by Julia Kent
“They’re not exactly a binary-oriented crowd here,” Josie tried to explain.
The nurse shot her a what the fuck? look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s complicated,” Dylan muttered.
Understatement of the year, Josie thought as she tried to check out the gorgeous doctor’s reaction, all of her senses on fire as she realized how turned on she was by his mere presence. A keen sense of familiarity made her think she knew him from somewhere. But where?
Sherri and Alex wandered back. “Have we decided the whole ‘who’s allowed in the room’ thing yet?” Sherri said, clearly exasperated.
“There is a written hospital policy about how many people can be in the room,” the nurse said, clearly not for the first time. A quick glare at the nurse showed exactly how Sherri felt about that. “It is rarely enforced, but it is on the books.”
“What’s the policy?” Alex looked at the nurse, then added, “I’ve been here for nearly a year and the only support person policy I know of is that only one person can be in the OR for a C-section.”
“One support person, one father.” The nurse clamped her lips together in disapproval, not touching Alex’s leading comment. “And she”—the nurse pointed at Josie—“is the support person.”
“Who’s the father?” he asked.
Silence. Josie, Mike, and Dylan sighed.
Sherri said, “I’m going to go and be with the actual patient and do patient care here.” She gave the nurse a withering look. “Meanwhile, let’s make the decision that’s best for the patient. If she wants all these people in there, why can’t they be in there?”
“If we need to get a crash cart in there it’s too many people.”
Josie had a thought. “So, wait a minute—”
Alex interrupted her, which caught her off guard—she wasn’t used to being interrupted. Normally, she was the one who interrupted. Again that deep voice, that melody in his vocal cords strumming something in her that made her sit and listen attentively. “One support person is allowed,” he said to the nurse.
“Yes.”
“And one father is allowed.”
The nurse pursed her lips. “Well, yes, normally there only is one father.”
“Okay, fair enough. One father. Anyone else allowed?”
“No.”
“What about a doula?”
The nurse tilted her head left and right and said, “Well, yes, we have had cases where—”
Josie was about to open her mouth and offer to back out of being in the room for the sake of Dylan and Mike when Dylan jumped up and shouted. “I’m the doula!”
“You’re the doula?” the nurse questioned, incredulous and skeptical.
“I’m the doula.” Dylan’s emphatic words showed in his new stance, the slumped shoulders long gone, body tight and defensive, ready for action.
“You don’t look like a doula.”
Dylan preened a little, pumped up his chest and said, “I’m a licensed paramedic and I’m a doula. I’ve got a therapy ball at home and some patchouli oil in my car. I do energy work.” He waved his hands in front of him like some sort of mystic, coming within inches of the nurse’s head. “Your energy is very negative. Maybe you need to get a sage stick and smudge yourself.”
Josie bit her lips trying not to laugh. The male doula story was about to make the nurse's gossip rounds for the next six months at this hospital, as if Dylan didn’t have his own notoriety when it came to Boston. And, unfortunately, here it came.
The nurse took a really long, good look at Dylan and then pulled back, her face shocked. She pointed and said, “I know who you are. You’re the billionaire bachelor.”
Dylan shot her a smug, charming smile. “Yes, I am.”
“Then why do you need to be a doula?” she said. “You don’t need to work.”
That caught him off guard. “That’s right. That’s right,” he said, fumbling for words. “I am a doula because I love the work and I want to support women in their birthing options.” Josie motioned her hand in a circular manner that indicated to keep going. “And besides, there’s nothing that you can do about it. I’m the doula. You go in there and you ask Laura and she’ll tell you that I’m the doula and—”
The nurse pointed to Mike. “That makes you the father?”
“I guess so,” Mike said, looking at Dylan with a very, very skeptical expression.
Dylan stood up on tiptoes and whispered in Mike’s ear, “This doesn’t mean that I think you’re the father.”
“I know that,” Mike whispered back.
“Okay, just clarifying.”
“Jesus Christ, Dylan, can we cut this out?”
“As cute as your conversation is,” Josie said, a fake smile plastered on her face yet again. She was getting tired of this. “Let’s just call it done.” She put a hand on the shoulder of the nurse and said, “Can we just cut the bullshit and let all three of us in? Because right now we’ve wasted the past five minutes arguing about this and our friend needs us.”
“You’re not the doula,” the nurse whispered, now unsure. It was three—make that four, if you included Alex, who had turned out to be their savior—against one, and the nurse was losing badly now.
“Ask Laura. I am the doula, and my client needs me.” He waved his hands in the air around her, then clasped them in a namaste gesture.
The nurse softened and said, “All right. I’ll let it go but,” she said, taking a step closer to Dylan and sticking a finger on his chest, poking twice, “you better be the best damn doula I’ve ever seen in this hospital.”
“You’re on,” he said. “Wait until you see what I can do with a massage wand!”
Josie walked into Laura’s hospital room and found a weeping, hormonal mess sitting on a large therapy ball, rocking her hips and sighing through occasional mumblings of “Nobody told me this would hurt so much” and “Why the fuck didn’t I get an epidural in the parking lot?”
As Mike and Dylan entered closely behind her she could sense their absolute feeling of panic, compassion, confusion, and expectation—with just the slightest hint of excitement coming through, thankfully. Laura was going to need every drop of support from the three of them that she could get to emerge from this birth as unscathed as possible.
“Unscathed” wasn’t exactly the right word, Josie knew. Having every mucosal section of skin in the nether regions shredded like mozzarella cheese over a pizza wasn’t quite her personal definition of unscathed—and she knew that for the next three days after the baby was born Laura’s best friend wasn’t going to be Josie, Mike, or Dylan. It was going to be ice packs and Lidocaine gently placed over her crotch and those stretchy, mesh panties that were anything but sexy, but that became a woman’s life line as she recovered postpartum.
All of that, though, Josie had to push out of her mind because right this moment she had one thing to think about—and that was getting Laura through this. Dammit, she thought. Make that two thoughts, because right behind Mike and Dylan she sensed another presence, a masculine, self-possessed, and oh, so seductive presence. One that somehow managed to push Thor and his sidekick aside about as readily as a lion bats an annoying mouse.
How could the hot OB do this to her, to the room, to the world? How did someone she had just met ten minutes ago suck all of the negativity out of her atmosphere and fill it with a keening, sultry desire that made everything else go away? Her poor friend was sitting here, perched on top of an oversized playground ball, her head down, her breathing labored, her back wrenched as her hips split to let her baby emerge.
And all Josie could think about was grabbing Alex and finding a quiet room and riding him like a bull. A good friend would have anything but sex on her mind right now.
Apparently, Josie was not a good friend.
She happened to be standing at the end of the bed, and Alex came over to her left and reached across her to grab the chart. Her eyes were drawn to the smattering of dark hair that pepper
ed the skin of his outstretched arm, the taut muscles of his wrist, the way the bones all moved so fluidly. Of course, he had surgeon’s hands, with long, slim fingers that grasped the metal chart as if he were a catcher in a baseball game receiving a ball. Flipping open the chart, his forearms flexed with movement, the sinew and bulging veins speaking to some sort of outside activity that made him athletic and active. Her mind wandered once more to the bedroom. Was he athletic and active there?
She closed her eyes and squinted, trying to drive the thought away as he was mere inches from her. The scent of something citrusy, spicy, and a bit musky all mingled to make her hum even more vibrantly like a magnet drawn to iron shavings— except the magnet was her nether regions, a familiar warmth pooling in her belly above her pubic bone, threatening to make her breathing as labored as Laura’s. The muscles that were clamping inside Josie may have been in the same area as Laura’s, but they were producing a noticeably different sensorial effect.
“Excuse me,” Alex said, looking over with a flirtatious tone to his voice.
“By all means,” she said. “You are the doctor.”
His eyes narrowed slightly at that and he shot her a puzzled look. “But I’m not in charge here,” he reminded her. “Sherri is.”
Could you be any more perfect? she thought. A humble OB? Impossible. There was no such thing. She wanted to say that, to test him, to push him, see where his limits were, but this wasn’t the time. At that exact moment Dylan walked over to Laura and began rubbing her back while Mike poured a glass of water.
“Laura, you okay?” Dylan asked, bending over her shoulder.
“Am I okay?” said a demon voice from deep inside Laura’s core. “Am I okay? Do I lookokay?” she asked.
Josie winced. Dylan was about to get it. “No, I just mean…”
For the first time since they’d arrived, Josie got a good look at Dylan. He was wearing a navy polo shirt, some torn jeans, flip-flops, and a baseball cap. Red Sox. Must be a game day.
“It’s okay, Laura. It’s all right, babe,” Mike said, coming over with a glass of water, trying to soothe her and glaring at Dylan. Dylan looked back, shrugging, his palms up in the air in a what did I do? kind of motion.
“It’s not okay!” Laura shouted. “Quit telling me it’s okay! You!” She pointed at Dylan. “And you!”—now at Mike—“aren’t the ones who are about to have this baby come out the hole where you put her in. If one more person in this room,” she shouted, looking around, her eyes wild and angry, “tells me it’s going to be okay, I’m going to order you out of here. I’m going to strap you down and I’m gonna load a bunch of Pitocin in your veins and I’m gonna make you feel how it feels to have your asshole clamp down for forty-five to sixty seconds every two to three minutes and then I’m gonna make you shit an eight- pound brick. Are we clear?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the men said in unison. Josie almost said it too, and then bit her lower lip, afraid to piss off Laura any more.
Alex leaned down and Josie could feel his breath before he said a word, the heat tickling her earlobe, making her lose about ninety-nine percent of the thin thread of resolve that was left. “I’m going to assume,” he said, his voice like a soft touch, “that she’s not always like this.”
“No,” Josie answered, whispering, her mouth so close to his earlobe she wanted to stand on tiptoes and bite it. “Only when she’s shitting an eight-pound brick.”
He nodded somberly. “Most of my patients find the brick is worth it.” His smile lit up his eyes as he studied her face. “You have kids?”
The question shocked her. It shouldn’t have—she was getting to that age where it was becoming more common—but it still did. “Um, no. I kill house plants and the only reason my cat is still alive is because he’s smarter than I am.”
He chuckled. “Not everyone’s ready at the same time, right?”
What was that supposed to mean? “And some of us aren’t ready even when reality is staring us down the birth canal,” she said, nodding at Laura.
“Her level of denial must be pretty extreme,” he said.
“You don’t know the least of it.”
Dylan was attaching some sort of MP3 player to Laura’s shirt as she batted away the earbuds. “I don’t want to listen to that crap,” she said, bursting into tears. “I just want someone to hold me.” A loud, winding-down cry like a toddler’s poured out of her as she melted into a puddle of tears, sniffling against Dylan’s chest, his body twisted in an awkward pose. He looked at Mike and shook his head, eyes begging for help.
What do I do? he mouthed. Josie started laughing.
She turned back to find Alex going over Laura’s chart, his frown deepening as he read further. She stood up on tiptoes, raised her eyebrows, and tried to get a look, but he was too tall and the chart was too far away. “Anything to be worried about?” she asked in a low hiss.
“Nothing so bad that we can’t continue with the midwife,” he said. “But this is one I’m going to have to watch very, very carefully.” Inscrutable, this one was. Snapping the chart shut, he kept a very neutral—almost too neutral—look on his face, his voice professional and moderate.
His hand brushed against hers as he lowered the chart, and she felt a zing of every form of energy in the universe coalesce into that point of contact. “Unfortunately, it looks like you’re stuck with me for most of the night on this case.” Avoiding eye contact, he looked at a spot above Laura’s head. “If Sherri agrees,” he added in a slightly deferential tone. Unreal. Doctors didn’t do that—defer. To anyone.
“Unfortunately?” she asked, cocking an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
He seemed to consider that, breathing in through his nose, taking his time to answer. When he did, one hundred percent of his attention was focused on her. She liked that very much. “The unfortunate part is that her case is high risk enough that she needs an OB consult for most of the night,” he explained, a practical tone in his voice that made her think she had completely misread what she thought was a flirtatious signal, her stomach clenching and her heart hardening to save herself the social embarrassment of thinking that someone this hot and this interesting would have any interest in her.
“But,” he said, his finger touching the inside of her elbow, making a slow, steady trail into the soft inner flesh and then writing tiny circles in the middle, a pretty obvious symbolic move on his part, “the fortunate part is that, given the amount of time I’m going to need to focus on the case, and the nineteen hours left on my shift, I think you and I are going to become very well acquainted.”
“Me?” she squeaked. His fingers stopped and she nearly sobbed with the exit of his touch, her solar plexus, her abs, her everything all tight with anticipation and with some sort of paradigm shift in the universe that made everything about him, him, him.
“Yeah, Josie. You.”
“I need to pee!” Laura shouted. Josie deflated on the spot. Way to kill the mood, she thought, and then clamped down on her brain, on her thought process, which was far better than clamping down with some of the other muscles in her body that were pulsating right now.
What in the ever-loving hell was she doing?
All her attention needed to be focused on Laura, not on Dr. Alex Derjian. Flashing him a smile, she got herself out of the situation, extracting her ego, her attention, and her clit from this diversion. Two out of three of those should be focused on Laura and the third—well, she had a box of electronic toys to handle that one. She didn’t need another crazy romantic entanglement right now, and certainly not in the middle of Laura’s birth.
She should be focused on her friend’s vagina—not her own.
Chapter Three
This was a new low, even for Alex. Coming on to a patient’s support person during the woman’s labor? Alex had seen it happen before, unscrupulous doctors hitting on doulas. Twice in his short career, he’d even seen the expectant fathers hitting on nurses or other women in the room while the poor, laboring
mom writhed in pain and agony. At least he wasn’t the baby daddy here. Although, he thought as he peered around the room, he still wasn’t sure who the baby daddy was. Sherri had briefly explained that this was an unusual romantic entanglement between the laboring mom and the two men in the room.
Alex watched how tender they were with her, how the tall blonde seemed to focus her in meditation and to calm her down, bringing her out of the anger and into a more neutral, calm energy that allowed her to handle the waves of contractions far better than she had while upset and bitter. He admired what they were doing, capable of so much more than he saw in most traditional unions. He wondered why he hadn’t seen this before. Flashing back on some of the two hundred births he’d been part of or observed, he couldn’t think of another situation where two men had been so eagerly devoted to one woman.
Not wanting to interrupt them, he took a quick look in the chart and saw nothing noted under “father’s name.” He wondered who they were, how they felt about this whole arrangement—but more than anything, he was curious. How do you do this? How do three people act as one? And which one was the father? Sherri had said that they didn’t want to know, and that seemed even more astonishing to him. If he helped to create a baby, damn right he’d want to know that he was the father.
But this was different, he sensed, as he watched the two men help Laura stand and begin to take some slow steps. There was an interplay between them, an easiness between the men that spoke of a kind of connection he respected but couldn’t fathom. Each directed his attention fully on Laura when she needed the engagement. Under their eager assistance, she blossomed a bit, even laughing as the tall blonde made a joke, and somehow she chuckled through a contraction, the motion making her belly tighten. Alex watched carefully, his practiced eye noting that she still hadn’t dropped.
Between polyhydramnios and the fact that she was a first-time mother, he guessed it really was going to be a long night. That fact he celebrated in his head, a great contradiction to most cases. In nearly every laboring case, he wanted it over quickly. Not to rush nature, but simply to bring closure to the family and to greet the new life that came into the world in his trained hands.
