He kissed her one last time and moved off of her, rolling onto his back and welcoming her soft, warm body as she snuggled up next to him.
"That was a nice way to wake up." She said.
"Wake up? We never slept." He chuckled.
"Those little naps in-between making love count as sleep." She argued as she placed soft kisses over his chest and moved her hand down his stomach, touching him gently, him allowing it for a bit before reaching down and pulling her hand away.
"I need a break." He said regretfully.
"So sleep for a bit and I'll wake you up with a bang." She said in a sexy tone and kissed him with a wet, and steadily growing hungry again mouth.
"Kate, if I have sex again within the next 12 hours, it will put me in the hospital." He told her.
"So we'll just have to find other ways to enjoy each other for the next 12 hours." She giggled.
"God, I'd love that, but I really need to go to the hospital and check on Michelle." He said.
"I'm driving you." She insisted.
"Kate, I think if I can do an all night sex marathon, I'm okay to drive myself to work." He laughed lightly.
"There's a big difference between sex and driving a car. One requires more of the brain than the other, well the big brain anyway." She teased.
"Okay you win, but you have to let me buy you breakfast when we're done." He said.
Kate drove him to the hospital and they walked into the ER together. The ER doctor checked the wound and checked his reflexes and cleared him.
"You want to come upstairs and meet Michelle?" He asked.
"Is it going to make me really sad?" She asked.
"No, she's a great kid and she likes new visitors." Jack said.
"Okay sure." Kate agreed.
They stepped off the elevator, his arm loosely around her waist both dressed in jeans and a polo shirt. He left a gentle hand on her lower back and walked them toward the nurse's station. They stopped at the nurse's station and the older woman sitting behind it writing in a chart looked up at them.
"Dr. Shephard what happened to you?" She asked.
"Good morning Delores. It's nothing. I just had a little accident. I'm fine. Can I see Michelle Adams' chart?" He asked and looked around, noticing the food caddies parked in the hallway.
A young male nurse entered the station and slammed the patient chart in his hand down hard. The older nurse shot him a look of disapproval, picked up the chart and handed it to Jack.
"Here it is Dr. Shephard, Teddy was just with her." Delores said.
Jack looked at the young man, could see that he was very worked up and wondered why.
"What's wrong with you?" Jack asked.
"Ah, the famous Dr. Shephard, the doctor who thinks it's a nurse's job to spoon feed his patients." Teddy grumbled.
"Teddy!" Delores scolded him.
"Do you have a problem with doing whatever is necessary to provide the care a patient needs?" Jack asked, his tone professional, unimpressed and in Kate's opinion, down right scary.
"I did not go to nursing school so I could spend my days having some little brat whining that the bites are too big and that she can't swallow that fast and spit her food all over her clothes and then throw a fit when I do my job and clean her up." Teddy spat angrily.
Delores started to get between them and Jack put his hand up. Delores sat back down and dropped her head, knowing things weren't going to end well for the young male nurse on his third day of work.
Jack opened the chart and pointed to the notes he'd made.
"Do you bother to read these?" Jack asked.
"I scanned them." Teddy answered quietly.
"You scanned them? Do you think doctors take the time to leave detailed notes in these charts so that the nurses can scan them?" Jack barked angrily.
"No sir." Teddy answered, completely compliant and respectful at this point.
"If you had bothered to read my notes Teddy, you would've seen that the little brat's esophagus is full of sores from her recent round of Kemo and that she can only handle small bites and little sips." Jack snapped.
"I'm sorry Dr. Shephard." Teddy apologized.
"Part of your job as a caregiver is to be compassionate Teddy and if you'd find that part of yourself you'd realize than an 11 year old little girl wouldn't be comfortable having some strange man she's never seen before changing her clothes. I swear if you've done anything to set her back." Jack threatened.
"I'm sorry, I didn't know." Teddy said.
"Did she get anything into her stomach?" Jack asked.
"I don't know. I doubt it." Teddy said.
"Go downstairs to the kitchen, get me another food tray and make sure it's got a big glass of cold chocolate milk with it and bring up here." Jack told him.
"Yes sir." Teddy said.
Jack took the chart, placed his hand on Kate's lower back and walked away, leaving the young male nurse feeling a lot less cocky and confident than he was when he got up that morning.
"Teddy, I'm going to give you some professional advice. If you want to have a nice, long career at this hospital, getting on that man's bad side is definitely not the way to go about it." Delores told him.
"Yeah, I heard that guy was a real prick." Teddy grumbled.
"That's enough Teddy! You screwed up and if you're going to survive as a nurse, you better first of all learn how not to screw up and second, learn how to be man enough to admit it when you do. Now, if I were you I'd go get that food tray and I'd make double-time doing it." Delores told him.
Jack entered the room with Kate, saw Michelle curled up in a ball crying and had to mentally count to 10 to keep his anger at bay. He moved to the side of her bed and placed a gentle hand on her back.
"Michelle, I'm sorry that nurse was so impatient with you. You won't be seeing him anymore, I promise." Jack told her.
"I want my mom." Michelle cried.
Jack sat on the side of the bed and moved his hand gently over her back.
"I know you do sweetheart, but we talked about this. The baby inside your mom's stomach wants to come out and it's too soon for him to be born so she has to stay in bed." Jack said.
"Will you take me to see her?" Michelle asked.
"Michelle, I don't want you exposed to the germs all over the hospital. I'll tell you what, I'll talk to your mom's doctor and see if she can take a ride in a wheelchair later today and come see you." Jack offered.
Michelle struggled for a moment and slowly rolled onto her back and looked up at him and that was when Kate noticed the patch over her left eye and the apparent paralysis affecting her entire left side.
"Did you have a fight?" Michelle asked eagerly.
"Well, it wasn't much of a fight. It was mostly me getting my butt kicked." Jack chuckled.
"Why did you fight?" Michelle asked.
"He was trying to protect me." Kate spoke up and walked toward the bed.
"Michelle this is Kate." Jack said.
Michelle held her hand out and Kate shook it gently.
"It's nice to meet you Michelle." Kate said making a mental note to ask Jack what his definition of sad was because this frail little girl crying for her mother was ripping her heart out.
"Are you Maggie's mom?" Michelle asked.
"Maggie?" Kate asked.
"Um, no Michelle she isn't." Jack quickly interrupted, noticing Kate's questioning eyes.
Michelle was about to question him further when Teddy entered the room with the food tray.
"Do you want me to feed her?" Teddy asked quietly.
"No, just leave it, I'll do it." Jack answered.
"I'm can do my job Dr. Shephard." Teddy argued.
"Good, go do it elsewhere, I've got this." Jack dismissed him.
Teddy left the room and Jack looked down at Michelle who was starting to pucker up and get weepy on him.
"Hey now, let's have none of that." Jack said.
"I don't want it Jack, it hurts too much." Michelle protested.
Jack lifted the lid on the food tray, rolled his eyes at the corn flakes and toast and wondered which part of sores in the esophagus Teddy didn't understand. He decided if he could get at least half of the scrambled eggs and chocolate milk into her it'd be a victory.
"I'll make a deal with you kiddo. You get as much of these eggs and this milk into your stomach as you can stand and I'll make sure you get milkshakes for lunch and dinner." He bargained.
"Can I have strawberry milkshakes?" She asked.
"Whip cream and no cherry." Jack agreed and smiled at her.
Kate sat in a chair and watched Jack cut the eggs into very small pieces and patiently feed them and the milk to her. He was so kind and so gentle with her and Kate could see that the little girl adored him and understood why Jack was so intent on getting to the hospital to check on her. She also came to understand while watching them together that if this little girl didn't pull through whatever procedure he was about to perform he wasn't going to handle it well, the bond between the two of them well beyond anything that would be considered a doctor/patient relationship.
Michelle tired easily and was sleeping soundly twenty minutes after she finished her breakfast. Jack left orders with Delores that Teddy wasn't to be allowed in the room again and made sure it was understood that the child would be getting a Strawberry milkshake with whip cream for lunch and dinner and they left the hospital. As negotiated earlier that morning, he pulled into a pancake house so they could eat breakfast. They placed their order and sat at a small table drinking coffee.
"Michelle looks pretty sick Jack." Kate said.
"She's is, but hopefully the surgery will be a success and she'll get better." Jack said.
"Hopefully?" Kate asked.
"It's risky Kate and it might not end well. It's an impossible surgery that nobody wanted to try. When her mother came to me she'd been turned down by four other doctors who basically suggested she take her daughter home to die. I made the same suggestion, but I also offered an aggressive treatment and risky surgery as an alternative to certain death. What parent is going to turn that down right?" He explained, not sounding too sure of himself toward the end.
"You're having second thoughts?" Kate asked.
"I can't afford the luxury of second guessing myself in a case this critical, but yeah there are days when the doubt creeps in for a moment and I'm not sure it was the right thing to do. Maybe the most humane thing to do was to let the child's suffering end." Jack explained.
"So why did you do it?" Kate asked.
"Because what if she lives Kate? What if this works and she's cured and she gets to go back to being a kid again? Does any doctor have the right to not at least offer that chance? If you were dying and there was a chance you could be cured, would you want to at least be given a choice?" He asked, this case something he obviously needed to talk about very badly.
"Of course, who wouldn't? Jack, the child is very sick and very pitiful and it got to me in just the short time I spent with her, so I think you wouldn't be you, if it wasn't getting to you and making you question your motives." Kate said.
"My motives?" Jack asked, sounding a little offended.
"Isn't that what this is about Jack? You're wondering if you pushed this treatment for the sake of that little girl or for the sake of you getting to achieve something others have deemed medically impossible. You aren't the only one who pays attention when we're talking." She said, making him smile, impressed that she could read him and his demons so well.
"Did I?" He asked.
"No one but you knows for sure, but I watched you with her and I didn't see a doctor looking to get his name published in medical journals. Of course I might be biased because I happen to think you're pretty great and therefore I'm not capable of seeing you as someone who would even consider something like that." She told him, offering a wink and a smile.
"Thanks Kate." He said in a genuinely appreciative tone.
"You seem awfully attached Jack. Are you going to be okay if that little girl dies on your operating table?" Kate asked.
"No, but I'll get past it eventually." He sighed.
"Jack, who is Maggie?" Kate asked.
"I guess now is as good a time as any to talk about Maggie." He said.
Jack reached behind him, pulled his wallet out of his pocket, looked through it, pulled a picture out and set it on the table in front of Kate.
"Maggie is my 12 year old daughter." He said.