The Second Time Around Read online

  Blair Memorial Hospital had been part of the community for as long as Laurel could remember. She’d had her tonsils out here as a little girl and all three of her sons had been born here. As she parked the car, she noticed the hospital facilities were twice as big as they’d once been. Several floors had been added to the rest of the extended building. Parking had gone from scattered lots to a four-story parking structure. It hardly looked like the same place she remembered.

  It didn’t even smell like a hospital anymore, she thought as she entered the outpatient admission area. And even the chapel had been moved. It used to be in the rear of the hospital, but was now immediately visible upon entrance. She saw the light shining through the stained-glass windows on her right and for a moment, she thought about stopping to say a few words in supplication that all would go well.

  But she wanted to get this over with, so she went directly to the front desk.

  The hospital walls were a soothing pastel-blue and soft gray rugs covered the old black-and-white checkered linoleum. Paintings of pastoral scenes decorated the walls.

  Everything to put the prospective patient at ease, she thought.

  It wasn’t working.

  Laurel still felt nervous. Nervous as she gave her information to the blue-smocked, smiling woman who pulled up her preregistration file on the computer. Nervous as she put her wrist out to be tagged.

  “Is that really necessary?” she asked, looking at the plastic bracelet that had suddenly been hermetically sealed onto itself—and by proxy, to her. “I’m only going to be here for a couple of hours.” She reiterated the words that Dr. Kilpatrick had said to her just the other day. Laurel held onto them like a promise.

  “It’s just standard procedure,” the woman assured her. The receptionist gathered together several in-hospital sheets of paper that further authorized the test and, stapling them, handed them to her. She flashed a brilliant smile. “Don’t worry, we’re not planning on losing you in the hallway.”

  Laurel nodded. “Right.”

  Tearing yet another sheet from a pad, the woman flipped it around for her to see. It was a map of the hospital’s first floor. The entire area was honeycombed with more than a score of different rooms for a myriad of labs and screenings.

  “Now you follow this line,” the woman obligingly drew in said line using a yellow marker. “Until you get here.” She made an x with a flourish. “And they’ll take it from there. Room one-eighteen,” the woman told her, retiring the marker and sitting back in her chair again. “You can’t miss it.”

  Laurel accepted the map, placing it on top of the papers. She glanced again toward the electronic doors. Each time they opened, she’d looked in their direction. Hoping. Being disappointed. She didn’t want to make her way to the testing area before Jason got there.

  “Um, my husband said he’d meet me here.”

  The woman nodded. A glint of sympathy entered her eyes. “Everyone has to stop at this desk when they come in. When he gets here, I’ll tell him where to go,” she promised.

  She doesn’t believe me. How many husbands and boyfriends promised to come and never showed? Laurel fought off a feeling of being isolated.

  “His name is Jason. He’s a tall, good-looking man,” Laurel described, suddenly wanting to prove to this woman that her husband really was going to be here. That maybe other men didn’t come when they said they would, but her Jason wasn’t like that. He kept his word. Please keep your word, Jason.

  “Lucky you,” the woman said with just a touch of wistfulness. “I’ll send Jason over to you the minute I see him come in.” Leaning forward, she tapped the map Laurel was holding. “Off you go,” the receptionist coaxed.

  So, not having any other choice, off she went.

  The best time to have the test performed was between fifteen and eighteen weeks of gestation. Laurel had put it off until time had almost run out. It was now or never.

  Apparently without Jason, she thought.

  No, she told herself, he’d said he’d be here this morning. Jason didn’t lie.

  But he did get stuck in traffic.

  Her phone began to ring in her pocket. She glanced around to see if anyone was around to hear. There were signs posted all through the hospital, thanking people for shutting off their cell phones because the signal could interfere with tests.

  Making a quick decision, Laurel darted into the ladies’ room. The second the door shut behind her, she pulled her cell phone out of her pocket, at the same time scanning the area. She bent down to see if there were any feet peering out from beneath the stall doors. There weren’t. The bathroom was empty.

  Laurel flipped open the phone, hoping that it was Jason calling to tell her he’d reached the hospital and that he hadn’t hung up yet.

  “Hello?”

  “Laurie, it looks like I might be late getting to the hospital.”

  She didn’t know whether she detected an apology in his voice, but she did hear frustration. It matched her own.

  Laurel leaned against a wall, dropping her purse to the floor. It was starting to feel heavy. She struggled to hide her disappointment. He wasn’t going to get here in time. “Oh God, Jason, where are you?” There was background noise, but she couldn’t make it out.

  “Stuck on the southbound 5, staring at the back of a produce truck.” She heard him turning down the radio in the car. “According to the guy on the radio, there was a two-car collision up ahead. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  She wanted to ask him why he hadn’t left earlier. Or, better yet, why he hadn’t taken the day off to begin with. But that wouldn’t change the situation now and being petulant would only wind up creating friction between them.

  “Can’t ask for anything more than that,” she answered, resigning herself to going through this on her own. The outer door opened and a woman entered. She glanced at her with vague, passing interest before going into the stall farthest from the door. “If you do get here,” she said halfheartedly, “I’ll be in room one-eighteen.”

  “Not if—when,” Jason insisted. “This isn’t my fault, Laurel.”

  She suppressed a sigh. “I know. Look, I’ve got to go, Jason. I don’t want to be late for the appointment.”

  “Yeah. Well, good luck, baby. And I’m sorry.”

  “Not your fault,” she echoed his words. Laurel flipped the phone shut and this time, closed it.

  Baby.

  Jason hadn’t called her that in so long she couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard him say it. Maybe he actually was trying to get here. The woman in the stall flushed. Laurel blew out a breath, squared her shoulders and walked from the ladies’ room.

  Armed with her yellow-marked map, she found the right area in less than five minutes. And that was walking slowly and even pausing to look in the tiny gift-shop window. She gave her name to the receptionist, handed in her paperwork and took a seat on a sofa designed to eat whoever sat down on it.

  The wait for her amniocentesis was much too short.

  Within seven minutes of handing her paperwork to the woman at the reception desk, Laurel heard her name being called. Trying to dig herself out of the folds of the all-encompassing sofa without drawing any undue attention, she finally managed to stand.

  She raised her hand to get the technician’s attention. “Right here.”

  The next minute, a matronly looking woman in white was at her elbow and she was being escorted to a small, ultimately dark room several feet beyond the reception desk.

  The woman handed her a blue-and-white floral one-size-fits-all-gown. “Here, put this on.”

  “I need to go to the bathroom first,” Laurel realized.

  “Full bladder?” the woman asked kindly.

  “Oh yes.” That seemed to be the annoying state of affairs these days, occurring every twenty minutes or so.

  “Perfect.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You need a full bladder for the ultrasound.”

  Laurel shoo
k her head. “There’s been some mistake, I’m here for the amniocentesis.”

  “I know, dear,” the nurse, whose name tag read “Annie,” said patiently. “But we need to take the ultrasound so we know exactly where the baby is. Wouldn’t want us accidentally impaling the little one, now would you?”

  Laurel shivered. She tried not to let her mind go there. “No.”

  “I’ll try to be as quick as possible,” Annie promised, beginning to leave.

  Laurel looked down at the gown. Funny how a piece of material could make her feel so vulnerable. “Is it all right if I keep my underwear on?”

  The woman smiled. “Sure, just be sure to take off your panty hose. I’ll be back in a few minutes. When you’re ready, you can get on that.” She indicated the narrow, sterile-looking table. There was a fresh layer of paper on in.

  “Does it hurt?” Laurel heard herself asking just as the woman opened the door. She remembered that the last time, it had really hurt. Long after the procedure was over.

  Annie turned around and gave her a sympathetic smile. “Not so much.”

  I’ll hold you to that, Laurel thought. “Um, my husband is supposed to meet me here,” she called after Annie’s departing back.

  She half expected the woman to give her a patronizing, pitying glance. Instead, she nodded. “I’ll let the receptionist know.”

  And then she was alone.

  Laurel’s hands felt icy as she slipped out of her dress. Once she took off her panty hose, she stuffed them beneath the dress and left both on top of the nearby chair. She’d just managed to get on the table when the door opened again after one quick knock. Annie had returned. The grandmotherly woman had a broad smile on her face. “Look what I found outside at the reception desk, making a fuss.”

  The woman stepped aside, allowing her to see just what she had “found.”

  Jason.

  He was at her side the next moment, taking her hand in his. Her husband bent over to kiss her forehead. “Hi, baby. See, I told you I’d make it.”

  She could have cried.

  CHAPTER 22

  She stared at him, stunned. “How did you get here so fast?”

  “I used the car-pool lane.” He made it sound like the simplest thing in the world.

  “You brought someone with you?”

  Jason hadn’t said anything about bringing someone with him when he left this morning, or even when he called earlier. Who could he have brought? Her mother? Lynda? Certainly not one of the boys. Two of them were busy working and Christopher had been rather uncommunicative lately. Ever since she’d told the family that she was pregnant, he seemed to be distancing himself from her, as if he was even more embarrassed about the situation than Luke was. Luke, at least, seemed to be coming to terms with it—as long as she didn’t embarrass him at the wedding.

  “No,” Jason answered innocently. In the background, Annie was moving around, checking instruments, preparing to start the test. And then he grinned. “That’s exactly what the cop asked when he pulled me over.”

  “You got a ticket?” She felt horrible for him. Jason never got tickets. He was the only one in the family who didn’t and he was so proud of his record.

  The grin widened. Annie moved a stool over toward him and he accepted the seat with a grateful nod. Making himself comfortable, he continued with his narrative.

  “I told him my wife was having an amniocentesis and that she’d bring down the house if I didn’t get there in time. He gave me an escort. Nice guy. But we’ve got to call the baby Darrell when it gets here.” Still holding Laurel’s hand, he looked over to the woman who had brought him in here. “Did I miss anything?”

  “Nope,” she answered. “The show’s just about ready to start.” Slipping on a pair of surgical gloves, Annie parted Laurel’s gown, exposing only her rounded abdomen. Taking some gel, she prepared to rub it on the area. “This is going to be a little cold.”

  Laurel discovered the woman had a gift for understatement. She arched her back at first contact, surprised at just how cold the gel was. It took her several moments to relax again.

  “Sorry about that,” Annie murmured. She was now passing what looked like a stubby, square wand over her abdomen. “How far along are you?”

  Something was forming on the monitor to the left. An overexposed image that resembled an inverted guppy in a pond. Was that her baby? It looked as tiny as a peanut.

  “Eighteen weeks.”

  “You’re kind of small for eighteen weeks,” Annie commented, watching the monitor as she continued to stroke the wand over her belly.

  “I’m trying to eat sensibly this time around.”

  Annie nodded. “Very smart.” Finished, she laid the wand down and picked up a large cotton swab. Very gently she cleaned off the area again. “A lot of ladies overeat, then get depressed when the weight doesn’t go once the baby arrives.” Turning away, she threw out the swab and reached for the needle. “Now this is going to look a lot scarier than it actually is,” she warned just before she faced them again.

  The woman had in her hand the largest needle Laurel had ever seen. They’d definitely gotten larger since the last time she’d had this done.

  “Not hardly,” Laurel breathed.

  “Wow.” The comment came out before Jason had a chance to stop himself. He cleared his throat, glancing at his wife. “I mean, that’s not so bad.”

  This was definitely not a good idea. Laurel froze in place, staring at the instrument. “You want to get on this table instead of me?”

  “I’m not the one with the baby, honey,” he pointed out gently. And then he took her hand in both of his again. “You’ll do fine.”

  “He’s right,” Annie told her, getting into position. “And it has to be this big because it’s hollow. I need one cc of fluid from the sac for every week of gestation.”

  Laurel couldn’t take her eyes off the needle. “Isn’t there some other way?”

  “I’m afraid not. This has to reach all the way down to your uterus.” Saying that, she began slowly to insert the needle. “There’s going to be a little sting.” The woman shifted her eyes to the monitor, watching the image of the baby as she went in further and further. “Just try to relax,” she urged.

  “Easy for you to say,” Laurel ground out through clenched teeth. “That ‘little sting’ is still there.” As the pain continued, she squeezed Jason’s hand hard, trying to find a level where she could draw in a complete breath.

  “It’ll go away in a couple of minutes,” Annie promised. Her voice was calm, soothing. “It’ll all be over with soon.” Annie glanced down at what she was doing, and then back at the monitor again. The tiny guppy seemed to move slightly. But that could have been her imagination, Laurel thought. “And before you know it, you’ll be going to her graduation.”

  “Her?” Laurel cried. She looked at the image, but there was absolutely no hint from that quarter. “It’s a girl?” She looked back at Annie. She felt a strange excitement grip her. “I’m having a girl?” Her voice fairly squeaked at the end of the question.

  Annie watched the monitor. The image wasn’t conclusive. “I really can’t tell just yet. Sorry, I was just using a figure of speech. I’m used to girls. I’ve got five daughters.”

  “I have three sons,” Laurel told her, doing her best to relax a body that felt as stiff as an ironing board. “We,” she suddenly corrected herself, squeezing the word out as she tried hard not to scream. The harpoon was going down even deeper than it had originally. Was Annie trying to get fluid out of her toes? “We have three sons.”

  Annie acknowledged the information with a nod of her head. “So, do you want another boy?”

  “Boy, girl, it doesn’t really matter. Just as long as the baby’s healthy, that’s all that counts.” She felt like panting, like clawing. This hurt a lot more than the nurse had said it would, even more than she’d remembered.

  “Is there something wrong, Nurse?” Jason asked.

  The woma
n glanced in his direction, bemused by his question. “No, why?”

  He didn’t like seeing Laurel in pain. With his first son, he’d lucked out and been away on business when Luke had decided to come into the world. But he’d been there for Morgan and Christopher. And watching her had damn near killed him.

  “Well, it seems like you’re an awfully long time with this. I just wondered if that meant that maybe there was something—”

  But Annie was shaking her head, stopping him from ending his thought. “We just make sure that we have a good amount of fluid for all the tests and if we rush it, it’s going to hurt your wife more.”

  “Oh God, don’t hurry,” Laurel pleaded, wishing she could stay Annie’s hand.

  “You’re doing great, honey,” the nurse assured her.

  “How much longer?” Laurel asked.

  “A couple more minutes,” Annie answered. And then, very carefully, the woman drew out the needle. With a quick movement of her hand, she dabbed at Laurel’s stomach, cleaning up any fluid that might have dripped out. “There,” she declared. “Done.”

  Laurel stared at her, not comprehending. “You said a couple more minutes.”

  The woman winked, a pleased expression on her face. “I lied,” she freely confessed. “This way, you get a nice surprise.” She held the needle up, the tip pointing toward the ceiling. “Unless, of course, you’d like me to insert it again.”

  “No, no, that’s okay,” Laurel assured her, holding her hands up before her belly. “I feel like a pincushion as it is.”

  Annie nodded. “All right then, Laurel, you can get dressed now. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  As the nurse/technician left the room, Jason took Laurel’s hand and helped her up into a sitting position. He looked at her with concern, seemingly half-expecting her to pass out. “How do you feel?”

  She stared down at her abdomen. “As if I’d leak if I drank any water.”

  “You’re a lot braver than I am,” he told her, shaking his head. “I think if she had stuck that thing into me, I would have passed out.”

  Now that it was behind her, Laurel could put the experience into perspective. Compared to childbirth, the discomfort of the test had actually been rather minor. It was the needle that had been the most frightening part.