Chapter 17: Flowers in the Waiting Room

The waiting room at Little Smiles Pediatric Dentistry had a fish tank, a dinosaur rug, and six fathers on Tuesday afternoon.

I was behind the desk in purple scrubs, writing a toddler's name on a sticker, when the front door chimed.

"Hannah."

I didn't look up.

"You can't be here, Ethan."

"It's a public waiting room."

"It's a children's clinic. I'm at work."

He came to the desk anyway, in the navy coat, holding a bunch of yellow tulips this time.

He'd learned something from the roses.

He'd learned nothing else.

"Tulips," he said. "No allergies. I checked."

"You checked the one thing."

"Han, please. Five minutes."

A girl of about four on the dinosaur rug looked up from her coloring and stared at him with great interest.

Her father, a big man in a hardware store jacket, looked up too.

"I'm not giving you five minutes," I said. "You can give them to my lawyer."

"I'm not signing."

"You will."

"I want to talk about the baby."

The room went still.

A father in the corner lowered his phone.

I put the sticker down on the counter.

"Which baby?"

"Ours. Han, I know you're scared. I know what Mom said at tea. I know what Quinn said, and I swear it isn't what I want."

"I don't know what you want."

"I want you."

"You wanted me in room 214."

"I wanted both of you to be okay." He pressed the tulips toward me, and a petal fell on the counter. "I thought it could work, for a little while."