by Annie O'Neil
“I’ll tell you... I thought they were delicious. I’m Joseph, by the way, though Marilee here calls me Jesse. Her very own Jesse James,” he continued with a laugh, giving a quick squeeze to Beatrice’s arm, seemingly oblivious to his wife’s pain. He let go to shoot a pair of invisible revolvers, only just catching his wife as she stumbled and unleashed another despairing howl.
“I’ll get a wheelchair,” Beatrice said in a low voice to Jamie.
Jamie nodded, then stopped her with a hand on her elbow as she turned to go. “Make it a gurney.” He glanced around until he found the nurse who’d signed the woman in. “Name?”
“Marilee James.”
“All right, Marilee. We’re just going to get you—oops! Easy, there, I’ve got you. Over this way, love.”
Beatrice had magicked a gurney out of the ether and was already pushing it through the waiting room door.
“Now, if I can just get my colleague to...” He flicked his eyes from Bea to Marilee, which, true to form, Beatrice understood as “Come over here and help me get her up on the gurney because the husband’s not much use.”
After a handful of awkward maneuvers, the sturdy but fit-looking woman was up and on the gurney.
“Mrs. James—”
“Call me Marilee. I can’t stand the formal stuff... Ooo-eee... It hurts. Do you think it was the clams, Jesse?” She reached back and grabbed her husband’s hand as he tried to keep up with the moving gurney, squeezing it until it was white. “We should never have had seafood up here in the mountains. This is not the vacation of my dreams you promised!”
“I know, my little cherry pie. But we’ll get it right. I’m sure they have loads of medication they can give you here for the pain.” He shot anxious looks in Jamie’s direction as he pulled the gurney.
They did. But only if they knew what was going on.
“Have you been sick at all? Vomiting, diarrhea?” Jamie tipped his head toward an open exam area. “Let’s get her in there for an abdominal exam. Can you call up to X-ray? We might need a—”
Marilee’s scream drowned out his instructions to Beatrice, who stood, calm as she always was in a crisis. He could almost see the medical terminology whizzing past her eyes as her mind did its usual high-speed race through possible prognoses.
“She hasn’t been sick,” said Jessie. “Not at all. And we only had the clams about half an hour ago. Lovely, they were. All sorts of garlic and some kinda green thingy. A little chopped-up herb.”
“Appendicitis?”
Jamie threw the word softly to Beatrice, who nodded one of those could-be nods and then parried with a whispered “Spleen?”
“No, it wasn’t that. Something more like parsley, but Italian-style. Mountain grass?” Jesse looked to his wife, who answered him with an I-don’t-know glare.
“Are you having any trouble passing wind, Mrs.—Marilee?”
As if to prove she wasn’t, the woman rolled to the side and rather dramatically passed a healthy gust of wind.
Beatrice turned to Jamie and rather spectacularly managed a straight face as she said, “Perhaps passing wind isn’t the trouble after all. Can you tell us where the feeling is most acute, Marilee?”
She put a hand on the woman’s belly, doing her best to work around the fact Marilee seemed unable to remain stationary for more than a few seconds.
“My back!” Marilee plunged a hand behind her and then quickly grabbed one of Jamie’s hands and one of Beatrice’s and dragged them to the center of her belly, pulling her knees up to her stomach as she did so. “Oh, my sweet blazes. It’s wet. I feel wet! Am I bleeding?”
Jamie shot Beatrice a worried look. This was more than a case of gastroenteritis.
“Pseudocyesis?” Beatrice whispered, tucking her shoulders down and dropping a quick shrug.
False pregnancy was a far reach, but...
“Psuedo what? Don’t bother whispering. Little Bat Ears, my Jesse calls me.” Marilee tightened her grip on Jamie’s hand.
“That’s right, my little sugar pie.” Jesse beamed from the far end of the gurney, his eyes suddenly widening. “Oh, my blue-blooded ancestors! Marilee, your dress is all wet.”
“Marilee?” Jamie quickly untucked his hand from hers, seeing the situation for what it was in an instant. “Why didn’t you tell us you were pregnant?”
“Uh...” Jesse held up his hands—minus the invisible pistols this time—and started backing up. “Hang on there a minute, Doc. My Marilee may be a lot of things. But pregnant is most certainly not one of them.”
Marilee pushed herself up on her elbows and shot wild-eyed looks between each doctor, her cheeks pinkening as the rest of her face paled.
“Let’s get you lying back down here—all right, Marilee.” Jamie moved to the side of the gurney, gently pressing on the woman’s shoulders and only losing eye contact to indicate to Beatrice that she should do a vaginal exam.
Beatrice quickly shifted down to the foot of the gurney, snapping on a pair of gloves as she went, and deftly blocked Jesse’s view.
After a surreptitious glimpse, and the most infinitesimal of nods to Jamie to tell him that he’d made the right call, she turned to Mr. Jesse James and began to guide him to a chair adjacent to his wife’s gurney.
Jamie replaced Beatrice, barely containing his astonishment at what he saw. Thank goodness Beatrice had stayed behind. He’d need someone who could keep their head on their shoulders for this one.
“How’re your midwifery skills, Dr. Jesolo?”
“All right.” Beatrice threw a look over her shoulder as she gowned up.
Jamie grinned. “That’s good. Because Mrs. James is crowning.”
“What the heck are you people on about?” Marilee cut in. “I just ate some funny cheesy flowers, is all!”
“Marilee, I think you’d better lie back and ask your husband if you can hold his hand.” Jamie kept his voice as calm as possible. “It looks like the pair of you are about to become parents.”
He shot a look over to Beatrice, who was popping on a fresh pair of gloves and unfurling a disposable surgical gown.
* * *
“Doctor?” Bea held out the gown for him.
He swiftly stepped into the gown and for one brief moment their gazes caught and meshed as if they were back at Northern General. Madly in love. Meeting challenge after challenge with dexterity and skill.
And that was when she knew she had never—not for one second—stopped loving him.
“There is no chance at all there is a baby inside me,” Marilee was busy explaining. “We’ve been married over eighteen years. Exchanged rings the first day we were legal, then spent the next seventeen trying to have a baby. Isn’t that right, Jesse? Then last year we decided to give up. It was just going to be you and me. Why, I think the last time we—”
She stopped midsentence and reached out for her husband’s hand.
“Do you remember the last time before the last time? Not last night’s last time, but the other last time?”
“Sugar bean, I don’t know what you’re talking about—unless you mean the last time we—oh... Do you mean...the whipped cream night?”
“Mmm-hmm... Thanksgiving?” She teased the memory up a bit more, her voice dipping an octave, to a lower, more sultry tone, saying something about pumpkin pie and cinnamon-hot spices before lurching back up with a sharply pitched gasp.
As hard as she tried, Bea couldn’t contain the crazy feeling of sisterhood she felt with Marilee. Against all the odds, the American woman was going to have a child!
She’d be doing the same in a few months’ time. Granted, she’d be on her own—Jamie wouldn’t be there, asking if she’d eaten bad clams, and there would be the press to contend with eventually because she wouldn’t be able to hide away forever—but...a baby! The explo
sive joy of it warmed her chest and recharged her, as if she’d just woken up from a perfect night’s sleep.
“You’re going to be all right, Marilee. If you thought about this for seventeen years, you’ll have read a fair few books on what to expect.”
Wide-eyed, Marilee looked up, panting through a hit of pain and doing her best to nod.
“I’ve read ’em all. And nearly each one of them mentioned getting painkillers. That’s all I was hoping for when we came stumbling in here. Just a couple of pills to take the edge off and then we were going to get back for the rest of the fireworks—weren’t we, honey bun?”
“Sure were, sugar bee. Now, look what you’ve done! Thrown everything all off-kilter. We’re going to miss the grand finale.”
“I think you two are going to have one exciting grand finale of your own to the evening,” Jamie said. “You’re fully dilated, Marilee. This baby’s going to be here in the next few minutes.”
Bea glanced across at him, enjoying the warmth of his smile. She knew he loved babies every bit as much as she did. He hadn’t been the least bit shy about telling her he hoped to be a father to a fleet of little ones.
It wouldn’t be fair to ask...
“Dr. Coutts, are you sure you’re seeing everything straight? Are you positive it’s a baby?”
Bea had to stem a rush of emotion as Marilee’s voice caught and grew jagged as she well and truly began to take on board how enormous a turn her life was about to take.
“How could you not have known?” Jesse threw up his hands. “I thought you were meant to throw up or go off your favorite foods or something?”
“I most certainly did no such thing,” Marilee shot back indignantly, then went quiet. “Or did I...? I can’t remember. Maybe after those oysters on Valentine’s Day, but... Jesse James!” She threw the argument back at her husband. “How could you not have noticed? Aren’t men supposed to be fine-tuned to a woman’s breasts getting bigger or something?”
She shot Bea a glance to garner some support for her argument. The best Bea could come up with was a who-knows? face. This was her first surprise pregnancy. She’d certainly heard about them, but... Well, everything about her own pregnancy had been planned down to the microsecond.
Not so much a surprise as a secret... Even if her ex-fiancé had held out until the wedding, he probably would have run for the hills once the baby was born. Perhaps his infertility was nature’s way of stating the obvious. The man wasn’t meant to be a father. Just as well, he’d hit the road before they’d had to worry about divorce proceedings.
Bea smiled as Marilee grabbed her, then tightened her grip on her hand, pulling her in for a stage-whispered “At least he knows it’s his.”
“How could I not, my little sugar plum pie? That Thanksgiving dinner was the best...” He looked up to the sky, swiped at the beads of sweat accruing on his forehead. “That was a real doozy.”
“I sure do love you, Jesse.” Marilee’s eyes filled with tears.
“I love you, too, Marilee. There isn’t a single other woman on the planet I would have a child with just when I thought we’d have the whole rest of our lives to play.”
“You mean—” Marilee’s eyes widened. “I guess this does take the cliff-jumping trip to Mexico off the agenda for a while.”
“We’ll get through it, Marilee.” Jesse tipped his head down and dropped a kiss on his wife’s forehead. “We always do.”
As the scene unfolded Bea was finding it harder to keep a check on her emotions. Her family wasn’t one of those so-called traditional European families—lavishing each other with kisses and bear hugs and the smother-love Italian mothers in particular were renowned for. Jamie’s was. Open arms. Broad, unaffected smiles. Unfettered affection...
All the light she’d felt about her own pregnancy abruptly disappeared into a deep pool of fears.
She’d be a single mother.
Alone.
Her mother was the last person on earth she’d go to for advice. Her nanny would be a better source of wisdom than—
No!
She was going to do this.
But it’s scary.
She had to do this.
All on your own.
Bea took a surreptitious glance at the couple, now reaching for each other’s hands, trying to grasp the magnitude of what was happening to them, and felt a pure bolt of envy rocket through her.
She could have had this. Maybe not the surprise labor part—but she could have had this with Jamie. She hadn’t been sure, but something had told her Jamie had wanted to ask her to marry him. They’d walked past that beautiful old stone house, paused and daydreamed enough times. It would have needed so much work...
“Here you are, Jesse. Why don’t you keep your wife’s forehead cool with this cloth? And, Marilee? Perhaps we should get a pillow under your head, there.”
Bea huffed out a sigh, trying her best to disguise it as a reaction to the misstep she took as she turned away, no longer able to remain neutral as the couple began to shed tears of joy as the news sank in.
She’d misstepped, all right.
In so many ways.
She was—what was it now?—ten weeks along and not one person had noticed a single change in her. Not that there was anything dramatic this early on, but even so... Her breasts were a bit bigger than when she’d first found out. And though she hated to admit it, she was going to have to do some internet-shopping pretty quickly to get some bigger pants.
Bea glanced at Jamie, quietly, deftly at work, sliding a pair of stirrups down from the end of the multipurpose gurney. She knew it was crazy to look to him for reactions to this pregnancy that had clearly taken this pair by surprise, but she couldn’t help wondering what Jamie would think if he found out she was pregnant. Keeping it secret had seemed the best thing at the time. The wisest thing. If he were to know, would he—
No. No, he wouldn’t. And, no, you shouldn’t, Bea silently chastised herself, before realigning her focus to Marilee.
“How about slipping your feet in these, love?” Jamie eased her tennis shoes off, then carefully slipped each foot into a stirrup.
Marilee grinned and giggled at the instruction, and then quickly her features crumpled in agony as another contraction hit. It was a sign for Bea not to get hopeful. She wasn’t pregnant with Jamie’s baby. And that simple fact made a world of difference.
“You’ve got a lot to answer for, Jesse James,” Marilee hollered, in between biting down on her lip and doing her best to mimic Bea as she started to show her how to control her breath.
“Nice and steady, there, Marilee.” She glanced across at Jamie, who gave her a nod. “You ready to start pushing?”
Sweat was trickling from the poor woman’s brow. This was a lot of information to take in at once. A dream vacation turning into a—a dream baby? It was definitely the last souvenir the couple had anticipated bringing home from their European journey.
“Shall I get that cloth back in the cool water for you, Jesse?”
“You can get my wife some drugs, is what you can do,” Jesse asserted, as if he’d been recalling a TV medical drama and remembering it was his turn to demand an epidural.
Jamie, having spread a paper cloth over Marilee’s knees, was taking another look. “I’m afraid we’re a bit too far along for any painkillers.”
“We?” Marilee barked, trying once again to elbow herself up to a seated position. “We are talking about me, and I think it is high time you gave me some!”
* * *
“Breathe. Remember to breathe, Marilee. Just a couple more pushes and we’re there.”
Jamie ducked behind the blue paper towel, his hand already on the crowning head of the little one. Beatrice had wrapped her hands around Marilee’s and was breathing along with her, murmuring words of enc
ouragement.
Every bit of him longed to look across at those dark brown eyes of hers. Share a complicit smile. Revel in all that was yet to come for these soon-to-be-parents. But today was yet another vivid reminder that none of that would be coming for him. Falling in love again would be a big enough miracle, let alone having a family with someone who wasn’t Beatrice.
“It stings! Really, really stings!” Marilee managed through her deep breaths.
“That’s a normal sensation to feel. Especially without any painkillers.” Jamie put up a hand to stop Marilee’s knees from catching his head in a clamp. Given the madness of the situation, it probably would be fitting.
“Can’t you give her anything?” Jesse was throwing panicked looks between him and his wife, whose face was scrunching up as she bore down for another push. “Gas? Ether? Knock her out with something? I can’t stand to see my little sweet honey bear in so much pain!”
“Oh, no—we wouldn’t want her to go to sleep now...” Jamie’s jaw tensed as he cupped one hand beneath the baby’s emerging head.
“Why the hell not? She’s in agony!”
Jamie’s own features tightened as Marilee’s scream of primal pain reached epic proportions. Within seconds he was helping the rest of the little form wriggle free, uncoiling the tiniest bit of umbilical cord from its foot, tipping it back to prevent any blood or amniotic fluid from going into his lungs.
And, yes, Beatrice was there, as if he’d summoned her out loud. The same rhythm. The same ability to read his mind. No matter what chaos reigned between the pair of them on a personal level, he knew he could rely on her to be one hundred percent professional.
She gave the baby’s mouth and nose a quick suction with a bulb syringe, and then, with the umbilical cord still attached, he reached across and laid the now-crying child on his mother’s stomach.
“And miss the birth of your son...”
The Jameses gasped in disbelief, their eyes clouding with tears as they took in the sight of their red-haired son.
“Jesse Junior,” Jesse whispered, tickling the tip of his son’s teensy nose with his index finger.