He ignored me, sweeping me up into his arms and walking steadily toward the house.
“You forgot to close the door to the truck,” I said lightly, wrapping my arms around his neck and leaning my head against his face.
“I’ll get it later,” he murmured.
“Later… like tomorrow later… or later like later this night later?” I teased. “Because we live in the woods now. There’s no telling what’ll be in the truck come morning.”
Michael knew I was right.
He’d had this new house of ours built in the boonies with absolutely nothing around. Literally, the closest Wal-Mart was forty minutes away, if that tells you anything.
“Fuck,” he growled, turning on his heels and walking back to his truck.
“You could put me down,” I suggested lightly when a light sheen of sweat started to dot along his brow.
“I’m fine, Nik. Quit worrying,” he muttered just before slamming the truck door closed with his boot covered foot.
It slammed closed with a bone-shattering thud and he turned on his heel to head back toward the house.
“You really don’t look fine,” I said laughingly.
“Nikki.” He gave me ‘the look.’ “I’m fine. I can bench press three hundred and fifty pounds and squat twice that. Trust me, I’m okay.”
“You can squat seven hundred pounds?” I asked skeptically.
“Yes,” he answered.
“With your legs?” I countered.
He shot me a look, and I shut up.
There was no way he could squat seven hundred pounds. That was unheard of.
He was in a good mood, though, so I wouldn’t pester him about it… today.
“How are you going to get the door open?” I asked once he reached the front door.
A set of keys fell into my lap from where he’d tossed them from his hand across my back.
“It’s the pink key,” he said, a smile in his voice.
It was indeed pink. With purple flowers on it.
I assumed that one was mine, but whatever.
“Why didn’t we just go in through the garage?” I asked while I unlocked the door.
He grunted.
“Because I’m supposed to carry you over the threshold. It doesn’t work the same way if I carry you through the garage,” he muttered, sounding slightly breathless.
“Okay,” I said slowly, drawing the word out. “Whatever you say, my dear.”
He pinched my ass just as I swung the door open, causing me to jump and squeak, followed by him cursing.
“Hurry up and carry me over before you break your back,” I squealed.
“I’m not going to drop you!” he roared.
I had to smother a laugh as the moment he walked through the door, he unceremoniously dropped me to my feet and walked off toward the kitchen.
“Hey!” I said indignantly. “You were supposed to carry me up to our room and ravish me!”
Wasn’t that how it worked in movies?
My husband must not have gotten the memo.
“Where are you going?” I asked, following behind him.
“To get something to eat. That dinner we supposedly had was shit,” I heard him mutter from in front of me.
I smiled as I ran my hands over the walls.
They were beautifully done.
As were the floors and ceilings.
We’d gone more ‘home and country’ rather than modern.
We wanted our house to be warm and inviting, and our contractor accomplished that to a T.
When I breached the door to the kitchen, I found Michal standing at the fridge with his head stuck in it.
“We don’t have any food in there,” I muttered. “What do you think you’re going to find?”
He backed out of the fridge with turkey, cheese, mustard, pickles, lettuce, tomatoes, and mayo, causing my brows to shoot up to my hairline.
“Where’d that come from?” I asked in surprise.
He shrugged.
“If I had to guess, your parents or mine. Whatever, I don’t care. I’m just glad there’s food. I can’t believe you expected me to live on so little,” he muttered.
He was right.
The food we’d had catered had run out because I hadn’t prepared for the sheer amount of food that all of Michael’s friends would eat.
Turns out, muscles required about twice the protein of a normal full-grown adult.
Who knew?
“Make me one?” I asked, pouting my lip for added bonus.
He gave me a look that clearly said, ‘What do you take me for?’
So I raised my hands up in a placating gesture and walked around the counter.
“Love you, Mikey Mike,” I said before kissing his cheek and patting his ass.
He tossed me another look before kissing my upturned lips.
“Why do you insist on calling me that all of a sudden?” he asked with amusement.
I shrugged and circled the counter once again to leave the room.
“I could call you hubby now, I guess,” I said just as I was leaving the room.
“That’s not any better!” he yelled at my back.
I snickered as I made my way around the house, checking to see if everything I wanted was up to par.
It was.
The furniture had been delivered while we were getting married, and while the rest of us were celebrating at the reception, my sisters came over here and made the beds, and I assumed brought over a few staples for us.
God, I loved them.
Especially when I crossed the threshold of our room and saw the bed already made, ready for my tired body to crawl into it.
Which was what I did.
Falling asleep nearly instantaneously.
***
Michael
“Nikki,” I said, looking around the room for my wife. “Here’s your sandwich…” I trailed off as I spotted her curled up around a pillow.
She had half the comforter covering her, seeing as she was lying on it, causing me to smile.
Guess I’d be sleeping with the sheet tonight.
Not that I hadn’t gotten used to it.
I loved sleeping with Nikki, although she did move a lot.
I’d had to sleep a few times during the day when she was gone, since I’d had a late shift, and I’d slept like crap.
Placing the sandwich on the nightstand, I went to the bathroom, stripped out of my police dress blues, and brushed my teeth.
Turning the light off, I walked slowly to the bed, relishing in the way the new carpet felt between my toes before I flipped off the lamp, tugged the cord on the ceiling fan, and plunged the room into darkness.
I crawled into bed carefully, as not to wake Nikki, though I shouldn’t have bothered.
Nothing woke Nikki anymore short of a freight train barreling down on us.
She slept anywhere.
In the car.
In my office chair.
Halfway through dinner.
It was actually quite endearing.
As I settled around her, curling her into my body as best as I could, I closed my eyes and said my prayers. A nightly ritual that I would repeat for the rest of my life.
Thank you God, for my wife and unborn child.
Chapter 21
The only kids I want are Sourpatch.
-Nikki during the throes of labor
Nikki
“Alright, Jasmine. When you feel the need to push, I want you to bear down, bring your knees up to your chest, and push down from your bottom. Almost like you’re doing number…” She held up her hand to stop me.
Jasmine nodded miserably. “I don’t know why you let me say no drugs. I like drugs.”
I smothered my smile and started laying out sheets.
My big ‘ol belly was in the way, but there was nothing I could do about that.
I’d been a married wom
an for a little over four months, and I was nine months pregnant.
Our little girl would be here very soon, and it was times like this, with other women giving birth to their own little miracles, that I started to feel envy for them.
I felt like I’d been pregnant for forever!
“I need to poop!” Jasmine yelled in alarm a few moments later.
I smothered another smile and moved closer to her on my stool.
“That’s the urge to push. Bare down,” I instructed.
She narrowed her eyes at me. “But what if I…”
She gestured with her hands.
I waved a dismissive hand. “Shit happens.”
She burst out laughing, but then, just as suddenly, she started to scream as she curled around her belly and gave it all she had.
My own stomach cramped right along with hers.
“Okay, one more push and the head should be delivered,” I told Jasmine. “Tony, do you want to come catch the baby?”
Tony shook his head frantically.
Like all first time fathers, he was a nervous wreck, and anything dealing with childbirth was a very scary ordeal to him.
“Alright, well it’s up to you, Jasmine. Show me what you got…”
***
Two hours later
“Pick up, pick up, pick up,” I chanted into my phone as I called Michael once I was leaving Jasmine and her newest addition.
You got my voicemail, leave a message.
“Fuck!” I said, walking quickly to my car before it happened again.
‘It’ being those regular pains that signaled that I, myself, was about to have my own baby.
I’d been having them on and off all day long, but it’d only been since Jasmine started to push that they began to become regular and consistent.
At least my water hadn’t broken yet.
Although, that wasn’t a good indication of progress. There were some women who went all the way up to delivery before their water broke.
My next call was to Doctor Mead, my OB/GYN.
Or his office, anyway.
Although I did have his home number, I’d play the good little in labor mom and call the office like everyone else was instructed to do once they were in labor.
“Hello?” A bored woman’s voice came over the speakers in my car.
“This is Nikki Alvarez, I’m in labor,” I said a little breathlessly.
Another pain had consumed me, and I had to pull the car over to avoid wrecking.
“How do you know you’re in labor?” the woman asked with annoyance.
I clenched the steering wheel and said through clenched teeth. “Because I’m having regular contractions, and I go breathless each time one hits. Now, relay the message.”
“What did you say your name was again?” the woman asked snottily.
The pain finally loosened its grip on my uterus, and I started moving forward again.
I knew I’d get a good two minutes of reprieve, which might get me all the way to the ER before I had another.
“Nicole Alvarez, but my maiden name is Pena. Sometimes they have to pull it up underneath that,” I told her, pulling around an old woman going fifty in her maroon Lincoln Towncar.
“I found it, Dr. Mead isn’t on-call today, Dr. Shepherd is. I’ll transfer you to…”
I interrupted her.
“No, call Dr. Mead. There should be a note in my chart. My husband refuses to have anyone but Dr. Mead take care of me. Trust me, he won’t let Dr. Shepherd touch me if you call her,” I explained quickly, excited to see the red and blue sign that denoted the emergency entrance of the emergency room up ahead.
I turned into the lot and parked before the next pain hit.
“I’ll try, but that’s not protocol. He won’t even answer if it’s not an emergency…”
I hung up on her.
“Fuck it,” I panted, pulling up Dr. Mead in my contacts and pressing dial.
“This is Dr. Mead,” he answered three rings later.
“This is Nikki Pena Alvarez. I’ve gone into labor. I’m at the ER right now,” I told him quickly.
“I’ll be right there. Tell the doctors I’ll be there in twenty minutes or less,” he said quickly.
“10-4,” I agreed and hung up my own phone.
I grabbed my purse and bailed out of my car before I tried calling Michael again.
Luckily, this time, he answered. “Yeah?”
He was breathless.
“I’m in labor,” I panted, hoofing it all the way to the ER doors before another pain nearly took my feet out from under me.
“Where are you?” he asked sharply.
“The ER,” I told him, happy that my contraction had left me, but unhappy because another one was right on its heels, which meant that I was getting closer to delivery. “I’m less than a minute apart.”
Something which I proved moments later when another contraction slammed into me.
This time, I really did have to go to my knees because I was sure if I didn’t, I would fall on my face.
“Ma’am, are you alright?” a woman’s voice called from the doorway.
I looked up into Lennox’s familiar eyes.
“No, I’m pretty sure I’m having this baby, and my asshole isn’t here yet,” I told her.
Then a commotion from the ER’s entrance startled us both enough that we looked up only to see Michael running out with a bandage covering his eye.
“Michael!” I screamed, panicked now that my eyes caught sight of all the blood staining his shirt.
Michael dropped down to his knees beside me, gathering me into his strong arms as he said, “I’m okay.”
“Isn’t that something I should be saying to you?” I asked, raising my hand to look at the wound being covered by the bandage.
He grimaced and helped me stand by putting both arms underneath mine.
“Suspect knocked me over the head with a wrench,” he explained. “Now tell me about you.”
I panted as another pain hit me and said, “I’m having your baby.”
He laughed.
“Generally, that’s what labor usually indicates,” he teased as he helped me to a wheelchair that Lennox pushed out.
“You have the entire emergency room in an uproar, little lady,” Lennox crowed as she held the chair as I sat.
“Why?” I asked with worry.
What had I done to warrant such a reaction?
“Michael here has everyone scared as hell of him. Something he proved weeks ago when he told the charge nurse that, under no circumstance, was anyone but his parents, him, Dr. Mead or me to touch you when you go into labor without him being in the room. Not to mention he threatened them,” Lennox laughed. “So guess who your personal helper will be until Dr. Mead arrives!”
I shot my husband a look, but he shrugged as if he couldn’t care less what everyone thought of him.
“Please, ignore him. He won’t bother anybody.” I shook my head. “Plus, we’re heading up to Labor and Delivery anyway. So we’ll never even see anybody in the emergency room. How’d you get to leave the ER for this?”
“Thank God,” Lennox said as she walked with me to the elevators. “I got to help because your husband decided to have a talk with my boss. She agreed, so here I am!”
I just shook my head and closed my eyes as another pain washed over me.
“Another one?” Michael asked, looking down at his watch.
I nodded, too breathless to speak. “Yeah.”
“A minute and a half apart. Epidural or no epidural?” he asked.
I closed my eyes and tried to block out the pain… but I couldn’t.
Which answered the question he asked rather quickly.
We’d been fighting over the epidural or no epidural question for months now, and I’d told him that I’d have to wait and see.
He’d insisted on a birth plan, and I’d shook my head,
telling him that babies did what they wanted to. There was no rhyme or reason. No woman’s pregnancy was the same, and I couldn’t base a birth that hadn’t happened yet on a hunch.
Now, I was sure.
“Epidural,” I insisted through gritted teeth.
I felt like my uterus was trying to force its way out of my vagina.
God, it hurt.
And I was sure that Michael was only getting one kid, because this motherfuckin’ hurt.
“One kid, Michael. You better enjoy this one,” I informed him.
He smiled. “We’ll see.”
“No, we won’t. We really won’t. I’ll never be able to forget how this feels. It’s like razor blades tearing through my uterus, and a pair of needle-nose pliers trying to rip the spasming organ out through my cun—” Michael slapped his hand over my mouth as the elevator doors opened.
I’d been screaming, and apparently he didn’t want me to scream ‘cunt’ in general population.
Lennox had no problem laughing her ass off, consequently forgetting she was supposed to be pushing my wheelchair.
Michael, exasperated, took over the job and pushed me to the nurse’s station where they immediately gave us a room.
“What? Did you threaten them, too?” I asked with a narrow eyed look over my shoulder.
Michael smiled. “You’ll never know.”
I rolled my eyes.
The man was incorrigible, and he couldn’t help himself sometimes.
“Are you going to let any of the nurses take care of me?” I asked dryly. “You’re horrible.”
Michael helped me into the bed once he’d locked the wheelchair’s wheels, and I sighed in relief to have my feet up.
“Yeah, as a matter of fact, he is!” Hannah crowed as she came into the room.
I rolled my eyes. “You know, it’s really, really weird to have your sister-in-law’s hands up your cooch.”
Hannah smiled. “We’re all adults here. If you can handle it, I can handle it.”
I just shook my head. “I haven’t seen you on this floor in a while. How perfect that you’re on shift today,” I said dryly.
Hannah grinned. “In reality, I wasn’t supposed to be on this floor today. But I’m scheduled on this floor for the time being until you’re back from maternity leave.”
Code 11- KPD SWAT Box Set Page 141