I interrupted her.

“No, call Dr. Mead. There should be a note in my chart. My husband refuses to have anyone but Dr. Mead take care of me. Trust me, he won’t let Dr. Shepherd touch me if you call her,” I explained quickly, excited to see the red and blue sign that denoted the emergency entrance of the emergency room up ahead.

I turned into the lot and parked before the next pain hit.

“I’ll try, but that’s not protocol. He won’t even answer if it’s not an emergency…”

I hung up on her.

“Fuck it,” I panted, pulling up Dr. Mead in my contacts and pressing dial.

“This is Dr. Mead,” he answered three rings later.

“This is Nikki Pena Perez. I’ve gone into labor. I’m at the ER right now,” I told him quickly.

“I’ll be right there. Tell the doctors I’ll be there in twenty minutes or less,” he said quickly.

“10-4,” I agreed and hung up my own phone.

I grabbed my purse and bailed out of my car before I tried calling Michael again.

Luckily, this time, he answered. “Yeah?”

He was breathless.

“I’m in labor,” I panted, hoofing it all the way to the ER doors before another pain nearly took my feet out from under me.

“Where are you?” He asked sharply.

“The ER,” I told him, happy that my contraction had left me, but unhappy because another one was right on its heels, which meant that I was getting closer to delivery. “I’m less than a minute apart.”

Something which I proved moments later when another contraction slammed into me.

This time, I really did have to go to my knees because I was sure if I didn’t, I would fall on my face.

“Ma’am, are you alright?” A woman’s voice called from the doorway.

I looked up into Lennox’s familiar eyes.

“No, I’m pretty sure I’m having this baby, and my asshole isn’t here yet,” I told her.

Then a commotion from the ER’s entrance startled us both enough that we looked up only to see Michael running out with a bandage covering his eye.

“Michael!” I screamed, panicked now that my eyes caught sight of all the blood staining his shirt.

Michael dropped down to his knees beside me, gathering me into his strong arms as he said, “I’m okay.”

“Isn’t that something I should be saying to you?” I asked, raising my hand to look at the wound being covered by the bandage.

He grimaced and helped me stand by putting both arms underneath mine.

“Suspect knocked me over the head with a wrench,” he explained. “Now tell me about you.”

I panted as another pain hit me and said, “I’m having your baby.”

He laughed.

“Generally, that’s what labor usually indicates,” he teased as he helped me to a wheelchair that Lennox pushed out.

“You have the entire emergency room in an uproar, little lady,” Lennox crowed as she held the chair as I sat.

“Why?” I asked with worry.

What had I done to warrant such a reaction?

“Michael here has everyone scared as hell of him. Something he proved weeks ago when he told the charge nurse that, under no circumstance, was anyone but his parents, him, Dr. Mead or me to touch you when you go into labor without him being in the room. Not to mention he threatened them,” Lennox laughed. “So guess who your personal helper will be until Dr. Mead arrives!”

I shot my husband a look, but he shrugged as if he could care less what everyone thought of him.

“Please, ignore him. He won’t bother anybody,” I shook my head. “Plus, we’re heading up to Labor and Delivery anyway. So we’ll never even see anybody in the emergency room. How’d you get to leave the ER for this?”

“Thank God,” Lennox said as she walked with me to the elevators. “I got to help because your husband decided to have a talk with my boss. She agreed, so here I am!”

I just shook my head and closed my eyes as another pain washed over me.

“Another one?” Michael asked, looking down at his watch.

I nodded, too breathless to speak. “Yeah.”

“A minute and a half apart. Epidural or no epidural?” He asked.

I closed my eyes and tried to block out the pain…but I couldn’t.

Which answered the question he asked rather quickly.

We’d been fighting over the epidural or no epidural question for months now, and I’d told him that I’d have to wait and see.

He’d insisted on a birth plan, and I’d shook my head, telling him that babies did what they wanted to. There was no rhyme or reason. No woman’s pregnancy was the same, and I couldn’t base a birth that hadn’t happened yet on a hunch.

Now, I was sure.

“Epidural,” I insisted through gritted teeth.

I felt like my uterus was trying to force its way out of my vagina.

God, it hurt.

And I was sure that Michael was only getting one kid, because this motherfuckin’ hurt.

“One kid, Michael. You better enjoy this one,” I informed him.

He smiled. “We’ll see.”

“No, we won’t. We really won’t. I’ll never be able to forget how this feels. It’s like razor blades tearing through my uterus, and a pair of needle nose pliers trying to rip the spasming organ out through my cun…” Michael slapped his hand over my mouth as the elevator doors opened.

I’d been screaming, and apparently he didn’t want me to scream ‘cunt’ in general population.

Lennox had no problem laughing her ass off, consequently forgetting she was supposed to be pushing my wheelchair.

Michael, exasperated, took over the job and pushed me to the nurse’s station where they immediately gave us a room.

“What? Did you threaten them, too?” I asked with a narrowed eyed look over my shoulder.

Michael smiled. “You’ll never know.”

I rolled my eyes.

The man was incorrigible, and he couldn’t help himself sometimes.

“Are you going to let any of the nurses take care of me?” I asked dryly. “You’re horrible.”

Michael helped me into the bed once he’d locked the wheelchair’s wheels, and I sighed in relief to have my feet up.

“Yeah, as a matter of fact, he is!” Hannah crowed as she came into the room.

I rolled my eyes. “You know, it’s really, really weird to have your sister in law’s hands up your cooch.”

Hannah smiled. “We’re all adults here. If you can handle it, I can handle it.”

I just shook my head. “I haven’t seen you on this floor in a while. How perfect that you’re on shift today,” I said dryly.

Hannah grinned. “In reality, I wasn’t supposed to be on this floor today. But I’m scheduled on this floor for the time being until you’re back from maternity leave.”

She gave me a pointed look that said she’d known where I was today. Something I’d told her but not my husband.

I blushed.

I was supposed to be on maternity leave.

But when Jasmine had begged me to continue seeing her once I’d graduated school, I could do nothing less.

Even if it meant I had to deliver her kid while I was in labor with my own.

Something Michael hadn’t realized I’d done yet, since I’d left while he was at work and conveniently forgot to tell him.

“That’s cool,” I said, changing the subject.

“Alright, Hannah, check her out so we can see where we’re at,” Michael ordered.

Hannah shot him a disproving look. “I know how to do my job, boyo.”

His brows rose. “You’ve been talking to Peek.”

Hannah grinned and lifted up her shirt to reveal her belly to us.

She’d gotten a tattoo of Reggie’s name on her lower hipbone in bold, beautiful scripted letters.

“Wow, that’s awesome,” Lennox and I parroted at the same time.

Michael smiled. “It hurt, didn’t it. I told you not to go there with your first tattoo.”

Hannah shrugged. “Hurt like a motherfucker. But Peek gave me a shot of Jack Daniel’s to tide me over. And kept them coming until it was done. When I left I could barely stand. Had to call a cab to take me home.”

I gasped as another contraction tore through me, bringing everyone’s attention back to me.