Page 143 of Their Courtesan
“Hand me my phone, please,” Monica said to Seth. “I need to call my husband.”
She may have been in labor, but Seth figured they still had an hour to go before she was ready to deliver. That wasn’t enough time to drive her to a hospital. Nor was it enough time for the midwife to arrive before a baby had crowned its head into the world, but it was enough time to gather his bearings and send Matilda out to find a couple more helping hands. Within twenty minutes Chelsea and Grace, neither of whom had any work that night, arrived with another maid in tow. Monica grumbled about having an audience, but didn’t tell anyone to leave.
“Shut down the Château,” Judith told Chelsea. “No new clients except to honor appointments. If there’s a problem, come get me. Tell the bouncer that we had to close early tonight.” Chelsea looked more than happy to leave the scene of a birth. Seth later found out that she didn’t handle “gross” well.Things are about to get gross.Hopefully not too gross, but there was no such thing as a clean delivery.
Seth made Monica walk around her room with Matilda’s help. After calling her husband, she started texting, her face reclaiming its poised, no-fuss demeanor. Except for when she had a contraction, of course. Since Seth had to go in and out of the room to delegate responsibilities, he made Matilda track the time between contractions.
He didn’t share any concerns he had, such as the size of the baby and any complications that Monica’s doctor may have foreseen. Seth briefly took over walking duty to give Matilda a break. Really, it was a guise to get Monica to fess something up before it was too late. The midwife was on her way, but Seth wasn’t counting on her getting there in time. If shedidget there and Monica was still in labor… it probably wasn’t a good sign.
Monica said that, aside from a large baby, her doctor never said anything. She had planned on a homebirth anyway, just not…here.While it was good to know that there may not be any special equipment or monitoring necessary, Seth would not be relieved until this was all over.
“You’re going to need more towels than that,” he muttered to Grace. She was then sent to start stealing towels from the guest bathrooms. Preferably, Monica said, not the white ones.
When Matilda took over walking again, Judith grabbed her boyfriend and hauled him to the bathroom. Somewhere in the chaos she had changed into yoga pants and a black T-shirt.
“Can you do this?” she asked, hands grasping Seth’s arms. “Maybe it’s a sign that you’re here when this is happening.”
“Hon,” Seth said, letting slip a pet name he hadn’t intended to use on her yet, “I’m already doing it. I’ve seen hundreds of births in my life. I remember every single one. They’re all different, but a lot of them are the same, too. I do need you to help me, though. Canyoudo that?”
Judith assured him that she could.We’ll see.
Suffice to say, Seth had not expected to spend his night helping his girlfriend’s boss deliver her baby. Yet once things started rolling, they were impossible to stop. Seth had to call upon his years of being in the delivery room to do this for the first time in, well,years.Luckily, a lot of it was reflexive memory. Things he thought he had forgotten started coming back to him. The hardest part was not having a team of competent nurses at his beck and call. They were good for doing small tasks, monitoring, and keeping the patient as calm as possible. Instead, he had a ragtag team of working girls and cleaning staff running around and raising Monica’s blood pressure. He finally had to evict everyone but Judith and Matilda. Then replace Matilda with Grace, because for some reason the lady-in-waiting could not handle biological issues of this magnitude.She’s going to be a nanny? Good luck with that.
It was messy. It was painful. It was a miracle in the making and all Seth could do was pray that the baby faced the right way (it did) and nothing went terribly south (it didn’t, except for Monica hurling her phone across the room when husband Henry said he was still a half hour away.) Grace stayed at Monica’s side while Judith did whatever Seth told her to do. Which included seeing parts of her boss’s body she never wanted to see. To her credit, she didn’t pass out or throw up… although she did have to walk away a couple of times.
“One more push, Monica, I promise.” Seth, with his sleeves rolled up and still splattered with God-knew-what, had half a baby in his hands while Judith and Grace tried to keep the mother sitting up in the desired position. The bed was doused in sweat and the miracle of life. The size of the baby caused Monica to come dangerously close to some serious, surgery-inducing complications, but she somehow managed. Her being the type of perfectionist she was? No surprise. That baby was already following mother’s orders! “You can do it. Give me one big push and this baby will be out of there.”
A scream unlike evenhehad ever heard erupted from the petite woman. At least there was no cord around the baby’s throat, and nothing important had torn. Just abigred baby landing in Seth’s hands right before he thought he would collapse too.
The only thing that screamed louder than Monica was her baby the moment Seth tapped its foot and Judith grabbed the scissors to cut the cord.
***
Just because the baby was born didn’t mean things calmed down. Much to everyone’s chagrin, there was still stuff to do and bodily functions to keep track of. Matilda made herself useful again by taking care of dirty linens. Chelsea heralded the arrival of the midwife and, way too late to be of any real use, Mr. Warren.
By then, Monica was half passed out in bed, although thankfully not suffering from any major complications. Seth still made a call to the nearest hospital and suggested to Mr. Warren that his wife and baby go there as soon as possible for a check-up. The new father was too shocked to argue with him.
“It’s so cute it makes you want to gag,” Judith said, peering into the bedroom to see Mr. and Mrs. Warren in absolute awe of what they had made. The little girl was already big enough to be three months old, or so Seth swore.Then again, it’s been a while.“I’m afraid to gag, though. If I start, I may not stop.”
“Same.”
Judith looked askance at him. “Says the doctor.”
“I saw things then, and I sawthingstonight.”
“Don’t ever tell me a detail. I will barf.”
“I don’t want you doing that.”
“I don’t want to do that!”
They hung around long enough to be sure that mother and baby were fine. After a feeble thank you from an exhausted Monica and a semi-violent clap on the back from Henry, Seth and Judith retreated to the latter’s room, hoping for peace and quiet… and a long, hot shower.
“Don’t suppose I’m going to get something extra relaxing for all my efforts tonight,” Seth said, watching Judith strip down before hopping into the steam of her shower. “Because if not that, then I at least want the strongest drink you can make once we’re clean.”
“For the love of my ovaries, Seth,” Judith beckoned him to come inside with her, “I watched my boss give birth. The last thing I want to do now is the thing that makes babies!”
“You know…” He closed the shower door behind him. “There are other things we can do besides indulge in abstinence-only horror stories.”
He faced her decompressing beneath the showerhead. “You think you’re so cute…”
“Darlin’, I know I’m cute.” He met her lips beneath the rain of hot water, happy to get back to where they were before they were sorudelyinterrupted by a little heiress making her world debut.
