Shots
JASMINE
“Do you seriously want to come to the pediatrician’s office?” I asked Jasper. “You know what happened last time.”
“I prom
ise not to growl at any nurses,” he said. “It can’t get worse.”
I shook my head. “I’m glad that our pediatrician will even agree to keep looking after our boys,” I replied. “Blue can come, but you need to behave yourself. No growling at any nurses, even if they make your sons cry.”
I looked at our little angels, fast asleep. I loved every single inch of them, from their downy heads to their tiny toes. They had my dark hair and the blue eyes that their fathers had. Their skin looked beautifully brown.
“Will there be more shots today?” Jasper asked.
“Babies get a lot of shots, so you’re going to have to man up,” I retorted. “Blue can hold one and you can hold the other. Maybe that’ll help you control yourself.”
It tore my heart out when our little ones cried as the nurses stuck needles inside of them, but I considered the prospect of them dying from a preventable disease far worse than bearing the sound of their cries as they were stabbed with needles. Blue and Jasper tried to tell me that werewolf cubs didn’t get sick, but my sons were half human. I didn’t want to take any chances.
“I’ll get them in the car,” Blue said, picking up our boys. He kissed the top of one’s head while deftly maneuvering the other into the upper crook of his arm so he could still open the door. The babies cooed at him, making little sounds that meant that they were happy and content. It killed me to cause them any harm, but the harm of not taking them to the doctor exceeded the horrible minutes when they cried their lungs out. Blue had them strapped into their carseats in half the time it would’ve taken me. Werewolf speed was something I’d had to figure out, but once I got used to it, I appreciated how much easier it made everything.
“You need to buckle up, too, little one.” Blue came to hug me and kissed the top of my head.
I sat in the passenger seat while Blue sat in the middle with the babies. Jasper drove us a few miles to the pediatrician’s office. Inside were a bunch of small kids who smelled of urine and coughed. I clutched my baby carrier a little tighter. Taking them to the pediatrician meant exposing them to sick children. What if my kids got sick?
“Please take a seat,” the receptionist told Blue, who’d checked our sons in. “A nurse will be with you shortly.”
We took a seat in the corner, as far as I could get from the coughing children. I watched as one sneezed all over her mother’s lap. Maybe we shouldn’t have gone to the pediatrician.
Blue was reading a book to the son he had, while I peered into my sleeping son’s face and wondered how much illness I was currently exposing him to. Maybe I never should have left the house.
“Chill,” Jasper whispered so quietly I could barely hear him. “It’ll work out.”
“Wolfe twins,” the nurse called. I got to my feet, still carrying my baby. The three adults carried the kids into the backroom, where they were weighed. I answered questions about their eating and sleeping habits, feeling my anxiety mount by the second. If I could’ve cut and run, I would have. Rationally, I knew that I needed to be there. Emotionally, I needed to get my kids away from anything that would ever hurt them.
“Let’s go into Exam Room Three,” the nurse said after she’d done all the preliminary work on my kids.
“You’re okay,” Blue said. “Breathe deeply and this’ll all be over soon.”
It was dumb of me to get so worked up about going to the pediatrician, but here I was, completely freaking out over my kids and their health.
The doctor didn’t take long once we were in the exam room. She took a glance at the folder that the nurse had left at the door. I guessed that this pediatrician didn’t believe in digitizing things.
“Hello there,” she said. “You’re the Wolfes, I presume?”
“Yes,” Jasper said smoothly. “I’m Jasper, and this is Jasmine. That’s Blue.”
She hadn’t commented on the fact that there were three parents during previous visits, even though I could see the questions in her eyes about three people with the same last name. She talked about their habits and Blue and Jasper answered her. My fists were clenched as I wished that I could go anywhere besides the doctor’s office. I could hear a crying baby and needed to go to it. In a few minutes, my own babies would be crying.
“Well, your sons seem healthy enough. I’ll sign off and have a nurse come in so she can administer their shots. Good day.”
“Bye,” I said with my husbands. Almost as soon as the doctor left, a nurse was coming in with a giant number of needles.
“How many vaccines do they need?” I asked.
“Seven.”
I could barely breathe. Adults didn’t get that many shots at once. I wanted to protest, but all I could do was watch her stick needles into my sons as my babies burst into tears. I almost started crying as their faces turned a little bit red with how much they were crying. I was nearly hyperventilating.