Read Changed by His Son's Smile for Free Online Page A

wasn’t shedding a single tear. Hopefully, when the local nurse arrived, she could interpret for Dani. Or Chase would. One of the many amazing things about the darned man was all the languages he could speak fluently or partially. He had a true gift for it, while Dani hated the fact that it had never come easily to her.
    “I’m going to wash— laver —her cuts to get all the gravel and nasty stuff out of there.” Lord, was that the only French word she could come up with?
    The mother seemed to understand, though, nodding gravely. Dani rolled the gurney to the low sink and couldn’t believe she had to stick the child’s various extremities practically inside it, scrubbing with good old antiseptic soap to clean out the debris. Thank goodness the numbing solution seemed to be working pretty well, as the scrubbing didn’t seem to hurt her patient too badly.
    “You’re being very brave,” she told the little girl, who gave her a shy smile in return, though she probably didn’t understand the words.
    The mother helped with the washing, and Dani thought about how her own perspective had changed since she’d had Drew. When she had been in med school, and then when she’d become a doctor, she’d thought she’d got it. But now she truly understood how terrifying it must be to have your child seriously injured or ill.
    When Chase returned, Dani had finished prepping the girl and helped him get the boy’s wounds washed out. Not an easy task, because tiny bits of gravel seemed determined to stay embedded in his flesh. Thank heavens the morphine made the situation tolerable for the child.
    “You want me to stitch this big lac on his head, or do you want to do it after I work on his leg?” Chase asked, then grinned. “Or maybe we should call in the plastic surgeon.”
    “Funny. I’m as good as any plastic surgeon anyway. Tell his mom he’ll be as handsome as ever when I’m done.”
    Chase chatted with the mother as they laid the boy back on the gurney, and the woman managed a smile, her lips trembling and tears filling her eyes for a moment.
    “I haven’t seen anything like this since Honduras,” Dani said quietly to Chase as they got the patient comfortable and increased his morphine drip in preparation for setting the leg. “Been in a suburban practice where the bad stuff goes to the ER. The roughest stuff I dealt with was ear infections.”
    “So you’re sorry you came?”
    “No.” She shook her head and gave him a crooked smile. “Even though you’re here, I’d almost forgotten how much we’re needed in places like this.”
    “Except you shouldn’t have brought Drew. Which we’ll be talking about.” His expression hardened.
    Oh, right. Those deep, dark issues they had to deal with separate from what they were doing now.
    Yes, Chase was a great surgeon and good man, but she had to remember why she’d left in the first place. Because he didn’t want a child. And she wasn’t about to let him bully her into doing things his way and only his way, without regard for how it would affect Drew.
    Glad to be able to put some physical distance between them to go with the emotional distance that had suddenly appeared, she stepped away to stitch the girl’s cuts.
    “I’m taking him into the OR to set the bone and put a transverse pin in the distal femur,” Chase said, wheeling the gurney to the swinging door that led to the operating room. “If Trent comes down, tell him I’m just going to splint it and put drains in for now, until the swelling goes down. When the nurse anesthetist gets here, tell her to grab the X-rays and come in.”
    He stopped to place his hand on the mother’s shoulder, speaking to her in the soothing, warm tones that always reassured patients and family and had been known to weaken Dani’s knees. From now on, though, when it came to Chase, she had to be sure her knees, and every other part of her, stayed strong.
    “Once you heal, it’s going to take a while to get your leg