Читать книгу The Heart Doctor and the Baby - Lynne Marshall - Страница 9

JASON flew to his wife’s side, the one she was holding with both hands. “Sweetheart, is there anything I can do?”

Claire diligently practiced her birthing breathing as René knelt in front of her. She put her palm on Claire’s rigid stomach. The baby had dropped from yesterday’s appointment and, from the feel of the rock-solid mound, was already engaged.

“I have an idea,” René said. “Why don’t we adjourn this meeting, and I’ll take you to my office and examine you?”

“No argument from me,” Claire said.

The confirmed bachelor of the group, Phil, had noticeably paled beneath his Santa Barbara tan. “I guess I’ll take off, then,” he said, looking relieved.

Jason gingerly assisted his wife to stand, and escorted her, like the deliciously doting soon-to-be father he was, to René’s examination room in the clinic.

Jon stood perfectly still, obvious wheels turning in that wondrous mind of his. He glanced at René. “You need any help?”

“Don’t know yet,” she said, as she rushed out of the kitchen-turned-conference room. “Why don’t you stick around just in case?”

Five minutes later, René placed Claire’s feet in the stirrups on the table, gowned up and donned gloves, then started the examination. Holy smokes! Not only was she almost effaced and dilated, but her waters had broken.

“We’re having a baby here,” René called over her shoulder, which had Jason rushing into the room.

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Claire said, worry knitting her brows.

“Do we have time to get her to the hospital?” Jason asked, sounding breathless.

“Not at this stage.” René gave Jason an assertive glance, then she saw Claire’s questioning expression. “Don’t worry, Claire. I’m here. I’ll take care of you.”

“Ask Mrs. Densmore if she can keep Gina tonight,” Claire said to Jason.

He stood at Claire’s side, eyes dilated and wider than René had ever seen them. “Everything’s going to be fine,” he said, squeezing his wife’s fingers with one hand, fishing out his cell phone and speed-dialing their babysitter with the other.

From outside the door, she heard Jon’s voice. “How can I help?”

“Get a case of the absorbent towels, and warm some baby bath blankets, then start an IV for me,” she said.

A familiar-sounding scream tore from Claire’s chest. “Jason, get our morphine supply and an antiemetic. It might help Claire take the edge off before she goes into transition.” René waited for the contraction to diminish, then positioned the fetoscope to get an initial heart rate. She delivered babies at the local hospital, not in their clinic, and electronic fetal monitoring wasn’t available here.

“Oh, and call for standby ambulance transportation,” she added. After the birth, both mother and child would need to be admitted to the local hospital for observation. René bent her head and concentrated on timing the strong and steady beats. One hundred and thirty beats a minute. Good.

René stared into Claire’s stressed-out green eyes, sending her calming thoughts. Only thirty seconds later another contraction mounted, and perspiration formed around Claire’s honey-colored hairline. René continued listening for abnormal deceleration of the baby’s heart rate with the contraction, and was relieved to find a normal variation. Only a ten-beat dip.

Jason lurched back into the room with the IV supplies, and when his hands proved too shaky to stick his own wife, Jon stepped in and started the IV as Jason titrated a tiny amount of morphine into the line to help ease Claire’s pain in between the contractions. She didn’t want Claire too relaxed when it came time to push; the baby could come out floppy instead of vigorously crying.

The labor went on for another hour and a half, when René felt the rigid beginnings of a massive contraction. Now fully effaced and dilated, Claire had moved into transition.

“Push,” René said.

Though Claire seemed exhausted, she gave her all. This time the head fully crowned. When the next contraction rode in on the tail end of the first, René continued her encouragement. “Use the contraction, Claire,” René said. “Push!”

Jon hovered at René’s side. “I’ll get a basin for the afterbirth,” he said. “Are you going to need to do an episiotomy?”

“Don’t think so, but get a small surgical kit for me just in case.” She intended to do her part to slow down the passage of the head to avoid any tissue tear.

Jon dashed out of the room as if he were the expectant father, and when he returned, René put him to work tracking the baby’s heart rate through the fetoscope so she could concentrate on the birth. Not only was he fascinated with the listening device—typical of him—he was most likely figuring out a way to make a better one.

All was well, but the contractions came so quickly and hard that Claire didn’t have time to relax in between. Wringing with sweat, she looked exhausted, ready to give up. Along came another contraction.

“Bear down, Claire! Push! Push!” René urged, as she cupped the baby’s head in her hands and moved it downward as Claire pushed with everything she had. Her legs trembled and she let fly words René hadn’t heard since the last Lakers basketball game she’d attended.

She slipped the umbilical cord free of the baby’s face, and assisted as first the head, then one shoulder and then the other, slipped out. No sooner had the mouth cleared the birth canal, than the baby cried.

Obviously relieved after delivering the hardest part—the head—Claire wept.

René glanced up long enough to see tears fill Jason’s eyes. “Oh, my God,” he said. The room went blurry for her, too, but she couldn’t dwell on the swell of emotion taking over; she had a baby to finish delivering.

The baby slipped out, and René skillfully caught him, as she’d done so many times over her career, but this one felt more special than all the rest. It was her partner and friend’s baby. This infant sent her dreaming of birthing her own baby, of daring to hope she’d get the chance.

“It’s a beautiful boy,” she said, wiping the baby’s mouth and face with the warm and soft blanket that her new assistant, Jon, had handed her. He gave her another. After a quick check of the perfect little body, she wrapped the baby up as if the most precious thing in the world, and Jon produced a syringe bulb to suction the baby’s mouth and nose. He’d thought of everything. Had he thought of his answer yet?

The baby continued to make a healthy wail, music to her mother-longing ears. René laid the newborn on Claire’s stomach, and pressed to feel for another contraction, then prepared for the afterbirth. Jon held the large stainless-steel basin in readiness.

Jason hovered over Claire and the baby, as they laughed and cried together. René was too busy to hear everything they said, but knew love had been mentioned several times. And the name Jason James Rogers, Junior.

She glanced at Jon and saw the familiar look of wonder that new life always evoked. He met her gaze and held it, adding a smile. Could he read her thoughts, her desires? His short-cropped salt-and-pepper-brown hair had always made his eyes look intense, but she’d never seen that fiery excitement there before. Did he understand how she felt? How every cell in her body cried out for the chance to be a mother?

New life. Nothing compared with the wonder. Especially if the newborn belongs to you. Jon glanced back at the happy family, and she prayed they might perform a silent miracle on her behalf.

Jason kissed Claire’s forehead, as a distant siren rent the air. René could practically palpate their bonding. There was something about a baby that changed everything, that turned lovers into a family, and sealed a bond outsiders could never fathom. She’d seen it countless times, but this time it plunged straight into her heart.

Her chest clenched and ached for what she longed for, for the answer she depended on to provide the portal to her dreams. She couldn’t look at him again for fear she’d beg him to say yes.

“You want to do the honors?” She’d double clamped the umbilical cord and held it with gauze, handing Jason sterile scissors from the suturing pack. For a general practitioner, he looked apprehensive. She gave him an encouraging wink. When he’d finished, she applied the plastic clip on the baby’s end of the cord and smiled at the squirming newborn—healthy and strong, though small and a good three weeks premature by her calculations. Babies were nothing short of a miracle; she’d been convinced of that since her first delivery.

There went that clutch in her chest again, the one that made it hard to breathe. She couldn’t look at Jon, but felt his gaze on her.

“Congratulations, man,” Jon said to Jason. Memories of his wife giving birth flashed before his eyes. Nothing had awed him more, or given him greater satisfaction, than seeing his daughters brought into the world.

He didn’t have to look at René to know what she was going through; she’d thoroughly explained her deep hunger for motherhood to him last night. How must it feel to deliver babies for everyone else, and at the end of the day still be alone?

Jason grinned so hard his eyes almost disappeared. Claire patted his hand and welcomed the baby to her chest with the other. From the corner of his eye, Jon watched René’s reverent gaze as a pang twisted in his gut. He couldn’t take it. Couldn’t take the feeling or the implication a simple answer of yes would bring, so he bent to gather the soiled towels and stuff them into the exam room hamper.

The air was too thick with yearning and he’d never been the kind of guy to make dreams come true, just ask his wife. He needed to change the mood. “Do we get paid overtime for this?”

Not usually one to make light, his joke made everyone blurt a relieved laugh. Combined with Claire and Jason’s euphoria, joy filled the room from every angle, and against his better judgment, the feel-good rush fueled a growing desire to grant his coworker her biggest wish. He couldn’t let it influence him. His decision would be made the same way he made all of his medical determinations, based on logic and common sense. Nothing less.

René looked at him, the makeshift assistant, while the lovebirds and new baby continued bonding. Her expression had changed, as if she understood how much pressure she’d put on him, and how unfairly the perfect timing of this birth had played in her favor. A warm smile appeared on her face, as if the sun had cracked through thunderclouds. How could he not smile back?

“You’re not bad for a novice,” she said.

So she’d opted to keep it light, too. Relief crawled over him, as if a welcoming blanket. Birth or no birth, he wasn’t ready to make his life-altering decision, though her can-didness went far to nudge him along.

He flashed a capable look, one that conveyed I can handle just about anything. “You’re not the only one who’s full of surprises, René.”

“You want to hold him?” Claire had already dressed her contented-looking baby in blue by early the next morning.

René grinned. “I’d love to.” She’d popped in last night and found Claire sleeping, the baby swaddled and content in the bedside bassinet, and Jason lightly snoring in the lounger, so she tiptoed outside and read the pediatrician’s report instead. When the nurses assured her that Claire’s fundus was firming right up and there were no signs of excessive bleeding or fever, she’d gone home rather than wake up the new mother and father.

This morning, Jason was already down in the business office settling up, and they’d be heading home to introduce the baby to his big sister, Gina, as soon as René performed her discharge examination.

The six-pound boy squirmed when she took him and tucked him into the hook of her arm. The feel of him sent her reeling. He smelled fresh, like baby lotion and new life, and the clutching in her chest nearly took her breath away. She detected eye movement beneath tightly closed lids with no hint of lashes, and wondered what babies dreamed about. She gently pressed her lips to his head, and inhaled the wonders of his being pure as the first light. The longing in her soul for a baby swelled to near-unbearable proportions. His fine light brown hair resembled a balding man’s with a noticeably high forehead. On him it was adorable. Her eyes crinkled as the smile creased her lips.

His tiny hands latched on to her fingers, barely covering the tips. The flood of feelings converged—tingling, prickling, burning—until her eyes brimmed.

Her mouth filled with water, and she swallowed. “He’s so beautiful,” she whispered, discovering that Claire’s eyes shimmered with tears, too.

“I know,” Claire said. “Babies are miracles, aren’t they?”

Overwhelmed by the moment, wishing for a miracle of her own, her breath got swept away and all René could do was nod.

Jon wolfed down three bagels loaded with peanut butter and downed a pint of orange juice straight out of the carton when he arrived at work. He hadn’t slept for a second night, and the usual runner’s high had eluded him somewhere around mile eight that morning. He scrubbed his face and strode down the hall.

René was just about to knock on a patient exam room.

“Got a minute?” he said.

She started at his voice and snatched back her hand. “Oh!”

He headed for her office, stopped at the door, tilted his head and arched his eyes to guide her inside.

René’s breathing dropped out of sync, coming in gulps. She followed Jon toward her office as tiny invisible wings showered over her head to toe. Oh, God, what would he say?

She stopped one step short of entering the room, swallowed the sock in her throat and gathered her composure. She pasted a smile on her face in hopes of covering her gnawing apprehension, and proceeded inside, then prayed for courage to accept whatever Jon might tell her.

Would she have to go back to plan A, and the donor clinic? God, she hoped not.

“So, I’ve been thinking,” Jon said, the second she stepped over the threshold. “A lot.” He engaged her eyes and held her motionless.

“And?” she whispered, closing the door.

“I’m bowled over by this, René. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that. I don’t understand why you insisted on asking me when Phil is single and available.” He held up a hand to stop her before she could begin with the plethora of reasons all over again. She’d recited A to Z quite thoroughly, twice, the night before last. “But I believe your sincerity in wanting this—” he glanced toward the door as if to make sure no one was within hearing range, and though it was closed, he lowered his voice anyway “—baby. I saw it in your eyes last night. This isn’t some freaked-out biological-clock whim. This is the real deal.”

She nodded her head vehemently.

“I trust you’ll stick to your word about my small role in it.”

“To the T, Jon. I promise.” Oh, heavens, she didn’t want to anticipate too much, but it sounded as if he might take her up on the plan. She could only hope and pray. And hold her breath.

“It feels really callous on my part knowing how I plan to take a sabbatical and all, and I care about you as a coworker, and, well, I don’t want things to change professionally.” He scrubbed his jaw, and the now-familiar facial hair. “This could really ruin our working together.”

“I wouldn’t want that, either, Jon.” Oh, hell, in his swinging pendulum of emotions he’d convinced her from one second to the next to give up on him. Did she really want to sacrifice their professional friendship because of her desire for a baby? Could she blame him for wanting nothing to do with her outrageous plan?

“I’d want to think we could talk things through whenever we needed,” he said. “That though I’d be nothing more than a clinical donor as far as the baby goes, I’d like to be your friend. And as a friend and donor I should be able to share in your happiness, like everyone else here in the clinic.”

She nodded at his reasonable request, afraid to get too hopeful in case he pulled the rug out from under her dream. “I’d want that, too. I don’t want to lose what we have, Jon. Never.”

He stepped closer. “What do we have, you and me?”

He studied her eyes, making her feel under a microscope. Those winged creatures returned, dropping anxious nectar over the surface of her skin. She took a slow, intentional, quivery breath.

“We have five years of hard work and wonderful achievements to share,” she said. “We’ve laughed, celebrated, mourned and prevailed together over every setback in our clinic.” She took a step closer to reach out for his hand. “No matter what happens, if you say yes, you will always be a special friend, Jon.” His long fingers laced through hers, still feeling foreign, though warm, regardless of how many times she’d clutched his hand lately.

“No one can know a thing,” he cautioned. “If it comes out, I’ll leave the clinic.”

The importance of anonymity worried her. As with any risk, there was a cost. Was she willing to accept the guilt of changing Jon’s future if someone found out? Was she willing to let him pay the price? Confidence leaked out of her pores, leaving her insecure and wobbly. Maybe plan A was the only way to go, but Jon gently stroked her thumb with his, and a silent soothing message transmitted between them.

“I promise,” she whispered. A sharp pang in her gut, over the thought of ruining whatever relationship they had, forced her to face the gravity of their possible pact. This was it. Right here, right now. Her dream, their deal, was about to become a reality. The air grew cool and seemed to rush over the surface of her skin, setting off goose bumps.

His molasses-brown gaze swept over her face, as if searching for honesty. Could he look deep enough to see the longings of her heart? She’d meant what she’d said with all of her being.

“After you’re pregnant, I want superfriend status.” A tiny tug at one corner of his mouth almost turned into a smile.

“You’ll do it?” She grabbed his other hand and squeezed both, reeling with hope. The surge pushed her up onto her toes, ready to jump up and down, or kiss his cheek, based on his final decision.

“Yes,” he said. “I’ll do it.”

At the beautiful sound of his reply, she did both.