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brain to perceive pain in a different way with hypnosis. Josie thought that was a big load of shit, and yet, somehow in this moment of intensity, this pinpoint of biological destiny, that was where her brain went—to that stupid, insipid, ridiculous image of a misty cloud blooming. Maybe, though, just maybe, it was her own internal pain receptors panicking and not some new-agey bullshit…because damn, did Laura know how to destroy her hand or what?
    “We’re going to get you back to my car,” Josie said.
    “Where’s your car?” Laura cried.
    “It’s back near Jeddy’s.”
    “That far?”
    “It’s a block, Laura.”
    “We only made it a block?”
    “Yeah, hon, we did.”
    “No, I was walking…was…no.”
    “It was a long block,” Josie reassured her as they slowly, step by painstaking step, made their way back.
    “Why does it feel like I have a bowling ball between my legs?” Laura said, widening her stance and walking like a toddler with a heavy load in a disposable diaper.
    Because you do, Josie thought, except it’s coming out of your front door later on today . Laura came to a grinding halt and gaped openly at Josie. Oh, shit, she thought, did I say that aloud?
    “I am not giving birth to a bowling ball,” Laura said, her voice trembling. Two people walking past stopped and gawked at the two of them, then looked at Laura’s belly. It was a couple, a man and a woman, and the woman’s face changed to an expression of sympathy.
    “Dear, I’ve been there. The bowling ball eventually comes out,” she said, and pointed to the man next to her who looked young enough to be her son, a guy in his early twenties.
    Horror dotted his face as he stared at Laura’s crotch and mumbled, “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
    “But,” Laura said, “it doesn’t really feel like a bowling ball?”
    The woman and Josie exchanged a glance, and Laura began to wail like a small child. “But that’s not true!” she shouted.
    “No, of course not,” said the stranger.
    Oh boy, Josie thought, this is going to be a long birth.

Chapter Two
    Dr. Alex Derjian watched the scene unfold with a certain level of mischievous pleasure that he hadn’t been able to access in years. He’d done a double-take when the crew walked in through the main emergency doors as he’d been charting, documenting the last hour or so of work on patients. A rotund and deeply pregnant, gorgeous blonde woman was flanked by an incredibly tall Nordic man and a smaller but more muscular Italian guy who looked like he could be on the cover of GQ . And then behind them a slim, tiny, little buzzing dynamo he recognized instantly.
    Josie from the research trial his grandfather was part of. Holy shit, he thought. Of all the ways to run into her.
    The pregnant woman must be her friend…or her wife ( if so, his gaydar was broken ). He saw one of the certified nurse midwives, a serene and businesslike old hand at all things birthing, meeting up with them. Unless there were complications severe enough to warrant calling him in on a consult—he was one of two residents on call in OB/GYN-- he probably wouldn’t have any contact with Josie or her…whoever the laboring woman was. The only time that midwife would call him in would be in a true surgical emergency.
    Unlike some other obstetricians, he wasn’t a slicer, preferring a medical approach as much as possible before resorting to surgery. It didn’t earn him any favors and it hadn’t landed him any top internships or residencies anywhere. Without the killer instinct to cut, he’d been told, he should have just been a midwife.
    They said that as if it were a bad thing.
    A deep smile crossed his face, dimpling either side of his mouth. A mixture of Finnish and Armenian blood coursed through his veins, making him not particularly anything anymore, though his Armenian last name won him some points in Watertown, a western suburb just outside the city lines where a cluster of Armenians all