Chapter 3: Last Embrace Before Parenthood
The hospital hallway stretched before them, a tunnel of fluorescent light and polished linoleum. Each step was a negotiation between contractions. Edward’s arm was a steel band around her waist, supporting most of her weight. His medical bag swung from his other hand. The antiseptic air burned her nostrils, erasing the last traces of jasmine and sex.
A nurse at the central station looked up, her eyes widening in recognition. “Dr. Perry? We didn’t have you on the schedule for—”
“Ms. Roberts is my patient. She’s 37 weeks with di/di twins, ruptured membranes, contractions three minutes apart,” he recited, his voice clipped, authoritative. The mask was flawless. “Prep Room Three, please. And page Dr. Chen for potential backup.”
“Right away, Doctor.”
They moved past the desk. Sheena’s robe flapped open, revealing her bare legs, the towel he’d wrapped around her soaked through. She didn’t care. The next contraction was a tsunami building offshore, a dreadful, gathering pressure that demanded all her focus.
“Edward,” she gritted out, stopping short. Her fingers dug into his forearm. “It’s coming.”
He guided her against the cool wall, shielding her with his body from the curious glance of an orderly pushing a cart. “Breathe. Focus on me.” He put a hand on her belly, feeling the rigid transformation. His touch, even here, was a anchor. But as the pain crested, a fresh, sharp ache pierced through the lower arc of her womb—a new, insistent sensation that felt less like a squeeze and more like a downward pull.
She groaned, low and guttural, her head falling forward against his chest. The pressure intensified, a physical demand that made her muscles shake with the instinct to bear down.
“Don’t push,” he whispered urgently into her hair. “Not yet. Breathe it out.”
It was agony to resist. The contraction finally passed, leaving her sweating and trembling. The pulling sensation eased, but a profound, urgent fullness remained. She felt wildly exposed, her body a public event waiting to happen.
“Room Three is just around this corner,” he said, urging her forward.
They passed a metal door labeled ‘LINEN & SUPPLIES.’ It was slightly ajar. Without a word, Sheena veered, yanking him by the hand through the doorway into the dark, cramped space. She kicked the door shut behind them, plunging them into near blackness save for a thin sliver of light from under the door.
“Sheena, what the hell—”
Her mouth found his in the dark, a desperate, silencing kiss. Her hands fumbled for the buckle of his belt. The smell of starch and plastic wrapped around them.
“I can’t walk in there like this,” she panted against his lips. “I’m split open. I’m terrified. I need to be with you one more time, not just your patient on a gurney.” Her voice broke. “Please. Before I disappear into the machinery.”
He hesitated for a heartbeat. In the dim light, she saw the conflict warp his features—the doctor screaming protocol, the man screaming assent. The man won. He turned her gently, facing her toward the shelves, his body pressing against her from behind. His hands pushed the robe from her shoulders.
The cool air raised goosebumps on her skin. Before her, neat rows of gauze packs and suture kits formed a blurry wall. His breath was hot on her neck. One hand slid around to cradle the monumental swell of her belly, the other guided himself into her from behind.
She cried out, the sound muffled by her own arm. The entry was breathtaking, a deep, filling stretch that met the residual ache perfectly. He was still slick from her, from their frantic coupling at the house, and her body accepted him with a shocking, wet ease. He moved, slow at first, then with a building, relentless rhythm that rocked her against the metal shelving. A package of bandages clattered to the floor.
Every thrust resonated through her saturated tissues, a counter-rhythm to the ominous pressure building in her pelvis. It was frenzied, illicit, a stolen moment in a cathedral of sterility. His teeth grazed her shoulder. His hand on her belly slipped lower, his fingers finding the swollen, aching nexus of her sensitivity, circling with a precise, desperate friction.
“This is insane,” he breathed, his voice ragged with each drive of his hips.
“I know,” she gasped, pushing back against him, taking him deeper. The pleasure was a bright, searing wire inside the spreading numbness of labor. It was a claim, a rebellion. Her breasts, crushed against the shelves, throbbed, and she felt the warm, familiar leak of milk tracing a path down her skin.
The next contraction began its slow, tectonic ascent. She felt it coiling deep within, a separate entity from the man moving inside her. “Edward… it’s starting again.”
“Don’t fight it,” he murmured, his rhythm never breaking. “Let it come. Let me feel it.”
It was an intimacy more profound than any before. As the contraction seized her, clamping down with brutal force, he was buried within her, held in a vice of muscular tension. He groaned, a sound of shared strain, and held perfectly still, his body a brace against hers as she rode the peak. The dual sensations—the grinding internal power of the contraction and the hard, stationary fullness of him—drove her to a precipice.
As the pain began to ebb, he started moving again, faster now, his control fraying. His fingers worked her with urgent focus. The release, when it came, was a silent, shuddering explosion that ripped through the tail end of the contraction, blurring all lines between pain, pleasure, and primal function. Her knees buckled. He held her up, his own finish hitting him in a series of sharp, helpless thrusts, a muffled cry against her back.
For a few seconds, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing and the hum of the hospital. The smell of sex was sharp in the small space.
Reality returned on cold feet. He withdrew, helping her turn, quickly rearranging her robe. He fastened his own pants with clumsy hands. In the sliver of light, she saw his expression: shattered, awed, terrified.
A firm knock on the door made them both jump.
“Dr. Perry? Your patient is registered. We have Room Three ready.” It was the nurse from the station.
“Be right there,” he called, his voice remarkably steady. He looked at Sheena, cupping her face. His thumb wiped a tear she hadn’t felt fall. “Ready?”
She wasn’t. But she nodded.
He opened the door, and the full light of the hallway was an assault. The nurse’s eyes flicked over them—Sheena’s flushed face, Edward’s disheveled hair—but her professional courtesy was impenetrable. “This way.”
The delivery room was a world of cool blues and glaring lights. A bed, already broken down, waited in the center like an altar. The atmosphere was one of calm efficiency. Another nurse was arranging instruments.
“Let’s get you up here, honey,” the first nurse said, taking Sheena’s arm.
Edward’s hand fell away. The distance was immediate, a chasm measured in feet but spanning continents. He went to a sink in the corner, scrubbing his hands with a methodical fury, his back to her.
They helped her onto the bed, strapping a monitor around her belly. Cold gel, the press of a transducer. A moment later, the rapid, rhythmic whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of two heartbeats filled the room. The sound was comforting and alienating. She was a subject now.
Edward turned, drying his hands. He approached the bed, but his eyes were on the tracing paper spooling from the machine. “Heart rates are strong. Let’s check dilation.” He sat on a stool at the foot of the bed. His touch, when it came, was expert and impersonal. She flinched.
“You’re fully dilated,” he announced, his voice clear and devoid of inflection. “Ten centimeters. Complete.” He looked up at her, and for a fleeting second, the man in the supply closet looked back. “The first twin is vertex, right there. It’s time to push when you feel the urge.”
The urge was a constant, living presence now. The next contraction rolled in, a peak of irresistible pressure that commanded her entire being. She gasped, her body bowing off the bed.
“Alright, Sheena,” Edward said, moving to her side, his hand on her shoulder. The doctor was fully present, calm, directive. “With this one, I want you to take a deep breath, tuck your chin, and bear down into the pressure. Give me a long, strong push.”
The intimacy of the instruction, after everything, was jarring. She obeyed. She grabbed behind her knees, bore down with a guttural roar, pushing into the white-hot pain. She felt a monumental, stretching burn.
“Good! Good push, I can see the head!” Edward was back at the foot of the bed, his voice charged with a purely professional excitement. “Rest now. Breathe. Wait for the next one.”
She collapsed back, panting. The nurse wiped her forehead with a cool cloth. Edward’s eyes met hers over the drape. In them, she saw the shared memory of the dark closet, the gauze packs, their joined bodies. He gave her the smallest, almost imperceptible nod.
The next contraction built. She dragged in air, and pushed again, pouring every ounce of her fear, her want, her history into the effort. The burning stretch intensified, then, suddenly, released in a hot, slippery rush.
A first sharp cry pierced the room, a staggering, miraculous sound.
“It’s a girl,” Edward said, his voice thick. He placed a squirming, vernix-smeared infant on her bare chest. The weight was shocking, perfect. Her daughter rooted instinctively against her skin, a tiny, seeking mouth.
Sheena sobbed, her hands coming up to cradle the child. She looked from her daughter’s face to Edward’s. Tears tracked clean lines through the sweat on his cheeks. He wasn’t her doctor in that moment. He was a man witnessing a miracle he’d helped create, in every sense.
“She’s beautiful,” he whispered.
But his hands were already moving, gently palpating her still-enormous belly. The monitor showed the second heartbeat, steady. “Baby B is transverse. We need to turn him.” His voice regained its clinical edge, but it was softer now. “One more mountain, Sheena. Just one more.”
Just one more.
His words hung in the bright, charged air. The warm, wriggling weight of her daughter rooted into her chest, a tiny anchor in a suddenly tilting world. But the respite was false. The profound pressure of the second twin, lying sideways, was a solid, impossible weight against her spine. She could feel the wrongness of it.
Edward’s hands never left her. One touch remained on her shoulder, a point of human contact. The other moved over the dome of her belly with a gentle, assessing pressure. His brow was furrowed, eyes on the monitor tracing the second heartbeat.
“He’s sideways,” Sheena breathed, the knowledge a cold stone in her gut.
“He is,” Edward confirmed, his voice low, only for her. “But he’s not distressed. We have time to help him find the door.” He looked up, his gaze capturing hers, holding it. “I need to turn him. It’s called an external cephalic version. It won’t be pleasant, even with medication.”
“Do it,” she said, no hesitation. Her trust in him was absolute, a crystalline thing forged in her bedroom and the supply closet.
He nodded, a sharp, professional gesture. “I’m going to give you something to relax the uterine muscle and pause the contractions. Then a local anesthetic. You’ll feel pressure, but it shouldn’t be sharp pain.” He turned to the nurse, his orders crisp. “I need terbutaline, 0.25 milligrams, subQ. And set up for a local, lidocaine, ten cc’s.”
The nurse moved swiftly. Sheena watched as Edward drew the clear liquid into a syringe, his hands steady. The prick at her thigh was a distant sting. Almost immediately, a strange, loosening wave passed through the hard, clenched heart of her body. The urgent, grinding pressure that had been a constant presence for the last hour simply… dissolved.
The silence inside her was eerie, profound. Her womb, so fiercely active, fell into a passive, waiting stillness. The sudden absence of pain was its own kind of shock.
“Okay?” Edward asked, watching her face.
“It’s quiet,” she whispered, awed and unnerved.
“Good.” He prepared the second syringe, a larger one. “Deep breath for me, Sheena.” He swiped a cold antiseptic pad low on her abdomen, then pressed the tip of the needle against her skin. “A small burn now.”
It was more than a small burn. It was a bright, intrusive sting that spread under her skin, a balloon of numbness inflating across the lower curve of her belly. She hissed, her fingers curling into the sheets. Her daughter gave a faint, protesting squirm against her suddenly tense chest.
“Almost done,” he murmured, his voice a hypnotic calm. He depressed the plunger slowly, his other hand spreading the anesthetic with gentle pressure. The sharp sting faded, replaced by a dense, wooly absence of feeling. The landscape of her own body became foreign, a distant country she could observe but not truly feel.
He set the syringe aside. “Can you feel this?” He pinched the skin over her pubic bone.
She looked down at his fingers, saw the pressure, but felt only a vague, padded pressure. “No.”
“Perfect.” He positioned himself at her side, his hands, now slick with more gel, settling on her numb belly. His touch was firm, intentional, utterly clinical. “This will be a deep, manipulating pressure. Breathe through it. Tell me if it’s too much.”
He began to work.
It was not pain. It was a profound, internal dislocation. Through the numbness, she felt the immense, solid weight of the baby shift under his skilled, relentless hands. He pushed and rotated, one hand guiding the head downward, the other coaxing the tiny buttocks up and around. She could hear his own grunt of effort, see the corded tension in his forearms.
Her body was a silent, pliant thing under his command, a stark contrast to its earlier savage assertiveness. She watched his face, etched with concentration, his lips pressed thin. He was inside her, rearranging the universe, and she was just a spectator.
“Come on, little man,” Edward muttered, a bead of sweat tracing his temple. “Just a little farther.” He increased the pressure, a deep, rolling shove that made her gasp for air despite the lack of pain. Something inside gave way, a soft, internal clunk of alignment.
Edward let out a sharp breath, his hands stilling. He looked at the ultrasound screen the nurse had wheeled over, studying the image. A slow, triumphant smile broke through his professional mask. “Got him. Vertex. Perfect.”
The emotional release was more powerful than any contraction. A sob burst from Sheena’s throat. Her daughter mewled in response.
“Don’t celebrate yet,” he said, but his eyes were bright. “The medication will wear off soon. When it does, your body is going to remember exactly what it was doing, and it’s going to want to finish. I need you ready.”
As if summoned by his words, a faint, familiar tightening whispered through the fading numbness. A ghost of a contraction, testing the waters. Then another, stronger, a muscle memory of purpose. The anesthetic was retreating, feeling rushing back into her flesh like a tide, and with it came the deep, undeniable urge.
It built swiftly, a wave rising from the now-quiet sea of her uterus. This was different. This was focused, targeted, the baby now a cannonball in the birth canal, ready to be launched.
“Edward,” she warned, her voice tight.
He was already back at the foot of the bed, his gloves fresh, his gaze focused between her thighs. “I see him. His head is right there. Wait for the peak… and push.”
The drug-induced peace shattered. Sensation returned, magnificent and brutal. She dragged in a breath, curled her body around the life on her chest, and bore down with every shattered, reawakened fiber of her being.
The burning stretch was apocalyptic, a consuming fire. She screamed, a raw, open-throated sound.
“That’s it! Push through it! He’s coming!” Edward’s voice was a roar of pure encouragement, every pretense of detachment gone.
She collapsed back, heaving. The pressure remained, unrelenting. Her daughter’s cry became a steady wail against her heartbeat.
“Again, Sheena! Now!”
She pushed. The world narrowed to a tunnel of fire and his voice at the end of it. There was a searing, tearing sensation, a slip of resistance, and then a sudden, gushing release. A second cry joined the first, louder, indignant.
“A son,” Edward announced, his voice cracking.
He placed the squirming, bluish boy on her other side. She stared, breathless, at the two slick, howling creatures on her body. The weight of them was immense, final. She looked up at Edward.
He was staring at the twins, then at her, his gloves smeared with blood and vernix, his expression one of utterly devastated wonder. The silence between contractions was gone, replaced by the symphony of their children. But a new tension gripped the room. The aftermath.
She watched his eyes, so blue, flick from her face to the placentas yet to be delivered, to the medical necessities awaiting them. The intimacy of the turn, his hands inside her life, was over. The consequences were just beginning to breathe in the corner, waiting for the room to clear.
The consequences were just beginning to breathe in the corner, waiting for the room to clear.
The medical machinery took over. Edward’s voice became a low, professional murmur, directing the nurses. She felt a distant, tugging sensation below her waist, vague and unimportant compared to the two living weights on her chest. She was floating somewhere above the antiseptic smell and the beeping monitors, tethered only by the warm, wriggling anchor points of her children.
“Placenta’s delivered.Intact. Uterus is firm.” Edward’s words were for the chart, for the nurses. She heard the rustle of gauze, the soft click of instruments being set down. “Let’s get a baseline on their vitals, but keep them skin-to-skin. Good Apgars. Eight and nine.”
She tuned him out. Her world had narrowed to small, pursed mouths and the flutter of eyelashes against wet skin. Her daughter had a dusting of reddish fuzz. Her son was darker, his features already more defined. Their cries had softened to kittenish mews as they nuzzled against her, their instincts flawless. A deep, pulling ache resonated in her breasts, a sweet, painful letting-down of milk in answer to their nearness. She felt the warm, unmistakable trickle.
A nurse appeared at her shoulder, her voice gentle. “We need to weigh and measure them, honey. Just for a minute. Then you can have them right back.”
“No,” Sheena whispered, her arms tightening instinctively. The thought of their removal was a visceral terror.
“Sheena.” Edward’s voice was closer now. He had stepped away from the surgical tray, his gloves gone. He stood by her side, his hand resting lightly on the bed rail, not touching her. His face was pale under the harsh lights, exhaustion and something like fear etching lines around his eyes. “They need their footprints on record. It’s five minutes. Let them do their job.”
His use of the word ‘job’ cracked the fragile bubble. It was a reminder of where they were, of who he was here. The man from the closet was gone, retreated behind a wall of necessary protocol. She gave a stiff, tiny nod.
With infinite care, the nurses peeled the babies from her chest. The sudden absence of their warmth was a physical chill. She watched, her hands trembling in the empty air, as they were placed on the warm scale. Edward hovered near the assessment table, his gaze fixed on the numbers, on the tiny hands and feet being inked.
Her body felt suddenly cavernous, hollowed out and sore. A different kind of shaking began deep in her core, a seismic tremble of adrenaline withdrawal and profound, bodily shock.
“Six pounds two, and five pounds eleven. Good sizes for thirty-seven weeks.” Edward announced it to the room, but his eyes flicked to hers, offering the data like a peace offering.
The nurses swaddled the babies into tight, striped bundles, leaving their faces free. They brought them back, but not to her chest. They placed one in the crook of each of her arms, the tiny bundles resting on the sheets beside her. It wasn’t the same. The separation, however brief, had been a primer.
“We’ll give you some time,” the lead nurse said, her smile warm but impersonal. “Dr. Perry will stitch the minor tear. You did amazing.” She and the other nurse wheeled the instrument table away, discarded gloves whispering into the bin. The door swished shut behind them.
The silence they left was thick, humming with everything unsaid. Edward moved the stool to the foot of the bed again. She heard the snap of fresh gloves, the quiet click of a suture kit opening.
“This will be a few stitches,” he said, his voice low. He didn’t look at her face. His focus was between her legs, on the damage. “Local’s still good from before. You shouldn’t feel much.”
She didn’t feel the needle. She felt the tension in the room draw tight as a wire. The only sounds were his controlled breathing and the soft, snuffling sounds from the bundles in her arms.
“They’re beautiful, Sheena,” he said finally, the words strained, as he tied off a suture.
“What happens now?” Her own voice sounded strange to her, worn thin.
His hands stilled for a second. “Now?You recover. You feed your babies. You learn how to be a mother to two.”
“You know what I’m asking.”
He let out a long, slow breath. He finished the last stitch, the snip of the scissors startlingly loud. He peeled off the gloves, the snap of latex breaking the stillness. He finally looked up at her, and the raw vulnerability in his gaze was almost too much to bear. He looked wrecked.
“I don’t know,” he admitted, the honesty brutal. “The hospital board has policies. So does the medical licensing board. What I did… crossing that line with a patient in active labor…” He ran a hand through his hair, leaving it disheveled. “I could lose everything. My practice. My license.”
She’d known it, intellectually. Hearing him say it made the danger concrete, a cold stone in her gut. “So this is it? The door closes, and you walk away to protect your career?”
“It’s not just a career!” The words burst from him, sharp with a frustration he immediately tried to leash. He stood up, turning his back to her, bracing his hands on the now-clean instrument cart. His shoulders were tight. “It’s my life. It’s who I am. And it’s… it’s how I provide care for hundreds of women. Would you have me throw that away?”
“No.” The answer was immediate, and it cost her. It felt like tearing a part of her own heart out. “Of course not.”
He turned around. His blue eyes were bright with an agonized conflict. “But what I felt with you… in your house, in that goddamn closet…” He shook his head, as if to clear it. “That wasn’t professional. That wasn’t just professional. It was real. And it happened. I can’t un-happen it.”
Her son began to fuss, a tiny, hiccupping cry. Automatically, she shifted the bundle, but her arms felt clumsy. The nurse had swaddled them tightly, and she couldn’t free her hand to guide him without letting go of her daughter. A flicker of panic rose—she couldn’t comfort them both, not like this.
Edward saw it. Without a word, he stepped forward. He didn’t ask. He simply reached down and carefully gathered her swaddled daughter into his own arms. He held the tiny bundle against the crisp white of his scrubs with an innate, surprising gentleness, one hand cradling the head. The baby’s cries subsided into a soft murmur.
She looked from her son in her left arm to her daughter in his. The sight severed something inside her. This was the impossible core of it: the doctor, the man, holding the child whose entry into the world he had overseen after crossing every conceivable boundary. The two halves of him, irrevocably joined in that tiny, sleeping face.
This was the consequence, made flesh. It wasn’t in a disciplinary hearing. It was here, in the quiet room, in the way he instinctively swayed on his feet, soothing her child.
“What do you want, Edward?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
He looked down at the baby in his arms, then at her, his expression utterly open, defenseless. “I want to come back.Tonight. After my shift. Not as your doctor.”
She held his gaze, the weight of her son in one arm, the sight of her daughter in his the other. The duality was her new reality. Mother of two. A woman who had shared one kind of intensity with this man and was facing another. She couldn’t hold one without the other. The love, the risk, the beauty, the potential ruin—they were a matched set now.
SHE HOLDS BOTH.