An Honest Life

But she hadn’t imagined during their earlier conversation that Rick had been pleasant. Nice even. It couldn’t have stunned her more that he’d taken the time to discuss the child with her, and her cheeks warmed at the thought of his compliment.

As tempting as it had been to mention his comment about praying and to spring into a litany of questions, she’d resisted. She would have avoided anything to keep him grinning like that, with sunlight dancing over his eyes and dimples softening the hard lines of his face.

“The slow night doesn’t seem to be bothering you,” Dr. Walker said as they passed in the hall.

“What’s making you so happy?”

She raised an eyebrow at the young obstetrician she’d always enjoyed working with, but tempered her smile anyway. “Can’t a person enjoy her job without having to withstand the third degree?”

“Guess not.” The doctor chuckled as she headed down the hall in the opposite direction.

Farther down the birthing center hallway, Charity reached the nurse’s station and the room-status board. Set up in a grid, that dry-erase board was nearly blank except for a few last names listed with MBV—for a mother-baby vaginal delivery—and MBC—for mother-baby cesarean section. She seconded Dr. Walker’s prediction that it would be a light night.

Charity traced her hand along the wooden handrail that mirrored wood flooring. At the doorway to an empty LDRP room, she stood for several seconds before stepping inside. There she took in the dark wood, the rich colors of the wallpaper and the muted lighting that she usually didn’t have the luxury of time to observe. Instead of the medical equipment she usually focused on, hidden behind wood cabinetry, she examined the sleeper chair that waited in the room’s corner for another exhausted father.

The crib against the wall caught her attention. Inside its Plexiglas part referred to as a “bucket,” she imagined a tiny baby squirming under the warm lights. She could see a nurse leaning over the crib, starting to “eye and thigh” him, inserting erythromycin in his eyes to prevent infection and injecting vitamin K in his thigh for blood clotting. Though those two jobs would have been automatic for her, she was strangely certain she wasn’t the RN on duty.

Stranger still, she suspected she was the other woman in her daydream—the one resting on the bed with a man by her side. It was so close, this dream of hers, that she could almost grasp it. Could cradle the sweet baby against her heart. Could lace her fingers with those of the man who touched her hair so gently.

“Hey, Charity, quit daydreaming,” Jenny Lancaster-Porter called from the doorway, grinning at her fellow labor and delivery nurse. “The clerk just put a walk-in in Room 224, and another mom’s taking the chair ride from ER.”

Charity jumped guiltily at being caught imagining things that were becoming closer and closer to impossible. But at that moment they hadn’t seemed unattainable, not when for the first time, she’d imagined herself on the other side of the bed. The one with a family, with joy, with hope for the future.

Jenny snapped her fingers in front of Charity’s face. “Girlfriend, are you coming? These babies can’t wait.”

On command, Charity’s thoughts clicked into focus the way they always did, and she followed at Jenny’s heels. “I’ll take the walk-in. You take the chair.”

Jenny winked. “Already wrote that on the board.”

Both chuckled at Charity’s attempt to hand the precipitous case to her friend and Jenny’s hearty receipt of the gift. Jenny liked her deliveries fast and furious, and Charity didn’t mind the occasional slow and steady, so they had developed a great working rhythm from several years of working shifts together.

“You’ll be on dinner break, your patient and baby settled in for the night, and I’ll still be walking the halls with mine,” Charity said as she turned into Room 224.

Just the opposite proved true, with Charity’s patient crowning within half an hour, and Jenny’s walking the halls for two hours and eventually being sent home after a bout of false labor. Charity had barely had time to get a fetal heart rate and start an IV before the delivery, let alone to record advance directives in case something went wrong or to inquire about nursing or bottle-feeding.

The rest of the shift was equally unpredictable. It was as if every full-term mother who had avoided ruining her Labor Day barbecue had gone into labor just before dawn broke. Staying busy had prevented her from analyzing that earlier daydream. Or how familiar the man in her dream had seemed.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.