The producer was poised to say no—I could see it—until he got a look at me. “Adrianne Montoya! Oh, of course! You just go right on. Bryant will be happy to take you wherever you need to go.”
“Thank you!”
We all clambered into the back of the limo. “Mount Sinai, please,” Foster said to the driver. The limo inched its way through the premiere traffic, and I tried not to cry when another contraction seized my muscles.
Ethan rubbed at my back, murmuring soft words of encouragement to me, while Foster called the hospital to let them know we were on our way. We’d pre-registered and had the staff sign a hefty NDA so that all three of my men could be in the room while I delivered.
The limo got us to Mt. Sinai a short while later, and two nurses met us in the ambulance bay with a wheelchair. “I can walk perfectly fine,” I started to say, but a contraction, worse than all the others so far, hit, and I let Foster and Callan maneuver me into the chair.
The nurse didn’t take us through the ER, but instead, we went down a private hallway and up an elevator that was off the beaten path to the labor and delivery floor. “Everything’s been made ready for you, Ms. Montoya,” she said soothingly. “Just as you requested, you will have total privacy for you and your... family.”
While I heard the judgment in her voice, I chose to keep composed. “Thank you.”
She wheeled me into a large birthing suite and helped me onto the bed. My men had to stay back as she hooked me to a blood pressure cuff and a baby monitor that looked at the baby’s heart rate as I contracted. “We’ll be back in to check to see if you’re dilated, and then we can talk about pain management options.” Then, she swept out of the room, leaving us alone.
“Are you okay?” Callan asked.
“I'm fine,” I said, but a contraction seized my hamstring, and I wailed in pain. Callan's eyes grew wide. Ethan planted himself by the side of the bed and took my hand.
“Foster, take Cal and find some ice chips,” Ethan barked.
The two jumped to do just that, needing to be helpful. In moments of stress, whenever Ethan took charge, it actually helped everyone to focus because they knew he had it covered. Ethan brought my hand up to his lips and kissed my knuckles. “You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “I look and sound like a beached whale.”
Ethan shook his head. “Not at all, Princess. You’re gorgeous.”
Foster and Callan came back with a cup heaped with ice and a different nurse. “Do you want the gentlemen to step into the hall while I check your cervix?” she asked.
There was absolutely no way that was going to happen. All three of them had been as high-strung as I’d ever seen them in the last few weeks. They were bound and determined to see me through this delivery every step of the way.
“They can stay,” I said.
This nurse knew to keep her face a little more neutral. She simply nodded. “Go ahead and bring your knees up, and then let them fall open with your feet together for me, okay?” It was a position I had grown much accustomed to at the OB’s office, and I copied it now, unabashed that I was on display for everyone to see. The nurse very gently checked me, and I did my best not to look so wholly uncomfortable. It wasn’t necessarily a painful sensation, but it wasn’t pleasant... and I didn’t want to worry my men. The nurse was smiling, though.
“You’re around six centimeters already,” she said. “It won’t be too long now. How are we feeling about an epidural?”
We all nodded our heads. “I would like one, yes.”
“Please,” Callan added, and if I weren’t in pain, I would have giggled. Callan was normally so laidback. He was my jokester, the one to make me laugh when I didn’t want to, and to see him so frazzled was almost funny.
The nurse promised that they would get the anesthesiologist to come by as soon as possible. Foster parked himself on the opposite side of my bed and held up a spoonful of ice chips. I took the bite and let the ice melt on my tongue. It was a soothing feeling. “Thank you for getting these,” I said.
Callan gave me a shaky smile, but he began to pace and couldn’t seem to stop.Poor love, I thought. “He doesn’t like seeing you in pain,” Foster said. “None of us do.”
“Once I get the epidural, I’ll be fine.” Another contraction gripped me, and I squeezed down on Ethan’s hand. Good man that he was, he barely reacted, although I could feel the bones of his hand squeezing together. “Sorry,” I mumbled to him once the contraction eased.
“I’m made of sturdy stuff,” he said with a little wink. “I’ll be just fine.”
I couldn’t tell whether he was just being a man about things or not, but I appreciated his resolve to take as much of my pain as he could. Ethan may have started out wary about the whole pregnancy, but I had seen a shift in him. He was still scared about fatherhood—I didn’t think that was likely to go away anytime soon—but he wasn’t backing down from it, either.
I’d asked whether they wanted a paternity test to know which of the men was the “biological” father, but they’d all waved that off as unimportant. They would all be this child’s—and any other children we might happen to have—fathers. To be loved equally and unconditionally by all. I’d fallen in love with them all a little more that day.
Callan paced for the twenty minutes it took the anesthesiologist to make his way to my room. Foster fed me ice chips when I wanted them, and Ethan took the brunt of the hand-holding during contractions. “Okay, I’m going to need two of you to go out into the hallway,” the anesthesiologist, an older man with the tag that readDr. Greene, announced as he walked into the room. “One of you can stay to hold her hands, but I can’t have you all passing out on me.”
“Passing out?” Ethan all but rolled his eyes. “Sir, we were all Navy SEALs at one point in our lives. I promise you that we can handle just about anything.”
Dr. Greene sighed. “I’m about to put a nearly five-inch long, flexible needle into this woman’s spine.” I must have jumped because he looked at me and smiled. He suddenly looked like a kind grandfather from a television show. “You are a rockstar. You’ve been dealing with a pain that no man could withstand, understand? This needle is going to feel like nothing compared to those contractions.” He turned back, stern once more, to Callan, Foster, and Ethan. “I’ve seen the biggest and baddest of men throw up all over my floor while I’ve administered an epidural, and I won’t have it happen now. Figure out who stays and who goes, gentlemen.”