but this one felt more special than all the rest. It was her partner and friend’s baby. This infant sent her dreaming of birthing her own baby, of daring to hope she’d get the chance.
“It’s a beautiful boy,” she said, wiping the baby’s mouth and face with the warm and soft blanket that her new assistant, Jon, had handed her. He gave her another. After a quick check of the perfect little body, she wrapped the baby up as if the most precious thing in the world, and Jon produced a syringe bulb to suction the baby’s mouth and nose. He’d thought of everything. Had he thought of his answer yet?
The baby continued to make a healthy wail, music to her mother-longing ears. René laid the newborn on Claire’s stomach, and pressed to feel for another contraction, then prepared for the afterbirth. Jon held the large stainless-steel basin in readiness.
Jason hovered over Claire and the baby, as they laughed and cried together. René was too busy to hear everything they said, but knew love had been mentioned several times. And the name Jason James Rogers, Junior.
She glanced at Jon and saw the familiar look of wonder that new life always evoked. He met her gaze and held it, adding a smile. Could he read her thoughts, her desires? His short-cropped salt-and-pepper-brown hair had always made his eyes look intense, but she’d never seen that fiery excitement there before. Did he understand how she felt? How every cell in her body cried out for the chance to be a mother?
New life. Nothing compared with the wonder. Especially if the newborn belongs to you. Jon glanced back at the happy family, and she prayed they might perform a silent miracle on her behalf.
Jason kissed Claire’s forehead, as a distant siren rent the air. René could practically palpate their bonding. There was something about a baby that changed everything, that turned lovers into a family, and sealed a bond outsiders could never fathom. She’d seen it countless times, but this time it plunged straight into her heart.
Her chest clenched and ached for what she longed for, for the answer she depended on to provide the portal to her dreams. She couldn’t look at him again for fear she’d beg him to say yes.
“You want to do the honors?” She’d double clamped the umbilical cord and held it with gauze, handing Jason sterile scissors from the suturing pack. For a general practitioner, he looked apprehensive. She gave him an encouraging wink. When he’d finished, she applied the plastic clip on the baby’s end of the cord and smiled at the squirming newborn—healthy and strong, though small and a good three weeks premature by her calculations. Babies were nothing short of a miracle; she’d been convinced of that since her first delivery.
There went that clutch in her chest again, the one that made it hard to breathe. She couldn’t look at Jon, but felt his gaze on her.
“Congratulations, man,” Jon said to Jason. Memories of his wife giving birth flashed before his eyes. Nothing had awed him more, or given him greater satisfaction, than seeing his daughters brought into the world.
He didn’t have to look at René to know what she was going through; she’d thoroughly explained her deep hunger for motherhood to him last night. How must it feel to deliver babies for everyone else, and at the end of the day still be alone?
Jason grinned so hard his eyes almost disappeared. Claire patted his hand and welcomed the baby to her chest with the other. From the corner of his eye, Jon watched René’s reverent gaze as a pang twisted in his gut. He couldn’t take it. Couldn’t take the feeling or the implication a simple answer of yes would bring, so he bent to gather the soiled towels and stuff them into the exam room hamper.
The air was too thick with yearning and he’d never been the kind of guy to make dreams come true, just ask his wife. He needed to change the mood. “Do we get paid overtime for this?”
Not usually one to make light, his joke made everyone blurt a relieved laugh. Combined with Claire and Jason’s euphoria, joy filled the room from every angle, and against his better judgment, the feel-good rush fueled a growing desire to grant his coworker her biggest wish. He couldn’t let it influence him. His decision would be made the same way he made all of his medical determinations, based on logic and common sense. Nothing less.
René looked at him, the makeshift assistant, while the lovebirds and new baby continued bonding. Her expression had changed, as if she understood how much pressure she’d put on him, and how unfairly the perfect timing of this birth had played in her favor. A warm smile appeared on her face, as if the sun had cracked through thunderclouds. How could he not smile back?
“You’re not bad for a novice,” she said.
So she’d opted to keep it light, too. Relief crawled over him, as if a welcoming blanket. Birth or no birth, he wasn’t ready to make his life-altering decision, though her can-didness went far to nudge him along.
He flashed a capable look, one that conveyed I can handle just about anything. “You’re not the only one who’s full of surprises, René.”
“You want to hold him?” Claire had already dressed her contented-looking baby in blue by early the next morning.
René grinned. “I’d love to.” She’d popped in last night and found Claire sleeping, the baby swaddled and content in the bedside bassinet, and Jason lightly snoring in the lounger, so she tiptoed outside and read the pediatrician’s report instead. When the nurses assured her that Claire’s fundus was firming right up and there were no signs of excessive bleeding or fever, she’d gone home rather than wake up the new mother and father.
This morning, Jason was already down in the business office settling up, and they’d be heading home to introduce the baby to his big sister, Gina, as soon as René performed her discharge examination.
The six-pound boy squirmed when she took him and tucked him into the hook of her arm. The feel of him sent her reeling. He smelled fresh, like baby lotion and new life, and the clutching in her chest nearly took her breath away. She detected eye movement beneath tightly closed lids with no hint of lashes, and wondered what babies dreamed about. She gently pressed her lips to his head, and inhaled the wonders of his being pure as the first light. The longing in her soul for a baby swelled to near-unbearable proportions. His fine light brown hair resembled a balding man’s with a noticeably high forehead. On him it was adorable. Her eyes crinkled as the smile creased her lips.
His tiny hands latched on to her fingers, barely covering the tips. The flood of feelings converged—tingling, prickling, burning—until her eyes brimmed.
Her mouth filled with water, and she swallowed. “He’s so beautiful,” she whispered, discovering that Claire’s eyes shimmered with tears, too.
“I know,” Claire said. “Babies are miracles, aren’t they?”
Overwhelmed by the moment, wishing for a miracle of her own, her breath got swept away and all René could do was nod.
Jon wolfed down three bagels loaded with peanut butter and downed a pint of orange juice straight out of the carton when he arrived at work. He hadn’t slept for a second night, and the usual runner’s high had eluded him somewhere around mile eight that morning. He scrubbed his face and strode down the hall.
René was just about to knock on a patient exam room.
“Got a minute?” he said.
She started at his voice and snatched back her hand. “Oh!”
He headed for her office,
