Page 92 of Act Like You Don't Care
“Did you think we’d check him in under his own name? He’s private, too. They wouldn’t tell you if your mother was there if you check in private.” Will sounded scornful.
I could have smacked myself in the face—of course he wouldn’t be here under his own name. “What room is he in?”
“Thirty-one-oh-nine,” Will rhymed off.
I knew what that floor was, if only by office gossip. “Why is he there?” My heart sped up, a distant ache growing around it. “Did the fall…?” I couldn’t say it.
“No, it’s just a precaution.” But Will’s voice didn’t sound as certain as Miles would have liked. “I have to go, he’s asking for something.” The line went dead and I shoved my phone in my pocket and headed for the elevators.
The doors opened on labor and maternity. I took a look around to orient myself, then headed straight for Tam’s room. I got stopped by security and had to call Will again, who looked like he was at the end of his rope as he came to rescue me.
When I got to Tam’s room, he was in a bed, in a hospital smock, with wires running away from several points on his body to beeping machines. He looked pale and, being Tam, frustrated.
“Hey, you made it!” he said, brightening.
“What happened?” I made myself cross the room calmly and took the chair that Will pointed out next to the head of Tam’s bed.
Tam looked over at Will. “I know you’ve got stuff to do. If you want to take off, it’s okay. Miles is here.”
Will looked doubtfully between the two of us, then seemed to come to a decision. “Sure. Text me if you need anything, I’ll get it sent over.” He gathered up his messenger bag and left, closing the door behind him.
“So, what happened?” I asked.
Tam shrugged. “There’s this ramp I have to go up for one of the scenes. Something went wrong with a part of the staging. Will says that a bolt snapped when I put my weight on it and I fell through, though it happened so fast I don’t really remember it. This is just a precaution.”
“You hit your chin pretty hard,” I said, gently tipping his face up to look at the neat line of stitches underneath it. Just touching him made my heart race and I pulled my hand away as if it had been burned. “Did they check your neck?”
“Yeah. X-rays. They’re kind of limited in what they can do because of…” He gestured at his belly.
Now I could ask. “And there’s no problem there?”
Tam shook his head. “No.” He chewed at the corner of his mouth, then pushed the button to raise the head of the bed to near vertical. “Look, this made me think. I’ve got a break in scheduling next week, Will’s found me a lawyer to set up some stuff. About the baby. And about me.” He paused and, unconsciously I thought, ran his fingers over the stitches under his chin. “I don’t have any family here, they’re all on the East Coast. If something happens, there needs to be someone here who can make a decision. I wanted to ask if you’d be that person.”
I wanted to reach out and pull him into my arms so badly I almost had to sit on my hands to control the impulse. Tam wouldn’t have appreciated the sentiment and, realistically, I wasn’t anything more than the father of his baby. “What kind of decisions?”
He looked away, playing with the wire of the oxygen sensor on his finger. “If something happens to me…” He leaned back against the bed and turned his face up to the ceiling and sniffed, his mouth tightening in a thin white line. I realized he was fighting tears and sat quietly, waiting until he’d gotten himself under control again—he wouldn’t appreciate me commenting on it. “Basically, I need someone who can make medical decisions for me if I can’t. I know it’s a lot to ask, but, well, I trust you.” The last three words were soft, almost inaudible.
How alone did he feel if he needed to ask an almost complete stranger to be his medical proxy? Even if that complete stranger was the father of his child. “Sure. If you want that. There’s no one else? No family who could be here?”
He shook his head and closed his eyes, fatigue suddenly drawing the lines of his face with a sharp-edged pen. “They’ve all got lives and kids and families. Lots of roots, you know?”
Fuck. How lonely was that? “Then I’d be honored.”
Tam let out a noisy breath and opened his eyes to stare intently at me. “Good. Will’s put the appointment in my planner, but they want me to rest so they took my phone. I’ll text you the time later. Just in case, though, in between now and then…” His mouth tightened again for a moment and then the old Tam, fiercely independent and absolutely determined, was back. “If something happens to me, if I get hit by a car or a boom falls on me or whatever, if there’s any way they can keep me physically alive until the baby can survive on its own, I want you to make sure they do that.”
My stomach jerked with sudden fear. “I doubt that’s going to happen. This was an accident, right?”
“Yeah, but accidents do happen. And I want to be sure there’s someone who can make sure the baby makes it, even if I’m not going to.” He grabbed my hand and held it tightly. “There’s those properties in the corporation—they can be sold to pay any medical expenses that my insurance doesn’t cover and anything left over can be used for the baby. Not my mother’s house, though. I want that transferred over to her name—it’s still in mine for tax reasons. Maybe I should do that now…” He frowned and reached toward the table at the side of the bed. “Damn. I need my phone.”
“I think there’s time to get this set up.” I used a matter-of-fact tone with him, guessing that he needed the reassurance that he was the only one seeing the problem here. It worked, kind of.
“I should have had this set up before,” he said impatiently. “I have a will—the lawyer insisted once I started buying places. But it was only when I was in the ambulance that I thought about what would happen if there was a bigger accident. I mean, I got beat to crap all the time filming, but it didn’t seem to be as big a thing before.” He glanced down at our hands, still linked, then gently pulled his fingers from mine. “If something happens, if you don’t want the baby, I’m sure my mother will take it.”
“I do want the baby,” I told him. “I’m not going to run off into the sunset because you aren’t here to hold me accountable.”
He smiled at that. “I didn’t think you would, but I hate being cornered. I didn’t think you’d like it much better.”
That made me laugh. “No, probably not. This isn’t being cornered.”
