She gave me a pointed look that said she’d known where I was today. Something I’d told her but not my husband.
I blushed.
I was supposed to be on maternity leave.
But when Jasmine had begged me to continue seeing her once I’d graduated school, I could do nothing less.
Even if it meant I had to deliver her kid while I was in labor with my own.
Something Michael hadn’t realized I’d done yet, since I’d left while he was at work and conveniently forgot to tell him.
“That’s cool,” I said, changing the subject.
“Alright, Hannah, check her out so we can see where we’re at,” Michael ordered.
Hannah shot him a disproving look. “I know how to do my job, boyo.”
His brows rose. “You’ve been talking to Peek.”
Hannah grinned and lifted up her shirt to reveal her belly to us.
She’d gotten a tattoo of Reggie’s name on her lower hipbone in bold, beautiful scripted letters.
“Wow, that’s awesome,” Lennox and I parroted at the same time.
Michael smiled. “It hurt, didn’t it? I told you not to go there with your first tattoo.”
Hannah shrugged. “Hurt like a motherfucker. But Peek gave me a shot of Jack Daniel’s to tide me over. And kept them coming until it was done. When I left I could barely stand. Had to call a cab to take me home.”
I gasped as another contraction tore through me, bringing everyone’s attention back to me.
“Alright, you know the drill.” Hannah picked up a gown and tossed it at Michael. “Help her into that, and we’ll step outside the curtains. Let us know when you’re done… and what the fuck happened to your face?”
I coughed to cover up my laugh.
She’d just now noticed that after being in the room with him for ten minutes?
Michael ignored her and swung the curtains closed himself before walking over to me.
“You ready for this?” he asked softly, his eyes taking in my every feature.
I nodded and started to strip my shirt over my head, followed by my sports bra.
Michael’s eyes flared as he caught sight of my swollen belly and big breasts, but managed to stand still as I stood and pushed my maternity yoga pants over my hips, followed closely by my panties.
I offered him my hands, and he slipped the gown on over my chest, covering my nakedness without one lewd touch or comment.
He must really be scared, I thought.
Which stood to reason.
I was scared to.
Really scared.
But the thing about Michael and me was that we’d both gone through hell together, and had come out the other side.
We had our scars.
We had our doubts.
But we also had each other, and as long as I had him at my side, we could get through just about anything.
“I love you, Mikey Mike,” I whispered, knowing it’d draw a smile from him.
And he didn’t disappoint.
He smiled, eyes sparkling.
“I love you more, Nik.”
“Impossible,” I whispered fiercely.
“Nothing’s impossible when it comes to you. You showed me that,” he said just before pressing his soft lips against mine. “You ready for this?”
I nodded and touched the side of the bandage covering up the right side of his forehead.
“Have you had this taken care of?” I asked, feeling another pain coming.
He nodded. “Ten stitches.”
I winced.
Not only because that was a lot of stitches, but because it felt like this child of ours was trying to claw its way out of my vagina like a tiny Hulk.
“Epidural,” I insisted.
He smiled and helped me sit back down before yanking the curtains open.
Lennox and Hannah turned from their discussion, hurrying up to my bedside.
“Alright, lay back and let me feel you up.”
I covered my face with my hand as Hannah snapped gloves into place over her hands.
“Sit back, I’ll try to make this good.”
I huffed out a laugh as I moved until I was flat on my back, moving my enormous beached whale body until I was in position, then slowly opened my legs.
Hannah didn’t waste any time doing her thing, and I was grateful.
“You know,” Lennox said from her position by my head. “I’ve never seen a pregnant woman so calm before.”
I didn’t say anything to that.
I was freaking the fuck out.
Michael, though, didn’t need that from me.
I was sure he was already nervous enough, and I didn’t want him to regret having a kid.
He didn’t need yet another insecurity, and I wouldn’t be the one to give it to him.
“Do you remember what I do for a living?” I panted.
“You’re at six centimeters and fifty percent effaced. Doing good. You can still have an epidural, but I’d recommend making the decision quickly,” Hannah said, taking my gown and covering my knees.
Lennox sat the head of the bed up, and I looked to Michael to see him staring at the wall.
“What is it?” I asked him.
“I can’t tell you how disturbing it is to see my sister’s fingers up your…you know,” Michael informed me.
I smiled at him.
“You’re better at it, if it makes you feel any better.”
He made a gagging sound. “Disgusting.”
I snickered as Hannah tossed her used gloves in the trash and washed her hands. “I’ll go get the on-call anesthesiologist. We’ll get your shit knocked right out.”
“Should she be talking like that?” I asked, eyes closed as I tried to breathe through my next contraction. “Motherfucker, this hurts like a bitch!”
The room stayed silent for long moments while my question and subsequent comment hung there in the air around us.
“What?” I asked, opening my eyes to squint at Michael.
He just shook his head. “Nothing.”
Lennox busied herself hooking up the monitor, starting an IV, and drawing blood while Michael and I watched the screen to monitor my progress.
“That was a big one,” Michael said a few minutes later.
I grunted.
I knew it was a ‘big one.’
Simply because I’d felt the motherfucker.
But I tried to be nice about it.
“Uh-huh,” I agreed tiredly.
Then Michael and Lennox started talking medical jargon that was too advanced for my exhausted brain to process, so I ignored them and tried to sleep during my contractions.
Something I realized wasn’t working very well.
Especially since two of my favorite people in the world, under normal circumstances, wouldn’t shut the fuck up.
“Go away,” I muttered.
The talking stopped, and I ordered my husband to do my bidding.
“Go call your family and mine. Let them know what’s going on. And stop talking over my body. It’s annoying,” I ordered them.
Michael chuckled as he bent down and kissed my forehead. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Okay, Nikki. This is Amy Jones, the nurse anesthetist. She’s going to do your epidural for you. This is Eddie Gonzales, he’s the anesthesiologist that she works under. They’re here to answer any questions you might have. Okay?”
Michael froze on his way out the door, but then I started having another contraction.
“Get out so she can do her job,” I ordered my ornery husband.
Amy’s eyes followed Michael’s progress, brows raising to see what he’d do.
Michael chose correctly, though.
He offered his hand to the two of them, said, “I’m going to call my family,” and left the room.
“Eddie and Amy,” Hannah said. “Is there anything you need from me? I have another patient that’s in the fi
nal stages of pushing.”
Amy shook her head when Eddie looked at her. “No, that’s all, thank you.”
I knew Eddie, and the moment Hannah left the room he walked to my bedside.
“You ready for this rodeo to get started?” he asked teasingly.
Eddie loved to tease me.
We worked well together, trading barbs back and forth like two children in a play yard battle.
He loved the Yankees, and I was a Texas Rangers fan all the way. Which tended to make us butt heads from time to time.
“Well, I was all ready to have you teasing me while giving me the epidural,” I grunted, toes curling when the next pain hit me. “But I guess since you’re too good for me I’ll settle for Ms. Amy.”
Amy didn’t smile, but Eddie did.
“I have a C-section with triplets in about fifteen minutes. I’m sorry, but she’s cooler than you are,” he admitted openly.
I laughed. “Yeah, that’s what they all say.”
He winked. “I’ll check back in with you later.”
I nodded and watched him leave the room.
As my face turned to Amy, I was immediately struck with just how different she looked now that Eddie was out of the room.
Like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde different.
“You okay?” I asked her worriedly.
She walked to the door and closed it slowly.
“Don’t you need a nurse?” I asked. “And your stuff?”
She didn’t answer as she drew the curtain and turned back to me, walking toward me with a new purpose that set my instincts on edge.
“Your man fucked up,” the woman whispered to me. “You’d think with how cautious he was being with the doctors that he’d pay a little more attention to who was about to inject all sorts of fun drugs into your spinal column.”
I looked at her nametag and realized with a sinking feeling that she had the same last name as Dr. Jones.
Her name was Amy Jones.
Wife or daughter?
I couldn’t tell.
And why had I never seen her before?
I worked on this floor, and it was kind of a rule that I saw everyone on it seeing as I was a midwife. It was good business to know my colleagues.
“Don’t you mean my epidural space?” I asked worriedly.
My hands were sweaty, and my thighs quivered as I prepared to launch myself from the bed.
Only before I could, Amy Jones produced a gun.
“Don’t move,” she hissed. “I don’t really need your cooperation. I think I’ll just do it the quick way.”
My body froze.
“There’s oxygen in this room, not to mention my husband is right outside,” I tried to reason with her. “Surely you know that you’ll never get out of this unscathed.”
She shrugged.
“I don’t really care. At this point, I just know you need to be gone, as well as him, before I go. You’ll be my final couple. How does it feel?” She said soothingly, bringing the IV tubing that was going into my right hand up to her stomach.
I could see the syringe in her hand and knew she was about to give me something.
Which was why I yanked my hand to the side hard and quick, ripping tape, hair, and skin as I forcefully removed the catheter from my vein.
She glared at me disapprovingly and shook the gun at me for emphasis.
“I told you not to fucking move!” she whispered forcefully.
I moved.
I couldn’t help it.
It wasn’t in me to lay back and take what was coming for me.
“Hey, I just got word from Dr. Mead. He’ll be here in just a few minutes. He got held up by a train on eighteen…” Lennox’s voice trailed off as she got a load of the situation she’d walked in on.
She looked to me, then back to Amy before raising her hands up near her head. “Don’t shoot her.”
Amy kept the gun pointed at me, but she was glaring at Lennox, which was why she never saw me move close to the emergency ‘code blue’ cord and yank it from the wall.
The alarm in my room started to shriek.
And people poured inside.
Nurses, doctors, techs. Michael.
The sheer amount of people that’d entered the room had overwhelmed Amy, but she was smart and put the gun away before anyone could see her.
Michael’s eyes fell on me, and I started to scream.
“She has a gun!”
Amy was quick, though.
Using the commotion to her advantage, she ran, skirting past multiple nurses who were standing there stunned.
Michael, though, wasn’t stunned.
Far from it.
He was following her out the door almost as quickly as she’d left it.
Lennox walked up to me, placing a towel to the wound at my hand that I just now realized was pouring blood onto the floor.
“You’re a mess,” she whispered soothingly.
A sob caught in my throat, and the pain that I’d somehow been able to disregard through this entire debacle hit me again tenfold.
“God.” I slumped.
Lennox caught me and moved me toward the bed, and I went willingly.
“Your hand’s a mess,” she said, eyes scanning the wound.
I nodded. “Yep.”
“I should’ve done what Michael wanted and not gotten the epidural. Then we wouldn’t be in this mess right now,” I said worriedly.
Lennox started to clean off my hand with an alcohol swab.
Which was ridiculous since I needed a lot more than an alcohol pad to clean up this mess. Maybe a towel or something.
Then I forgot all about the mess I’d made and started focusing on the massacre that was happening between my legs.
It burned, but it didn’t hurt anywhere near as bad as everything else attached to my body.
“I feel like I need to push,” I said worriedly a few moments later.
Lennox looked up into my eyes.
“Your doctor’s not here yet,” she said worriedly.
I closed my eyes.
“Alright,” Hannah yelled. “This isn’t an exhibit. Everyone out.”
“But that psycho’s got a gun!” a nurse replied worriedly.
I wanted to roll my eyes.
And I would have had I not been worried that I might suddenly make a big move and the baby would fall out of my vagina.
“I really… really need to push,” I urged insistently, ripping the blankets that Lennox had just replaced, off my legs. “Either back off or catch this baby, because it’s about to happen.”
Hannah shooed out the rest of the people and Lennox and her stared at me with worried eyes.
“I’ve never delivered a baby before,” Lennox said helplessly.
“She’s in the custody of the police,” Michael growled, throwing open the door and slamming it shut behind him. It took him a few moments, but it wasn’t long before he realized that my vagina was out for everyone to see. “What?”
I pointed down to my vagina. “Your baby wants me to push.”
He shook his head. “Dr. Mead isn’t here yet.”
If I could have, I would have beaten him.
“Well, you tell that to this kid!” I screamed.
Michael’s eyes widened when something between my legs caught his eye, and I moved my hand down between my legs and felt something that most definitely hadn’t been there before.
“I’m crowning,” I said to the three of them.
I wished I’d had a camera to capture the looks on the three of their faces.
“Either one of you needs to come over here and play catcher, or you need to go get a doctor. Now,” I ordered them.
Still, none of them moved.
A doctor. A PA. And a nurse.
And all three of them stared at me with blank faces.
I can’t believe I was having to do this all myself!
My body
started to do what it was made to do, and soon I could do nothing but push and hope they got with the game.
Because seriously, it fucking hurt!
“Ahhhh! Michael get your fucking head out of your ass and catch this fucking kid!” I screamed.
Michael finally came unstuck and put his doctor hat on… or at least his thinking cap anyway.
He moved between my legs, then asked the stupidest question on earth at that point.
“Should I put on gloves?”
I would’ve kicked him had I not been holding onto my legs.
Instead, I closed my eyes, pushed, and daydreamed about shooting our kid out of my vagina and hitting him with her.
Which seemed good in theory, but probably not good for real.
My mind didn’t really care at that point.
“How come nobody waited for your family to arrive… ahhhh! My eyes!” Nico screamed, covering his eyes as he got a good look at my vagina.
I would be embarrassed… later.
Right now, I couldn’t muster up the ability to care, though.
“Move out of the way, hijo. I’ve got to get in there!” my mother yelled.
I didn’t look at her either.
I couldn’t.
My eyes were on Michael as he did things between my legs that I hoped he and I could both forget later on.
Then I swear to you, he stuck his hand into my vagina and I saw stars… and not the good kind.
“Owww! What the ever-loving fuck, Michael!” I shrieked.
“The cord was around her neck,” he rumbled softly. “All better now. Push again when you feel the next contraction.”
I pushed again at the next contraction. But not because he’d said to. Because I needed to. My body wouldn’t let me not do it.
“Owww, ow, ow, ow, ow,” I chanted over and over again.
“Would you grow the fuck up, Nico?” Georgia asked, shoving him out of the doorway where he was still covering his eyes and facing the opposite direction of me and my ‘big ‘ol vagina.’
Georgia came to my side and swept my hair back off my face.
“You’re doing good, almost done,” she soothed.
I nodded, panting as the worst pain yet washed over me.
“Fuck!”
“Language, hija,” my mother admonished from my other side.
When had she gotten there?
“The head’s out,” Hannah and Lennox said at the same time, standing at the end of the bed and looking at the humongous child that was trying to come out and being incredibly slow about it. “Your amniotic sac is still intact.”
Code 11- KPD SWAT Box Set Page 142
