Bundle of Joy (16 page)

She sniffled. "I'm fine."

"You don't sound fine."

"Oh, go away, Charles. Let me fall apart in peace."

#

Charlie had never seen a more pathetic sight in his life. Sure, he couldn't help but notice she was half-naked--and looking damn good at that--but the tears streaming down her beautiful cheeks reached a part of him that wasn't governed by his glands.

She sank down onto the edge of her satin-covered bed and buried her face in her hands. Huge sobs wracked her slender body. From the look and sound of her, you'd think somebody had died. "Come on," he said, stroking her hair with his hand. "You don't want to be late for your appointment."

"I don't care." She sniffled all the louder. "I don't care if I never leave this house again."

"Yeah, well, you've got a doctor's appointment."

"I'll cancel it."

"The hell you will."

Her head snapped up and the look she skewered him with was pure Ms. Bradley.
Good,
he thought, knowing better than to grin. There was still some fight left in her.

"Don't think that marriage license gives you the right to tell me what to do, Charles." Amazing how quickly a woman could stop sniffling if you gave her a good reason.

"I don't give a damn if you never see a doctor," he retorted, "but I damn well do care about that baby you're carrying."

She looked semi-chastened but still unbowed. "I'll go next week."

"You'll go tonight."

"You're trying my patience."

"Don't throw around any of that upper-class crap, lady, because it doesn't work on me." He picked up a pair of pale blue pants and a silky green t-shirt and tossed them into her lap. "Put them on."

She looked at the items and wrinkled her nose. "Good Lord, Charles, they clash."

"Put them on or I carry you out in your underwear."

"You have no right to treat me like this. I won't allow it."

"I don't give a damn what you'll allow. That kid is as much mine as it is yours and if you don't want to do what's right for him, I'll make goddamn sure you do it anyway."

Her voice shook with outrage. "Marriage doesn't give you the right to treat me like this."

"Yeah?" He met her outrage with some healthy outrage of his own. "You're the expert. Tell me what rights marriage does give me. Far as I can tell, they're few and far between."

Unfair,
a little voice inside him said.
You knew the bargain when you married her.

And then the most amazing thing happened. Right before his eyes, the perfect Caroline Bradley lost her cool.

"You think this has been a bed of roses for me?" she hollered, her soft, cultured voice rising like a fish wife's. "If I see one more dirty sock behind the sofa cushions, I swear I'll--" She spun around, eyes darting about the room.

"Don't even think about it," he warned. "I don't go for those
War of the Roses
scenes."

"You infuriate me, Donohue."

"Feeling's mutual, Bradley."

They glared at each other across the room, Caroline in her fancy underwear, Charlie in a pair of cut-offs and a Coors t-shirt. "Get dressed," he growled, heading for the door. "I'll meet you out front."

"Why? To wave goodbye?"

"No," he said. "To take you to the doctor."

#

I don't belong here,
thought Caroline as she glanced around Dr. Burkheit's waiting room a half-hour later. The chairs and sofas were filled with women in advanced stages of pregnancy ranging from any day to any minute. Pictures of Madonnas cradling infants in their arms covered the walls. The reading material ran the gamut from
American Baby
to
You're Nursing
to
Bringing Baby Back Home.

Next to her Charlie shook his head. "Why is it I feel like I don't belong?"

She met his eyes. "I was thinking the same thing."

He started to laugh. "I thought you're the one who
does belong here."

"Tell that to my nerves."

"You're jumpy?"

She swallowed hard. "Very."

Charlie started to say that he thought all women took to the experience the way a duck took to water but he wisely kept that observation to himself. Lately it seemed that everything he'd believed about women had been turned upside-down and inside-out. Either he'd been unbelievably wrong all these years or his new wife was unlike any other woman he'd ever known.

A pregnant wife and husband came out of the inner sanctum of offices, both of them glowing radiantly.

"I guess you belong here, too," Caroline observed. A lump rose formed in her throat as she looked at the obvious love and pride on the husband's face.

It was Charlie's turn to swallow hard as another of his misconceptions bit the dust. He hadn't paid a hell of a lot of attention to things when Sam and Murphy O'Rourke were expecting their kid, but looking back, it seemed like Murphy had been almost as involved in things as his wife. "Another one of those Lamaze classes tonight," Murphy's dad had remarked once over a beer. "In my day, you sat in the waiting room and smoked a cigar while the wife did all the work."

In my day, too
. Or so he'd thought. Charlie zeroed in on a woman who looked ready to pop. Panic swamped him as he thought of his tiny, delicate wife wracked with pain and--

"Put your head between your knees," Caroline whispered. "It really does help."

"I'm not dizzy."

"You look dizzy."

"I'm fine."

Her blue eyes twinkled. "You don't look fine."

She knew exactly what he was feeling. Somehow he kind of liked that. "Is it too late to change our minds?"

"Afraid so," said his wife. "It's all up to the baby now."

The baby.

Geez.

#

Dr. Burkheit was a youngish man in his mid-forties whose manner was naturally ebullient and prone to inspire confidence in the most nervous of patients.

Unfortunately, Dr. Burkheit's bedside manner, fine though it was for expectant mothers, hadn't done much to alleviate Charlie's galloping sense of panic. By the time the doctor finished the pelvic examination on Caroline then invited Charlie into his office to join them for a chat, Charlie was beside himself.

"Something wrong?" he asked the second he sat down on one of those plastic horrors that passed for chairs in doctors' offices. "Is Caroline okay?" He'd made the mistake of reading one of those pastel-pretty magazines scattered about the waiting room. Toxemia. High-blood pressure. Edema. Placenta previa. Why hadn't someone told him that having a baby was like tap-dancing through a minefield?

"Your wife is doing splendidly, Mr. Donohue. I'm pleased with her progress."

Caroline, who was as nervous as Charlie but better at dissembling, beamed. "I've gained
four and one-half pounds so far."

Charlie looked from Caroline to the doctor. "Is that good?" One of the magazines had said a
twenty pound weight gain was optimal for Caroline's size but the article hadn't specified exactly when you were supposed to gain the weight. He'd probably wake up one morning and her belly would be out to there....

"It's good," said Burkheit with a chuckle. "So far we have a textbook pregnancy here."

Relief coursed through Charlie like the tidal waves he'd heard about while in the navy. He hadn't realized how much this all mattered to him until that very moment. "My--my wife is...she's kind of small-boned. Will that--?"

"Not at all," said the doctor. "We want to keep her weight gain under control, of course, so not to put too great a strain on her, but we have no reason to expect anything but a perfectly normal vaginal delivery with only the usual episiotomy."

Charlie blanched. "Episiotomy?" Even the word sounded painful.

Caroline explained the procedure of precautionary incision and subsequent stitches.

That did it. Charlie put his head between his knees, visions of gore dancing before his eyes.

#

"I made an ass out of myself back at the doctor's office, didn't I?" he asked an hour later as they took their seats at the Rusty Scupper.

Caroline unfolded her napkin and placed it on her lap, wondering how much longer she would have a lap. "I wouldn't say that."

"He had to put a bag over my head to get me breathing again," Charlie muttered. "I've seen guys handle combat better."

Caroline smiled as a busboy deposited two glasses of iced water at their table and hustled away. "You hyperventilated. It happens all the time."

"Not to me it doesn't."

"There's always a first time."

He was the picture of male despair. "Makes you wonder what the hell I'll do in the delivery room, doesn't it?"

Caroline missed her mouth and spilled cold water on her chin. "The delivery room?!"

It was Charlie's turn to look surprised. "Standard operating procedure these days, isn't it?"

"Maybe for some people, but I really never imagined that you...I mean, we aren't exactly the norm, are we?"

"What is the norm these days?" Charlie countered. "To most people we probably seem like Ozzie and Harriet."

Single women with their own mothers as Lamaze coaches. Whole families in attendance for home births. In Russia, babies had even been born under water and thrived swimmingly. By comparison, Caroline and Charlie's situation seemed downright average.

"Know what you want, folks?" The waitress popped up next to them. "The red snapper is great today."

Caroline blanched at the thought. "Broiled chicken and rice for me. Tossed salad." She folded her menu and handed it to the waitress. "Oh, and a large glass of milk."

The waitress grinned. "Expecting?"

Caroline nodded.

"When are you due?"

Caroline told her.

"The cusp of Capricorn and Aquarius," said the waitress with a knowing smile. "Got myself two of them. Good luck to you." She scribbled something on her pad then turned to Charlie. "And you, daddy?"

Charlie could have cheerfully strangled the waitress but he exhibited admirable restraint and ordered himself some swordfish. The contrast between this dinner and the last one they'd shared was obvious to both of them but neither knew how to broach the subject.

"Great salad bar, isn't it?" asked Charlie.

"Try the broccoli," said Caroline. "It's wonderful."

"This is ridiculous," said Charlie after a few minutes of concentrated grazing. "What the hell are we doing?"

Caroline put down her fork. "I was thinking the same thing."

"Those pictures Burkheit showed us." Charlie leaned forward. "It doesn't seem possible, does it?"

Caroline thought of the amazing photographs taken of a fetus
in utero
. The size of a peach it was, so small yet so perfect. "It's beginning to seem real to me," she said softly. "I was afraid it never would."

"The hands...the tiny feet..." Charlie shook his head. "I guess it
is
a miracle, isn't it?"

No,
she thought.
The miracle is that we're sitting here together talking like this.
Who would have imagined it? "How would you feel about attending Lamaze classes with me?"

"I'd probably embarrass the living hell out of you."

She met his eyes. "I'm willing to risk it if you are."

He was quiet just long enough for Caroline to wish she could pull her words back and make them disappear.

"I figured you'd ask Sam."

In for a penny, in for a pound. She might as well make a total fool of herself. "Sam's my friend, Charles. She's not my husband."

His expression changed so many times in the next few seconds that she almost laughed.

"You want me with you?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. "I do."

A slow smile spread across his face. "I was there for the conception, I guess I should be there for the birth."

"A reasonable philosophy."

"You won't hold it against me if I pass out cold on you?"

"Not if you don't hold it against me if I scream down the hospital."

His hand inched forward along the table top, stopping just shy of her fingertips. "Scared?"

Casually she adjusted her position until her fingertips brushed against his hand. "Terrified. I'm not very brave when it comes to pain."

"Maybe we can help each other."

"I'd like that, Charles."

The waitress approached the table with their food. Reluctantly they drew apart and leaned back in their chairs. The moment had passed but, to their mutual delight, the mood lingered. They chatted amiably during dinner, touching on subjects from
glasnost
to the leaky faucet in Caroline's kitchen.