“William Morris Cummings!” she exclaimed with an accusing index finger pointed in my direction. “I will murder you. Not to mention, she just put her resignation in the other day. One more month and Marlene will be retired. Finally.”
I chuckled. “Yeah, that’s what you said six months ago, and she never actually went through with it. The day that woman retires will be the day they’re putting her in the ground.”
“Oh my God,” she gasped. “That’s an awful thing to say.”
“Oh, don’t act all high and mighty over Marlene. You know she will literally be a nurse until the day she dies. There’s no way she could give up a job that allows her to complain about anything and everything.”
I watched as she bit back her smile and shook her head.
“Anyway, Marlene’s fake retirement aside, I was thinking more along the lines of Georgia to be your labor coach.”
She groaned. “Eh, I don’t know. Sometimes your sister stresses me out.”
“I’ll give her a pep talk beforehand, I promise. Nothing but positivity and light and unicorns and rainbows and shit.”
“Oh my God.” She sank her head into her hands. “It’s gonna be like being coached by someone on LSD.”
“At least she’s been through it before, right?”
“I guess,” Melody grumbled. “And she’s probably the best person on our family roster…except for Kline. Maybe he would want to be my coach,” she said with a calculated raise of her eyebrow.
She wasn’t fooling me, though. There was absolutely no way my Mel would be comfortable having her brother-in-law coach her through labor. She didn’t need to know I knew all of that, though. She just needed to think I was willing to do whatever she needed. “Maybe he would. I’d be happy to ask him.”
Her eyes narrowed as she turned away and whined, “I really hate you.”
I chuckled. “Why? Because I’m accommodating of your every wish?”
“Because you make me feel like a bitch! Why do you have to be so helpful? Why can’t you be an asshole?”
“You want me to be an asshole?” I asked even though I knew my wife was full of baloney. She secretly loved the fact that I treated her like a goddamn queen. The joke was on her, though. She deserved to be nothing less than the center of my universe.
“Ugh. No,” she finally admitted as she moved, well, more like waddled toward the hallway. But she only made it four steps before she stopped, clutched her back, and grimaced.
The way she was rubbing at her lower back made me take notice and get serious. “You okay, baby?”
“Yeah.” She nodded. “Just…” Her eyes pinched in pain. “Ow.”
I stood up straight in one smooth motion and was at her side between one breath and the next. “Are you in labor?”
“Stop,” she sighed and waved me away with the hand not constantly rubbing at her back. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s probably just something I ate.”
Not even listening, I moved down the hall to my home office, opened the bottom right door of my desk, and pulled out the portable cardiotocography machine, otherwise known as an electronic fetal monitor.
A quick trip back down the hall, and I was pulling up Melody’s shirt to strap the band onto her stomach.
“Oh my God. You’re ridiculous. You don’t think I’d know if I were in labor?”
I paused my work at her stomach to meet her annoyed gaze and raise just one eyebrow. She rolled her eyes. “Okay, so maybe I haven’t done it before, but I have two more weeks to go.”
“And babies sometimes come early. Another thing you already know,” I teased.
She flipped me off as I finished getting her set up and hooked to the monitor. Fifteen seconds later, a contraction read out on the screen.
“Well, well, well, what do we have here?” I goaded as I palpated her abdomen with both hands. “And an extremely strong contraction, at that. I mean…I’m not a labor expert…or maybe I am?” I questioned, and she huffed out her irritation in one long exhale.
“Fine!” she finally admitted and threw both hands into the air. “So, I’m in labor, but we both know that there’s still plenty of time before we need to go to the hospital.”
I shook my head, unsatisfied with the wait-and-see approach when I’d spent so many years in school to know better. “Come on,” I said as I picked her up and carried her down the hall. “We’re going to check your cervix.”
“No! Will!”
“Sorry, Mel. Just lie back and pretend we’re playing out your favorite doctor fantasy.”
“I don’t have a doctor fantasy!”
“You should,” I advised. “I hear they’re really dreamy.”
She growled at me as I set her down on the bed and pulled her shorts and panties down her legs. “Relax, baby. Just let me check, okay?” I soothed as I ran my hand up the soft skin of her thigh. “I love both of you. Just let me make sure you’re both going to be okay.”
Properly mollified, she relented. “Okay. Fine.”
I helped her scoot up and onto the bed as she clutched her stomach and grimaced with another contraction. Once she was positioned comfortably, I sat beside her hip and she pulled up her legs.
I rubbed her clit in the hopes of making a little natural lubrication, and she moaned, startled.
I smiled. “Maybe there are some benefits to letting me be your doctor?”
She flipped me off again and lay back, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t noticeably wet.
Using the moisture to ease my entrance, I pushed my fingers inside and moved straight to the cervix. As the three fingers I’d inserted slid easily inside, my eyes got a little glassy with anticipation.
“You’re already dilated close to four centimeters, Mel.”
“What?” she all but yelled.
“Time to go to the hospital, baby,” I directed, pulling my hand free and wiping her clean with a washcloth.
“Ah, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she chanted.
But I’d never felt calmer in my life. Everything that mattered to me in this world was going to be in my arms within the day.
And they’d be getting there safely—I’d make sure of that.
“More ice chips, Mel?” Georgia asked, and I shook my head.
I didn’t need ice chips. I needed my epidural to actually start working.
Jesus, Mary, and the Beatles, this pressure is fucking terrible.
Okay, maybe it was working, but holy hell, it wasn’t taking this insane pressure away. I might not have been feeling the contractions in my stomach and lower back, but I sure as hell was feeling them in my vagina. It was like a bowling ball was trying to slowly roll its way out of my body.
Four hours after we’d arrived at the hospital and I’d gotten an epidural and dilated to ten centimeters at a pretty quick pace. But the baby was still a little high up, and since everything looked good on the fetal monitor, I’d chosen to try to let the baby descend farther before I started pushing. The fact that my husband was intent on delivering our baby himself might have also influenced my decision to wait a while before pushing.
Normally, I was madly in love with Will. But today, I was kind of in the middle of having his baby, and he seemed intent on driving me crazy with his resolve to deliver our baby himself.