Brenda Harlen - A Very Special Delivery

“The plows are out in full force, but it’s going to take a while,” he told her. “Main Street is technically still shut down, but I knew the officer posted at the barricade and told him that I had to get through to deal with a medical emergency.”

“Are you a doctor, too?” Julie asked him.

Cameron’s brows lifted. “Too?”

“Yolanda wanted to reassure Julie that she was in capable hands with Doctor Garrett,” Lukas told his friend.

The other man chuckled.

“Why do I feel as if I’m missing something?” Julie asked warily.

“The only thing that matters is that you and your baby are okay,” Cameron said. “And since I was on my way home from the hospital, Luke asked if I could stop by to check on both of you. With your permission, of course.”

She looked questioningly at Lukas. “I don’t understand. You said everything was okay. Is something—”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he said, answering her question before she could finish asking it. “But you may have misunderstood my qualifications.”

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I’m a DVM, not an MD,” he told her.

It only took her a few seconds to decipher the acronym, and when she did, her jaw dropped.

“My baby was delivered by a vet?”

Lukas nodded.

Julie was stunned.

And mortified.

Dr. Garrett wasn’t a qualified medical doctor—he was an animal doctor.

She drew in a deep breath and tried to accept the reality of the situation. And the truth was, neither of them had had any other choice. She’d been stranded in his house in a blizzard with no one else around to help. Her options had been simple: accept his assistance or try to deliver her baby on her own. And, in his defense, he hadn’t claimed to be a doctor—it was the 911 operator who had offered that information.

And she’d grasped at it with both hands. It wasn’t how she’d wanted to deliver her baby but knowing that she had no chance of getting to a hospital, she’d considered herself lucky that her car had gone into the ditch by a doctor’s house. Proving once again that she had a tendency to see what she wanted to see.

“I didn’t intend to deceive you,” Lukas said to her now. “But you seemed to find comfort in believing that I was a medical doctor, and I didn’t want to cause you undue stress by correcting that impression.”

And she’d willingly stripped out of her clothes because a doctor—especially an obstetrician—was accustomed to his patients doing that. Glancing at the veterinarian who had delivered her baby, she didn’t doubt that he was accustomed to women stripping for him, too, although probably not in a clinical setting.

“So.” She cleared her throat. “How many babies have you delivered?”

“One,” he admitted.

“And it looks to me like he did a pretty good job for a first-timer,” Cameron—Doctor Turcotte—commented.

“But I think we’d both feel better if Cameron checked Caden over, just to make sure I didn’t miscount his toes or something.”

She could smile at that, because she’d already counted his fingers and toes herself.

“And you might want some numbers—weight and length, for example—to put in his baby book,” Cameron said.

“I guess ‘tiny’ is somewhat vague,” she admitted, relinquishing the swaddled infant to the doctor.

He measured Caden’s length and the circumference of his head, then he used a kitchen scale to weigh the baby.

“Not as tiny as I thought,” he said, handing the infant back to his mother. “Just about seven and a half pounds and twenty inches. A pretty good size for thirty-eight weeks. You obviously took good care of yourself throughout your pregnancy.”

“I tried to exercise regularly and eat healthy,” she said, then felt compelled to confess, “but I sometimes gave in to insatiable cravings for French fries and gravy.”

“Well, I don’t think those French fries and gravy did any harm to you or your baby,” Cameron assured her.

He opened a backpack she hadn’t seen him carry in. “Newborn diapers and wipes,” he said, pulling out a bunch of sample packs. “Some receiving blankets and baby gowns.”

“Thank you,” Julie said. “I’ve got a few outfits and sleepers in the trunk of my car, just because I wandered through a baby store the other day, but I didn’t think I’d be needing diapers just yet.”

“Well, there should be enough here to hold you for a couple of days, until you can get out—or send Luke out—to stock up on supplies.” Then he said to his friend, “You did a good job—for someone who doesn’t specialize in obstetrics.”

Lukas narrowed his gaze in response to Cameron’s grin, but he only said, “Julie did all the work.”

“Knowing you, I don’t doubt that’s true,” the doctor teased. “Now I’m going to get home to my wife and kids, while I still can. If the storm doesn’t blow over, you might be snowed in for the whole weekend,” he warned Julie. “But if you have any questions or concerns, please call.”

* * *

“I’m sorry.”

They were Luke’s first words to Julie when he returned to the family room after seeing Cameron to the door.

“I’m not,” she told him. “I’m grateful.”

He sat down across from her. “You’re not even a little bit mad?”

She shook her head. “I’m a little embarrassed. Okay, more than a little,” she admitted. “But the truth is, I couldn’t have done it without out you.”

“It was an incredible experience for me, too.”

“Could you do one more thing for me, though?”

“What’s that?”

“Not tell anyone that you got me naked within an hour of meeting me.”

“Not even my brothers?”

“No one,” she said firmly.

He chuckled. “Okay, I won’t tell anyone. But speaking of telling—was there anyone you wanted to call? Or have you already posted newborn photos from your phone on Facebook or Twitter?”

She shook her head. “I don’t do the social media thing.”

His brows lifted. “Do you do the telephone thing?”

“Of course, but I don’t think any of my friends or family is expecting to hear any news about a baby just yet.”

“He’s only a couple weeks ahead of his due date,” Lukas reminded her.

Which was true. It was also true that no one was expecting any birth announcement because no one had known that she was pregnant. Not even her parents, because it wasn’t the type of news Julie wanted to tell them over the phone. She’d wanted to talk to her mother in person, to share her joy—and her fears—with the one person she was sure would understand everything she was feeling. But she’d been traveling for work for the past seven months and hadn’t had a chance to go home. In fact, no one aside from her boss at The Grayson Gallery knew, and it wasn’t Evangeline’s voice that Julie wanted to hear right now—it was her mother’s.

But more than she wanted to hear Lucinda’s voice, she wanted to see her, to feel the warmth of her arms around her. Julie wondered at the irony of the realization that never had she more craved the comfort of her own mother than after becoming a mother herself.

“I guess I need to figure out a way to get home.”

“You’re not going anywhere until this storm passes,” Lukas pointed out to her.

Watching the snow swirl outside the window, she couldn’t dispute the point.

She’d hoped to be home before the weekend. She’d only taken this detour through Pinehurst to discuss some issues with the lawyer her brother had recommended. Of course, she hadn’t admitted to Daniel that she was the one in need of legal advice, because he would have demanded to know what the issues were and insisted that he could handle whatever needed to be handled.