How did stuff like that happen?
She’d carried the baby for nine months and it still wasn’t hers?
Jesus.
We really needed to talk to that doctor.
There was something more going on there that I had no clue about, and I had a feeling that he knew a whole lot more than he was telling us—including Eerie.
“Well, I’m happy for you,” Willet admitted. “She’s kind of a… pain.”
I had no doubt.
“All right,” I said as I steeled myself. “I’m gonna go.”
She snickered. “Good luck. God be with you.”
I tossed her a look over my shoulder that clearly conveyed that I was going to need it, then straightened my shoulders before making my way toward the back of the room where little man was set up.
I felt like my feet weighed a thousand pounds as I made my way forward.
Eerie looked up from where she was sitting on the chair next to the bed playing on her phone and sneered.
“You’re early,” she snapped.
I looked at my watch.
“Actually, I’m a bit late.” I ignored her jibe.
“Oh,” she fibbed. “It is twelve. Imagine that. Time flies when you’re having fun.”
I didn’t say anything as I waited for her to get up, but she didn’t.
I crossed my arms over my chest.
“It’s time to go,” I said carefully.
“Actually, it states on the agreement from the judge that I can stay until Nathan arrives. It says nothing about you,” she countered. “So I’ll just sit right here and wait for him to arrive.”
I narrowed my eyes.
But it was more than obvious that she wasn’t going to be leaving if she had anything to say about it, so I decided to go ahead and make my call to the lawyer.
“It states that you have to leave at noon,” I countered. “It has nothing to do with Nathan at all.”
“Well.” She shrugged. “If Nathan can take advantage of the non-visiting hours, then I should be able to, too. So I’m staying.”
I narrowed my eyes as I dialed the number of the law office Swayze co-owned with her father.
She answered on the first ring.
“The judge has already dropped the case, full custody was awarded to Nathan,” she said without waiting for me to answer.
My mouth fell open. “Really?”
“Really,” Swayze confirmed. “Like, no joke, I just got off the conference call with the baby’s lawyer, Ms. Foster’s lawyer, and the judge. It’s over for now until Ms. Foster’s lawyer can figure out what the next step is. Apparently she’s been unreachable over the last half an hour.”
I looked at Eerie, sitting all pretty and unaffected in the chair, unaware of her entire world being pulled out from under her.
“Okay,” I said. “Do you have some sort of documentation that I can show her?”
Eerie looked up at those words, eyes narrowed in anger.
She knew that I was talking about her.
How funny.
Twat.
“I do,” Swayze admitted. “Do you want me to fax it over? Is she giving you trouble?”
“I do and she is,” I confirmed.
“I’m sending it now,” she said. “I’ve got all the information right here. Let me know if you need anything else, okay? And make sure that the nurses on shift save this for their files.”
After communicating that I would, indeed, have them save the information, we hung up and I nearly smiled when I could see the wheels spinning in Eerie’s head.
I looked away from her before she could ask what was on the tip of her tongue, and then started toward the fax machine that had started whirling before I’d even reached it.
After the papers were spit out, I walked them over to the charge nurse and showed them to her.
Her brows rose, eyes wide.
“You might want to go ahead and call security,” I admitted. “This is going to get ugly.”
“It’s a good thing that it’s lunch time,” she admitted, looking around the nearly empty NICU. The only people that were there right then were the nurses, me, and Eerie.
The nurses—neither of which I worked with often—were staring at me as if they knew it was about to go down.
I winked and crossed my arms, leaning against the nurses’ station as I waited for Willet to call in security.
They arrived within two minutes, and by that time, Eerie was more than aware that she was about to be kicked out.
She just had no clue as to the actual reason.
I couldn’t wait to enlighten her.
Eerie angrily grabbed all her shit and started to stalk out the door.
I looked over at Willet and said, “Will you make a copy of that and bring it to me outside?”
Willet nodded and did as I asked while I followed Eerie out the doors of the NICU.
It was as I heard her walk up behind me that I said, “Eerie, you’re not allowed to come to the NICU anymore.”
She snorted. “Whatever.”
“No,” I disagreed. “I’m being serious. As of today, the judge awarded us full custody of Dare.”
“Stanley,” she corrected. “And we’ll see about that.”
“We won’t see about anything,” I countered. “This is the final say in the matter.”
“You can think that all you want, but I’ll fix it.” She crossed her arms over her chest.
“You have no claim on this baby anymore,” I said softly. “You will not come back.”
“I carried that baby for nine months! He’s mine!” she cried, pointing her clawed finger at me with anger stamped all over her face.
I stared at her, eyes just as hot.
“You may have carried the baby for seven months,” I corrected. “But you are not the baby’s parent. Nathan is. Biologically. He’s no more your child than he is mine. And, just sayin’, but I have more claim on him now than you do. I’m married to the baby’s father, after all. You, on the other hand? You don’t even carry the same DNA. You may have carried the baby, but the baby wasn’t yours. You are not the mother. The DNA test proved it.”
“Here,” Willet said
