Page 88 of There Are No Words

I looked over as she rolled her eyes. “Of course not. I’ll be there, but I still think—”

“I’m talking about a doula. I think I want an unmedicated birth.”

I wasn’t following. Unmedicated? Wasn’t giving birth painful? And she didn’t want to be medicated? I’d watched enough TV to know that was the first thing a woman asked for—drugs. Figured Allegra would be opposed to them. They would help her. And we all knew how she felt about help.

“You need to give birth in a hospital. What if you need a C-section?”

“It’ll be fine, Brady.”

I strummed my fingers on the steering wheel, trying to make sense of this. How could she seriously think this was a good idea? “What did Maria do? Don’t you want to do the same thing she did?” See, that made sense, right? They were sisters, and the Morelli sisters were stuck together with something a lot stronger than glue. So bringing up Maria could only help my case. Knowing her, she’d given birth to Isabella in a hospital.

“Maria is a traditionalist, so she went to a hospital.”

“See,” I pointed out, a smile crossing my lips. Had I mentioned I was a genius? End of discussion, we were having our baby in a hospital, too.

“But that doesn’t change anything.”

Why did she make everything so hard? “Not following. I imagine she had a great birth, right? So don’t you want the same thing?”

“Hospitals don’t automatically make it great. I want to do this my way.”

Fine. I understood what Allegra wanted. Really, I did. But there were risks involved with that shit, and I didn’t want anything happening to either of my girls. They were both way too important to me.

I turned to look at her and placed a hand on her thigh, my other one still on the steering wheel. I gave her thigh a gentle squeeze, and she gazed over at me. “Can you do this for me, please? I would feel much better knowing you’re safe in a hospital.”

She licked her lips, softening her expression. “We’ll see.”

She’d think about it. That was all I needed. “Thank you.”

A few minutes later, Allegra broke the silence, saying, “You know, it’s too bad because if I did have a home birth, I would let you catch the baby like it was a football.”

Just another reason we needed to do this in a hospital.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Allegra

“You know onething I’m not going to miss once this baby arrives?” Brady asked, his elbows on his knees as he leaned forward in the waiting room at the doctor’s office.

Spending way too much time in a waiting room?

Referring to my doctor as Dr. Intrusive?

Or sitting up, anxiously, making everyone wonder what was going on here between us?

I stopped scrolling through the feed on my phone. “What’s that?” I finally asked.

“Seeing Dr. Intrusive.”There you go.

I groaned, leaning my head back on the wall. If I could’ve banged my head on it, I would have. “What is it with you and this doctor? We’ve been here enough times for you to realize he’s just doing his job. Your imagination is running wild.”

He wagged a finger in the air, looking all smug. “A man is a man is a man. I’d bet a pretty penny that he gets turned on by looking at women’s vaginas all day.”

I widened my eyes. Was he out of his ever-loving mind? “Ohmigod!” I gasped, shaking my head. “You’re outrageous.”

“Explain it to me, then. Who just wakes up one day deciding that they’re going to do this job? I mean, out of all the jobs? He could have been a surgeon or an anesthesiologist. But, no, he had to look at vaginas.”

I shushed him, looking around at the other patients waiting to be called in for their appointments. I sincerely hoped none of them were listening to him. “Are you hearing yourself?”

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