Alpha Billionaire Series

MARK

I couldn't believe I was back in Chicago. I didn't like the idea that Brooke was up here with someone else's baby. Thinking about it raised my ire and boiled my blood. That could have been our child had she simply been honest with me from the beginning. Clearly, that hadn't been her agenda back then.

I was too old for this shit. I needed to get over my obsession with her. I was behaving like a love lost teen, and not an adult. didn't need to be worried about seeing her, and if I did, so what? It wasn't as if I would fall to my knees and beg forgiveness for some situation, I still wasn't clear on what had happened.

I had to remind myself that Brooke worked in a hospital, and I was not going to see her again. I would be at the conference hotel the entire time. The odds of me running into her were slim to none.

I climbed out of the cab and wheeled my bags up to the service counter.Content © NôvelDrama.Org 2024.

“Are you checking in with us today?” The bright young woman behind the counter smiled at me.

“Yes, I have reservations, Dr. Mark Bryant.”

“I see you're here for the obstetrics conference. Welcome.”

Her fingers made a rapid click-clack over the computer keyboard as she looked up my information.

I could almost hear the whir of the printer as it printed out a few pages. She placed one of the pages in front of me with a pen.

“I need your signature here, please. Will you be paying with the credit card we have on file?”

I nodded with a grunt.

As signed and placed the pen down, before she could hand me my card key, a frazzled-looking co-worker— I assumed from the matching uniform— crashed into the desk next to me.

“Call 9II. She's having the baby right now.”

“Are you kidding me, Jason?" The clerk looked shocked.

“Yeah, her water broke and everything. We're in the ballroom. Hurry. I don’t know what to do."

I turned to the frantic young man. “I'm an obstetrician. You said you have a pregnant woman? I can help.”

“Yeah. This way."

I turned to the young lady at the counter. “Call an ambulance, explain that there is an obstetrician on site. However, we would still need an emergency crew. Can you hold my bag back here?”

I lifted my bag onto the counter.

“Absolutely”

As she reached forward for my bag. I turned and ran after the young man as he crashed through double doors into a ballroom. Everything was in the middle of being set up for our conference meeting with chairs lined up facing a stage with a podium and a large screen in the background. Carts of stacked chairs were being ignored as a few people surrounded a heavily pregnant woman groaning and panting in one of the chairs.

She had dark hair, but I didn't see her face until I knelt down in front of her.

“My name is Dr. Mark Bry-""

Brooke's eyes flashed up at me. “Oh God, Doctor Mark. Why are you here?” she panted between words.

“What the hell's going on? Brooke?” I asked.

She groaned and folded over herself as a contraction hit. “What does it look like? I'm having a baby!”

“Okay,” I said as calmly as I could manage. I knew I was the last person she expected to see. “I need you to not push. Can you do that Brooke? Don’t push.”

“Don't tell me what to do, Mark," she snapped at me.

Yeah, this was going to be easy. “I'm here to help deliver your baby and you're early. I'm going to tell you what to do." “What do you know? I'm not early. Ah"

I put my hand on her belly. It was hard as her muscles bared down with another contraction.

“You shouldn't be this far along.” The last time I saw her, she couldn't have been more than three months along.

“I'm going to have to take a look. Are you willing to let me do that? Can somebody get us some blankets here?” I asked. “And maybe some pillows. We need to get her comfortable,” I shouted commands at everyone.

“Brooke, we need to get you off this chair. I want to get you laying on the floor because I don't want you falling."

She grunted and tried to get to her feet.

Somebody came running in with an armful of blankets. “I've got some blankets over here.”

I directed them to spread the blankets out on the floor in front of her. I helped ease her down to the ground.

“I gotcha. Let's roll you onto your back” I guided her back and propped some pillows behind her. “There you go. Knees up” I turned my attention to the person with the blankets. “Could I have another blanket?” They handed me a blanket and I covered her from the waist down.

I shrugged out of my jacket and rolled up my sleeves.

“I need some hand sanitizer!” I yelled. I hadn't had a chance to wash my hands since the young man crashed into the counter. Medical gloves would have been ideal, but clean hands were the best I would be able to manage at the moment. I didn't think Brooke had time for me to get up and find a restroom to get washed up in.

“Brooke, we have to take your pants off."

“Fine, it's not like it's not anything you've seen before.”

Despite her obvious animosity, I had to chuckle. The last time I had done this she had been as eager to get out of her clothe as I had been to get her out of them. Things had definitely changed.

I did a quick exam. She was dilated and she was crowning. “We've got full dilation and you've got a head crowning. So, I'l tel you when it's time to push.”

I waved over the same young man who had brought me to the ballroom. “What's your name?” I asked.

“Jason,” he told me.

“Okay Jason, you're going to be Brooke's labor assistant. I need you to hold her leg up here. When I tell Brooke to push, you are going to keep her leg braced so she can push against it. I need you to remind her to breathe. Got it?"

He looked completely terrified, pale, and panicked with beads of sweat on his upper lip, but he nodded.

“Brooke, when I tell you to push, I need you to grab your knees and really push. The baby is almost here.”

I placed my hand on her so I could gauge when her next contraction was.

“Push now.” I directed.

She screamed as she curled up over her belly and pushed. I checked her progress. Everything looked good. With a gasp, she released her knees and fell back.

“I can't. I can't. I can't” Her head fell back as she panted.

“You've got this. You're doing really well. I need you to push again"

Brooke screamed in agony again. She curled up as instructed.

It was hard to see her in this much pain, sweat streamed down her face. Hair plastered to her skin. Jason lifted his hand and brushed the hair away from her face. I shot a glare at him. Who was he to her? I closed my eyes and shook off the sudden and uncalled-for jealousy. He was her co-worker; he was helping her with this delivery. The rest was none of my business. “You're doing good, you're doing good,” I kept saying. “Do you want somebody to call the father?”

She was in the middle of pushing and she managed to open her eyes and glare at me with the fury of a thousand suns.

She laid back with a sob. I checked her progress, and she was doing well but she was in a lot of pain.

“Do you want somebody to call the father?” I repeated myself.

“There is no father! she panted.

“Brooke. You didn’t get this way from immaculate conception.”

She gritted her teeth and bore down on another contraction and when it was over, she panted hard. “I didn't get this way with any help from you,” she bit out.

She was right, I wasn't the one who got her here. But I was here now, she would have to deal with that.

She lay back, exhausted, panting hard.

“On this next contraction, I want you to try to breathe through it instead of bearing down.”

“What do you mean, breathe through it? Isn't that what I've been doing?”

“You haven't attended any birth coaching classes, have you?"

“What the hell is a birth coaching class?"

“You mean like when they tell you to breathe like this?” Jason asked and then demonstrated fast breathing through puckere: lips. “Like they always do on Tv?"

I nodded. “Yeah, like that. Only not so fast”

I had my hand back on her belly. I felt the muscles harden. “Brooke, look at me, breathe” I let out a long slow breath. I exaggerated my motions, inhaling, and then blowing another breath out.

She kept her eyes locked with mine as she mimicked my breathing.

“Good, just like that”

She lay back and looked up. This was hard work, and she was doing an excellent job.

“Is that emergency crew here yet?" I asked.

The staff members I looked at just stood there and shook their heads. They probably didn’t know what to do in an emergency situation. I needed answers.

“Well go find out.” I barked. I returned my attention to Brooke. “Are you ready to do this again? This time, you need to really push’