Free It's Complicated by Julia Kent Page A

marginal, like a moon orbiting them.
    Laura’s face was tired, and Josie knew that her reserves were running low already. This was like mile ten of a marathon, though. It was one thing to be this tired at mile twenty, but this early? It didn’t bode well for what was coming. Love could be enough for a hell of a lot of things, and if love were the measure of how Laura would fare tonight, she’d be fine. Biology, though, could overpower love when it came to birth.
    Josie found herself wishing with all her heart that biology could be swayed by all the love the three of them were sending to Laura and the baby, hoping more than anything that maybe love could conquer all.

    Alex happened to be at the nurse’s desk, charting away, documenting the case where he’d sniped The Claw, taking away his ability to perform a C-section simply by reading the fetal monitor strip with the consultation of a nurse with thirty years of experience under her belt. The need to rush in had been thwarted, and with a little help from some augmentation drugs, the mom had crowned, and the baby had come out nice and slick, like a little seal pouring forth into the world, big, wide eyes open. The baby was safe in the NICU now, being monitored; if Alex had any sense of predicting the future, he’d say that the baby would be fine in about forty-eight hours. Probably just some junk in its lungs causing minor respiratory issues.
    So many of his med school colleagues had gone into obstetrics with a giant burden of fear yoked around their necks. Fear that a baby would be harmed, fear that a mother would crash, fear that a baby would be injured or die. Fear seemed to drive them and from the outside looking in, and they allowed themselves to make so many consequential decisions based on something that hadn’t happened yet.
    Alex made his decisions on data and, he admitted, on hunches—but when he listened to his gut there wasn’t a third partner there screaming like a giant fire alarm that went on and on forever, and no flame ever appeared. He ruled over his psyche with a steady, reasonable mind that applied a calculus of optimism. For him, the baseline was of course everything will be fine and it was only data that shook that deep core of faith that would make him act.
    When the alarm in Laura’s room went off, he leapt and shot down the hall, barely hearing the clattering of the chart that he’d just been writing in as it slipped down off the counter and banged against a chair. His feet pounded into the linoleum floor as he pushed his body as hard as possible—because that code meant that something was wrong and with a patient with her profile he could walk into damn near anything .
    The flames of fear licked at his ankles right now; he had the briefest of appreciations for what his med school comrades had gone through. Fighting it back as his heart pounded in his chest, as his arms pumped him forward, climbing up four flights of stairs as fast as possible with no time for the elevator, all he could think was get to the baby, get to the baby, get to the baby, get to the baby. It became a mantra, a chant, in his head as his brow began to pound, as his hamstrings began to scream and he burst through the doors just as Sherri came down the hall, wide-eyed and pointing.
    Sherri, Alex, a nurse, and two hospital staff he couldn’t identify slammed through the door to Laura’s room. Sherri plowed through the suite to the bathroom door, finding it locked. His head swinging wildly, eyes darting around the room, Alex saw Josie resting in a chair, her head snapping up as the group crashed into the room.
    “Where is she?”
    “What? What? What?” Josie said, sitting up, her eyes alarmed. “What are you talking about?”
    And then, slam! The bathroom door unlocked. Alex charged in right behind Sherri, who was standing at a dead halt, staring at the scene that unfolded before them all.
    A man’s hairy asshole pointed squarely at the door, nearly at waist level