It's Complicated (6 page)

Introductions complete, he pulled his hand away, leaving her drained and empty and full of self-doubt. Had she been alone in the feeling that had just jolted through her? She wasn’t imagining it, though—he seemed to feel it too. Fidgety and a little ill at ease, Josie pretended to study the silver doors as the elevator hummed its way up to an even bigger, more chaotic mess that they both encountered as the doors wheezed open.

There stood Mike and Dylan and Sherri outside Laura’s door, engaged in an angry whisper campaign with another nurse who stood there. The pained expression on Dylan’s face was shifting more and more into anger, while Mike coiled with a tension diametrically opposite his normal state. Snippets of their conversation floated into Josie’s awareness as they approached.

“But there’s a limit…”

“I don’t care about the limit…”

“Why can’t we…?”

“Does it really matter?”

“Is there a reason why we can’t…?”

“What’s going on?” Alex said, his voice commanding and clear.

It made Josie stand up straight and listen intently—not that she had any choice. She could have listened to him read a Windows 7 installation guide and been in a state of bliss for hours on end. A melodic baritone, he didn’t have the standard Boston accent that so many men had, and there was a lilt, something foreign, but not quite. He wasn’t a Midwesterner, not a New Yorker, and nothing from the South came into his voice. The sound of his voice was more his own accent, as if he had honed it carefully himself, born of an internal core that made him something distinct and unique and well worthy of everyone’s immediate attention.

As he spoke, her eyes combed over his body. Brown, shiny waves in hair that needed a cut, but looked perfect tousled the way it was. Dark brown eyes, similar to hers, but with little specks of orange in them. His face was wide, with high cheekbones but the sprinklings of early five o’clock shadow. She knew, too well, that shadow would end up quite thick by the end of his long shift, the kind of stubble that left a slight, rough, red rug burn on a woman’s face after a perfect, intense kiss…or twenty.

Broad shoulders and a body that indicated that he worked out. His scrubs lay flat against his skin, not too tight, but not the baggy, shapeless look that so many men acquired as residency added some paunch to their under-exercised, over-carbed forms. This was a man who took care of himself. And as the conversation continued, she recognized that he was a man accustomed to finding solutions and having them carried out.

Sherri turned to him. “Thank you, Alex. I’m glad you’re here. I need you to consult on Laura’s polyhydramnios case,” she said, pulling him aside. “But we also have another issue here that has nothing to do with you.”

The nurse who stood next to them was arguing with Dylan and Mike, and Josie heard, “But there can’t be two fathers in the room.”

“But there are two fathers.”

“No, there can’t be two fathers. Our rooms are small and we can only allow one support person and one father.”

“Well, I’m the support person,” Josie said. “I’m also an RN. What’s going on?”

The nurse gave her a grateful look, as if Josie were an instant ally in whatever argument she was having with the men. Josie didn’t like the assumption because she had a feeling that this was going to be one of those moments where she got rip-shit pissed and lost her cool. Doing that in front of Alex was a hell of a first impression she didn’t want to make.

“Did Lisa call you, too?” the nurse asked.

“Lisa?” Josie shook her head, confused. The sly look on the woman’s face pinched off instantly, shifting from a conspirator’s countenance to one of officiousness.

“Both of these men say that they’re the father.” The nurse was in her mid-sixties, no nonsense, about as wide as she was tall. She had extremely short gray hair, thick bifocals, and the body language of someone who didn’t take crap, ever. And Josie could respect that. If she worked here for forty years she’d be an impenetrable fortress of rules too.

“Haven’t you heard of a kid having two dads?” They were quite a crowd in the hallway now— Mike, Dylan, Josie, and the nurse clustered together, Alex and Sherri just behind them. The OB and midwife, whispering, backed up a few paces.

“Is this a surrogacy case?” the nurse asked, arms crossing over her chest tighter. A loud scream poured into the hallway from a nearby room, followed by the muted sound of a man’s soothing voice.

Dylan and Mike exchanged a glance, and Dylan said, “If it was, could we both be in there?”

“Well, that depends. Is it?” The nurse was so cynical and challenging that Josie wondered if there was something personal going on here. Maybe she was homophobic and assumed Dylan and Mike were gay? Overt discrimination was very rare in the Boston area, but it did happen.

Honesty prevailed, Dylan’s instinct to lie not strong enough, Josie noticed. Ironic considering he had no problem lying when it came to other things.
Maybe he really has reformed
, she thought. “No, it’s not,” he admitted reluctantly, shoulders slumping in defeat.

The nurse pointed to Josie. “So, you’re the support person.”

“Yes.”

“Who is the dad?”

“I am,” both men said in unison.

Out of the corner of her eye Josie saw Alex do a double-take and then whisper something to Sherri, who whispered something back. Alex’s jaw dropped.
Oh, boy
, she thought,
this is getting interesting
. Who was she kidding? This had been interesting about ten minutes ago—no, make that nine and a half months ago.

“Don’t make me do eenie-meenie-minie-moe on you,” the nurse said, pointing her finger at Dylan, and then at Mike.

“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.