Page 125 of The Doctors Will See You Now

She flipped me off as I finished getting her set up and hooked to the monitor. Fifteen seconds later, a contraction read out on the screen.

“Well, well, well, what do we have here?” I goaded as I palpated her abdomen with both hands. “And an extremely strong contraction, at that. I mean…I’m not a labor expert…or maybe I am?” I questioned, and she huffed out her irritation in one long exhale.

“Fine!” she finally admitted and threw both hands into the air. “So, I’m in labor, but we both know that there’s still plenty of time before we need to go to the hospital.”

I shook my head, unsatisfied with the wait-and-see approach when I’d spent so many years in school to know better. “Come on,” I said as I picked her up and carried her down the hall. “We’re going to check your cervix.”

“No! Will!”

“Sorry, Mel. Just lie back and pretend we’re playing out your favorite doctor fantasy.”

“I don’t have a doctor fantasy!”

“You should,” I advised. “I hear they’re really dreamy.”

She growled at me as I set her down on the bed and pulled her shorts and panties down her legs. “Relax, baby. Just let me check, okay?” I soothed as I ran my hand up the soft skin of her thigh. “I love both of you. Just let me make sure you’re both going to be okay.”

Properly mollified, she relented. “Okay. Fine.”

I helped her scoot up and onto the bed as she clutched her stomach and grimaced with another contraction. Once she was positioned comfortably, I sat beside her hip and she pulled up her legs.

I rubbed her clit in the hopes of making a little natural lubrication, and she moaned, startled.

I smiled. “Maybe there are some benefits to letting me be your doctor?”

She flipped me off again and lay back, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t noticeably wet.

Using the moisture to ease my entrance, I pushed my fingers inside and moved straight to the cervix. As the three fingers I’d inserted slid easily inside, my eyes got a little glassy with anticipation.

“You’re already dilated close to four centimeters, Mel.”

“What?” she all but yelled.

“Time to go to the hospital, baby,” I directed, pulling my hand free and wiping her clean with a washcloth.

“Ah, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she chanted.

But I’d never felt calmer in my life. Everything that mattered to me in this world was going to be in my arms within the day.

And they’d be getting there safely—I’d make sure of that.

“More ice chips, Mel?” Georgia asked, and I shook my head.

I didn’t need ice chips. I needed my epidural to actually start working.

Jesus, Mary, and the Beatles, this pressure is fucking terrible.

Okay, maybe it was working, but holy hell, it wasn’t taking this insane pressure away. I might not have been feeling the contractions in my stomach and lower back, but I sure as hell was feeling them in my vagina. It was like a bowling ball was trying to slowly roll its way out of my body.

Four hours after we’d arrived at the hospital and I’d gotten an epidural and dilated to ten centimeters at a pretty quick pace. But the baby was still a little high up, and since everything looked good on the fetal monitor, I’d chosen to try to let the baby descend farther before I started pushing. The fact that my husband was intent on delivering our baby himself might have also influenced my decision to wait a while before pushing.

Normally, I was madly in love with Will. But today, I was kind of in the middle of having his baby, and he seemed intent on driving me crazy with his resolve to deliver our baby himself.

I mean, he’s crazy, right?

I understand that my husband is an OB/GYN.

But what I don’t understand is why he’d think he should be the one whose face is all up in my crotch while I push out a baby from my lady parts.