The contractions were coming closer together than he’d predicted, and he and Sherri exchanged a glance. She tapped her watch and shrugged. He nodded, put the chart back, and backed out of the room. If they needed an OB, Sherri would call him. And if the birth went on past 7 a.m., whichever CNM took over for Sherri would call whichever resident took over for him, short of an imminent birth at shift change.
Mentally settling in for a long night and a long labor, he began to plot in his mind how he could use these hours to the fullest, assuming no more big cases came in tonight. Could he get Josie to join him for coffee? Could he come in to offer to help? Could he make it plausible that he wanted to read a fetal monitor strip or assess surgical possibilities? All of that took up the rational part of his brain. Meanwhile, the irrational part drummed a steady beat as he looked at Josie and studied her more carefully. Her attention was focused solely on Laura’s back, giving him a moment to stand in the threshold and just take her in.
On the surface, his friends would think he was crazy for being attracted to her, because she was the kind of woman he normally just wouldn’t look twice at. And that was precisely why she intrigued him so. From the first day he’d seen her at the research trial, he’d been drawn to her. Now, even with this brief bit of interaction, he was drawn all the more, once again feeling a familiar tightening below the waist that made him think maybe he needed to start wearing a f**king cup to hide his intermittent arousal.
The fire in her eyes, the sarcastic retort she threw out to the brown-haired guy, the way she seemed to be able to touch Laura and whisper something in her ear that instantly made the laboring woman seem a little more at ease—it was all part of the allure of Josie. Beyond that, though, he just didn’t know. How could he pinpoint it when he’d exchanged more words with her in the past fifteen minutes than he had in his life prior?
If he could explain it, he would. But he couldn’t. Some primal attraction that went deeper than the surface, deeper than language, made him want her, made him want to possess her, to be the center of everything for her. And he knew it was crazy. Alex had built an entire career on the known, on facts, on medicine and science and that which could be measured and tested, and then applied to the human condition to provide relief, to provide remedies, to provide comfort.
He had decided to specialize in obstetrics after going to his first birth in medical school. All the mother’s kinetic energy had focused, even through the epidural, and Alex was transfixed. The head had emerged, and then one shoulder, and then the slide and slipperiness of the baby had poured out of the mother’s body, a new life in the deft hands of the doctor. That transition from the safety of the mother’s body into the light of the world was a bridge that Alex wanted to walk for the rest of his life. Obstetrics it was for him.
The surgical side had come easily; he had rock-steady hands, no matter what. It had become a joke in med school that you could feed him fourteen cups of coffee, a considerable amount of sugar, and probably throw in a Red Bull or two, and his hands would be as calm and neutral as Switzerland. Yet, handed that gift by some outside force, he largely rejected it, choosing to find as many medical methods as possible to preserve vaginal births for his patients. He didn’t care that he was largely ignored, or worse, belittled, for his old-fashioned views. Medicine, for Alex, wasn’t about reputation, or climbing a ladder, or any of the other petty things that his classmates considered important.
For him, medicine was his identity. Being a doctor was who he was, deep in his blood. Helping patients was the focus, and the rest—money, prestige, competition—didn’t appeal to him. Those issues weren’t part of his ethical calculus. So why, if he could so easily reject conventional ideas about his career, did he find it surprising that he would fall for a woman in such an unconventional way?
He turned around and walked back to the elevators, riding them down to the main desk where his other patients’ charts waited for him like baby birds begging to be fed. His handwriting looked like regurgitated worm as he scrawled his way through note after note after note of earlier patients. He found himself on autopilot, thinking solely about Josie, scheming to find a way to get back up to the labor and delivery wing without being too obvious.
Did it matter? He hadn’t come out and asked her on a date, but before that baby was born he was going to. At the rate his mind was consumed by her, he was going to end up f**king her before transition.
Josie tried to imagine what the four of them looked like, wandering down the halls of the maternity wing. Laura straddled an invisible bowling ball and stepped as if she were walking on burning coals in some sort of new age practice. Dylan looked like a deer caught in the headlights, eyes wide and frantic, his entire being trying to keep it together whenever Laura would look at him. Mike was Mike, calm and steady, but holding on to a bracelet filled with beads and mouthing words as they walked along. Every so often Josie could hear little bits and pieces of whatever prayer he was saying—Om, Tara, Pad me—and she guessed it was something Buddhist.
If Josie were about to have her daughter enter into the world she’d be praying too, but it wouldn’t be quite as calm and peaceful. It would be more like, Oh, dear God, make the f**king pain stop!
Laura was pretty close to that, but the walk had made a huge difference. She sipped on a cup of cranberry juice as they strolled at a pace about as slow as a bill making its way through Congress. On their second lap around the nurses’ desk, a slightly pudgy, brown-haired shift nurse with piggish eyes joked, “There goes Mario Andretti.” The guys had laughed and Laura faked a polite smile, but Josie’s heart sank. That was the last thing that any woman in this condition needed, the joke failing miserably for the one person who needed it to succeed.
Time and space had condensed into this hallway, and the next hallway, as they made a left turn, the one after that, past the bank of born babies that they could “ooh” and “ahh” at and that could hearten Laura, to give her more spirit. Any rift in that and Laura’s support network wouldn’t be enough. Ultimately, they all knew, this rested on Laura’s ability to dig deep and find a core of love and strength within herself that would allow her to ride this out, to bring a new life into this world. No chant, no prayer, from anyone else could accomplish that. And when all of this was over and Laura held her brand-new daughter in her arms, Laura alone would be the bridge this little soul had traversed into being.