The driver didn’t give us two glances as Darla told him the hospital name. The car jerked forward and I leaned against the shiny vinyl upholstery, consumed by the scent of coconut air freshener and my own fear.
“You’ll be fine,” she whispered in a stage voice. “The contractions are still far enough apart that it won’t be a problem.”
The cab driver leaned on the accelerator noticeably as the car weaved through Boston traffic. He made it feel like we were driving in a stick of butter.
“Shut up.”
Bzzzz.
I was stuck in some deranged Stanley Milgrim experiment, which Darla would fail miserably. She was exactly the type to torture other people mercilessly, and cackle along with it at the same time, and unfortunately, she was the only person who could help me.
Her and the mysterious Dr. Alex.
With any luck, there was no Dr. Alex. He was just a lie she’d created with her illegal network to convince me to leave with her. Darla was actually a front woman for a white slavery underground, and I’d be sold off to some wealthy man who would find my vagina phone so repulsive he’d have it removed and set me free and I’d be that poor future librarian who was sold in human trafficking and come home a pitied heroine.
Anderson Cooper would do a special about me.
I’d write a tell-all biography. Even be a contestant on Dancing With the Stars.
That sounded so much better than what I’d actually done.
I began to cry.
“Don’t worry, lady. This is the hardest part,” the cabbie said from the front, his deep, bass voice startling me and making the pain sharper as I twisted in my seat. “This is the hardest part. That moment when you swear you just can’t do it? You’re about an hour away from holding that baby in your arms.” He chuckled. “My wife’s done it four times, so I know all about it.”
“Thank you,” I said, sobbing. Darla’s eyes met mine and I mouthed, You are such an asshole.
She pulled out the phone and began punching numbers. My ineffectual swipes at her hands couldn’t stop it.
Bzzzzzzz.
“Asshole!” I hissed.
“That’s what my wife always said as the baby’s head was coming,” the cabbie chortled.
Sartre was so right.
Hell is other people.
Other people in a cab on the way to a hospital to get a phonectomy.
“Here we are!” the cabbie said, jumping out to help open my door. He didn’t bat an eyelash when I climbed out and obviously wasn’t pregnant. I had some extra curves, sure—but no way was I about to deliver a full-term kid.
“You really hung on to your figure,” he admired. “You only look about five months along.”
Darla bit her lips and made a choking sound from the back of her throat. Mercifully, she paid and seemed to give a generous tip, because the driver smiled even wider as he sped off and called back, “Good luck!”
“I really hate you,” I shouted at her.
“All the girls say that as they’re crowning,” he called after us.
We walked through an enormous lobby that could have just as easily been a foyer at a luxury hotel. Straightening up, I walked with as much dignity as I could muster, which wasn’t much when you considered that my vagina doubled as a street sweeper.
The walk across those fake-marble floors was as inelegant and torturous as any I would ever experience, bar none. But I made it to a small desk near the emergency room, when Darla pulled out her phone and began tapping.
“Please?” I begged. “I haven’t said anything mean to you for two whole minutes.”
She looked at me like I had a phone in my vagina.
Oh, wait.
“I’m texting Alex,” she reminded me.
And then—bzzzzzz.
“You suck!” I hissed.
“That’s not me,” she snickered. The familiar tinkling sounds of I Wasted My Only Answered Prayer sprinkled lightly into the hallway, like fairly dust.
Juicy, slick fairy dust.
“Blame Sam for that one,” she said, not looking up from her texting.
Within twenty seconds one of the hottest men I had ever laid eyes on turned the corner next to the desk, tall and muscled, dark and looking like he was missing from the set of Grey’s Anatomy. Green scrubs, messy brown hair, and broad cheekbones, with dark eyes that made me want to disrobe and—
“Alex!” Darla cried out, going to give him a casual hug. As he bent down his eyes caught mine briefly, warm, centered eyes that oozed intelligence and confidence.
My knees pulsed with a tingly shock of shame. This was Alex? THE Dr. Alex?
McFuck me.
The world is so unfair.
Alex let her go and took a step toward me, offering his hand. “Hi. Alex Derjian. And you are Darla’s friend...”
“Amy.” The softness of his hands surprised me. Long surgeon’s fingers—literally, ones he used to deliver babies, gentle and strong—met mine in a firm grasp that showed respect. His eyes held mine a beat longer than needed. My hand stayed warm after he let go. It would take days for me to run through the scene again in my mind and realize that he hadn’t used his title.
“Darla said you needed some care that is confidential. Why don’t we go into this exam room—” he pointed to a small one across the hall—“and I’ll see what I can do.”
Darla followed, but Alex stopped her as I went in. “I don’t think you should come in.”
“Oh,” she said. “Um, you’re right.”
Anxiety shot through me. “No! I want her there. She can explain some things.”
“It’s not like I had anything to do with this, Amy. There’s nothing I can explain that you can’t.”
The idea of being alone with Alex in an exam room, getting a pelvic exam and having to explain why that was in there was just too much. Even the humiliation of having a friend in there was better than having no one in there.