Doctors in the Wedding

by Gina Wilkins

  Everyone at the table, with the exception of Madison, spoke in unison to invite him to join them. Realizing her silence could be taken as rudeness, she quickly added her own welcome. He gave her a quick look and an almost imperceptible nod, then slid into the chair.

  When he spoke, it was to ask Lila, “How are you? Have you had a good time today?”

  “I’ve had a lovely time,” she replied eagerly. “Did you see my Tommy ride the bull? Seven and a half seconds!”

  “I saw. Great job, Tom. I only made it to six,” Jason answered with a wry chuckle. “The operator gave me a ride that darned near dislocated my shoulder.”

  “I made it to seven,” Allen said with no little pride. “He pushed it hard for me, too, but I held on. Thought I’d go the whole eight, but my hand slipped on the rope. I think it might have gotten a little loose with the riders before me.”

  “Great job, Allen,” Jason conceded easily. “Mike held on for the eight-count. I guess he was the only one who did so today.”

  Lila shifted in her chair, something she’d been doing since Madison had sat beside her.

  “Are you uncomfortable?” Madison asked her quietly.

  Lila grimaced somewhat apologetically. “I’m always uncomfortable these days,” she admitted. “I might have overdone it a little today. My back is really hurting.”

  “Can I get you anything, honey?” Tommy asked, his expression solicitous. “They’ve got hot water and tea bags on the drinks table. A hot drink usually helps you relax.”

  Lila beamed at him. “That would be perfect, thanks, sweetie.”

  He touched her hair when he stood to fetch the drink. A brief, light, almost absentminded stroke that still spoke volumes about his feelings for his pregnant wife, as far as Madison was concerned. She’d seen her brother touch his adored bride in much the same manner, and Seth do the same with Meagan. Just a fleeting moment of private connection in an otherwise public venue. Sweet, she thought with a silent sigh. Maybe someday someone would connect with her that way.

  She focused intently on her dinner after that random thought, telling herself not to be like everyone else and get too carried away with all this wedding stuff.

  “So what’s the plan after dinner?” Allen asked while they were eating desserts—a choice of several fruit cobblers with freshly made soft-serve ice cream. “Are we headed back to the hotel soon?”

  Pressing a hand to her side, Lila pushed her dessert away barely tasted. “No, there’s an hour of group singing and storytelling around the campfire before we head back.”

  “Oh.” Allen looked more resigned than enthusiastic. “BiBi sure planned a full day, didn’t she?”

  “You up to another hour, honey?” Tommy asked, studying his wife’s face with increasing concern. “You’re looking pretty pale.”

  Madison had just been thinking the same thing. Something about Lila’s expression didn’t look quite right to her. She suspected the woman was in more discomfort than she was letting on. “Are you okay, Lila?”

  Hand still pressed to her lower side, Lila nodded, but without a great deal of assurance. “The pain in my back is getting worse,” she confessed. “Maybe if someone could find me a more padded chair or something? I’m sure I’ll be fine—I don’t want to ruin the evening for everyone else.”

  “Don’t you worry about that,” Madison told her. “Maybe we should take you inside the ranch house. I was told there are rooms in there for dining and dancing and other activities when the weather’s too bad for outdoor events. I bet there’s a couch or at least an easy chair you can use to rest before the bus ride back to the hotel.”

  Privately she wondered if Tommy shouldn’t arrange different transportation for his wife. The bus didn’t seem to be the most comfortable conveyance, as nice as it had been.

  Buck, the ranch host, appeared at their side, and Madison realized that Jason had signaled him. “Something I can do for you?” Buck asked.

  Giving Jason a glance of gratitude, Madison repeated her suggestion for a comfortable place for Lila to rest. Lila demurred again, visibly self-conscious with the attention, but Buck nodded obligingly. “Of course. If you’ll follow me, ma’am and sir, I’ll find you a comfy place to hang out for the next hour and a half or so until we load the buses. We’ve got a nice lounge area inside, and I’ll have someone bring you some herbal tea, if you’d like.”

  Tommy and Lila stood to follow him. On an instinct, Madison rose with them. “Maybe I can help you inside?”

  Both of the Polanskis smiled gratefully. “You can take her other side,” Tommy said, clinging to his wife’s left arm.

  Madison nodded and looped her left arm with Lila’s right. Once they were inside, she would suggest that Tommy call a cab to take them back to Dallas. It wouldn’t be cheap, but she’d tactfully offer to pitch in, if necessary, and she was sure others would, too. Lila needed to get off her feet as soon as possible and take it easy for the remainder of the weekend.

  They didn’t even make it to the ranch house before Lila cried out and doubled over in pain. Tommy reacted in panic, clutching at his wife’s arm with a white-knuckled grip. “Honey? What’s wrong? What’s happening?”

  Though Lila’s maternity jeans were a dark denim, Madison could still see the darker stain that was rapidly spreading down her legs. Her heart sank. It had been five years since her rotation in obstetrics and gynecology. She only hoped she remembered everything she had learned then.

  She looked at Buck, trying to keep her voice calm for the sake of the anxious couple. “You should call for an ambulance now.”

  Lila cried out again, sagging heavily between her husband and Madison. “I think my water broke. But it’s too soon. The baby’s not due for another month.”

  People began chattering excitedly behind them, but Madison focused solely on Lila and Tommy, who had gone stark white with fear. “It’s okay,” she began.

  “I’m a doctor. I can help.”

  Jason and Madison had spoken almost in unison, coincidentally choosing the same words to reassure the couple. Skidding to a stop after rushing toward them, Jason looked at Madison in bemusement when her words registered. She’d known he was a doctor, but apparently, no one had mentioned her career to him.

  “You’re a doctor?”

  She nodded. “Psychiatry. Please tell me you’re ob-gyn.”

  His lips twitched. “Internal medicine. No obstetrics, but I’m sure between the two of us we can remember the basics, if necessary.”

  “Let’s just hope the ambulance gets here before that becomes necessary,” she murmured, turning back to her—their—patient.

  Tommy, Jason and Allen carried Lila inside the roomy ranch house where bright lights and an open floor plan welcomed them into the main lounge area decorated in cowboy chic. Called in to assist, Gayla swiftly produced a stack of clean sheets and towels from the supplies for the cabins used for dude ranch guests staying longer than a day.

  Once Lila was settled on top of several folded sheets covering a wide vinyl sofa, Allen swiftly excused himself.

  “Don’t either of you try to leave,” Tommy ordered Madison and Jason. “I want both of you here in case the ambulance doesn’t arrive in time.”

  “It usually takes several hours for a first baby to be born,” Madison assured him, mentally crossing her fingers. “I’m guessing there will be plenty of time.”

  Lila wailed and clutched her middle, drawing her knees upward in pain.

  Okay, maybe not, Madison thought, swallowing hard as she looked at Jason. “Should we, um…?”

  He nodded somberly. “Buck said the nearest hospital is almost half an hour away. We should probably do a quick exam.”

  Asking Buck to keep everyone else outside, they covered Lila with a sheet from the waist down. Tommy hel
ped her undress beneath the sheet while Madison and Jason scrubbed their hands in a small lavatory that opened off the lounge.

  “I didn’t realize you’re a doctor,” Jason said as he lathered forcefully from the container of liquid soap provided for guests.

  “Fourth-year resident. I’ll be starting a child and adolescent psych fellowship next year. I just found out this morning that you’re in practice when, um, someone mentioned your connection to the Lovato family.”

  “About that connection—”

  It was almost a relief when they were interrupted by another wail from Lila and a shout for help from Tommy. “Y’all need to hurry! She’s hurting bad.”

  This was not the time to talk about themselves, Madison thought with a quick shake of her head. Holding her scrubbed-clean hands in front of her chest out of long-forged habit, she hurried back into the other room with Jason close behind her.

  Jason made it clear he thought Madison should do the exam. “I’ll stand by if you need me.”

  She gave him a “gee, thanks” look, but since Lila was tearily begging for help, she had no other choice.

  It was obvious that the Polanski baby was in a hurry to be born. Madison looked at Jason over the sheet covering Lila’s raised knees. “We don’t have time to wait for the ambulance.”

  Lila moaned and Tommy went a shade paler, which Madison wouldn’t have thought possible. She frowned at Jason and nodded toward Tommy. Catching her meaning—or maybe he’d already noticed for himself—Jason spoke bracingly to the other man, reminding him that two doctors were there to help and the ambulance was on its way.

  “But it’s too soon,” Lila kept repeating, her voice catching in frightened little sobs.

  “Don’t you worry about that,” Madison said reassuringly. “Lots of babies are born at eight months and do very well. I happened to have been a couple weeks early, myself. My family said it’s because I’ve always been too impatient to wait my turn for anything. Maybe little Polanski here is the same way.”

  Her light tone seemed to accomplish what she’d hoped. Lila looked somewhat reassured when she gasped out, “Joseph. His name is Joseph. After Tommy’s daddy.”

  “That’s a very nice name. Jason and I will take good care of you and Joseph until the ambulance gets here, okay?”

  Lila’s eyes went wide as her entire body shuddered. “I need to push.”

  “Oh, honey, can’t you wait a little longer?”

  “No, I can’t wait!” she snapped at her worried husband. “Get over here and start doing that coaching thing. And you,” she added to Jason, “stop fussing over Tommy and help Madison, will you?”

  Jason obviously knew better than to laugh, though he and Madison shared a quick, amused look at this sudden change in tone from the sunny, mild-mannered woman they’d met earlier.

  The EMTs arrived some fifteen minutes before young Joseph emerged. Because it was too late to load Lila into the ambulance, they waited nearby with the ambulance incubator while Madison and Jason completed the delivery. Madison was grateful to have them—and their supplies—at hand during the final stages. She and Jason worked effortlessly together, barely having to speak to each other as they coordinated their movements, both encouraging Lila and Tommy during the process. By unspoken agreement, Madison took over as primary delivery doctor while Jason performed the nurse duties. When Joseph was out and the cord cut, Madison passed him off to Jason while she finished caring for Lila.

  Even as busy as she was caring for her own patient, she noted out of the corner of her eye that Jason handled the newborn with both confidence and competence. There were a few tense moments of silence after the birth, but they all exhaled in relief when Jason was able to clear the baby’s airway and elicit a shrill, indignant cry.

  “He’s a little scrawny, but he looks good,” Jason assured the anxious parents while the medics rushed forward to begin transport procedures. “As far as I can tell from my preliminary examination, he’s going to be just fine.”

  Tommy and Lila stared at their son with tear-streaked faces expressing exhaustion, stress, awe and instant, unconditional love. Madison blinked back a few stray tears of her own. She had almost forgotten how much she’d enjoyed that part of her labor and delivery rotation, though she still preferred the specialty she had chosen.

  The medics took the fussing baby from his parents to secure him inside the ambulance incubator where he’d be safe and warm for the trip to the hospital. And then Lila was transferred to a gurney and wheeled out to the ambulance with Tommy walking alongside her, holding her hand. Gayla and a couple of other ranch employees had already begun cleanup in the lounge, and Madison suspected that within a very short time, there would be no evidence of the events that had taken place here.

  Exhausted herself now, she turned to Jason when the Polanski family was out of their sight.

  “Oh. My. Gosh,” she said with an exaggerated wipe of her forehead. “That was not the way I expected to wrap up the day’s events.”

  Looking a little peaked, as well, he gave her a lopsided grin. “You and me both. I’m just glad you were here.”

  “Right. So you could hand off the messy part to me.”

  He nodded. “I won’t argue with you. L and D was never my forte.”

  “Mine, either. Head doc, remember?” She tapped her forehead. “Whole different end of the patient.”

  Jason laughed and reached out seemingly on impulse to give her a bracing squeeze around the shoulders. “You did good, Doc Esmeralda.”

  “You did good, yourself, Dr. Jones,” she conceded, letting her head rest against his shoulder just for one weak moment. The experience they had just shared only added to the unexpected—and decidedly inconvenient—bond that had formed between them at last night’s party.

  Still determined to keep peace with BiBi, she promised herself she would hold him at arm’s length again. In just a moment.

  “Oh, wow, we just saw Lila and Tommy and the baby onto the ambulance. They’re on the way to the hospital now. You two really—” Seeing Madison standing in the circle of Jason’s arm, BiBi stopped abruptly in the doorway of the lounge, her excited words trailing off.

  Madison stepped quickly away from Jason just as Carl and Corinna appeared behind BiBi. She was pretty sure Corinna hadn’t seen anything—not that there had been anything to see, she reminded herself impatiently.

  “Jason and I were just congratulating each other on remembering our med school training. Although he made me do most of the work,” she added with a teasing scowl.

  Jason grinned and reached for the cowboy hat he’d tossed onto a chair earlier. “Delivering babies is women’s work,” he drawled, settling the hat onto his head. “Us cowboys just pass out cigars afterward. Anyone got any cigars?”

  Madison snorted and swept toward the door. “We’d better get out of here now, before we step in any of that manure he’s shoveling,” she told BiBi, linking arms with her friend and winking at Corinna. “Come on, I’ll tell you all about my brilliant doctoring during the bus ride back to the hotel.”

  Either she’d reassured them with her joking toward Jason, or maybe the fact that she didn’t even glance back at him as they walked away, or the sisters were simply too interested in hearing all the particulars about little Joseph’s birth to focus on how friendly Madison and Jason had become during the delivery. They stopped giving her searching glances and started peppering her with questions that didn’t stop all the way back to the hotel. Others on the bus wanted to know all the details, as well, so Madison ended up telling the story several times. She was careful each time to focus more on her own involvement with Lila, keeping Tommy and Jason in the background of the tale and of roughly equal importance.

  “So you just handed the baby to Jason?” someone asked after the second—or was it the th
ird?—recounting. “All messy and squirmy and everything?”

  “He had a towel to wrap the baby in.”

  Several of the women listening from surrounding bus seats looked intrigued. Madison suspected they were picturing handsome Jason D’Alessandro holding a newborn infant. She had to admit she had found his competent, gentle handling of the tiny baby attractive—but that was hardly a surprise, since she’d been charmed by pretty much everything else she’d observed about Jason so far that weekend.

  “Well, he is a family practice physician,” Hannah pointed out logically. “I’m sure he’s used to holding infants.”

  “He’s always liked kids,” Corinna added. “He has three younger siblings, two young nephews, and too many cousins to count, and all the little ones love Jason.”

  “So, did Tommy pass out?” BiBi asked quickly, either to distract her sister from thoughts of Jason with children or to distract everyone else from noticing Corinna’s besotted tone. Maybe both. “He looked pretty pale when you all rushed him and Lila into the ranch house.”

  “No, he held up great. He was a little nervous at first, but J— But he calmed down fairly quickly.” She had almost praised Jason’s skillful soothing of Tommy’s anxiety but had changed her words at the last moment. Saint Jason had received enough credit this evening, she decided. Seriously, the guy had to have some flaws. Corinna’s crush aside, and discounting the few minor imperfections BiBi had listed, no one could be as perfect as Jason D’Alessandro was beginning to sound.

  Madison had never been particularly interested in too-perfect people—another reason she had chosen psychiatry as a specialty. Maybe that was the solution to her problematic fascination with Jason. The more she learned about how upstanding and responsible he was, the more she realized how different he was from the rebel she’d fantasized him to be after last night’s masquerade, the less intrigued she would be by him.