Page 38 of Shimmering Emeralds
Meg rushed forward with tears in her eyes. She brushed her hand down Harper’s face as if, like me, she couldn’t quite believe this was really happening. “It’s me, baby. Mommy’s here. You’re going to be okay.”
She lifted one of Harper’s hands to her lips and pressed a long kiss to it before turning to look at me. I didn’t bother to hide the tears that were streaming down my cheeks. Being manly was the last thing on my mind as I watched my daughter interact with her mother.
Harper seemed to take Meg’s words at face value because she blinked her heavy eyelids several times before letting them drift shut.
Meg’s alarmed gaze darted up to Dani and then the other doctors before she screeched, “Is she slipping back into a coma? Do something!”
Harper’s doctor from our first day at the hospital said, “Don’t worry, Ms. Stark. Your daughter is just sleeping. She will be very tired and confused for a while, so we need to give her brain the time it needs to fully heal.”
The woman’s words eased the frantic look from Meg’s expression, but she seemed to need further confirmation as much as I did. Before I could speak, Meg asked, “So, she’s going to be okay?”
“It’s looking very good,” the doctor said, smiling for the first time since I’d met the serious woman.
The male doctor added, “We just need to be patient and let her body heal itself, but it looks like she’s already making great progress. We’ll want to keep a close eye on her, but she’ll probably start waking up for longer intervals and becoming more animated.”
Evidently unable to be all sunshine and roses, the female doctor said, “She still has a long road to recovery, and she will likely have significant confusion for a while.”
“We can handle a long recovery time and bouts of confusion as long as we get our little girl back!” Meg beamed at me, and I tried not to notice the puzzled look the doctor gave Meg over her inclusion of me in her excited statement.
I nodded at Meg, knowing my shaky voice would betray the significant emotions churning through my system, even more than the tears trailing freely down my cheeks.
As the medical personnel began to clear out, Meg sat down in her usual spot right next to Harper. Dani was still hovering on the other side of the bed, so Meg said to her, “Tell me everything! How did you first know she was waking up? What did she do? Has she said anything else?”
Dani chuckled at her friend’s enthusiastic barrage of questions before diving in to answer them. I noticed as she spoke that she made eye contact with both of us. I was a parent to Harper, too, and she was including me as such. The realization was heady and emotional.
I had the urge to shout to everyone I knew that I had a daughter, while at the same time wanting to throttle Meg––and to a lesser extent, Dani––for keeping the child from me for so long. What these two women did to Harper and me was absolutely unforgivable.
35
Meg
After Dani left, it was just Levi, Harper and me in the room. It felt exactly like it had for the past several days, except now, Harper was back! She’d been asleep since that brief, initial, lucid moment when Levi and I returned, but the doctors assured us it was normal for her to be overly tired. It didn’t make sense, since she’d been doing nothing but resting, but I was happy to let her body take all the time it needed––as long as she eventually came back to us.
I fussed around the room, adjusting her blankets, getting fresh water for her flowers, and changing into dry clothes. I wanted everything to be perfect any time she was awake.
Levi sat in the chair beside the bed staring at Harper as if he couldn’t quite believe she was real. I couldn’t begin to imagine the shock he must be feeling at learning after all this time that he had a daughter. In hindsight, I could see how selfish and wrong it was to keep her from him, but at the time, I had truly believed I was doing what was best for us all.
Unable to find anything else to fluff or adjust, I finally plopped down in the chair beside Levi. It felt so familiar to be here beside him like this, yet so much had changed in the past few hours.
“It was horrible of you to keep her from me.” Levi’s voice was a low, angry rumble.
I wasn’t sure what else to say in defense of my decision so I merely nodded and said, “I know.”
He turned to look at me then and his expression softened a tiny bit. He seemed to appreciate me admitting that I’d made a mistake by not telling him about Harper.
It was quiet for a long time. I wasn’t sure what else to say, so I just sat there looking at my little girl. Levi’s voice startled me when he said, “I feel like I’ve missed so much with her. I want to know everything about her.”
Harper was my very favorite topic to discuss, so I jumped right in to begin sharing pieces of our little girl with her father. “She’s very thoughtful and sweet. She loves to help me bake and she’s constantly leaving me sweet pictures or notes around the house. She lives for her karate lessons. She’s already earned her blue belt, and her instructor asked her to be his special helper in the class.”
When I paused to smile at him, Levi said, “Sounds like she’s tough, like her mom.”
His words weren’t said with any malice and he was looking at me expectantly, so I hurried on. “She’s one of the fastest runners in her class at school and often even beats some of the boys.”
“I wonder where she got that. Neither of us are great runners.” Levi tossed in.
I shook my head. “I don’t know, but she’s quick.”
Levi was leaning in expectantly, hanging on my every word, so I searched my brain for little details that could help him feel like he was getting to know his little girl.
