He gave her a grateful smile, and followed her. Inside the room, both Rachel and Hayden were holding Becca’s hands, talking her through a contraction. Kerry took over, quickly and discretely checking Becca’s progress.
“At this rate, it’ll be time to push very soon. I’ll go grab a second pair of hands, and then we can get started.”
“Oh my God, really?” Becca burst into tears, and Hayden wrapped her in his arms.
From where Owen was waiting in the corner, on the other side of Becca, he couldn’t hear their whispered conversation back and forth, but he saw his daughter nod and take a deep breath.
Rachel came over to join Owen.
He handed her the coffee. “I swear when I left to get this, I thought we would be in for a long night.”
“Me, too. Maybe she was just waiting until he got here?” She took a sip. “Our bodies are strange things.”
Kerry returned with Jenna, and together they got Becca moved around on the bed, sitting more upright with Hayden behind her, her feet in stirrups.
Seventeen pushes later—because Owen counted, it was the only thing he could do from the corner, although he wasn’t sure his count was accurate, given that he was going by Kerry’s instructions to Becca—Kerry lifted a tiny, wriggling bundle into the air just above Becca’s blue hospital gown. “It’s a boy!”
She delivered him to the new mom’s chest and Jenna covered the baby with a flannel cloth. A little blue hat came out of nowhere for his head, and then Owen couldn’t see anything for a minute because his vision was blurry.
Once the room had been cleaned up and Becca and the baby were bundled up together in the bed, they got closer to get a better look at the new little guy.
“It’s aboy.” Rachel leaned into him, and Owen swallowed around the lump in his throat. “Congratulations, Grandpa,” she whispered. He jerked back in reaction, and she laughed. Over her head, Owen saw Kerry’s eyes crinkled, too. She’d heard Rachel’s comment, and now her shoulders were shaking. She gave him a quick, blink-and-you’d miss it sideways smile that said she’d seen him notice her laughing before she returned to writing in her chart.
Fucking hell. Fuckingeh. “Yeah,” he said shakily. “That’s my name now.” He dragged in a long, rough breath and addressed the new parents. “Speaking of names, what did you settle on?”
Hayden looked at Becca, who gazed back at him with far too much sparkling adoration for Owen’s liking. Then she glanced down at their son, and her face dissolved into pure pleasure. “Charlie,” she said softly. “His name is Charlie.”
Chapter Twelve
The next afternoon,Owen drove Becca and Charlie home through a rain storm. It continued steadily all night, and the relentless drizzle hadn’t let up by the time Kerry came over for the first home check up. Owen waited at the door, watching for her car, and when she pulled up he had an umbrella to protect her and her bag.
Inside, she stepped out of her shoes and then settled next to Becca on the couch.
They were all tired. Charlie was sleeping now, but he hadn’t stayed asleep for more than twenty minutes all night, and neither had his mom. And because Owen’s baby had been up all night, he had been as well. He was grateful that Kerry had shown up with her soothing voice and easy confidence. Becca needed some of that now.
He left them to their conversation and went to the kitchen to make coffee. He thought about whether or not he should take a week off work. The schedule was done, and he had a couple of senior EMTs who could cover the supervisor desk. Or hell, he’d still carry the damn pager. But the one thing he remembered crystal clear from when Becca was a baby was the whole nap-when-the-baby-is-napping thing. Did it count if your baby had a baby, and nobody was napping properly yet?
It was early days, and she was in good hands. He knew that. But if the last forty-eight hours had reinforced anything for him it was that denying his feelings didn’t help anyone.
Kerry appeared in the kitchen doorway just as the coffee finished brewing. “I got Becca tucked into bed with Charlie, nursing, and they both fell asleep.”
Owen did a double-take. “That was fast.”
“They both have a lot of rest to catch up on.” She shrugged. “I’m just down the street if she wants me to come back. It’s a treat to hang out with brand-new babies, especially one as cute as Charlie.”
“I’m biased, but he’s perfect, right?” Owen held out a mug of coffee, and Kerry came closer to take it.
She smiled. “He’s perfect.” She said it with tender wonder, a feeling Owen felt in his core. “And Becca’s going to be just fine.”
He let out a long, ragged breath.
Kerry raised her eyebrows. “How long have you been holding that in?”
“Eighteen years?”
That made her laugh. “I guess we talked about that at the hospital.”
“We started to.” He glanced at her hip. “Then your pager went off, because Charlie had decided to make his arrival.”
