He didn’t say anything at first, like maybe he was afraid to, but his set mouth and wrinkled brow told Maddie probably more than she wanted to know. He simply stood beside her, his hands crammed in his back pockets, watching the baby for several seconds, until his breath suddenly left him in a great rush. “And now I suppose you blame yourself for his death?”
    She thought on that for a bit, then said, “Not as much as I did at first. I mean, yes, I was the one who told him to get out, but it wasn’t me who told him to drive way the heck out to some bar he’d never been in before, pick a fight with a local twice his size. And it wasn’t me who’d made a mess of my life, or took out my frustrations on a five-year-old child.”
    The side door buzzer went off, making both of them jump.
    â€œThat’ll be my first victim,” he said, finally looking at her. “The office is right next door, so all you have to do is thump on the wall if you need anything—”
    â€œI’ll be fine,” she reassured him with a shaky smile. “You just go on now.”
    He touched the baby’s head with two fingers, then left the room.
    Â 
    â€œWell, hey, Alden,” Ryan said, coming up with a grin for the elderly man sitting in the waiting room, a grin which he then shared with Alden’s Lancaster’s pinchy-faced daughter Ruthanne sitting beside him, her black patent leather purse clutched tightly on top of even more tightly clutched together knees. The old man was just in for a checkup after a bout with pneumonia he’d gone through a few weeks ago. “Come on in, come on in… How’re you feeling?”
    But then it was as if something just shut right down inside of him, because Ryan barely heard his patient’s “Not too bad, considerin’,” as the pair followed him into the office, barely said two words to the old man as he checked his vitals, listened to his lungs and heart. Wasn’t until he caught the odd looks the two of them were giving him that he realized he wasn’t acting like his normal self.
    Which might have something to do with the fact that he sure as hell wasn’t feeling like his normal self.
    Ryan fixed a smile to his face, dragged his bedside manner back out on display, and got through the appointment as best he could. But after they left, rather than calling in the next patient—Sadie Metcalf and her chronic psoriasis—he decided maybe he’d better take a minute to collect his thoughts.
    The fifty-year-old rolling chair behind Dr. Patterson’s oak desk creaked mightily when Ryan slumped down into it, his palm cradling his cheek. It wasn’t as if he’d never heard stories like Maddie’s before. Or borne witness to the effects of neglect, ignorance, abuse on mind and body. And it wasn’t as if he hadn’t been fully aware he was wading into treacherous waters, encouraging her to talk. Still, it wasn’t the tale itself that had left him so shaken—she hadn’t said anything he hadn’t expected to hear in any case—it was the