“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 f**k? 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 h*ps and sighing through occasional mumblings of “Nobody told me this would hurt so much” and “Why the f**k 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.