by JD Hawkins
For some new parents, it’s incredibly scary. For others, it’s emotionally overwhelming. For a few it’s a massive shock. For most? It’s all of the above.
For me, at the end of my third overnight shift in a row, the magic of delivering a baby is simply the last obligation I have to meet before heading home for a hot shower and bed. I’m normally not so cynical about the miracle of life, but it’s been a particularly tough shift. One that’s included a young woman in her second trimester barely surviving a car crash, two men carrying on a knife fight in the ER (and half destroying the place), and a mother begging to prolong her pregnancy so she doesn’t give birth to a Gemini. If I let my red hair out of its ponytail it would likely be frizzed as thin and wiry as my nerves are—so it’s probably a good thing I’m too busy to look in a mirror and see bags as dark as the eyes they’re under.
But the truth is, this is what I live for.
Ever since I was a kid, it was my dream to become a doctor. My dolls and stuffed animals received weekly checkups, and I used to dream of pure-white doctor’s coats the way other girls would plan their wedding dresses. Maybe it was a pathological desire to help people and make a real difference in the world, maybe it was a natural attraction to that position of respect and authority—either way, I let my friends and family speculate why; all I knew is that I wanted to be a doctor, and nothing would stop me.
Mountains of schoolwork, a perfect GPA, a particularly grueling residency, and, finally, stellar recommendations are what led me to my job at Santa Teresa, the proving grounds for any ambitious doctor. I slowly let the rest of my life and hobbies (tennis and cooking) drift away, my single-minded focus entirely upon my dream—and I’ve never stopped. Yet at no point over the last seven years at the hospital have I felt like I “achieved” it. Maybe it got upgraded instead. Now my dream is to be the best damn doctor I can be.
I can easily waste an entire day off reading medical journals and checking reports to catch up or get ahead of my work. If I put on a movie, I usually drift off into thoughts about my most recent patients, until I’m suddenly surprised at the end credits. The only time I treat myself well is when I start thinking of myself as a patient, and maybe get a massage for the tension in my back (“muscles as tight as a rope” the massage therapist told me last time) or spend a day in bed. Even then, I like to read the kind of huge Victorian novels that most people would consider hard work anyway.
And yet, despite the sacrifices, the endless labor, the long hours, and my almost-nonexistent social life, I love what I do. The medical field is where I belong.
“Doctor Taylor!”
The voice calls to me while I’m making the twenty second rush from the X-ray department to the maternity ward—the closest thing to a break I’ve had in hours. Even then, I use the time to look over a blood test for one of my patients while sipping on the alien black goo we get from the vending machines that some poor people actually mistake for coffee.
I glance behind me and see the head nurse striding my way, box braids up in a high bun, her lavender scrubs providing the drab hallway with a splash of soothing color.
“Hey Jackie,” I reply chirpily, slowing my pace just enough so she can keep up beside me. “Can you hold this a sec, please?” I hand her my coffee and pull a pen from my pocket to mark the report in my hand, huffing a breath when the thing refuses to work.
“Are you heading to the maternity ward for the delivery?” she asks.
“Yep,” I say, tossing the dry pen into a trash can and then trying my backup.
Jackie clears her throat. “There’s a problem.”
“Only one?” I reply, gritting my teeth when the second pen also doesn’t work. “Sorry, do you have a functioning pen?”
She hands one over. “Of course.”
“Thanks.” I mark the report, return the pen, then take my coffee back. “So what’s the problem? Dilation?”
“Dilation is good. Not quite at ten centimeters yet.”
My stomach knots. “The baby?”
I toss my coffee away as we turn into the maternity ward.
“Baby’s doing great. Mama’s doing great too, it’s just…”
Jackie stops because we’re at the doors of the delivery room now. I shoulder-barge through them and immediately see what the problem is.
The mother, Yasmin Morales, is in position, her face a contorted mass of flushed skin and rolling sweat. To one side of her, nurse Candace is soothing her while checking the monitors. To the other side, the patient’s husband is frantically flicking through the pages of a large book which he’s propped up against her. It’s one of several books that he’s piled up on the bed and several of the surrounding tables. Beside him on the floor is a bag stuffed with stress balls and biting sticks and other contraptions that look more appropriate for a prop comedian than a father-to-be.
“Where is it… I had it bookmarked somewhere… I’m sure I did,” he says as he slaps the pages of the book and his wife lets out a long, growling yell. “Ah! Here it is! Don’t worry, honey. I found it. Listen: During the birthing process the diaphragm can have some pressure on it which may cause—”
“Richard!” Yasmin yells, struggling to find the concentration to speak in between her rapid panting. “If you don’t put that book away I’ll ram it up your ass and force you to give birth to it so you know how it feels! Nyaaagh!”
I move quickly over to the sink station to scrub up and pull on gloves and a mask while calling to the nurse. “How is she, Candace?”
“She’s doing fine, Doctor,” Candace says, smiling down at Yasmin.
“You hear that, honey?” Richard says. “You’re doing fine. Just push!”
“Don’t tell her to push, she’s not fully dilated yet,” Candace says tersely.
“Okay, how can I help her dilate?”
As I join them I say, “How about you help by moving these books away? And that bag before somebody trips on it.”
Richard does so, but within seconds he’s back at my side, breathing down my neck as I check Yasmin and the baby’s heartbeats.
“Doctor, I need to ask you something,” Richard says.
“What is it?” I say, concentrating on Yasmin.
“Well, I know the conventional wisdom is that contractions are supposed to come every five minutes, for at least sixty seconds each, but I’ve been timing her contractions since we first came here an hour ago and I’m not getting them down to five minutes—”
“I already told you, sir,” Candace says with increasing terseness. “Your wife’s water has broken. She is in labor. Forget about the contractions.”
“With all due respect,” Richard says to Candace, “I wanted the doctor’s opinion.”
I spare him a glance. “My opinion, Mr. Morales, is that Candace has delivered more babies than anyone I know—so you can trust her as much as anyone.”
I hope the remark puts the man in his place, but for the next half hour he continues asking more questions than an enthusiastic trainee doctor. Occasionally, he even regales me with memorized passages from one of the many books he’s read. Even holding Yasmin’s hand and comforting her becomes a complex, multi-stage process with him constantly bugging me to ask whether he’s “doing it right.”
Meanwhile, Yasmin offers some of the most creative swearing I’ve heard in a long time—most of it directed at Richard, though she makes an effort to include his parents, his books, and even a few of his friends in some of her tirades.
I concentrate on the birth, having left my emotions at the sink station. Despite insulting my colleague, my intelligence, testing our patience, and generally making a nuisance of himself, I understand. He’s just frightened. Scared of not being in control. Worried for the people he cares about most. I’d be hypocritical to chastise him for that.
“Push!” I instruct.
“Aaaah!”
“I can see it!” Richard crows.
“One more time, you can do it!” I coax. “One more big push!”
>
“Aaaaahh! God!”
“Push!”
And then the baby’s in my arms. A tiny, crying, messy little thing too fragile for the world. Candace is preoccupied with one of the machines so I cut the cord and clean the baby off before wrapping her in a blanket, then bring her back to her parents. Richard starts crying uncontrollably, and Yasmin melts as the tiny girl quiets in her arms. I watch them, feeling as warm and as transfixed as they are, before Candace touches my arm.
“Doctor Taylor, I’ve got to run.”
“Of course, I can handle it from here,” I say.
Candace grabs a few reports from a side table and then dashes outside. I turn back to the parents.
For the briefest of moments, I almost forget myself. I can’t help sympathizing with Yasmin, holding a new life—her new life—in her arms. In the back of my mind, in the base of my gut, I feel something nagging. And then I realize how much I need a hot meal (even if it does come from a microwave) and a hotter shower. A profound exhaustion fills my skin and I step toward the new parents.
“I’ll leave you now. The pediatrician will be in shortly. You’ve done beautifully.”
“Thank you so much,” Yasmin says, struggling to peel her moony eyes from her baby. “Thank you, Doctor Taylor.”
“Yes. Thank you…” Richard repeats before beginning to sob again.
I turn, peel my gloves off, trash them, and give one last smile to the happy trio before pushing through the doors. Then I walk straight into a brick wall.
Or at least, that’s what it feels like.
I almost fall backwards, my legs aching from twelve hours of standing, but the brick wall grabs my arm and stops me. It takes a second for my tired senses to focus, but when they do, they focus intensely.
“Whoa there,” the brick wall says. “Sorry. You okay?”
He releases my arm, but something about his touch leaves a burning imprint on me. I hear his voice before I look up, and I like what I hear. It’s low and thudding, like the rhythmic pound of a bass drum. When I finally look up at his face, it’s like I’m bumping into something all over again.
A Roman nose set between sculpted cheekbones and a jaw so angular it feels like a trick of the light, a face carved by some brutal genius. His eyes are a bright, transparent green that would make a jeweler salivate. Shaggy brown hair just a bit too long to be professional softens his appearance a little, though it only makes him look even more roguish.
“Yasmin Morales?” he asks, pointing at the door behind me.
I don’t answer right away, looking around as if to check if anyone else sees what I’m seeing—a physically perfect specimen of a man impersonating a doctor.
“Wait a minute,” I say, shaking my head so I can think properly. “Are you the new pediatrician?”
He smiles. A light turning on in his eyes, and dimples I have to consciously keep myself from reaching out to touch. “Doctor Pierce,” he says, holding out his hand. “Colin.”
“Doctor Taylor,” I reply, allowing his hand to engulf mine. “Mia.”
He chuckles and doesn’t peel his eyes from me. I push my hair behind my ear, embarrassed when I suddenly remember what a mess I must look like, and then angry with myself for even caring about it.
“I just delivered the baby,” I say. “She’s fine.”
“Congratulations.”
“I said I delivered it—I didn’t give birth to it,” I reply. Instinctive end-of-shift snappiness cutting through the strangeness of the moment.
Colin laughs easily at this, then keeps his eyes on me, as if he’s expecting more.
“Well,” I say, stepping aside to leave. “They’re all yours. Have at it.”
I’m three steps away from him when he calls from behind me.
“Doctor Taylor.” I turn to look at him over my shoulder. He says, “It’s good to meet you. I suppose we’ll be seeing a lot of each other from now on.”
This time I retain just enough of my senses to laugh back.
“I suppose we will.”
All the way to the locker room, then to my car, in my shower, through the Chinese takeout I eat while leaning over a book, I replay the interaction with the new doctor in my mind. Like a detective looking for clues at a crime scene, or a director trying to see it from all angles.
It’s just the way I am. Obsessive to a fault. Self-analytical to a ridiculous degree. If I wasn’t thinking of Doctor Pierce—Colin—I would be going over the way I handled the anxious pregnant teenager earlier in the day. Officially, I work way too long. Unofficially? I never stop working. Even my daydreams involve worrying about the things I could be doing better. It’s who I am, and though I could hire a therapist to try to tell me why, I’d probably just overanalyze the sessions and drive them crazy too.
With a sigh, I set my book down and pack up the leftovers, taking the containers to the kitchen to refrigerate before returning to the living room to grab my dirty dishes. I’m kind of a neat freak already, and the modest size of my place requires utmost tidiness.
My apartment may be small, but it works for me. All white galley kitchen, tiny bathroom still tiled wall-to-wall in 1950s-era turquoise, a bedroom barely big enough for my queen-size bed, and a cozy living room with a surprisingly good view of the Verdugo mountains in the distance. The living room is where I spend most of my time at home. It contains an industrial-style bookshelf crammed with thick medical journals and equally thick classic novels, a cloud-like custom sofa that I splurged on years ago but that everyone loves sinking into—my one true luxury item—and a TV so small I often wonder why I even have one at all. Around the room are a few photos of my parents and my brother Toby—who always says my apartment feels as clean as a hospital.
I can feel the tension in my shoulders as I wash the dishes, my feet aching from the hours I spent pounding up and down the halls of Santa Teresa. A hot bath would be good, maybe a drink…but what I really need is to blow off some steam with my best friend Maeve. Luckily, we meet on Thursdays, which means I’ll be seeing her tomorrow…except even tomorrow seems a little too far away now that I’ve got Colin on the brain.
So after I’m done wiping down the sink, I dry my hands and grab my phone. When Maeve finally answers, I hear the sound of a drunk crowd, clinking glasses, and pulsating music immediately. None of it surprises me.
“Darling!” Maeve says happily, and my shoulders relax just hearing her cheery voice. “Help me! I’m being assaulted by an Antonio Banderas lookalike.” I hear a man purr something at her and then she laughs gently. “Hold on, honey. I can’t hear a thing.”
Then the sound of voices nearing and moving away, eruptions of laughter and boisterous shouts. I hear Maeve’s name called a few times, and then it fades, replaced by the sound of her heels click-clacking on a hard floor.
“Am I interrupting?” I say. “It’s not urgent. I don’t want to bother you.”
“Oh shut up,” Maeve replies with affectionate dismissiveness. “I was just popping in on some terrible artist’s launch party—everybody’s bothering me. What’s up? You better not be canceling our girls’ night tomorrow.”
I take a second to answer, suddenly hesitant to spill my guts about the new doctor. Especially knowing that Maeve will drill me with questions I’m not quite ready to answer.
“Oh, I’m all right…long day. Just sitting here reading Doctor Zhivago… Eating takeout. Just wanted to check in.”
“Doctor Zhivago? God… Even the movie of that is too long for me.”
“Tell me about the party.”
“Eh. It’s dull but noisy—like too many of them these days. I’d ask you to come and make it more interesting but I know you’d just say no.”
“I do have an early shift tomorrow.”
She laughs. “Of course.” I hear a male voice on Maeve’s end and she shoos him away.
“Well. I should let you get back to your boring party,” I say.
“And I should let you get back to your boring book,” she jok
es. “See you tomorrow, honey.”
When I hang up, I do feel a little better, but I still can’t shake my unease over Colin. It’s funny—I can give a talk about gestational diabetes to a conference of over two hundred people and not break a sweat. I can keep my hands rock steady while carrying out a high-risk external cephalic version. But the memory of being so utterly, helplessly, physically attracted to someone has me jogging my knee with a strange tension. I meet all kinds of people at work, but it’s always in a professional capacity. This felt…different.
As I pick apart the encounter with him yet again, I realize that the real surprise wasn’t his hotness, but my reaction to it. It’s been a while, sure, but I’ve dated my share of hot guys. Maybe none with eyes quite as nice as his, or a chest that hard and broad, and perhaps few with that beguiling mixture of playful smiles covering up something a lot more dangerous and sexy, but… What was I saying?
Climbing into bed, I tell myself that it’s just a combination of hormones and exhaustion. I’d just helped a couple give birth. Just held a baby in my arms. Just witnessed two people experiencing the physical manifestation of their love for each other. That sort of thing can trigger all kinds of latent hormonal boosts. Dormant, powerful, R-brain emotions suddenly flaring up. Unconscious primal desires stirred up before they can settle.
And ordinarily those things settle under the professionalism of being a doctor, but it just so happened that it occurred at the end of a particularly tough shift, and that I immediately ran into him. That’s all it was. Plain and simple.
He’s probably not even as attractive as I’m remembering (who could be?). It was just my unstable state of mind and frazzled nerves that made me gawp at him like a schoolgirl.
That’s all it was, I tell myself.
Nothing to worry about.
3
Colin
I’ve got a dirty secret.
Something I don’t tell anyone—not even my best friend. Something only a few women have found out about so far. It’s the sort of thing that makes most women look at me funny when they first find out. The kind of thing that makes them wonder if they knew me as well as they thought. Eventually though, those women come around, and they usually end up loving it just as much as I do.