Page 15 of Own the Eights Maybe Baby
“Why’d you wear that? Are there special clothes you’re supposed to wear here?” Jordan asked in a hushed voice, confusion marring his handsome face. Except something was different.
When she’d left him, the man looked ready to conquer the world. Calm and collected, he’d stayed right outside the door as she’d peed on pregnancy test after pregnancy test this morning. He’d held her hand in the car ride over, gently brushing his thumb across her knuckles. Even once they’d arrived, despite being surprised by the kid factor in the waiting room, he’d been steady—her solid supporter.
He deflated into the seat next to her, and the giant CrossFit trainer looked as if he’d completed ten Ironman competitions in a row, then got plowed over by a steamroller.
She touched a long scratch on his cheek below his left eye.
“What happened?”
“A nose-picking toddler attacked me with a book. He got me good, Georgie,” her husband answered with absolutely no sarcasm or humor infused into his ridiculous statement.
“You got into a fight with a child?” She had to have misunderstood.
“No, not a fight.”
“Then, what happened?”
Jordan sighed a deep contemplative sound. “The dads out there were telling me about the baby NFL and all the wait-lists we needed to get on to make sure we have a normal kid. I was so blown away that I accidentally knocked a bunch of those board books off a little table.”
“A baby NFL?” she questioned. He wasn’t making any sense.
Jordan’s eyes went mad-professor wide. “Yeah, crazy, huh?”
Oh yes! Somebody seemed crazy! A certain six-foot-four behemoth of a man seated beside her.
“Okay, but I’m not sure how that leads to a baby assaulting you,” she pressed gently.
He leaned in. “It was a toddler, Georgie. They’re a different beast. He faked me out. Kids are smart. They’re deceptively cute. They draw you in and then, whack! You find yourself nearly smashing them like a pancake.”
In the fifteen minutes she’d been separated from her husband, the man had gone from Mr. Positivity to sounding like a war vet, recalling days on the battlefield.
“You tried to smash a toddler?” She had to piece this out. Something had to be missing.
“Not on purpose! It happened when I fell out of the chair.”
“You fell onto the floor?” she questioned.
“I told you. The kid had NFL training,” Jordan answered, exasperation coating the words.
For the love of Pete!
She looked to Joyce, who’d started typing away on the exam room computer. Perhaps Nurse Scowl could help fill in the gaps in her husband’s explanation.
“Did you notice anything interesting going on when you went to fetch my husband?” she asked, going for indifferent nonchalance—which wasn’t easy when wearing a black sex kitten bra beneath a potato sack.
“He was on the ground next to a crying child. I don’t know if I’d call it interesting,” Joyce answered, gaze glued to the computer screen.
“Do you see that a lot around here?” she continued with a laugh meant to sound playful but veered closer to psycho.
The woman turned away from the screen. “No,” she answered with the pleasantness of a slug.
Wait! That wasn’t fair to slugs. There had to be some pleasant ones out there.
“I need to ask you a few questions, Mrs. Jensen-Marks,” Nurse Joyce said, squinting at a piece of paper in the chart.
“Go ahead.”
Joyce pursed her lips. “A lot has changed for you. Last time you were here, under relationship status, you circled single, then wrote in that the doctor may need to clear the cobwebs because it had been so long since you’dgotten any.”
