Page 26 of Accidental Doctor Daddy

The rest of the staff felt the same way I did about laboring mothers in distress. The NICU team swept in, their movements coordinated as they took the babies to the NICU for further observation and oxygen. Standard procedure.

But there was nothing standard about this case. Not for me, not by a long shot. Ella didn’t stir. Her vitals had stabilized, but she was completely unconscious.

I stood there glued to the spot, staring at her, my hands flexing and curling into fists at my sides. The exhaustion on her face, the way her body had fought so hard—it hit me in a way I wasn’t ready for.

I am supposed to leave now. I wasn’t needed here anymore. But I couldn’t make my feet move.

“Dr. Mortoli?”

I forced myself to turn, and it took all the strength I had left.

The OB on-call was watching me carefully. “The patient will be out for a while. She lost a lot of blood, but she’s stable.”

I nodded like that was news to me. “Right.”

He stared at me for another moment, but before he could ask why I was still around, I left.

But I didn’t go far. After getting cleaned up, I clocked out for lunch and lingered in the hallway, pretending to check my phone, pretending I had something else to do. She was here.

Ella is here.

Alone.

That was the part of it that confused the hell out of me, even more than her presence itself. If someone like Ella was going to give birth to my kids, it would have taken an army to pry me from her side. And letting her go to work at eight months pregnant, doing what she did? Over my dead fucking body.

Whatever asshole knocked her up is going to answer for not being here, and he better pray he is not that ex-boyfriend of hers. Unprofessional or not, if he shows up here, I’m kicking his ass on principle.

None of this sat right with me. I didn’t know why. I didn’t know how. But I wasn’t going anywhere.

Chapter 9

Ella

Pain.

That was the first thing I felt, wrapping around my ribs and hips like barbed wire. A deep, bone-deep ache that throbbed through every inch of me. Everything hurt—from my throat to the soles of my feet.

For a second, I thought I was dreaming. Then the sharp scent of antiseptic hit me, and the weight of the blankets confirmed this wasn’t my bed at home. Or any home.

The memories came like a gut punch. The kitchen. The sharp gush of fluid. Carrie’s panicked voice, calling for help. The ambulance. Contractions like a freight train.

And…Dom.

God, had that been real?

I squeezed my eyes shut, but the image wouldn’t fade—the sharp lines of his jaw, those commanding dark eyes staring down at me through the fog of pain.

No. Couldn’t be him. Couldn’t be real.

The stress, the blood loss, the sheer terror of what was happening—it had to have conjured him out of thin air. A cruel trick from a brain desperate for comfort.

Because if it had been him?—

No.

I wouldn’t be that unlucky. Out of all the hospitals in this goddamn city, it wouldn’t behis.

I forced my eyes open, blinking against the dim hospital room light.

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