Chance leaned in close to Jenny and pressed his forehead against her temple. “I do.”
“By the power vested in me by the Internet, I now pronounce you husband and wife,” Dylan said, with a wave of his arms that almost smacked both Darion and the cameraman. “Now kiss this bride before she pops out your kid!”
Jenny turned her face to Chance and he kissed her softly, tenderly. The light from the camera cast a soft glow over both of them.
Everyone in the ambulance cheered. Then Jenny started to groan. “Here comes another one!” she said.
“Four minutes,” Corabelle said, her face colored blue from the light of her phone. She had a stopwatch app open.
The ambulance rolled to a stop. Darion peered out the back window. “We’re here.” He flipped the latch on the door and pushed it open.
Darion jumped out, then Dylan, then the cameraman. He continued to film as the rest of us filed out. Finally, the glowering EMT began unlocking the stretcher so they could get it out the back.
Darion ran up to the sliding glass doors and approached the intake nurse. I was glad we were on familiar turf. I hadn’t realized Jenny’s obstetrician worked out of the same hospital as Darion. I should probably have asked more questions, been a better friend. But babies were tough territory for me. Like Corabelle, I’d avoided contact with infants or people whose domestic bliss made them likely to pop one out anytime. But here we were.
The male EMT let down the wheels to the stretcher and locked them in place. They rolled Jenny out. She was in the throes of another contraction, panting. When Chance could get next to her again, he took her hand and kissed it.
For the first time since we’d intercepted the ambulance, my throat tightened. Jenny’s baby was coming. We’d have a baby among our friends.
I caught Corabelle’s eyes. She stood off to the side, her hands clasped tightly together under her chin. Her face mirrored how I felt. Elated. Excited. Fearful. But also, for us, in agony as we considered what had never been.
Chapter 4: Jenny
“What do you MEAN I don’t get any drugs?” I didn’t think I could yell that loud, particularly since my insides felt like a car getting crunched into a bundle of twisted metal. But apparently, I could.
The OB on call had a mean face, big nasty eyebrows, and a triangle goatee. He looked like an evil overlord. “You’re too close to delivery for it now,” he said.
I turned to send a pleading look at Chance. “Can you please call Dr. Jamison’s office again?”
Chance looked like he was about to argue that there was no point, but thought better of it and pulled out his phone.
The Evil One looked even more menacing now. Yeah, I didn’t want him. I’d made that clear. He patted my knee patronizingly. “You’re in good hands. The nurses will let me know when it’s time. It won’t be long.” He turned and strode out the door.
His words made me even more furious. I needed to pull rank. “Tina!” I called out.
She stood up from a chair in the corner. Thankfully the birthing suites were large. Corabelle was still here, and of course Chance. Dylan and his cameraman had gone back to the concert.
Tina leaned on the bars on the side of my bed. “What’s up, baby girl?”
I grabbed her arm. “Can Darion deliver babies?”
I could see her trying not to laugh. “Sure,” she said. “But they’re going to have a whole team in here when it’s time, since the baby is early. You’ll probably have to go with Dr. Schlock.”
God, that name. That goatee. That attitude. Anything but that. “They said the baby was fine. Lungs working, weight great. Will it really be that bad?”
A nurse came in on the last question. “I’m going to be here for the duration now,” she said. “Doc says you’re close and we’re going to move you into pushing position during the next contraction.”
I could already feel it coming on. They were super close together now that we’d gotten through admitting and a quick sonogram to check the baby’s lungs. The radiologist had almost told us the gender, but Corabelle managed to cut him off. She was good at knowing what people were about to say.
I looked down at my belly, strapped with a gizmo that monitored the baby’s heart rate and the length of the contractions. A blue sheet was covering me below that, not that it mattered. Half the hospital had been all up in my business from the moment I got rolled in.
Seriously, why did anybody care if Britney flashed her parts getting out of a limo when you could see a million of the same in any maternity ward?