Page 100 of The Doctors Will See You Now

“Exactly. This baby has to come out one way or another.”

For the first time since I’d agree to this, I started to get scared. “But…there’s not an actual baby in there.”

“What are you saying?” she shouted in mock-anger. “Are you saying this baby isn’t mine?”

“Mel…”

“I went on Maury, I took a paternity test, and William, I am the father.”

“Mel…”

She hit the switch to turn on the machine, and I jumped as it buzzed to life. Oh God.

“Ready for your first contraction?”

“I’m not sure… Should I—” I started to ask, but she didn’t wait or answer. Instead, she turned the dial halfway to the max and hit the button to start.

“Oh, Jiminy Cricket!” I shouted. She laughed. “Wow. That…that doesn’t feel good.”

“You thought it would?”

“Well, no…but, good Christ.”

As the squeezing, cramping pressure settled in my stomach, she rubbed at my wrist. “Want me to turn it up?”

“Not really,” I answered honestly, and she laughed again.

“You’re not even in active labor yet.”

“What?” I shouted, and her laugh turned into a cackle. People lingered around us as my shouts turned pained when she racheted up the dial and started my next contraction.

“Oh my God, I think my balls are swelling. Oh Jesus Christ in a tourniquet. Ooh. Oh, fuuuuudgesticks.”

“Almost done,” Melody wheezed out through a chortle. “Just breathe.”

“How do women do this? I mean, I’ve always known. But I’ve never known. You just can’t know until you know.”

“Oh dear. And you haven’t even gotten to the bowling ball out of a tube part yet.”

Panic overwhelmed me as I looked to the countdown screen on my right and strongly considered crying. Another contraction was going to start in twenty seconds, and I wasn’t going to be ready. Hell, I wouldn’t be ready in twenty years, but time wouldn’t wait for me.

“Titties and whipped cream!” Thatch yelled from two beds down. “What the hell setting do you have that thing on, woman?”

“What?” Cassie asked as a bead of sweat rolled off of his forehead. “You’re a big guy. You make big babies. Just making sure you get the real experience.”

I closed my eyes tightly and let my head fall back on the bed. The sound of the two of them was the absolute last thing I’d want to listen to during labor.

Meanwhile, a crowd was starting to form around my bed, patients and employees alike, and I wasn’t sure I liked the feel of that either. “Is this what it’s really like?” I asked all of them. “Just a crowd of strangers watching intently as you go through some of the most horrendous pain of your life?”

Several of them nodded and laughed. “For about twelve hours,” one of them shouted.

“Wow. What a horrifying miracle.”

Melody’s laugh was contagious as she found humor in my torture. Honestly, with this woman, it didn’t really ever matter what she was laughing about, even if it was about me, as long as she was laughing.

“Think you can take more?” Melody asked. I wanted to say no, but a sudden vision of her a couple of years down the road, laboring with our kid, made me reconsider.

“Go ahead,” I offered. “Turn it all the way up. No reason to half-ass it. Plus,” I teased. “I want to hold my baby.”