“Where was I?” Laura asked. “Oh. Right. So the guys are on autopilot all the time. They’ve been together for ten years, and so this is all old hat to them. There’s no room for my ideas. For me to imprint on the way everything flows.”
As if knowing that Josie were about to ask her a question, Laura locked eyes with her. Before Josie could even open her mouth to speak, Laura’s eyes got wider than Josie had ever seen them, as if her eyeballs were about to pop out. The clanking of the fork against Laura’s plate was all Josie could hear as she watched her friend’s pale, creamy hand reach down below the table and grasp her abdomen, her head pitched down and an audible, long inhale coming through her nose.
“Braxton Hicks?” Madge muttered, eyebrow cocked up as she walked by.
Josie was starting to be on Madge’s side, silently counting to herself as Laura started to breathe again on the exhale, in and out, for what Josie counted to be thirty-seven seconds. The nurse in her shifted to a different kind of math, not relationship math but labor math. How long were the contractions? How many minutes apart were they? How intense were they?
Laura’s hands reached up for her face and smoothed her blonde waves away. Calm eyes peered back at Josie, though Laura’s face was considerably flushed. “It’s okay,” she said—long inhale, long exhale. “Just a crazy Braxton Hicks contraction.”
“Okay,” Josie said simply. Who was she to argue with a pregnant woman? Nature would win. No need to poke the ripe lady.
Laura reached for the fork and started to stuff a piece of cake in her mouth, but seemed to think better of it. Instead, she looked at Josie and said, “So, I have a business proposition for you.”
Whoa. Big topic shift. As her shoulders relaxed, Josie realized how relieved she was to change the conversation. More talk about the cozy world the threesome created threatened Josie’s tenuous stability right now.
“No. I won’t host a Mary Kay party for you,” Josie joked.
“No, not that. But, hey! You know, my mom did really well with them.”
“Yeah, I know. The pink Cadillac kind of tipped everybody off.”
Laura’s face went from an amused, flushed look to one of nostalgic sadness. Josie had only met Laura’s mom once, before she’d passed away a few years ago, a freak asthma attack that turned deadly. Obviously, she would never meet the baby—and Laura’s dad had taken off years ago. They’d bonded over being fatherless when they had met in college. It was a club no one wanted to be in.
It wasn’t a surprise to Josie that Laura, feeling alone in the world, had been so happy to find a whole instant family in Mike and Dylan.
“Laura, you realize ‘a business proposition’ makes it sound like you want to rope me into some MLM scheme.”
“MFM, actually.” Laura coughed.
“Wha?”
Laura put her fork down, leaning in, an intense stare practically pinning Josie in place. “I think, financially, we’re a little beyond that. MLM, I mean.”
“Well,” Josie answered. “Mike and Dylan are. You…”
Insecurity poured out of Laura in waves stronger than any contraction. “You know, just because the guys told me to quit my job and just take care of the baby and that they would support me, doesn’t mean—”
Josie held a palm up. She could see that Laura was on the verge of tears over this and had really struggled already, pride almost overriding their offer. “Laura—Laura, I’m just joking,” she assured her. “I know the drill, and if I were in your shoes I’d have quit in a heartbeat too. Trust me, anything to get out of the daily grind.”
“Anything?”
“Anything,” Josie said. “Do you have any idea what it’s like working on a research trial for Alzheimer’s? Talking to old people every day”—she corrected herself—“that’s fine. The problem is that I’m dealing with people who are deteriorating. So every time I see them for a new appointment, most of them, first of all, don’t remember me, and, second of all, they’re worsening. It’s pretty depressing to work a job where all of the people I see and serve are getting worse.”
Laura furrowed her brow. “You went into geriatric nursing, Josie,” she said slowly, as if talking to a child. “Didn’t you expect that to be the case?”
Leave it to Laura to state the obvious. “Sure,” Josie protested. “But Alzheimer’s is a different animal. It’s one thing to work with some ninety-year-old woman who forgets things once in a while but is otherwise sharp and has a body that’s failing her. You try seeing a sixty-two-year-old or a seventy-three-year-old with kids and grandkids, who points to his wife of thirty or forty years and says, ‘Can you tip the cab driver?’”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah. Day in and day out. Not nearly as hard, though, as having Dylan bring you coffee in bed and Mike not attune to your shower desires.” Meow. Where did that come from?
A patient, controlled look clouded Laura’s features. She took two deep breaths and smiled sweetly. “You really want me to start talking about the shower desires Mike does meet? Because I have some stories that—”
“Stop!” Josie shrieked, fingers in ears. “I deserved that. Just stop,” she begged.
“Go into another kind of nursing.” Laura tapped her belly. “Labor and delivery.”
Josie had an answer for that, but before she could open her mouth and spit it out, Laura leaned over again, grabbing her belly and doing the deep inhale. By Josie’s guess, that was about seven minutes. Slowly, Laura worked her way through the contraction—about the same amount of time as before, thirty-eight seconds. In her phone, Josie had programmed Mike’s number, Dylan’s number, the labor and delivery numbers for all the hospitals in the area, and even a handful of personal cell phone numbers for the OBs she knew in at least a casual way.
Without violating any confidentiality, Josie had called the doctors about a month before, explaining the basics of Laura’s situation. Depending on which professional she talked to, the polyhydramnios made the delivery moderate or high risk, but Laura was determined to have a natural birth.
Now was probably a really terrible time to explain to Laura that she would make a horrible labor and delivery nurse. During her rotation of clinicals as a nursing student she’d actually dropped a baby once—fortunately, only three or four inches before catching it again. And the experience had chilled her so deeply that she had no desire whatsoever to do it professionally. Be there with her friend through the whole thing, from start to finish, just as another body in the room there to support the mom? No problem. Have an actual professional role with responsibilities? No way.