38 Weeks Pregnant And Done Waiting novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Back on the Schedule

Millicent walks into the hospital in person. Dillon Aldrich has already fixed her slot and changes her emergency contact. Then Brett and his mother walk in with an envelope.

The surgical unit at Mercy General opens at eight, and we were at the desk at ten to nine.

June had called in to her own shift and told them she'd be late.

I had told her I didn't need to be walked in like a prisoner.

She had said, "You're thirty-eight weeks and your husband just lied to a hospital. Humor me."

A man in navy scrubs came around the desk before we got there.

He was tall, with a short sandy beard and a badge that said Dillon Aldrich, RN, Charge Nurse.

"June," he said. "You're not on my schedule."

"I'm not here for me."

"Good. You look terrible when you're here for you."

"Dillon, this is my sister, Millicent."

He turned to me, and his face went careful in a way I recognized from my own clinic.

It was the face you make for a patient who has had a bad night.

"Mrs. Rigby," he said.

"Lowry," I said. "Millicent Lowry. I'd like my surgery date back."

His eyebrows moved a quarter inch.

"Okay," he said. "Come sit. Please."

He took me by the elbow, which I would have hated from anyone else, and steered me to a chair with a footstool already in front of it.

"Ankles," he said. "June's got the same ones when she stands for twelve hours."

"Hers are the ones I earned," June said.

"I'll find you a ginger ale. Don't move."

He was back in a minute with a paper cup and a laptop.

I noticed that his hands were large and very steady, and that he set the cup down without a drop on the table.

Then I told myself that was a ridiculous thing to notice at nine in the morning, nine days before surgery, in the same week my husband had put me up for a bet.

"I never cancelled," I said. "A woman from scheduling called me at seven. She said Brett did it last night."

Dillon tapped at the screen.

"Here's the entry. Six-oh-two p.m. Caller identified himself as your husband. Said you were too anxious to go through with it."

"I'm not."

"I'm not saying you are." He looked up. "Policy is that the patient cancels her own surgery. If a spouse calls, we're supposed to ask for her. The person who took it didn't."

"So it can be undone?"

"It's already undone."

I stared at him.

"I saw the cancellation when I came on at six this morning. It bothered me, so I put you back in the slot and flagged it. You're on for nine days from now, seven-thirty, the same room."

"You did that before I even called."

"I do it when something looks wrong." He shrugged one shoulder. "A breech baby this close to term doesn't get bumped on one phone call."

"That's very unprofessional of you," I said.

"I'll put it in my own chart."

I laughed.

It was a small laugh, but June stared at me, because she hadn't heard it in a week.

Dillon scrolled down.

"There's something else you should hear from me and not from the portal."

"Go ahead."

"Your husband phoned twice. The first call was the cancellation. The second was at six-forty."

"What did he say?"

"He asked what the unit needs on file if a patient's too distressed to make her own decisions."

June sat up.

"He wanted to know who can sign for you," Dillon said. "I told him the surgeon decides, and the patient's emergency contact is normally next. He asked if that could be him."

"It is him," I said.

"It's him right now."

He turned the laptop around and showed me a field with Brett's name and number in it.

"You can change it right now. Does your sister have a pen?"

June already had one.

I wrote her name and her number.

I signed at the bottom with a hand that wasn't shaking nearly as much as I expected.

"Portal login too," Dillon said. "It's registered to an email that isn't yours."

"His. He set it up so I wouldn't stress."

"Mm."

He said it very neutrally, and he did not say anything else.

He sent a reset link to my phone, and I made a new password with June reading the characters aloud over my shoulder.

When he handed the laptop to a younger nurse, he lingered one beat longer than he needed to.

"If anyone calls about you, I'll tell them nothing and then tell you who it was."

"That's allowed?"

"It's allowed if I say it's allowed. I'm the charge nurse."

"Does anyone ever say no to you?"

"Only June."

"Only because I'm right," June said.

He smiled, and it changed his whole face, and for a second I forgot I was pregnant.

Then I felt the baby kick against the ginger ale cup, and I remembered.

The double doors at the end of the corridor opened.

Brett came through them in his good gray suit with a bouquet of white roses.

His mother was beside him.

She had a manila envelope clutched against her purse, and she was already looking for me.

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