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“What is it?” I asked him.
“I can’t tell you how disturbing it is to see my sister’s fingers up your…you know,” Michael informed me.
I smiled at him.
“You’re better at it, if it makes you feel any better.”
He made a gagging sound. “Disgusting.”
I snickered as Hannah tossed her used gloves in the trash and washed her hands. “I’ll go get the on call anesthesiologist. We’ll get your shit knocked right out.”
“Should she be talking like that?” I asked, eyes closed as I tried to breathe through my next contraction. “Motherfucker, this hurts like a bitch!”
The room stayed silent for long moments while my question and subsequent comment hung therein the air around us.
“What?” I asked, opening my eyes to squint at Michael.
He just shook his head. “Nothing.”
Lennox busied herself hooking up the monitor, starting an IV, and drawing blood while Michael and I watched the screen to monitor my progress.
“That was a big one,” Michael said a few minutes later.
I grunted.
I knew it was a ‘big one.’
Simply because I’d felt the motherfucker.
But I tried to be nice about it.
“Uh-huh,” I agreed tiredly.
Then Michael and Lennox started talking about medical jargon that was too advanced for my exhausted brain to process, so I ignored them and tried to sleep during my contractions.
Something I realized wasn’t working very well.
Especially since two of my favorite people in the world, under normal circumstances, wouldn’t shut the fuck up.
“Go away,” I muttered.
The talking stopped, and I ordered my husband to do my bidding.
“Go call your family and mine. Let them know what’s going on. And stop talking over my body. It’s annoying,” I ordered them.
Michael chuckled as he bent down and kissed my forehead. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Okay, Nikki. This is Amy Jones, the nurse anesthetist. She’s going to do your epidural for you. This is Eddie Gonzales, he’s the anesthesiologist that she works under. They’re here to answer any questions you might have. Okay?”
Michael froze on his way out the door, but then I started having another contraction.
“Get out so she can do her job,” I ordered my ornery husband.
Amy’s eyes followed Michael’s progress, brows raising to see what he’d do.
Michael chose correctly, though.
He offered his hand to the two of them, said, “I’m going to call my family,” and left the room.
“Eddie and Amy,” Hannah said. “Is there anything you need from me? I have another patient that’s in the final stages of pushing.”
Amy shook her head when Eddie looked at her. “No, that’s all, thank you.”
I knew Eddie, and the moment Hannah left the room he walked to my bedside.
“You ready for this rodeo to get started?” He asked teasingly.
Eddie loved to tease me.
We worked well together, trading barbs back and forth like two children in a play yard battle.
He loved the Yankees, and I was a Texas Rangers fan all the way. Which tended to make us butt heads from time to time.
“Well, I was all ready to have you teasing me while giving me the epidural,” I grunted, toes curling when the next pain hit me. “But I guess since you’re too good for me I’ll settle for Ms. Amy.”
Amy didn’t smile, but Eddie did.
“I have a C-section with triplets in about fifteen minutes. I’m sorry, but she’s cooler than you are,” he admitted openly.
I laughed. “Yeah, that’s what they all say.”
He winked. “I’ll check back in with you later.”
I nodded and watched him leave the room.
As my face turned to Amy, I was immediately struck with just how different she looked now that Eddie was out of the room.
Like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde different.
“You okay?” I asked her worriedly.
She walked to the door and closed it slowly.
“Don’t you need a nurse?” I asked. “And your stuff?”
She didn’t answer as she drew the curtain and turned back to me, walking towards me with a new purpose that set my instincts on edge.
“Your man fucked up,” the woman whispered to me. “You’d think with how cautious he was being with the doctors that he’d pay a little more attention to who was about to inject all sorts of fun drugs into your spinal column.”
I looked at her nametag and realized with a sinking feeling that she had the same last name as Dr. Jones.
Her name was Amy Jones.
Wife or daughter?
I couldn’t tell.
And why had I never seen her before?
I worked on this floor, and it was kind of a rule that I saw everyone on it seeing as I was a midwife. It was good business to know my colleagues.
“Don’t you mean my epidural space?” I asked worriedly.
My hands were sweaty, and my thighs quivered as I prepared to launch myself from the bed.
Only before I could, Amy Jones produced a gun.
“Don’t move,” she hissed. “I don’t really need your cooperation. I think I’ll just do it the quick way.”
My body froze.
“There’s oxygen in this room, not to mention my husband is right outside,” I tried to reason with her. “Surely you know that you’ll never get out of this unscathed.”
She shrugged.
“I don’t really care. At this point, I just know you need to be gone, as well as him, before I go. You’ll be my final couple. How does it feel?” She said soothingly, bringing the IV tubing that was going into my right hand up to her stomach.
I could see the syringe in her hand, and knew she was about to give me something.
Which was why I yanked my hand to the side hard and quick, ripping tape, hair, and skin as I forcefully removed the catheter from my vein.
She glared at me disapprovingly and shook the gun at me for emphasis.
“I told you not to fucking move!” She whispered forcefully.
I moved.
I couldn’t help it.
It wasn’t in me to lay back and take what was coming for me.
“Hey, I just got word from Dr. Mead. He’ll be here in just a few minutes. He got held up by a train on 18…” Lennox’s voice trailed off as she got a load of the situation she’d walked in on.
She looked to me, then back to Amy before raising her hands up near her head. “Don’t shoot her.”
