Chapter 1
Someone was banging on my door.
My hands were posted on Seymore’s bare shoulders. He’d banged on my door a half-hour ago—my preferred wakeup call—a hot cop with a cup of steaming coffee in one hand and a breakfast sandwich in the other. I was showing him a little well-deserved appreciation for revving my morning engines in such a happy way. Banging seemed to be the verb of the day, at least I’d had high hopes that it would be.
Seymour’s head rested on my pillow. I looked down, reading disappointment in his eyes. “Yeah, me too.” I sighed out. “Maybe it’s a neighbor, and I can get rid of them fast.”
The look on his face told me he wasn’t holding out much hope.
“Coming,” I yelled.
“If only,” he said. Putting his hands on my hips, he helped me off my bed.
I dropped an apology kiss on his lips as I reached for my robe and phone. It was weird to have these many visitors on a Tuesday morning. Surely, if this were an emergency, they would have called first. I stepped over Seymore’s police duty belt, heading toward the door.
Twinkles, my hundred and forty-pound Rottweiler (yeah, he’d gained some weight—that’s what happens when you eat too many cardiac arrest burgers), laid across my doorway, looking uninterested, so I assumed I knew the person on the other side of the door.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
“I’m coming,” I called again as I tied my robe into place. I pulled the door open without looking through the peephole—after all, I was well protected by a hot cop and a big dog.
There stood my best friend, Kay. She, too, had a cup of steaming coffee and a bag that smelled like a breakfast sandwich in her hands. I think I might be getting predictable. That, or people knew to feed the bear if they wanted me to be somewhat pleasant in the early morning hours of noon. Yeah, my job as a quasi-bar owner meant I had different circadian rhythms than the average human being.
Kay looked over at my breakfast bar where the first set of appeasers sat, then looked over at my closed bedroom door, and finally, looked down at my dog who was lying in such an odd place, and said, “I see you’re entertaining. Sorry, but you didn’t answer your phone.”
I swiped my cell and scrolled. She’d been calling since seven, but my phone was set on airplane mode.
Reaching out for the coffee Kay was wriggling in my direction, I took a sip and burned my tongue. I set the cup down and reached for the one Seymour had brought me twenty minutes earlier. Ah, just right. I glugged it down, all of it, in one big swallow.
Kay raised an eyebrow. “Better now?”
“I can feel the effects starting to spread,” I said, turning to see Seymore coming out of my bedroom, tucking his shirt into his pants, and adjusting his duty belt.
I sent him a frown.
“I feel the same, BJ,” he said. “But you’ve got company.” He lifted his chin toward Kay. “Hey there.” He then turned back to me. “And I have to clock in at the station. I’ll text you later. Maybe we can find some time to pick up where we left off?” He leaned down and gave me a very nice kiss, the kind that made me all warm and yearn-y.
I released a breath of disappointment as I watched him walk out the door, shutting it softly behind him.
“He’s new,” Kay said as I moved over to fill Twinkles’s bowl with kibble. “I thought you were seeing Captain Lewis.”
“The good captain started dating, and I have my badge bunny scruples to uphold. I don’t play with other girls’ toys, especially when it comes to their boys.”
“Ah, you made a rhyme. That coffee must have been high test.”
“Yeah, Seymore was on his lunch break, and he knows I’m not very energetic when I first get up. I’m surprised he didn’t choose rocket fuel instead of a cup of Joe.”
“Seymore?”
“Seymore Wang.”
Her brow pulled together. “That’s an improbable name.”
I shrugged. “His mother’s British.”
“Just keeping the roster straight. Lewis is out, and Wang is in.”
“Could have been, but you stopped by about fifteen minutes before I would have liked.”
“Sorry.” She climbed onto a kitchen stool and helped herself to a bite of the breakfast sandwich. “Now that Captain Lewis is out of the picture, here’s another question: Why did you nickname him Captain Hook? ’Cause of a pirating past?” She winked. “Was he looking for booty?”
I lifted my hand and curled my pointer finger. “He hooked left.”
“Huh, that’s a new sensation.”
“I didn’t mind. Seymore’s straight as an arrow.”
“Noted,” Kay said. “Hey, how did the Captain become a boxing champion so fast?”
I took a bite of the egg sandwich she had handed me, giving her a sideways glance.
“Nobody was ready for his left hook.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Too early? How about this one? How do you save a drowning pirate?”
I shook my head.
“With C P ARRR.”
I picked up the second cup of coffee and slogged my way toward the shower.
“One more?”
I turned around.
“Just one?” Kay clasped her hands and gave me the big puppy-eyed look.
I held up a finger. “One.”
“Why do pirates cry all by themselves?”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Because they’re private tears.”
“I’m going to take a shower now.”
“Wait!”
“No. No more. Shower first. You’ve been up for five hours. I need to ease into my day.” I looked back at her. “You never said why you’re here.”
“Alice had her baby earlier this morning. Paul called to let me know.” She followed me into my bedroom and walked toward my closet. I knew that meant she’d have an outfit laid out for me by the time I got cleaned up. “I picked up a gift,” she called as I shut the bathroom door. “That sit-and-play thingy that Alice wanted. I signed both our names to the card. I got a really good deal, too. Hey, do you know how much the pirate paid for his peg leg and hook?”
“No,” I called out from behind the door.
“An arm and a leg!”
I turned the water on full-blast. I loved Kay. But it was too darned early for perky. Just sayin’.
Chapter 2
We walked into Alice’s hospital room to find her crying. Kay and I scooted in to wrap her up in a hug. I was terrified to hear what had happened. If there was something wrong with the baby... Oh, no! What if there was something wrong with the baby?
Alice laid her head on my shoulder. Her face was moist with snot and tears.
I eyed the tissue box just out of reach on her side table and thought it would be inappropriate for me to lunge for it. Kay and I stroked Alice’s heaving back and waited.
“Sorry.” She snuffled. “Damned birthing hormones. I’m a mess.” She fanned at her face, and Kay got hold of the tissues.
“But the baby’s okay?” Kay asked.
“Oh, yes. He’s fine. They took him for his meet-and-greet with the pediatrician.”
“And you’re okay?” I asked.
“Sure. If you can be okay after pushing a bowling ball out of your vagina, I’m great.”
“You know,” Kay said, climbing on the end of the bed and crisscrossing her legs like we were all back in fifth grade having a slumber party. “I hear that after a woman’s given birth, she can almost imagine the horror of what it’s like for a man to have a fever.”
“Yesterday, that might have been funny,” Alice said still catching her breath.
Ruh-roh. I had a feeling that Alice was about to lay some truths on us.
“You know those feminine hygiene commercials where the perfectly coiffed women are dancing in flowing dresses amongst the flowers in a meadow?” she asked, pushing her limp, sweaty hair from her face. “The butterflies are flitting about, and all is serene and glorious?”
“I’ve never had a period like that,” Kay said.
“Yeah, it’s not really like that for me. I’m more of a sweatpants wearing, Cherry Garcia gobbling, bitch-ranting mess.”
“Yeah, mine are more of the cramping, crying, don’t f’ing F with me variety,” Kay said.
“Same with giving birth. They lie. They lie. They lie. I swear to god, they entice you in. The dad is mopping your brow; the nurse is clucking supportively. They’re all so proud of how brave and strong you are. But that, my friends,” she waggled her finger in the air, “is total bullshit.”
I climbed on the bed at Alice’s feet next to Kay and put my elbows on my knees and my chin on my fists.
“Yup.” She pushed the button on the bed to lift her head a little higher. “Same with the whole giving birth thing. On TV, even when it’s bad, it’s funny. This wasn’t funny. This was a horror story. I made my husband erase all the pictures and video. No one needs to see that, especially me.”
Kay’s brow creased, and she tipped her head to give her sad-kitty face—her way of showing sympathy and support. “What happened?
“First of all,” she said. “Everyone thinks you’re out of your head in pain.”
“Aren’t you?” Kay asked.
“Well, yeah,” Alice replied. “But still, if I say something, they should listen.”
Kay reached for Alice’s hand. “Of course, they should. Of course, they should listen to you. You were the one it was happening to.”
“What was happening?” I asked, my whole body clenched. Birth wasn’t a topic that I felt chatty about. I worked hard not to make a stink face.
Alice was focused on Kay who always was the more empathetic between the two of us. “All I wanted was a bedpan.”
Kay rewarded her with a look of horror. “They wouldn’t let you go to the bathroom?”
“Not when you’re hooked up to the machines they won’t. Or they didn’t. They said no.”
“No to the bathroom?” I looked around the room for any stray bedpans, just in case one was needed again.
“No to the bedpan.” She scowled, looking fierce. If someone had given me that look, and all I had to do to appease the situation was to hand Alice a plastic bowl. I would have done it. No, I didn’t see a bedpan. I could go to the nurses’ station, maybe.
“I’m begging them for a damned bedpan because I had to poop.”
“Ugh.” It popped out of my mouth before I could neutralize that thought. I mean, sure Alice had been a friend since we were all reading Are you there, God? It’s me Margaret and stuffing our training bras with rolled up pantyhose. But poop wasn’t something that came up often. Or ever.
“They kept saying. ‘It’s the baby. The baby is coming.’ And I kept yelling, ‘I’m a college educated woman. I know the damned difference between a baby and a bowel movement.’”
Kay and I were shaking our heads.
“And they just wouldn’t give me the bedpan, so I put my hand under me then held out the poop and yelled, ‘Does this look like a baby to you?”
“Holy cow!” Gross!
“What did they do?” Kay looked a little green, and I scooted farther to the side, just in case that green wanted to come up as spew.
“The nurse cleaned off my hand and said sorry.”
“Well, the baby is here!” Kay said with jazz hands.
“And so is my milk,” Alice said, her face sour. “Have you seen this shit? People don’t tell you about this shit either.” She pulled up her hospital gown. Her breasts were swollen into two massive bowling balls. “I can’t put my arms down,” she complained. “My boobs are so big that they touch in the middle and swell out the sides. It’s exhausting to hold my arms up. And I had so looked forward to sleeping on my stomach, but I can’t even come close because of the size of my boobs. Feel. They’re hard as a brick.”
Kay and I looked at each other and back at her boobs. Neither of us took her up on the offer.
“I’m so miserable.” She started crying, and not a little crying—big fat tears ran down her face, and she swiped at them with her palms as she hiccupped, hacked, and gasped. “And that’s not even the worst of it.”
I didn’t think I could stand anymore. I had been anti-pregnancy all my adult life. It was on the list of things to consider in, oh, eight or nine years. But now I was rethinking this, and maybe setting my calendar to never. Birth took on a kind of self-mutilation, self-flagellation, self-destruction aspect that I didn’t think I was up for. Selfish as that may be.
As soon as this bout of sobs was settling, Alice said, “After I had the baby, and we had our cuddle time, they took him for his physical exam with the pediatrician, and they brought me up to my room. The nurse suggested I try to take a nap, and that sounded great to me.”
“To me too,” I said. “But the look on your face says, ‘not so much.’”
“Well, I fell asleep and woke up sopping wet. It was the same wet feeling I had last night when I woke up because my water broke. I was dazed, and my brain hasn’t been working quite right since the first really bad labor pain turned my head around like I was in The Exorcist. I’m lying there thinking, ‘holy cow! I was pregnant with twins.’”
“What?” Kay asked, leaning forward. “Twins?”
“I thought that my water had broken again, and I was about to go into labor again, and girlfriend, no. Just no. I wasn’t willing to do that again. So, I’m in a panic. Paul went home to pick up some things for me, and here I was by myself getting ready to have a baby I wasn’t ready for. A second baby. We only have the one bassinet. I’m pressing the call button going out of my mind. The nurse comes rushing in, probably because I’m screaming, and I’m trying to get myself calmed down enough to tell her about the second baby.” Alice reached out and snagged another tissue to wipe her eyes. “The nurse said, ‘Your water broke again?’ She’s all bug-eyed, deer in the headlights, and I know, I just know something horrible is happening to me down there.” She stopped to point to her crotch. “And I’m about to die.”
Kay and I had pulled our eyebrows all the way up to our hairlines and had stopped blinking.
“The nurse pulled back the covers and said, ‘Oh, you kicked your fluids bag. They left the catheter in so you could get some rest.’” She looked from Kay to me and back again. “I didn’t even know I had a catheter. Everything is kind of a numb, burning sensation down there. Right now, I’m sitting on a donut with an ice pack on my coochie.”
“So, no twins—you just peed in your bed?” Kay wrinkled her nose. “You did that at my house that one time, remember?”
“Yeah, I was ten, and Melanie put my hand in a bowl of warm water to make me do it. Blame her.”
“I’m so sorry that happened. The whole spinning head, kicking pee bag, false labor-thing sounds like a nightmare,” I said. “You must have been so embarrassed.”
“Nope,” Alice said suddenly looking blotchy but serene as if someone had dialed her emotions to a new channel. “I couldn’t have cared less. I have no boundaries anymore. I mean, after you lie there with your feet in the stirrups and your privates hanging wide out there, as some medical professor parades the obstetrics students into your room to take a look-see—well, you give up all decorum out of self-preservation.”
Yowza!
She straightened up a little and reached over to press the call button. “My boobs are at capacity. Where is that baby? He’d better be hungry is all I’m saying. And I mean, hungry hippo, hungry. He needs to eat three times his body weight in milk—like now.”
“Can I help you?” a voice said from the bed speaker.
“I’m hoping my son is awake and hungry,” she said, sounding sweet and loving, and nothing like the woman who had just sobbed out her poop story.
Within a minute, the nurse was pushing the plastic box into the room. Alice lit up with a bright smile and doting mommy eyes as she pulled the baby up to her face and smothered him in kisses. She unwrapped the swaddling to show us what she had made. It looked like a cone-headed plucked chicken to me. But I’d never say that out loud. I mean, it was just pushed out of a vaginal canal. Surely, things would round themselves out.
I folded the baby blanket and turned to put it back in the bassinet when something wet hit me in the face, and I looked up to see the baby trying to latch on to Alice’s breast.
Who would have thought a boob could squirt milk like a water cannon?
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