Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 80555 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80555 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
“Intuition is a funny thing,” I mused, thinking how mine kept failing me where Magnus was concerned. I simply wanted a sign to tell me which direction we were supposed to head from this fork in the road.
“I also have years of experience.” Marissa put her hands on her hips, tone pointed.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean anything bad by the comment.” Trying to recover, I spoke faster. “I get that professional intuition too. Sometimes, you just know a call is going to go sideways. Or the opposite, where the patient is freaking out, but you can sense the situation isn’t as dire.”
“Exactly.” Dropping her arms, Marissa shifted to a less bristly tone. “And intuition can change as something progresses. Yesterday, I was thinking false alarm and another week or so before we meet this baby. Now, I’m thinking the next twenty-four hours or so. The thing about intuition is you have to be open to evolving and also to being wrong.”
Oh. Well, there was an interesting wrinkle. Last spring, my intuition said that Magnus was a player, but I had indeed been wrong. What else might I be wrong about?
“Well said.” My voice came out weak as the wheels in my brain continued to spin in the snow of my present dilemma. Time for a distraction. “Can I help with the pool?”
“Absolutely.” Marissa smiled like a woman who knew better than to turn down help. “Maren had planned on blowing up the tub in the living room rather than trying to fit it in the basement, but with your permission, I’d like to consider using the primary where I was resting earlier. If we move the bed to one side, there will be enough room, and it will give Maren more privacy.”
“More privacy is a good idea.” I glanced over at the stairs. It wouldn’t be too many more hours until Wren and the rest of the house were awake. Maren might want a home birth, but she didn’t need an unintended audience.
I followed Marissa back to my bedroom, where we worked together to move the nightstands and push the bed under the bank of windows on the far wall.
“Ow.” Straightening, Marissa rubbed her lower back. “That thing is a beast.”
“You okay? What hurts?” I asked, not wanting to sound too concerned but slipping into paramedic mode anyway. “I’ve never had the chance to ask how you healed from the accident.”
“The accident was mainly my leg, along with the ruptured spleen. This is just my back getting older.” She gave a self-conscious shrug.
“I feel that. Getting older sucks. And that was quite the ordeal you had in the spring.”
“Yeah, I finally retired the cane, but some days are better than others.” Marissa tore open a package for a waterproof tarp and spread it over the carpet with my help. “I’m back to work, though, and that helps tremendously. Maren was one of my first clients when I started taking on births again and being here for my clients has been good motivation for the continued physical therapy.”
“Loving your work always helps,” I agreed, trying to smooth over my earlier misstep. “Did you always want to be a midwife?”
“Yes and no. Midwifery is a family tradition, and when I was younger, I loved going along to help my mother or my grandmother. But I dabbled in motocross as a teen, went to college, discovered the market for poets is rather slim, and spent a few years working for a nonprofit. Found my way back to birthwork as my mother slowed her practice.”
“Life has a way of leading us back where we started.”
“Or to entirely new destinations,” Marissa countered, sounding not unlike Magnus. And I supposed that was fair. I had a harder time rolling with life’s punches and shifting direction than either of them seemed to. Marissa dragged over the box for the birthing tub, which we had fetched earlier from her car. “How about you? Were you always going to be a paramedic?”
“My original plan out of high school was medicine, actually.” I didn’t feel like getting into the whole thing with defying my parents and the fire, but I shared that much. “I liked the idea of being a pediatrician.”
“You would have been good at that.” She worked efficiently, unrolling the soft plastic tub.
“That’s what Montgomery was always saying.” I quirked my lips at the memory. As earlier, guilt crept up my back. I didn’t like having less than kind thoughts about Montgomery, but as a doctor, he’d valued his profession highly. “He tried to get me to go back to school back when I was younger and we were first dating. But I like first responder work. I like the pace, and the hours have worked for raising the kids. I think I’m good at it too.”
“I’ve seen you working. You’re very good at your job,” Marissa allowed as she set up the air pump to inflate the tub. “And you’re a good dad.”