Page 50 of The Princess & the Prospect

“How the fuck should I know that?”

“I don’t know. Call Lucy and ask her. Tell her I need her to meet us at the hospital quick-like.”

“They’re already on the way. At the rate we’re going, they’ll probably beat us there and we’ll be rolling in with a kid we delivered on the front stoop,” he rushed out in an exasperated tone. Then, before either of us could stop him, Deck reached down and picked Anna up. He carried her all the way to the truck. “Sorry, Anna Banana. I don’t plan on playing catcher for my niece or nephew today though. Let’s make the doctor work for his paycheck, yeah?”

I couldn’t argue with that and managed to get us to the hospital in under fifteen minutes. Anna still had three weeks until her due date, but we were still well within the range where a healthy delivery wasn’t out of the question.

“Has her water broken?” A nurse was asking as she was getting us checked in. We had already pre-registered after Anna had been admitted the first time when premature labor started.

“Either that or she pissed the bed like a toddler,” I told her.

“Joker!” Anna yelped. I knew she was pissed about it since she failed to use my given name and instead used my road name. I just grinned down at her.

“It’s okay, beautiful. I’ll get you some depends and baby wipes from the gift shop.”

“Son of a biscuit! I’m going to shave your genitals and glue it to your face. Ball hair eyebrows. I’m going to use Gorilla Glue so that crap really sticks too.”

The nurse chuckled at Anna’s creative threats. “Don’t worry, honey. I’ll help you out. Sister solidarity!” She was cheering my woman’s nutso behavior on like it was the norm. Who knew, maybe it was. I gave the nurse a weary look and took a step back, covering my sensitive areas as I did. I noticed Deck did the same. Neither of us were feeling too secure any longer.

“Sugar Honey Iced Tea!” My woman yelled out as she clutched her belly. “Oh my sweet lord,” she managed to get out after some heavy panting. “I think I feel something down there,” she told the nurse.

“I don’t think so. This is your first baby, I’m pretty sure…”

The loudest grunt I have ever heard a human make came from my wife then as we all looked on in horror. “Get my panties off, the baby’s gonna get stuck in them.”

“Never want to hear those words in that sequence ever again,” Deck chimed in as he turned to go to the waiting room, or another state, if he was smart.

I reached down and moved to take Anna’s panties off and that’s when I saw it. A head of brown hair was staring at me from between my woman’s thighs and I don’t mean her pussy hair that she hadn’t been able to reach to trim either. “Holy fuck! There’s a baby’s head down here!” I shouted the words and everything stopped even though we were in the middle of the hallway with my wife sitting in a wheelchair. I moved my hands in front of her to catch our daughter just in case she fell out. “Can babies just fall out? Jesus fuck!”

“Oh my word!” The nurse declared as she started barking orders and then there was a rush of bodies all around us and I was being nudged out of the way as a doctor took my place.

The flurry of activity pushed me even further from Anna, but when her eyes popped open after the last push they met mine immediately, like she knew exactly where I was at all times. She gave me a quick smile and then pushed again. Her hair was plastered to her forehead with sweat and, before I could really take in the fact that her face changed immediately from pain-laced effort to tranquility, I heard it. A squall that shattered my heart to pieces and rebuilt it all at the same time. That was when I started pushing the staff out of the way. Hell, with the clusterfuck of people converged on my wife, there was no way to know who actually worked here and who didn’t.

“Oh my goodness! Did my baby just deliver my first grandchild in the hallway?” Lucy and Double-D were running down the corridor to get to us as a woman snatched the baby from the doctor as he attempted to hand her over to Anna. I moved to block her exit immediately.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re taking my baby?”

“We need to measure her and clean her up,” she stated coolly.

“This is not a secure fucking hospital room we’re standing in and I don’t know you from Dick or Jane. That shit is not happening. You put the baby in wife’s arms right this fuckin’ minute and we’ll worry about everything else when we get to a room.”

“You can’t tell me what to do, we have protocol,” the woman stated as she tried to back away from me only to find Double-D standing at her back now keeping her from moving away.

“I will not tell you again,” I seethed through clenched teeth.

“Carmen!” The doctor snapped in her direction. “Do as they say, and don’t ever grab a baby that I am handing to its mother like that again or I will see that you no longer have a place here. Mr. Masters is not wrong.” He turned his attention from the nurse in question once she handed the baby over to Anna, refusing to put her in my arms after she was scolded in front of her coworkers.

“Get her out of here. If I see that bitch at all again while my wife and daughter are here, I will sue this fucking hospital and that will feel like a slap on the wrist compared to what I do personally.”

Everyone stopped briefly to glance at me and see how serious I was. Then the buzz of movement swept through the crowd once more. “Let’s get them moved into a room, quickly. Anna still needs to deliver the rest,” the doctor told them.

“The rest? There’s another one in there?” I heard Double-D ask.

I saw, out of the corner of my eye, as Lucy popped his head with her hand as she giggled at him. “He’s talking about the afterbirth dummy. You would know if you had stuck around after Anna was born.”

“You told me to follow the baby,” he argued back.

“You’re darn right I did.” She winked at me then. “Look, your son-in-law didn’t have to be told to do that.”

“What? Luce, that’s not funny.”

We were in the delivery suite and Anna was quickly transferred to a bed that had been broken down into one of the chairs that she sat in during her prenatal visits. The nurse helped her get her feet in the stirrups and the doctor went to town doing something down below that I quite frankly did not want to have nightmares about, so I didn’t look.

What did catch my attention was the fact that Anna had popped a boob out, not caring who was looking, and our little girl was rooting around on her tit like she had been training for it all her life. When my baby girl latched onto my woman and started suckling from her, my heart leaped into my throat, choking me with emotion. I didn’t even realize I was crying until Lucy leaned over and handed me a tissue. “That’s a beautiful sight, isn’t it?” She whispered to me.

“That is the best thing I have ever seen in my life,” I told her.

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