I exhaled a sigh of relief. The situation did not sound nearly as bad as the scenarios my mind had conjured up. “Good job, son. Now, let’s get back to your mom.”
Twenty minutes later, I pulled up to the hospital and parked. When we reached the entrance, my heart was thumping so hard in my chest I could feel it. By the time we were getting off the elevator on the labor and delivery floor, my hands had a slight tremor to them. My breath froze in my chest as I walked down the hall to her door, and I didn’t breathe again until Seth opened her door. I walked through to see her lying there, beaming at me.
I headed straight to her side, covered her mouth with my own, and kissed the living daylights out of her. When she moaned into my mouth, I pulled away and rested my forehead against hers.
“Hey, baby. Looks like I got here in time, huh?” My hand roamed down to cover her bulging belly where I stroked circles. A little bump hit my palm, and I laughed. “Looks like our girl is still tryin’ to kick her way out of there.”
Belle laughed. “Something like that. I’m guessing you came straight here.”
Pulling back from her, I murmured, “Of course. I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
She scrunched her nose. “I love to hear that honey, but your uniform is covered in stuff that I don’t want to identify at the moment. Maybe you should go take a quick shower before somebody else gets a good look at you.
Looking down at my clothes, I cursed. In my race to get to her, I hadn’t thought about what I was wearing or what might be on it. Belle was right; there were some splatters on it from Russia. I refused to leave her side, though, so what the hell was I going to change into? I refused to wear one of those stupid hospital gowns with my ass hanging out of the back.
“You think they would give me a pair of scrubs to wear?” I asked hopefully.
Belle rolled her eyes and shook her head at me. “I put a change of clothes for you in my bag, just in case.” She pointed to the other closed door in my room. “That’s the bathroom, and there is a shower in it. Go use it, mister. I refuse to let you hold our little girl if you’re covered in questionable substances.”
I chuckled at her command while giving her a kiss. “Be right back, sweetheart.”
Grabbing the clothes Seth was holding out to me, I went into the bathroom and took a shower so fast I possibly set some world record. It sort of reminded me of my boot camp days. Then I bagged up my uniform in a trash bag I found in a compartment under the sink and set it on the floor while I got dressed. Emerging from the bathroom in worn jeans and a gray Army T-shirt, my boy handed me socks and tennis shoes then took my trash bag, shoving it in a side compartment on his mom’s bag.
Just as I was about to sit in the chair and put my socks and shoes on, the nurse came into the room. I watched surreptitiously as she checked some of the machines attached to Belle, jotted down notes on her clipboard, and then shuffled out of the door.
Looking up, I scanned the room. Both Seth and Jenkins were sitting in chairs on the opposite side from me, watching some crime drama on the television, while Belle was napping. The room was much larger than I had expected. Belle had told me this new hospital had what was called ‘birth room suites,’ but I had never imagined it would be anything like this.
Silently scooting my chair closer to her bed, I sat down and laced my fingers through hers. I might be a little nervous about Belle pushing the baby out and what Lucas had said on the plane, but I figured, since women had been doing this since the dawn of time, everything was going to be okay.
Right?
Chapter
4
Hell hath no fury like a woman induced into labor.
“You super sperm carrying mother fucker! Get your ass over here so I can rip your balls off!”
Belle was screaming every obscenity invented by man and few I was pretty sure she had come up with on her own. My beautiful, serene, glowing fiancée had been replaced by a woman who could make the toughest men stand across the room to protect their assets.
The nurse slowly side-stepped from the room’s doorway over to me, keeping her wary gaze on the woman who was screeching like a banshee on the bed. “Sir, should I call a priest in to perform an exorcism?”
I turned my head to consider the nervous nurse’s suggestion. Short of Belle turning her head three hundred sixty degrees and vomiting green shit, I had to admit she was sort of acting like a demonically possessed hellion.