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She’s got to be nervous about giving birth; of course she wants to be in the best hands. My plan is to bring it up after the appointment. If I do it before, she won’t be receptive. I have a long, thoughtful list of reasons in my head, and I am sure once I detail them Stassi will see my side.
That is, until the door opens and a very small woman with gray hair comes out.
“Anastasia,” she calls out. Stassi pops up from her seat and heads to the door. Almost immediately the gray-haired woman pulls Stassi into a warm, motherly hug. “It’s so wonderful to see you. Are you ready to see your baby, my darling?”
Does she greet every patient like that? No wonder Stassi likes her. She gives off a protective, grandmotherly vibe. But good bedside manner does not a good doctor make.
“Ready as I’ll ever be.” Stassi smiles for the first time all day and points to me. “This is Alec. The baby’s father.”
The woman is probably half my height and as wide as she is tall. She runs a critical eye over me and doesn’t offer me a hug, a hand, or anything. Just a look.
“Well, let’s get to it then,” Dr. Freeman says.
We follow her down a long, dark hall with paneled walls similar to the ones in my apartment. There are pictures on those walls, yellowing drawings of naked babies playing in tubs, walking in rainstorms with nothing but rubber boots, lying on the beach. Each one is creepier than the next. The place smells like pine cleaner mixed with urine.
Dr. Freeman settles her in a dark room with a cot and an ultrasound machine and kisses her cheek. “I’ll be right back, love. Sit tight.”
Dr. Freeman shoots me a glare as she leaves the room. I sit in the empty chair in the corner and look around. The linoleum on the floor is cracked, dirty. The ceiling has water stains all over it. Is this place even sanitary? If they can’t keep those things up to code, what about the medical devices? I can’t help my lips from curling in disgust. It makes me wonder just what else we’re not going to agree on.
“So … what are you thinking for baby names?” I break the silence before I have half a mind to lug her over my shoulder and carry her out of here.
“Florence for a girl. Oliver if it’s a boy,” she says without pause.
I squint at her. “You’re not serious.”
She blinks. “What do you mean? They’re adorable. And classic names are making a comeback.”
“You actually want a kid to go through life with the nickname Flo? And Oliver, as in Please, sir, can I have some more?”
“They’re family names,” she says, looking around for something to throw at me. When she finds nothing, she throws the next best thing. “And she won’t be Flo, she’ll be Flossie. Flossie or Ollie. Florence Marie Hutton, Oliver Michael Hutton.”
Hutton.
“What about Mansfield?”
She shrugs. “I like Hutton better.”
“Hutton-Mansfield?” I suggest.
She looks down at her lap. “Maybe.”
That’s probably the closest thing to an agreement I’m going to get from her. “What about living arrangements? You’re not planning on staying in that apartment with your roommate, right? A baby’s not going to be able to sleep with the kind of noise she makes.”
Stassi nods, looking at her fingernails. “I plan on looking for something else. There are places inland that are cheaper. I know that before they got married, Aidan and Cooper were renting a townhouse up in Lewiston that had two full bedrooms and was a fraction of the cost of my place. I could probably find a job up there.”
Lewiston would be a bit of a trek to the Maine Medical Center, but I could do it. I’d just have to take the turnpike.
“Okay. We could rent two of them, next to each other.”
She looks up at me. “What?”
“Yeah. I mean, if I stay down here and you’re all the way up there, I’ll never see the kid.” And you’re going to need someone to be with the baby while you work, right? The hospital offers a paternity leave program and we can switch off shifts.”
Before she can answer, the door opens and Dr. Freeman appears.
“All right, darling,” she says, throwing a clipboard with her chart down on the counter beside me. Something tells me that this woman doesn’t know that most of the medical world has digitized records for the past several decades. She helps Stassi lie back and scoots a wheeled chair toward the ultrasound machine. “Let’s see what we have here.”
I’m instantly suspicious. “Don’t you have a tech to do this?”
Dr. Freeman glares at me. “I do, but my Stassi is special. I delivered her, you know.”
Ah. That’s the context that was missing.
Separating this bonded pair is going to be difficult—if not impossible. I glance at her chart. “You’ve taken blood at the last exam. What are the NIPT results?”
