Page 57 of His Bittersweet Regret

It was something new they were implementing after having one too many women come in through the emergency room, where all sorts of other concerns would arise.

“Have you done all the pre-check-in paperwork?” The nurse asked as she came over to help me into the wheelchair.

“Yes, I did it a couple weeks ago when Dr. Burns said I might go early.”

“Good. How far along are you?”

“Thirty-eight weeks,” I replied.

“And how far apart are your contractions?”

I couldn’t answer as another one whipped me from back to front and squeezed until I didn’t think I’d ever breathe again.

“In through your nose, out through your mouth,” Marsh coached. “She’s about three to four minutes between contractions now. Her water broke just before we left, and that was about twelve minutes ago. She was only about eight to ten minutes apart then. It seems like things are progressing really fast.”

If I could have thought clearly through the pain, I would have been impressed with the way Marsh not only kept his cool, but rattled off all the pertinent details as if he brought a new baby into the world every day.

Then I made myself sick with that thought, because one day, he’d do this again, only it would be at another woman’s side. The pain that realization caused my heart, made the contractions pale in comparison. How in the world would I deal with seeing Marsh in love with someone else? Dating was one thing. Knowing he had sex was another, but to see him in love with or marrying someone else, let alone having a baby with another woman… That might just kill me.

My son and I might have to move. That was a selfish thought, but one that felt necessary for my self-preservation. Then again, that wouldn’t be an option now that he for sure knew about the baby and the fact that it was his. When I thought he knew and didn’t care, it had been an option that I was willingly looking into. There was no way he’d let us go without a fight. Besides, I couldn’t take my son from his family. My parents were never going to win a ‘grandparents of the year’ prize. They’d probably see him once every two years, and that was if we traveled to them.

There was a large part of me, when faced with that uncertain future, that wanted to give in and take Marsh at his word that he got it all out of his system. That we could go back to being us, or maybe a better, wiser version of what we once were. We could be a family.

Just as the thought broke free, and felt right, I was pushed into the delivery room, where I would hopefully give birth to our son, very soon. Only, when our nurse turned around, I felt like throwing up.

“Hi,” she called out in a friendly voice. “I’m Gabby and I’ll be your labor and delivery nurse today.” She glanced over my shoulder, and I knew the moment the recognition appeared on her face that I hadn’t been wrong in thinking she was the same woman whose picture was on my phone. The one Cramer sent me of Marsh making out with another woman. The one that forced me to finally block his best friend because I couldn’t take the updates any longer.

“Marshal! What a surprise,” she stated before bringing her attention back to me, while still speaking to him. “Are you here supporting your sister?”

She couldn’t have known him that well, if she didn’t know his family dynamic better than that. The gleam in her eye told me she was just throwing out a hopeful suggestion. Marsh didn’t get a chance to speak up.

“You need to leave and have a different nurse come tend to me,” I told her in a quiet, even tone.

“Oh!” As the word came out of her mouth she left it hanging there with a surprised little pouty “O” on her lips too.

“Marshal?” She questioned.

“Nope,” I countered immediately. “I’m the one giving birth here, and very soon,” I yelped as another contraction hit me. Once it eased a bit, I glared at her for having not moved. “I will not do that with you in this room.”

“I don’t understand,” she feigned ignorance still, and that pissed me off even more.

“Gabby,” Marsh finally called out. “Please do as Opal asked.”

“Opal?” She cried out in shock. “As in the ex-girlfriend you couldn’t stop talking about that almost ruined our date?”

Marsh sighed, but it was an agitated sound.

I wheeled myself over to the bed and pushed the nurse’s call button repeatedly until a disembodied voice came over the little speaker system in the room.

“Please, come remove Nurse Gabby from my room and get someone in here who can catch my baby before he falls out of my vagina!”

There. That should get people moving.

A flurry of activity happened after that. Gabby was pushed out of the room, but no one had time to ask the all-important question of why. Instead, I screamed bloody murder as the doctor and two nurses helped me from the chair onto the bed and quickly assembled it into something akin to what Dr. Burns had in his office.

“Dr. Burns,” I requested through clenched teeth as the urge to bear down hit me hard. There was no way I could form a full sentence.

“He’s on the way, sweetie. We notified him the minute you gave us your information.”

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