Picture Pregnant Romance
Wendy is feeling lonely after her husband
deploys to the Gulf, but at least his best friend is there to comfort
the pregnant woman. -- This is not a cheating story! This is a book by
Rachael Ross
"You never heard the story?" Marcia smiled as Sadie shook her head. "Tell her Wendy, it's a good one."
I shrugged, eating my salad in the hospital cafeteria with my two friends. It was a good story and I didn't mind telling it.
"It's one of those stories that are too weird not to be true," Marcia
chuckled. She was a light colonel in her mid-forties, and chief
pharmacist there at Tripler Army Medical Center in Hawaii. I was younger
at 27 and Sadie might have been a bit older than me, but not by much.
"Really?" Sadie smiled politely, because that's what captains do when a
superior officer talks, friends or not. She worked in Ob/Gyn and more to
the point, Sadie was my Obstetrician.
I was a captain as well, one of the ophthalmologists at the big
hospital, and very close to having my first baby. I'd just passed the
eighth month mark and very much looking forward to delivering, believe
me. The first three months I'd been sick, the middle three had been
wonderful, but these last three were killing me.
"I have to get going." Marcia stood up. "Department head meeting." She rolled her eyes and we smiled sympathetically.
"So?" Sadie grinned at me after the colonel had left. "What's the story with you and Greg?"
"Okay, okay..." I sighed. "The short version, cause I'll have to pee in about five minutes."
It seemed like I always needed to pee then and it was probably the thing
I hated most about being pregnant, even more than the backaches I got
sometimes.
"Well, Greg and I knew each other in high school. I mean, he was my
boyfriend. We'd known each other since, I don't know 5th grade probably.
But we were never friends really, it was just a small town. So we'd
noticed each other as we got older, but he had his girlfriends and I had
my boyfriends. But finally our senior year in high school we were both
free, if you like, and he asked me out. We went to our prom together and
everything..."
"Did you guys ... You know..." She wiggled her eyebrows with a grin.
"Yeah," I giggled. "Just once though, and yeah, we did it on our Prom
night. I was a total virgin and I don't know how or why I let him ...
Anyway, we weren't really serious or anything. I knew I wanted to be a
doctor, so I was going to take off for college and Greg ... He didn't
know what he wanted to do."
"So you weren't going to marry him or anything," Sadie said, keeping up with me.
"Yeah, exactly. We liked each other a lot, but it wasn't like we were crazy in love." I smiled at the thought.
"After I left for college we lost touch, really. I was studying my butt
off and neither of us were much for phones or letters, so..." I
shrugged. "Anyway, I was going to Hopkins and racking up a hundred grand
in student loans every year, you know..."
"Oh yeah." Sadie made a face.
"I needed help and got the Army to cover me. You know the deal, sign up
for Uncle Sam and they pay for it. So I got through medical school and
got my funky greens, and ended up at Bragg. Brand new to everything,
completely lost, but it was fun."
I shook my head remembering what it had been like as a brand new
lieutenant, walking around a big army base in my bright new uniform. All
those soldiers, young and old, big strong men training for war, and
there they were saluting this small blonde woman. Little petite me, with
breasts that seemed a fraction too big for my body, which made them
perfect somehow, and a tight round butt wiggling above my smooth, toned
legs. I'd been entirely too pretty for that place and I'd felt it, every
salute was delivered with an inviting smile, like every guy there just
wanted to get my panties off.
"Too hot there," she said.
"What? Oh ... Yeah," I agreed. "The humidity is the worst. Um, where was
I? Oh ... About a year into it, I'd just put on captain, thanks to the
needs of the army, which was nice."
"Uh-huh." Sadie smiled. Doctors got promoted to captain quick as
incentive, but we stayed there forever because our time in service was
weak compared to the regular army. It was still a nice payday though.
"Anyway, so I'm doing my residency, looking at eyes and fixing aneurisms
and clots, mostly from all the jumps. I swear, most of those guys
landed on their heads instead of their feet. Some retinals from time to
time, plus I had a lot of nights in the ER, they always tapped me for
weekends too, like someone hated me."
I gave my friend a wry smile and she chuckled.
"And one day, in walks this staff sergeant and it's him ... I swear, I
mean I just stood there, you know, and Greg's got like a big bag of ice
taped across his face, because he took a tumble off his bike. Hit his
eye on the handlebar. Didn't hurt him much, just some burst blood
vessels, but it scared the heck out of him anyway."
Sadie smiled and I giggled at the memory.
"And it was like those eight years never happened. I mean, it was weird.
You know how you see someone you were close to after a long time and
after you talk for ten minutes there's just nothing left?"
"Yeah."
"Uh-uh." I bit my bottom lip. "We started talking and didn't stop until, oh God, about midnight."
"He was in your office til midnight?" she teased me.
"No, no ... I mean, we went out, we had to, and I brought him home
and..." I sighed. "He kissed me and that was it. It was my second time,
that night. I mean, my second time ever and with the same guy, but nine
years later. The only thing that changed, besides being older, was that
we were both ready, you know? I mean, we weren't kids, we're adults now,
and so we just fell into it."
"Fell in love," Sadie sighed as well.
"He was my first and only," I laughed. "I spent eight years in college
and med school, then a year in the army with nothing more than a kiss on
the cheek after a date. Like part of me knew. Greg was the only man I
wanted to make..." I lowered my voice, leaning over my big tummy, " ...
to make love to and I knew I'd see him again. Like ESP or something."
"Fate," Sadie nodded. "God, that's romantic."
"Yeah," I widened my blue eyes. "I can't believe it sometimes, but there
it is. We did it that night and it was great and a month later we were
getting married."
"Too bad he's just an enlisted man though," Sadie said.
"Just an enlisted man?" I bit off my temper, knowing my friend hadn't meant it the way it sounded, but I heard that a lot.
Some of the other officers here were less than friendly towards me for
just that reason. Like it made me suspect somehow, but those were the
people who forgot all too easily just who was dying in places like Iraq.
But I tried not to think about that too much. I just prayed that Greg
was watching his butt close while he was deployed.
"I mean, it's hard for you guys." Sadie reached out to touch my hand. "You know what I mean, Wen."
"Yeah," I nodded, softening my eyes.
I'd taken a hard time for marrying an enlisted man and everyone from my
department head to the commanding general at Fort Bragg had tried to
talk me out of it. Just few years ago they could have just said no,
called it fraternization, and ordered us not to see each other. But it
was a new army, or so they said.
That was why I was at Tripler and my husband was ostensibly stationed at
Bragg, and now deployed to the Gulf with his Ranger battalion. As soon
as we'd gotten married I had orders to Hawaii, like I'd take my
punishment a little easier if it was served up in paradise. That was the
army's solution to fraternization problems, separate duty stations for
the husband and wife.
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