Free Mother Puncher by Gina Ranalli Page B

coffee, swore again, then answered, already knowing it was Sandy. “Hey, Sandy. What’s up?”
    “She’s getting close,” the nurse told him. “Where are you?”
    “Needed coffee.”
    “Oh. Well, you’d better get back up here, just it case the damn thing falls out. Turns out this woman is on her fifth kid.”
    “Okie dokie. On the way.” He pushed the END button and stood up. “Duty calls,” he told Tea and walked away.
    He was unsurprised when she followed him. He was beginning to feel like a rambunctious little shit of a puppy had claimed him as her person.
    “Baby on the way?” she asked.
    “What else?”
    “How should I know? Maybe a sick kid got out of line and they’re calling you to come beat him up.”
    Ed let the comment slide. He was quickly learning to ignore this wise-ass.
    “You’re kind of a dick, you know,” she said. “It’s no wonder they hired you as a Mother Puncher.”
    “Yeah. No wonder.”
    She trailed him into the elevator, her too-big shoes clopping noisily. He wondered what she looked like under that ridiculous Hardy suit, if she had a good body…if she was pregnant. Then he gave himself a mental punch in the head for even wondering about her figure. What was wrong with him? She was half his age.
    Sandy was waiting for him outside the birthing room. She gave Tea a double-take, then returned her attention to Ed. “Might have been a false alarm. Her contractions have apparently stopped.”
    Ed nodded, sipped his coffee and hoped Sandy didn’t notice the stain at his crotch, but of course, she probably did. Unlike Tea, Ed assumed she was too polite to mention it.
    “I’ll be in the waiting area,” he told Sandy and started off with the new puppy at his side.
     He’d barely gone ten steps when the woman in the birthing room screamed. Ed spun on his heels but Sandy was already inside, working whatever magic she worked with these women.
    “Guess maybe I’ll wait here instead,” he said, more to himself than to Tea.
    There was a loud thud and another scream. Sandy’s scream.
    Ed never even knew he’d dropped his coffee. He ran to the room, shoved open the door, saw Sandy on the floor and started to rush towards her. Before he could even fully register what was happening, his head and his feet switched positions and then he was on his back, staring at the ceiling, a large knot already forming on the back of his skull.
    “What the…Sandy!” He struggled to sit up, slipped back to the floor again. The intense pain in his head made him nauseous and his confusion grew, his heart leaping in his ribcage.
    Instead of sitting up, he decided just to turn his head and see what he could see. But his hair felt weird and he had a momentary instant of panic, thinking he’d cracked his head open and was oozing brains all over the linoleum. But then he realized his hands felt gooey too.
    The first thing that came into his head was eggs. Someone had dropped an egg on the floor. He held his hand up in front of his face and saw that it was covered in a thick blue slime. Frowning, he sniffed it.
    It smelled like dish soap.
    To his left, Sandy groaned, sitting up slowly, staring down at the blue goo all over her peach-colored scrubs.
    Up in the bed, the pregnant woman began to laugh.

 
    16
     
    Tea made her way gingerly into the room and knelt down beside him. “You okay, Ed?” She had to ask the question rather loudly to be heard over the maniacal laughter of the patient.
    “Yeah,” he said. “Sick to my stomach though.”
    “I’m not surprised. I heard your head hit the floor. It sounded gross. I guess you might have a concussion or something. Good thing you work in a hospital, huh?”
    “Yeah, good thing.” He managed to get himself into a sitting position and looked over at Sandy who