Page 58 of His Bittersweet Regret

I nodded and then started crying. “I really need to push,” I told the older nurse who looked down at me with a bit of sympathy in her eyes before they skated over to Marsh and then the closed door where Gabby had been shuffled away.

“Let us check you first. Please, don’t push. We need to make sure the baby is in the right position and everything looks good first.”

“I wonder what women did before there were hospitals,” I muttered unhappily.

“Be thankful that we check on things first, these days,” the nurse answered back with a bit of a chastising tone. I didn’t mind. She was at least doing her job and not demanding answers from the baby’s father. Speaking of…

“I don’t want him in here,” I told the nurse.

“Who, dear?”

“Him. I don’t want him to see me.”

She didn’t hesitate to turn around and tell Marsh that he needed to leave the room.

“No way.” He turned from her to me with a grief-stricken expression. “Don’t send me away, Opal. You were fine with me being here five minutes ago. Don’t do this because of her being here. That’s not fair. I’m not with her. We had one date, a little over two months ago.”

I shook my head and then all hell broke loose because the baby wasn’t planning on waiting a minute longer for me to push. I could feel him moving.

“Arg, too late,” I growled to the nurse. “Can’t check. Please, help!” Then, I pushed with all my might to get my baby free of my body.

Fifteen minutes later, I was holding my son in my arms for the first time. “Hello, Austin, my beautiful baby boy. I am going to love you with everything I have left in me,” I promised him.

“He’s perfect. That was amazing, Opal. You did so good.” Marsh gushed, and when I looked at him, there was a part of me that wanted to reiterate my original wish to have him banished from the room. The other part couldn’t take the moment from the man. He had just as much right as I did to welcome his son into the world.

I tried to hold our son up higher, an offer for him to take the baby. “You want to hold him?” I asked as my arms dropped. Luckily, it was a gentle drop, but Marsh stepped right in and took our son from me. He cradled him against his chest and grinned down at our boy so widely that I should have felt his joy. I didn’t. All I felt were bittersweet regrets.

“We need to get the baby down to the nursery for a few minutes so we can get him cleaned up.”

Panic, like I’d never known before, overwhelmed me. I got ready to stand up, but the doctor gently pushed me back down. “We’re not done here just yet.”

“I don’t know her,” I fussed at him. “She can’t just take my baby. He doesn’t even have one of those tags on his foot yet.”

“Calm down. That’s what they’re taking him to do.” He turned to Marsh. “You’re the baby’s father?” He asked, to which my ex-boyfriend nodded. “You can go with him and they’ll give you a matching bracelet to wear while he’s here in the hospital.”

Marsh looked to me, for permission or what, I didn’t know. “You good with that?” He finally asked.

“Don’t let him out of your sight.”

“I won’t.”

Marsh turned from me to the doctor then. “What are you doing? Is there another baby in there or something?”

The doctor – who was not Dr. Burns – chuckled. “No. Opal needs to deliver the placenta and once she gives me a quick push, we’ll have that over and done with so she can get cleaned up and rest a bit.”

Marsh nodded and turned to follow the nurse out of the room. She was pushing what looked like a portable glass bassinet in front of her and Marsh, true to his word, had a finger on the damn thing. Taking his eyes off the baby wasn’t even a question when he refused to relinquish hold of the bassinet as they strolled out of the room. I could trust him with that. I could trust him with my son. I just couldn’t trust him with my heart. Nurse Gabby had been an awful reminder of that, and just when I was weak enough to beg him to come back to me.

Over an hour later, when I finally woke up, it was because they were transferring me to the room I would be staying in for the next night or two. Shortly after they got me there, Marsh came strolling in with the rolling bassinet and the biggest grin on his face. He had one of those special security bracelets on his arm and it made me angry that he had one and I didn’t until I looked down and saw that someone had stuck one on me while I was sleeping.

“I hope you don’t mind, they asked if we had a name picked out yet, so I told them.”

“What exactly did you tell them?” I asked, afraid of what he might say.

“Austin Jason Kennedy.”

With a sigh, I nodded my head. In my mind, there had been a tossup over what last name my son should carry. Mine or his. It should have never been this way. It should have never been a question. We were supposed to be married before we ever brought a child into this world, and suddenly the grief for the loss of that future hit me like a ton of bricks and I couldn’t hold the tears in any more.

“Hey! Hey, hey, hey,” he called out gently, almost soothingly. “If you changed your mind, we can fix it.” Marsh sat beside me on the bed then and tried to wipe the never-ending tears away. Eventually, he realized it was a futile effort. “Opal?” My name was a question on his lips, and a desperate one at that.

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