The Second Time Around

“You bet it’s a miracle,” Laurel said sarcastically. “It’s damn near close to being an immaculate conception. In the last six months, I can count the number of times Jason and I made love on the fingers of one hand.”

“Now there’s your problem,” the doctor teased with a laugh. “The bed’s much more comfortable for that sort of thing.” And then, because her patient looked so sober, so upset by the news that usually brought tears of joy to so many of her other patients, Rachel sat down on the examining table beside Laurel and placed an arm around her patient’s shoulders. There was compassion in her eyes as she asked, “Is there trouble between you and Jason?”

Jason was one of those easygoing men who was hard to ruffle. But this should definitely do it, Laurel thought. An ironic smile curved her mouth. “There will be once I come home with this.”

The doctor shook her head. “Besides ‘this.’”

Laurel knew she’d lucked out the day she’d haphazardly picked Rachel Kilpatrick to be her doctor. She could come to her with anything, even after hours. It made her wonder how the woman managed to maintain a private life. But somehow she did. Laurel knew for a fact that the woman had a husband and children.

“No ‘trouble.’ Jason’s just gotten caught up in his old hobby. Trains,” she explained.

Her husband had been a collector when they’d first met. At that time, he had only three engines to his name. Over the years, under the guise of building up sets for their sons, he’d bought more and more. But they hardly ever even got out of the box once he brought the trains home. He was storing them. And then suddenly, last Christmas, they’d all come out of their boxes, every last one of them, and began showing up in almost every room in the house. She’d managed to convince Jason that he needed to have them all in one place. He settled on two, the bonus room and the garage, both of which looked like miniature Grand Central Stations these days.

“We’ve got tracks all over the garage. The cars are parked outside.” She’d had to find a cover for hers because she didn’t want the elements getting to the paint job. “Now he’s talking about setting up something outside in the backyard.” Actually, he was doing more than talking about it, but she didn’t want to take up the doctor’s time.

“So, see, this will work out just fine.”

Laurel looked at her, not following the doctor’s reasons. “And how do you figure that?”

“Well, if you give him a son, Jason will have an excuse to play with the trains. Give him someone to run the trains for.”

They already had a son, Laurel thought. As a matter of fact, they had three of them. Three big, strong, strapping boys. None of whom were in that getting-on-their-knees-and-playing-with-trains stage anymore. Besides, Jason didn’t want another son—he wanted a heavy-duty transformer to help run his trains over longer distances without losing power.

Laurel looked at the doctor, feeling overwhelmed and helpless as well as exhausted. “What I’ll be giving him an excuse for is leaving home.”

Dr. Kilpatrick rose from the table. “I think you’re selling your husband short.”

It wasn’t so much a matter of selling Jason short as it was having been privy to his dreams all these years. He had a plan for their future. And that plan definitely didn’t include morning sickness and swollen ankles.

“You don’t understand, Doctor,” Laurel sighed. “Jason and I are in a different place now than we were twenty-five years ago.”

“Yes, for one thing, you’re far more experienced now than you were then.”

That wasn’t what she meant. “Twenty-five years ago, Jason wanted enough kids to populate his own professional baseball team. Now he’s satisfied with just enough to play four-handed poker with. Occasionally. What he wants to do is travel, do all the things we couldn’t do back then because we had kids.”

Oh God, pregnant. I’m pregnant.

“How am I going to tell him that after all these years, we’re back to square one again? Less than one. Zero. How am I going to tell him that he’s got to wait another eighteen years before we go on that road trip he’s been planning? By then, they won’t let him drive because they’ll have taken away his driver’s license.”

The exaggeration made Dr. Kilpatrick laugh. “Jason’s what, one year old than you?” Laurel nodded, letting another from-the-bottom-of-her-toes sigh escape. “That makes him forty-six. I don’t think he’ll be ready to be put on an ice flow just yet. Besides, haven’t you heard? Forty-six is the new thirty-six.” She patted Laurel’s shoulder. “Forget about this early-retirement business,” she advised, referring to something Laurel had told her earlier about her husband’s plans. “It’s highly overrated. Being involved keeps you young. Babies keep you young,” she emphasized. “This way, he still has retirement to look forward to.” Crossing to the door, Dr. Kilpatrick paused for a moment, a fond expression on her face. “Sometimes, the looking-forward-to-something part is even better than actually getting that ‘something.’”

“You want to come home with me and explain that to him? Maybe he’ll believe it if he hears it coming from you.”

Her hand on the doorknob, Dr. Kilpatrick stopped and turned around. “What, that you’re pregnant?”

“No, that looking forward to something is better than having it.”

Dr. Kilpatrick smiled. “Look at the positive aspects—”

What possible positive aspects could there be about being pregnant at forty-five? “Right, I’ll be the oldest mother in kindergarten.”

The look the doctor gave her said she knew it was just the shock talking, nothing more. “No, you’re better off financially than you were when you had your other children. And you’re definitely more experienced. You know what to expect.”

“Yes, morning sickness for five months.” And one hell of an explosion when she broke the news. She couldn’t think of one person who was going to be happy about this unexpected twist.

“Afterward,” the doctor gently prodded. “Remember how afraid you were when you brought that first baby home? How you thought you’d drop and break him? How everything was this big mystery? Every rash, every cough had you fearing the worst? Now you’ll have the advantage because you’ll know what you’re doing.”

Laurel remembered the early years and, yes, she’d learned from them. Learned that she could survive and, most of all, learned to expect the unexpected.

She laughed drily. “Obviously you’ve had an easier time with motherhood than I have. Each one of the boys was different. Each one refused to play by the rules his brothers set down.” She had great kids, but it had been an uphill battle with each one of them. There’d never been any coasting, not even with the youngest one, Christopher, who’d been the most like her.

He wasn’t going to be the youngest one anymore, she suddenly thought. How was Christopher going to like that? “Every time I thought I knew what I was doing, I didn’t.” And it had been exhausting, physically and emotionally. Laurel raised her eyes to the doctor’s. “How am I going to go through that again?”

The doctor answered her question with a question. “Would you change anything if you could?”

“What do you mean?”

Just for a second, Dr. Kilpatrick moved back into the room. “If you could erase one of your sons, go back and not have him, would you?”

Laurel didn’t even stop to think. “No.”

It was obviously the answer the doctor had expected. “Then how do you know you won’t feel that way about this one?”

Laurel shook her head. Things were getting jumbled, twisted. “Because with this one, I’ll be forty-five years old. Because with this one, I won’t be able to run and play.”

The doctor opened her chart and glanced down at the notation she’d made earlier. “You still get in a game of tennis now and then, don’t you?”

It had been an exaggeration. Wishful thinking on her part. She was too busy with the demands of her career and personal life to spend much time on the courts. “More then than now.”

The doctor closed the chart again, accepting the correction and going from there. “Running is not a requirement with children.”

The hell it wasn’t, Laurel thought. “I guess your kids were less active than mine. Mine were born running.” At least it felt that way. “I get tired just thinking about it.” And then it suddenly dawned on her. “Is that why I’ve been feeling so tired lately? Because I’m pregnant?”

Dr. Kilpatrick’s smile filtered into her eyes. “That would be my diagnosis.”

One mystery cleared up—and she wished with all her heart that it’d had an easier solution. “I beat you to it. That means you can’t charge me.”

“All right,” Dr. Kilpatrick agreed, tongue in cheek. “I’ll just bill you for the urinalysis. And the friendly advice.”

She could use some advice, Laurel thought. Real advice. “Which is?”

“Enjoy.”

Laurel rolled her eyes as she crossed her arms before her. “Easy for you to say. You don’t have to face a man who’s stockpiling tons of brochures on summer cabins from three different states.”

“He’ll be thrilled,” the doctor promised.

“He’ll be in shock,” Laurel countered. Real concern began to set in. What if the news was too much for Jason? “Got any smelling salts I can take with me?”