The Heart Doctor and the Baby Read online

  Their eyes met and he seemed hesitant, as if he’d mentally walked his way through exactly what his part would be, and was completely uncomfortable with her proposition.

  “But we work together,” he said. “How on earth am I supposed to not be involved?”

  “I admit it could get tricky, but if you just put yourself in a clinical frame of mind, think of it as a scientific experiment between friends and colleagues, it could work.”

  He didn’t look convinced.

  She patted his hand, the same hand she’d never touched before tonight. “I just know we can handle this.”

  He didn’t look nearly as sure as she professed to be, but she homed in to the subtle willingness to explore the possibilities with him, and seized her opportunity.

  An hour or two or three later, after they’d discussed everything from health history to parental obligations or, in his case, lack thereof, to attorney input and whether or not to do home insemination versus clinical, intravaginal or intracervical insemination, the bizarre nature of their conversation seemed almost normal, as if two medical colleagues were discussing lab results.

  “You feel like some dessert?” she asked.

  He laughed, but admitted he did.

  Amazingly, he ate every bite of the apple-and-berry torte she’d picked up at the bakery. Then, when it was time to leave, he hesitated. “I need time to think this over, René.”

  “Of course! I’m just grateful you haven’t gone bolting out my door, peeling tire rubber trying to get away.”

  “I wouldn’t run out on you.” He squeezed her shoulder.

  “I know that, Jon.” She ducked her head against his chest, something else she’d never done with him before tonight, then quickly lifted it.

  “I guess I’d better be going.” It was almost midnight.

  “When you make your decision, if it’s yes, all you have to do is give me the nod and I’ll have my attorney draw up a contract. If you do decide to help me with this, I won’t hold you responsible in any way, Jon. You have my word. I promise.”

  He took a breath and got a goofy look on his face. “In that case, we could save all kinds of trouble and do this the old-fashioned way,” he said with a devilish glint in his eyes.

  An absurd laugh escaped her lips, and she socked his arm. Jon thought more like most men than she’d imagined. “You’re such a joker.” Though in the five years she’d known him, joker was never a word she’d use to describe him.

  They’d had a conversation about creating a life without sex. He’d recited the statistics on success rates depending on his motility, and her fertility considering her age. They’d taken it to the scientific level, which made sense since they were both doctors, and he’d almost agreed to the plan. She wasn’t about to throw one major potentially mind-blowing wrench into the mix, no matter what he suggested in jest. The old-fashioned way? No way. No how.

  She bit her lip and stared at him. As their gazes fused, a new understanding bridged between them. Under the most unlikely circumstances, they’d taken their business relationship to a new level. Whether Jon decided to take her up on the deal or not, things between them would never be the same.

  Jon could run a hundred miles and still not work out the crazy mix of emotions sluicing through him. He’d woken up early—hell, he’d never officially fallen asleep by true sleep study standards—and after tossing and turning he’d gotten up before sunrise and hit the Santa Barbara foothills. What little REM time he did manage had been cluttered with vivid dreams about babies and doctor babes, outlandish propositions and some interesting positions, too. At one point, René had straddled him. He liked that part of his dream, yet it had made him sit bolt upright, disoriented. And poof, the sexy vision had vanished.

  A sudden steep hill forced him back into the moment, and he hit it with determination, refusing to slow his pace. Last night, in another transition from non-REM to early REM, he’d seen René as if looking through the wrong end of a telescope, motioning to him to follow her as she floated farther and farther away toward a baby. A tiny baby. In a test tube.

  Crazy dreams matched by crazy thoughts.

  His lungs burned with each stride, his leg muscles protested with aches and near cramps, but he refused to stop, refused to give in to the hill. That damn proposition. He had plans, for crying out loud! He was going to take a sabbatical and travel to the Far East. He’d study with Asian healers and cardiologists and learn their methods while imparting his knowledge. His daughters had reached the age where they’d be going out into the world, and he dreamed about doing the same. Finally!

  It still seemed unreal that two years ago his wife, out of the blue, had asked for a divorce after seventeen years of marriage. It had sent him reeling in disbelief; even now the thought released a thousand icy needles in his chest. What had he done wrong? How had she fallen out of love with him? If he couldn’t trust her to keep her word in marriage, what woman on this planet could he ever trust?

  He’d withdrawn and lived the life of a recluse since then, even going so far as to take up long-distance running, anything to avoid other people. His medical practice and plans for a sabbatical had kept him going when he didn’t think he could go on. That and his relationship with his daughters.

  René had asked him to consider this “deed” a special gift to her, and that he wouldn’t be involved beyond the initial donation. He could tell by the solidly sincere look in her eyes that she wanted a chance to have a baby, but would it be a passing whim?

  And more importantly, based on his experience with his ex-wife, could he trust that giving his sperm would be the extent of his involvement with René?

  That afternoon, the MidCoast Medical staff meeting dragged on. René stealthily tapped her foot under the table and listened to Jason recite the quarterly reports.

  Her mind wandered, dying to know if Jon had made his decision yet, but doing her best not to make eye contact with him. She didn’t want to pressure him.

  “We’ve balanced our budget, which means we’ll be able to buy that new lab equipment we’ve been wanting,” Jason said, using a laser pen to highlight the slide behind him. “And if things keep up this way, in a few more months we won’t have to send our patients to the local hospital for bronchoscopies. We can do them here.”

  “That would be fantastic,” Phil Hansen said. “I’ve been waiting a long time for that.”

  The clinic, housed in a renovated Victorian mansion in downtown Santa Barbara, was thriving. The four-doctor practice had taken a risk and prevailed against the odds. They’d built a clientele from nothing and reached out to the community, and their hard work had finally paid off.

  Jason gave his signature broad smile—the one he’d been wearing ever since he’d fallen in love with and married Claire, the nurse practitioner. “Who’d have thought that five years ago when we conceived the idea to join forces and build our own clinic, we’d come this far?” he said, glancing toward his partners, then at his pregnant wife.

  “Me,” Jon raised his hand. “We did our homework, studied the demographics, discovered the perfect location and need for the clinic. We had your money, Jason,” Jon added with a smirk, “and business expertise. We were bound to succeed.”

  He analyzed everything and, genius that he was, always did a fine job. René glanced fondly into his luminous brown eyes, which softened ever so slightly when their gazes met. She nodded and smiled. He smiled back—a masculine take on Mona Lisa. The kind of understated yet proud smile that made René react in her gut whether she wanted to or not.

  Was he sending a subtle message? Had he made his decision?

  Claire shifted in her chair, her brows knotted together and lips slightly pursed. René had seen that same look hundreds of times on the faces of her third trimester patients. Toward the end of the pregnancy, constantly searching for comfort, all they longed for was to get that baby out of there! René offered a smile of encouragement as she locked gazes with her newest friend in the medical group.r />
  Claire attempted to smile back, then tossed a glance toward the ceiling as if searching for moral support. Though considered a high-risk pregnancy since Claire also had lupus, René had seen her patient through nothing but smooth sailing from the first day she’d examined her.

  Claire was expecting her second child—Jason and Claire’s first together—and their newfound love was nothing short of a miracle. It gave René hope that anything was possible. Even for her.

  As René listened to the rest of Jason’s report, she stared at her lap, at the hands that had delivered countless babies…and the noticeably empty ring finger. Her thirty-sixth birthday was next month and this year, for the first time in her life, she’d become aware of distant keening. That ticking biological clock had never bothered her before, but now consumed her thoughts, drove her crazy with the desire to be a mother. Even to the point of making a fool of herself by asking Jon to be a sperm donor. Rather than cringe, she glanced longingly at Claire’s very pregnant state.

  Claire gasped.

  René went on alert. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine,” Claire said, releasing the word with a cleansing breath. “Been having Braxton Hicks all day.”

  René quirked a brow. “All day? Why didn’t you say something?”

  Claire shrugged. “Second-kid syndrome?”

  Since Claire wasn’t due for another few weeks, she’d keep her eye on her as the meeting continued.

  Phil shot up, forcing her to crane her neck toward the ceiling. His longish dark blond hair swept back from his face in a cavalier manner. Tanned and too handsome for his own good, he read his obligatory monthly OSHA report, and tortured them with rules running the gamut from what chemicals were acceptable to how to dispose of soiled dressings. She prayed the pulmonary faction of their group wouldn’t tell them it was time for another disaster drill. And if he did, how soon could she schedule a vacation?

  Claire let out another gasp, this time grabbing her back. René checked her watch. It had only been one minute since the last one.

  CHAPTER TWO

  JASON flew to his wife’s side, the one she was holding with both hands. “Sweetheart, is there anything I can do?”

  Claire diligently practiced her birthing breathing as René knelt in front of her. She put her palm on Claire’s rigid stomach. The baby had dropped from yesterday’s appointment and, from the feel of the rock-solid mound, was already engaged.

  “I have an idea,” René said. “Why don’t we adjourn this meeting, and I’ll take you to my office and examine you?”

  “No argument from me,” Claire said.

  The confirmed bachelor of the group, Phil, had noticeably paled beneath his Santa Barbara tan. “I guess I’ll take off, then,” he said, looking relieved.

  Jason gingerly assisted his wife to stand, and escorted her, like the deliciously doting soon-to-be father he was, to René’s examination room in the clinic.

  Jon stood perfectly still, obvious wheels turning in that wondrous mind of his. He glanced at René. “You need any help?”

  “Don’t know yet,” she said, as she rushed out of the kitchen-turned-conference room. “Why don’t you stick around just in case?”

  Five minutes later, René placed Claire’s feet in the stirrups on the table, gowned up and donned gloves, then started the examination. Holy smokes! Not only was she almost effaced and dilated, but her waters had broken.

  “We’re having a baby here,” René called over her shoulder, which had Jason rushing into the room.

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” Claire said, worry knitting her brows.

  “Do we have time to get her to the hospital?” Jason asked, sounding breathless.

  “Not at this stage.” René gave Jason an assertive glance, then she saw Claire’s questioning expression. “Don’t worry, Claire. I’m here. I’ll take care of you.”

  “Ask Mrs. Densmore if she can keep Gina tonight,” Claire said to Jason.

  He stood at Claire’s side, eyes dilated and wider than René had ever seen them. “Everything’s going to be fine,” he said, squeezing his wife’s fingers with one hand, fishing out his cell phone and speed-dialing their babysitter with the other.

  From outside the door, she heard Jon’s voice. “How can I help?”

  “Get a case of the absorbent towels, and warm some baby bath blankets, then start an IV for me,” she said.

  A familiar-sounding scream tore from Claire’s chest. “Jason, get our morphine supply and an antiemetic. It might help Claire take the edge off before she goes into transition.” René waited for the contraction to diminish, then positioned the fetoscope to get an initial heart rate. She delivered babies at the local hospital, not in their clinic, and electronic fetal monitoring wasn’t available here.

  “Oh, and call for standby ambulance transportation,” she added. After the birth, both mother and child would need to be admitted to the local hospital for observation. René bent her head and concentrated on timing the strong and steady beats. One hundred and thirty beats a minute. Good.

  René stared into Claire’s stressed-out green eyes, sending her calming thoughts. Only thirty seconds later another contraction mounted, and perspiration formed around Claire’s honey-colored hairline. René continued listening for abnormal deceleration of the baby’s heart rate with the contraction, and was relieved to find a normal variation. Only a ten-beat dip.

  Jason lurched back into the room with the IV supplies, and when his hands proved too shaky to stick his own wife, Jon stepped in and started the IV as Jason titrated a tiny amount of morphine into the line to help ease Claire’s pain in between the contractions. She didn’t want Claire too relaxed when it came time to push; the baby could come out floppy instead of vigorously crying.

  The labor went on for another hour and a half, when René felt the rigid beginnings of a massive contraction. Now fully effaced and dilated, Claire had moved into transition.

  “Push,” René said.

  Though Claire seemed exhausted, she gave her all. This time the head fully crowned. When the next contraction rode in on the tail end of the first, René continued her encouragement. “Use the contraction, Claire,” René said. “Push!”

  Jon hovered at René’s side. “I’ll get a basin for the afterbirth,” he said. “Are you going to need to do an episiotomy?”

  “Don’t think so, but get a small surgical kit for me just in case.” She intended to do her part to slow down the passage of the head to avoid any tissue tear.

  Jon dashed out of the room as if he were the expectant father, and when he returned, René put him to work tracking the baby’s heart rate through the fetoscope so she could concentrate on the birth. Not only was he fascinated with the listening device—typical of him—he was most likely figuring out a way to make a better one.

  All was well, but the contractions came so quickly and hard that Claire didn’t have time to relax in between. Wringing with sweat, she looked exhausted, ready to give up. Along came another contraction.

  “Bear down, Claire! Push! Push!” René urged, as she cupped the baby’s head in her hands and moved it downward as Claire pushed with everything she had. Her legs trembled and she let fly words René hadn’t heard since the last Lakers basketball game she’d attended.

  She slipped the umbilical cord free of the baby’s face, and assisted as first the head, then one shoulder and then the other, slipped out. No sooner had the mouth cleared the birth canal, than the baby cried.

  Obviously relieved after delivering the hardest part—the head—Claire wept.

  René glanced up long enough to see tears fill Jason’s eyes. “Oh, my God,” he said. The room went blurry for her, too, but she couldn’t dwell on the swell of emotion taking over; she had a baby to finish delivering.

  The baby slipped out, and René skillfully caught him, as she’d done so many times over her career, but this one felt more special than all the rest. It was her partner and friend’s baby. This infant sent her
dreaming of birthing her own baby, of daring to hope she’d get the chance.

  “It’s a beautiful boy,” she said, wiping the baby’s mouth and face with the warm and soft blanket that her new assistant, Jon, had handed her. He gave her another. After a quick check of the perfect little body, she wrapped the baby up as if the most precious thing in the world, and Jon produced a syringe bulb to suction the baby’s mouth and nose. He’d thought of everything. Had he thought of his answer yet?

  The baby continued to make a healthy wail, music to her mother-longing ears. René laid the newborn on Claire’s stomach, and pressed to feel for another contraction, then prepared for the afterbirth. Jon held the large stainless-steel basin in readiness.

  Jason hovered over Claire and the baby, as they laughed and cried together. René was too busy to hear everything they said, but knew love had been mentioned several times. And the name Jason James Rogers, Junior.

  She glanced at Jon and saw the familiar look of wonder that new life always evoked. He met her gaze and held it, adding a smile. Could he read her thoughts, her desires? His short-cropped salt-and-pepper-brown hair had always made his eyes look intense, but she’d never seen that fiery excitement there before. Did he understand how she felt? How every cell in her body cried out for the chance to be a mother?

  New life. Nothing compared with the wonder. Especially if the newborn belongs to you. Jon glanced back at the happy family, and she prayed they might perform a silent miracle on her behalf.

  Jason kissed Claire’s forehead, as a distant siren rent the air. René could practically palpate their bonding. There was something about a baby that changed everything, that turned lovers into a family, and sealed a bond outsiders could never fathom. She’d seen it countless times, but this time it plunged straight into her heart.

  Her chest clenched and ached for what she longed for, for the answer she depended on to provide the portal to her dreams. She couldn’t look at him again for fear she’d beg him to say yes.