Chapter 6
“It’s wonderful to see you, Mrs. Mahone. And you’ve brought Daddy along to see the babies.” The receptionist cooed in Nate’s direction, as if just turning up to medical appointments made a man Husband of the Year.
I was irritable. Bob had made me pissed beyond measure, and that made me snarkier than the poor receptionist probably deserved.
“Oh, he’s not the father of the babies. He is Daddy, though, if you know what I mean.” I gave the woman a lascivious wink, making her flush bright red. I purposefully didn’t turn to look at Nate. That might’ve been a little too ballsy, even for me.
“Well, uh, okay. That’s good?” The poor woman was flustered, and now I felt bad. She’d only been trying to make conversation. “The techs are running on time, so if you want to take a seat, someone will call you in soon, then Dr. Cho will see you afterwards to discuss your care.”
I gave a tight nod and headed into the waiting room, where I would be surrounded by my brethren. The pregnant and the rotund. I flopped down in a chair gratefully, because damn, I was exhausted. Emotionally and physically drained, and perilously close to crying. Yet again.
Fuck this shit.
“I’ll be fine here, if you have something else you want to do,” I said, attempting to ignore the last few minutes. I couldn’t believe I’d insinuated he was some kind of Dom to a perfect stranger. Damn my mouth. It would be best if he left, because then I could overthink everything without his scrutinizing gaze.
It didn’t matter if I was terrified about doing this on my own; I’d have to learn sometime. This was a good first step.
Some of my terror must have shown on my face, though, because Nate shook his head gently. “If you’d like, I could stay with you. It’s always good to have another set of ears at appointments.” He raised a single golden eyebrow at me. “After all, I am Daddy.”
All the blood in my body rushed to my face, and I choked. Serves me right. “Sorry. That was awkward, and I had no right to, uh, call you that.”
His shoulders shook, and I suddenly realized he was laughing. I could hear the low, muffled rumble of his chuckle. It was like a physical prickle across my skin. I’d never seen the man laugh. Ever. I wanted to bathe in the sensation.
“Don’t be. I’ve been called worse things.”
I was saved from answering by a tech calling my name. Nate rested his hand against my spine as I stood with a little less grace than a couple of months ago. He followed me in, and unlike the receptionist, the ultrasound tech didn’t make any assumptions about our relationship.
“Your notes say you’re expecting spontaneous triplets?” she asked, giving me a wide smile. “I bet that came as a wild surprise.”
I shook my head as I climbed onto the bed. “You have absolutely no idea. It was… a lot.” That was an understatement. It had forever altered my life; I doubted anyone could be adequately prepared for that. “I thought I had brain parasites.”
Nate barked out a laugh, drawing the gaze of both me and the tech. She stared for an inappropriate amount of time, her lips slightly parted. Girl, do I get it. As he laughed, his face pulled into that smile again, and it was dazzling.
As I cleared my throat softly, the tech dragged her eyes back to me. Her cheeks were pink, and she looked slightly horrified. “Uh, well, pregnant is better than brain parasites. That sounds awful.” She pulled out a squeeze bottle. “The gel should be warm, but if not, I apologize for the slight chill.” She squirted a good dollop of gel on the wand as I wiggled up my shirt.
Once upon a time, I might’ve been self-conscious of showing my stomach to someone like Nate, but now? My body felt like it was a timeshare, so I had to get over my insecurities.
The tech ran the wand over my stomach, and immediately, I heard the whoosh of heartbeats. Looking over at the screen, I could see a face. She took a few measurements, marking it as Baby A. Then she moved further down, and for a brief moment, I wondered if maybe the other ultrasound tech had been wrong. Maybe she’d had faulty equipment, and I was really only carrying one baby. A big one. Or hell, maybe just twins. I had two arms, which meant two babies would be workable, right?
“Okay, Baby B is here, and they both look really good. Let’s try and find baby C, shall we?” She poked her tongue out through her teeth as she stared at the screen, navigating my womb like it was the world’s most convoluted video game.
I held my breath as she searched and searched. “Is there something wrong?” What if there was something wrong with the third baby? Why couldn’t she find it? My heart felt like it was pounding in my chest.
Nate reached up and gripped my hand in his. Just completely encapsulated it with his large palm and long fingers. Instantly, I felt calmer.
The tech gave me a reassuring smile. “No, nothing is wrong. Just a lot of business going on in there at the moment, so it’s a little hard to navig—aha! There he is.”
“He?”
The tech shook her head. “Figure of speech. It’s a little too early to really tell the sex just yet.” She did her measurements, moving the wand around. “Baby C is a little smaller, but nothing to be worried about. He’s still within the acceptable parameters.” She went back to work, and when she was done, she printed me out a long strip of pictures. “Babies’ first photo,” she joked.
I was mesmerized by the tiny images. This was real. They were real. I looked up at Nate to check if he was seeing what I was seeing, but his gaze was fixed on my face, his blue eyes intense.
I passed him the ultrasound photos. “Babies. All three of them.” I was choked up, tears brimming at the edges of my eyes.
“Your babies, Wren,” he said softly, like he wasn’t sure I knew who they belonged to. “They’re beautiful already.”
Thankfully, the tech wiped off my stomach for me, distracting me from the heavy emotional blanket of the moment. Nate helped me sit up, holding my arm as I climbed down from the hospital bed. His hand stayed on my back as we returned to the waiting room to wait on the doctor, who wasn’t quite as on time as the tech.
An hour later, I was feeling sore and restless, my back was aching, and I felt guilty that I’d stolen so much of Nate’s day. “I can get the bus home,” I told him for the second time in thirty minutes.
“I’ve got nowhere to be,” he said gruffly, not looking up from the pregnancy magazine he was reading.
Women in here had been throwing him hungry looks for fifty-nine of the last sixty minutes. That was something they’d never told me about pregnancy. We might cry a lot, but man, pregnant women were also horny as hell. I wasn’t sure why; it seemed like an odd quirk of biology. I mean, we were already knocked up—why did our libido need to be ratcheted up to eleven?
One woman, who was so round that I was a little worried she’d legit explode, looked like she was ready to ride Nate all the way to the delivery ward of the hospital across the road.
“Wren?”
I realized I’d been giving the woman across the room the stink-eye when the doctor’s voice made me start. Dr. Cho was a female doctor in her late sixties, and there was something reassuring about her presence. I moved toward her, doing my best not to waddle just yet.
I was a little surprised when Nate followed me into the office, but not upset. Relieved, maybe. He’d been right; another set of ears didn’t hurt, and it felt like I was sharing the weight of this burden with someone else. Not that the babies were a burden.
No, you know what? They were a burden. I wasn’t going to pretend like being knocked up meant I was suddenly ready to be a mom. There wasn’t a switch inside me. I still had to come to terms with it, and then I knew, deep down in my soul, I would love them.
But they’d derailed my life. A life I could barely keep up with myself. I hadn’t been to the dentist since I was ten. There were weeks when I only bought crackers and cheese for food. I wasn’t the picture of responsibility, just because I was pregnant. There would be a learning curve.
They might be a burden now, but I would love them and care for them to the best of my ability, and if that meant that right now, at this moment, I needed a little extra help, then there was nothing wrong with that.
So I was glad that Nate was here to hear what the doctor said, because my brain had been a permanent tilt-a-whirl for weeks. What if I forgot something and made a mistake and somehow caused them irreparable damage?
“Take a seat, Wren. Can I call you Wren?” Dr. Cho asked, and I nodded. “So Dr. Kash has sent me the notes he had on your condition. Are you still seeing visual hallucinations?”
I cast a quick look at Nate, whose face was pulled down in a frown. Guess I’d left that part of the story out.
“Uh, yeah, but they aren’t as, I don’t know, bright anymore?” Well, most of the time anyway.
The doctor made a humming noise as she wrote notes. “Sometimes, disturbances in the vision or hearing can be an early onset sign of pre-eclampsia, though your blood pressure and blood work all look quite good. But we’ll keep an eye on it anyway. I see Dr. Kash also authorized an MRI, and I can see why he ruled out any organic cause of your disturbances. These things, if related to pregnancy, usually dissipate by the end of the second trimester, so we’ll watch it but not panic just yet.
“I’ve reviewed your ultrasound, and that all looks fine as well. A miraculous event, three fraternal triplets. Safer for the babies, and for you. Baby C is small, but we’ll watch and ensure he’s growing before we think about any drastic actions. They’re all well within the margins we’d expect at this stage.”
She talked more, about prenatal vitamins and regular ultrasounds and bed rest, and it all began to blur. But Nate, apparently, was taking extremely good notes.
“Is there any exercise she shouldn’t be doing? Or should be doing? Foods she can’t eat?” He quizzed, and I melted a little inside for my surly neighbor. I shook myself, because down that road only lay heartache.
As Dr. Cho unloaded an absolute wealth of knowledge onto Nate, I rested my hand on my stomach. Inside, there were three whole humans 3D printing, and it was hard to imagine that my body would ever be the same. It might be vain, but I was going to be like a deflated balloon.
No matter how sweet he was being now, Nate was not the kind of guy who would’ve been attracted to me normally, let alone once my body was all stretched and marked from carrying three tiny miracles into the world. No, Nate needed to stay well and truly in the friend zone, both for my sanity and my self-esteem.
Finally, we left the doctor’s office with a fistful of pamphlets and another appointment in two weeks. As I looked at the amount on the bill, I tried not to wince. Maybe I could push it out to a month’s time, because these visits were going to eat into my savings now that I was unemployed. Maybe I needed to look into a free clinic across town.
Nate opened the passenger door of his truck for me. “Come on, Wren. We’ll stop at the drugstore on the way home.” His voice was gentle but firm, and I found myself nodding.
It was a shame the receptionist had been wrong—he’d have made a good father.
“Seatbelt,” he reminded me, and I let my lips curl into a smile.
Actually, he’d have made a good Daddy too.