“Elsie, call Delivery. Tell them to come down and bring a warming bed,” I say as we push the trolley toward the nearest room.
“I did. The doctor is in another delivery, but a nurse is coming with a warmer.”
I nod at Elsie. The nurses here are really on top of things.
I lock the trolley wheels and hear the door close behind me. “Alright, Mrs. Cameron. Let’s see about you meeting your baby.”
She responds with another contraction, so I bend to check and find the top of the baby’s head entirely in view. I don’t typically deliver babies, but I’ve delivered quite a few over the course of my career. I always wonder if the mother would like me to tell her if the baby has hair. Is that a fun update to receive when you’re lying there between excruciating bouts of pain? I’m not sure.
“You’re doing well. It won’t be long now,” I tell Mrs. Cameron, leaving out the fact that her baby appears to be completely bald.
Mrs. Cameron pushes through three more contractions, then the slimy pink baby is in my hands.
“You’ve got yourself a braw lassie.”
I lay the bairn on her mother’s chest, and Rory is right behind me with a blanket to cover them both. Mr. Cameron, standing opposite me, stares down at them with tears in his eyes.
I’m stepping back to continue tending to Mrs. Cameron when her hand shoots out and grabs mine. If she’s grossed outby the bloody glove, she doesn’t show it.
“Thank you.” She gives my hand a squeeze. “What’s your name again?”
“Dr. Robertson. Malcolm Robertson.”
“Hmm … this little one doesn’t have a name, but neither of those will do,” she says.
“Roberta?” her husband suggested.
She turned her nose up at that. “No. We need to keep thinking.”
This wasn’t the first time someone had, or had tried, to name a baby after me. About three years ago I delivered a lad who’d been named Robert. I saw him here again just last year because he’d put a pencil eraser up his nose. His father had forgotten me, and the reason for his name, but his mother reminded me who they were immediately.
I’m so grateful for the highs of this job, because they go a long way toward balancing the lows. Delivering Robert, and this little one today, definitely count toward the highs.
Apart from the arrival of baby Olivia, my shift was as tame as they come. Rory asked if I’d like to go for a dram, but I declined. I’m ready to get home. I’m heading to Edinburgh tomorrow to see my sister, Fiona, for a couple of days betweenshifts.
Now I’m home, sitting in the back garden, enjoying my BLT piece in the sunshine. I love summer. It’s nine at night, and the sun will be shining for another hour. It’s nice to come home in daylight when my shift ends in the evening. In winter, it’s dark as early as four in the afternoon. I don’t mind it too much, but the summer’s nice.
I’m hit with a memory of one of the last times I was out here with my ex, Cait, and it really dampens my peaceful mood. I didn’t know she was already making plans to leave town while we were out here. She knew she was ending things when she let me kiss her by the rhododendron.
It’s been a while since I last thought about that, and at this point, it bothers me more that she had already made her plans that night, than it does that she left.
3
Makenna
Onegoodthingabouttraveling solo when a friend has to cancel at the last minute is the extra space on the plane. She couldn’t cancel her flight, so for the ten or so hours I’d spend in the air between Atlanta and London, and London and Inverness, I’d get to stretch out across two seats.
Except that, no. When she didn’t check in, they gave away her seat. I spent the first flight squished between a snoring, football-player-sized man and a larger woman who spent the entire eight hours doing Sudoku puzzles. And I mean the entire eight hours. I know she never stopped because I couldn’t sleep sitting up if my life depended on it.
When we land in London, I can’t get up fast enough. Unfortunately, the woman wants to sit until everyone in front of hergets up and heads down the aisle, and as a tall woman, I can’t stand under the overhead storage, so here I remain. What’s another twenty minutes when your butt is already numb? I close my burning eyes and wait.
When it’s finally our turn, I stand, pull on my backpack, and slide my carry-on from overhead. I’m pulling out the handle to drag it when I’m knocked in my side by someone’s luggage. I get tripped up by my luggage and land face-first in the aisle of an airplane that has seen the bottoms of no less than a hundred and twenty-five million shoes. While embarrassment—or, more likely, pain—should be at the forefront of my mind, I can’t get over the germs that must be all over my face right now.
“I’m so sorry, Miss.”
I have to work to keep from scowling as I look into the mortified eyes of the young Englishman who knocked me down. I’m not an easygoing traveler, and it’s been rough so far.
I eye the spindly arm he’s offering to me. No wonder he lost control of his suitcase. I’m not petite, and I’ll not be taking his hand and embarrassing us both again. “I’ve got it, thanks.”
