It's Complicated (11 page)

I tasted you,
she almost said
.
She stopped and thought for a moment, then shook her head slowly.

“Hang on,” he said.

The footsteps emerged and she heard Laura scream through gritted teeth, a low thrumming sound, guttural and visceral and like no other sound she’d heard a woman make before. She’d been to plenty of births, but
that
noise was like a song that came from the base of her spine.

Alex shoved a protein bar in her face.

She batted it away. “I can’t eat that.”

“Take a bite, trust me. Your friend is right on the verge and you want to be over there with her, right?”

Now she looked up and warm, concerned eyes met hers. She closed her lids, embarrassed. “I can’t believe I’m freaking out like this and
I’m a nurse
.”

“I’m a doctor and I’ve done it. It’s okay—it’s different when it’s your friend.”

“Really? You’ve freaked out when one of your friends gave birth?”

“No, I freaked out when my mom was in a car accident.”

“Oh.” Another shot of adrenaline poured through her, triggering deep memories of her own of parents in car accidents. Alarmed, she asked, “Did she make it?”

“Through the accident? Oh, yeah. She was injured but I freaked. No one wants to lose a parent that way, you know?”

No shit,
she thought.
I don’t recommend it
. But now was not the time to talk about her past.

“Now, we can chit-chat or you can eat the protein bar and get your ass over there. Which is it going to be?” he said.

The tone in his voice gave her no choice, and she was grateful. Right now options were her enemies.

The protein bar purported to be peanut butter flavored, but it tasted like a combination of wax, sugar, and something else she couldn’t put her finger on. But she swallowed it, felt better, chugged the water, and stood. The room stayed in place, and as she scooted over to hold Laura’s hand she turned back and mouthed,
Thank you.

He just smiled without showing his teeth, crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the door frame to watch.

She was just in time as Laura bent in half again, her face turning an impossible shade of purple, and Mike stooped down to look at the opening where his child’s head began to emerge.

“Laura, you’re
so
close,” he said.

Dylan craned over Laura’s shoulder—he was propping her up from behind and unable to see.

Josie saw a mirror, a rather large one on a stand in the corner, and caught Sherri’s eye. “Can I get the mirror?” she said.

“Ask Laura,” Sherri answered.

“Laura, do you want to see the baby?”

Laura pulled out of the pain and looked at her with emerald eyes that were glassy and exhausted and exhilarated all at once and said, “Yes, please,” and then bent down, pushing with all of her might as Josie wheeled the mirror over and positioned it so that Dylan and Laura could watch.

The next twenty seconds went by in such a flash that Josie, years later, would try to remember the exact sequence of events but never quite construct it. A growling scream from Laura, the sound of something popping, and then a slick, slithery sound as Sherri held the baby’s head and one shoulder and then told Laura to push. The sound of relieved laughter, silence, and a baby’s cry all mingled together into a joyful noise that would pull Josie through times of difficulty in the future.

The baby was, indeed, a girl. She caught that from a quick glance and as Sherri handled the wet, slimy, squalling little creature and placed it directly on Laura’s naked breasts, Josie looked over to see Alex wipe away a single tear from the corner of his eye and then step silently out of the room.

“Oh my God, she’s perfect,” Mike said, bending over. The baby wrapped four little fingers around his extended index finger and his tears crested over, one dropping on Laura’s chest, the other on his shirt.

Dylan stared at the baby slack-jawed, eyes wide but not wet, and then reached over tentatively to stroke her head. The baby opened her mouth and what had been a little, mewling cry turned into quite a lusty sound, Sherri smiling and gently laying a warming blanket over the baby.

Laura stared at the creature on her in complete, shocked silence. Josie was with her—right with her, in fact, because she couldn’t think of a single thing that she wanted to say right now, or could say, that would match the majesty of the moment. And then Laura said the one thing that made the tears come for every single person in the room, even Sherri.

“I did it,” she said quietly. With one finger she stroked the baby’s cheek and the baby looked up, eyes wide and calm, mouth closing, puckering, the cries gone, her face alert, following her mother’s voice. “Welcome to the world,” Laura laughed, all her pain seemingly gone, her face lit up with such rapturous joy that Josie thought it was a manifestation of the divine, right here in these seconds.

Mike and Dylan leaned in, both kissing the top of Laura’s head simultaneously, and then Laura whispered, “Welcome to the world…baby Jillian.”

Chapter Five

Josie got ready to go back to the hospital to see Mike, Dylan, Laura, and baby Jillian as if it were prom night. Five different outfit changes, two different re-dos on her hair, and make-up for the first time in ages. Add in the fact that the second Dylan would take one look at her she’d get teased for the next six months about her appearance, and all this fuss proved one simple thing: she was a
complete
idiot.

Alex had just finished a twenty-four-hour shift and there was no way that she would run into him. What she had was one big crush on a doctor she’d almost given it up for in the on-call room while her best friend was writhing in pain in another room—pain that was the result of doing exactly what Josie and Alex had almost done.

Well, almost exactly. Josie—unlike Laura—would use a condom. Plus she was on the pill.

That was one certainty in Josie’s very uncertain life. No babies—not now.

And not ever.

She’d decided that a long time ago, even though her mind faltered along with her heart, especially yesterday when she’d held that tiny, mewling infant in her arms, cradled close, warm, and new, and innocent, and just wanting to be loved. Love she could give. It was the whole idea of stability and emotional care-taking and being a good role model that scared the ever-loving shit out of her.

Her fear that she could never rise to the occasion, could never be a good parent because she had not been parented well herself, was what made her freeze in place at the thought of being handed an infant and told, “Love this! Mother this! You’re it!” One hundred percent in charge of this entire human being.

No way.

Hell, she was one hundred percent in charge of herself and she couldn’t even manage to figure out what to wear to go see her best friend and her new baby. For that matter, most days she could barely make her socks match and remember to pay her bills on time. Being the sole caretaker of a new life was something so far out of her grasp that Laura was suddenly catapulted into a whole new category of person that made Josie feel smaller. It wasn’t that Laura did that—it was Josie who did it to herself.

When her friends started having babies—not her friends back home, who spat them out at nineteen and twenty by accident and were little more than babies raising babies—no, it was when her
best
friend had an accidental pregnancy but turned it into a loving family,
that
was when Josie’s world view was shaken to the core.

Most of her friends back home who’d become teen or near-teen mothers did fine. They weren’t abusive, they loved their kids, they just…didn’t have a spark in them to do better, to
be
better, to rise up above the trailer parks, the minimum-wage jobs, the social network that kept people in place rather than encouraging them to spread their wings and see what they could do with their lives.

Josie was one of a handful of people from her graduating class who had actually gotten out of her little town in Ohio, and not a single one of the women she’d known who had babies young had ever left. That was one reason she was so extraordinarily paranoid about birth control. She did not want to find herself one hundred percent in charge of another human being and limited by life choices. In her world, the fathers faded away and weren’t part of the equation, and so it was with great incongruity that she watched the saga of Jillian’s
two
dads unfold.

Why was Jillian’s birth triggering so many of her past issues at the same time that she was grappling with some very right-now issues, all wrapped up in the tall, dark, and handsome Dr. Alex Derjian? Every inhale, every exhale made her think of him, how his hands were on her, his lips exploring her in the elevator, how hot just being with him in the on-call room felt, how far she would have gone if baby Jillian’s emergence into the world hadn’t interrupted them.

Thanks, kid.
She wasn’t sure whether to think that in her usual sarcastic tone, or whether it was genuinely heartfelt. Giving herself to Alex so soon might have been an enormous mistake, and now she was relieved that they’d been interrupted by nature, the visceral reality of what happens when two (or three…) people have sex and biology marches in its unyielding path toward fulfilling its pre-programmed destiny. No birth control? Then you roll the dice and take your chances.

Time to go see Laura and her little chance.

Alex walked into the hospital feeling more uncomfortable than he’d felt the first day of his residency. He
never
set foot on hospital grounds unless it was his shift. He was not the type to hang out, trying to curry favor or get in extra face time so that it looked like he was more serious about his work. When he was on shift, he was one hundred percent there—in mind, body, and spirit—and when he wasn’t on shift he stayed the hell away, because otherwise this job, this vocation, could completely consume his soul.

Walking into the hospital wearing jeans, a polo shirt, and sunglasses made him feel like a civilian. He headed in and, on autopilot, found his body directing him to the changing area where he would put on scrubs and turn into a doctor, morphing from a human being to someone who was supposed to be both humble and god-like; know everything but be flexible when a patient had an idea that he had never heard of; be proficient at paperwork and yet drop everything the second a medical emergency came up; have outstanding social skills and yet know when to keep his mouth shut; be gloriously ecstatic for a family when the birth of a healthy little baby came to fruition after a long labor—and be respectfully mournful when it didn’t.

Doctors—and especially OBs—were expected to be omnipresent, omniscient in some ways, and to be everything for everyone. And for some cases, to stay as far away as possible so that nature could do its work.

Entering the elevator after backtracking a bit from the changing area, he pushed the button for the maternity ward and then realized that he was going to the postpartum wing, furiously pressing a different number as he shook his head. A bundle of nerves this morning, he found himself worried about what he was wearing, which was insanely stupid because he never worried about what he was wearing. He just put on clean clothes and went about his day.

He knew exactly why he was here on his day off and why he was so nervous. It was a little bundle of joy—but it wasn’t Laura’s baby. It was Josie and the taste of something far outside his expectations that he’d gotten yesterday with her—and not just the raunchy taste that he had thoroughly enjoyed, too—that made him want more. His life was so circumscribed—work, the occasional trip with his grandfather, and more work—that when a flash of something deeper, of a connection so intense that he overrode all professional instinct and nearly took her in the on-call room—when that came along and was handed to him in the form of fate, he needed to seize it.

Coming in on his day off, lingering in the postpartum wing looking like your average Joe, meant that maybe he’d run into her and maybe he’d be able to convince her to go for a walk, or grab a cup of coffee. Could they do something that seemed so banal, so inane, and have it be a tipping point, a turning point, in developing a stronger relationship with her if that was the path that this was meant to take?

That was the path that he
hoped
it would take.

As the elevator doors opened onto the postpartum wing, he walked up to the main desk, took his sunglasses off, and asked for Laura’s room. Just as the nurse started to tell him, “I’m so sorry, sir, are you a member of the family?” and he realized that he wasn’t even recognized up here without his scrubs on, Dylan walked past with a stuffed giraffe taller than either of them.

“Hey, doctor…” Dylan’s features changed to embarrassed confusion as he pointed and then splayed out his palm in a gesture of desperation, trying to retrieve Alex’s name. “Doctor…you were there last night…”

“Alex. Alex Derjian,” he said, extending his hand.

Dylan shook it with great power, which Alex managed to match, the two practically arm-wrestling in front of the desk on the postpartum wing to prove their firm grips were manly enough. Mike, the other father (
what a strange phrase, and yet it rolled through Alex’s mind as if it were normal
) was a few steps behind, holding a tasteful bouquet of Mylar balloons attached to a small bunch of flowers in a mug.