In My Shoes - Chapter 3
"Okay Kara, let's see how far you're dialated." A gloved nurse in the hospital spoke to Nick as she pulled his covers back.
"How many times do you have to do that? They already said I was seven at the doctor's office! It hurts when you people do that to me!" Nick angrily protested.
"I'm sorry sweetie, but I have to do that, I need to know how close you are so that the doctor can be told." The nurse apologised.
Nick laid back on the bed and closed his eyes tightly. Naturally, the nurse checked right during the middle of a contraction which made it hurt even worse.
"#$&%*$#&." Nick yelled at the nurse.
"You're at seven and a half centemeters. Pretty soon." The nurse took the glove off and left the room.
Nick had a wild look in his eyes. He was scared to death to think of what could possibly be happening to him in a short while. There was no way in the world he would ever be prepared to have a baby.
"Kara, just relax and breathe, the more you fight this, the longer it will take." Kara's mother spoke softly to Nick, smoothing the hair away from his face.
"That's it!" Nick thought to himself."I'll fight this and it should take enough time for this girl to fix this."
Just as Nick was starting to feel that his plan would work, a doctor entered the room with a cart.
"Hi, I'm Doctor Schultz. I am consulthing with Doctor Maxon. I need to examine you, Kara, please just lay back and relax."
"Oh god, not again, please?" Nick moaned. He felt the need to push. "Is it time to push? I want to get this out of me?" Nick cried.
"Let's take a look."
Nick laid back and closed his eyes again. He never felt more humiliated in his life.
Nick thought that this doctor seemed to take more time than the other doctors. Which only made Nick feel more uncomfortable. Finally, what seemed to take forever, the doctor stood up.
"You're dialated to 7.5 centemeters. Everything looks good. Would you like an epidural for the pain?" The doctor asked Nick.
Nick didn't care what it was called, he wanted something to make him feel better. "Yeah."
"Let's do the epidural and put on a monitor." The doctor said to the nurse.
The nurse pulled out a large white band that had velcro and pulled Nick's sheets back. As she started to lift his gown up, Nick got wild eyed with worry wondering what she was going to do with the piece of equipment.
The nurse could see Nick's nervousness. "Relax, Kara, it's just something I need to put around your stomach, that way we can listen to the baby's heart during this and make sure everything's okay."
Nick watched as the nurse pulled the belt around his stomach. After it was in place, she turned on a machine next to his bed. The sound that filled the room was a fast paced heartbeat.
"There, baby sounds good. Heart rate is 145." The nurse said as she wrote it down in Kara's chart.
Nick was amazed listening to the heartbeats. He couldn't believe that was coming from him, a tiny little life inside of him.
A man entered the room wearing blue hospital scrubs and holding a kit of some kind.
"Hi Kara, I'm Doctor Adellman, anesthesia. I'm going to give you and epidural to take the pain away. Do you know what happens with an epidural?" The doctor asked Nick.
Nick was hit with a contraction before he could answer. He shook his head no during the contraction.
"Okay, well, I will be injecting you with some medicine in your spine and it will numb you from the waist down. No more pain, and when it comes time to deliver, the nurse will tell you when to push."
The contraction left. "That sounds good, but what did you say again about the spine?" Nick worried.
"Relax, Kara, it only hurts for a moment and then it's done. Now, lean up so we can prep your back." The doctor gently pushed Nick's shoulder to encourage him to sit up.
As the doctor washed the area, Nick was hit with another contraction.
"Good, then we can slide this in between contractions. I want you to let me know when this one ends, okay Kara?" Dr. Adellman asked.
Nick managed to nod yes. In what seemed to take forever, the contraction finally ended.
Nick took a deep breath. "It's over."
"Ok, don't jump, this will feel like a bee sting and some pressure down into your hips." The doctor spoke as he put the needle in. Nick winced with the pain and tried to convince himself that this was gonna get better.
"There, all done. You should be feeling it already."
Before the words left the doctor's mouth, Nick noticed that he could barely feel his legs. The pain from the contractions were gone.
"Wow! This is cool." Nick replied happily.
"Just don't try to get out of bed, you won't be able to walk. Just call the nurse for anything you need." The doctor took off his surgical gloves, threw them in the wastebasket and left the room.
Ryan went up to Nick and put his hand on Nick's stomach. "Pretty soon, baby."
Annoyed, Nick pushed Ryan's hand off his stomach. "Quit touching me. God how I hate having someone touch my stomach."
Ryan looked rejected as he backed off from Nick. Kara's mother tried to reassure Ryan.
"It's all a part of labor, Ryan, Kara doesn't hate you."
"Yes I do." Nick spat back at Kara's mother and Ryan.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Brian and Kara hurried through the small airport terminal. Their escape from the hotel was not without complications, Brian had to explain to Kevin that something suddenly happened and that he and Nick had to go and take care of things before it got out of hand and to do the interviews without them.
Brian signaled a cab by putting his fingers in his mouth and making a shrill sounding whistle. "Tell him where we need to go." Brian said to Kara as they were getting into the back seat.
"Um, Meadowbrook Subdivision, 1456 Crestview Drive." Kara told the cabbie.
"Okay." The driver replied. As he was pulling away from the curb, he looked into his rearview mirror. He recognized Nick and Brian. "Ain't you the Backstreet Boys? My daughter Wendy is nuts over you guys, especially the blonde one." The driver handed a pad of paper and a pen over the seat. "Could you sign this for her? It's W-e-n-d-y-T-r-u-m-a-n."
Brian leaned forward and took the pen and pad from the man. Kara watched Brian scribble his name down on the paper. He handed the pad to Kara.
"What? You can't be serious?" Kara stared at Brian in disbelief.
"Just sign it, no big deal." Brian insisted.
"But what if it don't look right?" Kara whispered quietly.
The whispering in the back seat grabbed the cabbie's attention. "Something wrong guys?"
Both Brian and Kara answered together. "No."
Kara signed Nick Carter on the pad of paper. She was suprised that the handwriting turned out to look exactly like the signatures of Nick she had seen on posters and in magazines.
Kara handed the pad back to the cabbie. "Here you go." She was relieved to see the cab pull into the driveway to her house.
Brian already had the fare with tip ready. "Could you wait here while we go in the house?"
"Sure, no problem." The dark eyed cabbie replied. He settled back into his seat and grabbed the newspaper that was laying next to him and started to read.
Kara ran up the sidewalk to the side door. She reached in the spot where the spare key was only to find it gone.
"I am gonna kill that little dink." Kara sputtered.
"What's wrong?" Brian asked.
Kara's eyes filled up with tears. "There's no key, we can't get in."
Brian patted her on the shoulder. "Nick er Kara, calm down we can climb in through a window, okay, it's no big deal."
Kara took a deep breath in. "Okay, there's the window in the back of the house, we can climb in through there."
Brian followed Kara into the back yard. The woods behind the house was spectacular as the leaves on the trees were just starting to change for the fall. The smell of wet dirt filled the air.
"I guess Nick should be strong enough to hike you up through the window." Kara commented.
"Hey, what about this door?" Brian pointed at a sliding glass door. It was not fully closed."
Kara hurried over to the door and was relieved when she discovered that it was unlocked and unblocked. Brian followed her into the kitchen.
"Come on, my bedroom's this way." Kara led Brian down the hallway into her bedroom. She blushed when she entered, she forgot about all the posters of Nick and Brian that were covering her wall.
"Nice room." Brian commented.
"Don't tease." Kara replied. She walked over to her bookcase, glancing down at her bed and seeing a pair of jeans and sweatshirt that she hadn't worn in months laying in a pile ontop of the unmade bed.
Kara pulled out the book and looked up the wealth spell. She read the directions and looked up at her dresser.
"Oh my god, I know what I did wrong now." Kara said as she slowly sat on the edge of the bed.
"What did you do?" Brian asked.
"I was supposed to use three white candles and one blue candle. I figured it wouldn't make that much difference and I used all blue candles. How could I be so stupid?" Kara said as she stared at the page.
"You wouldn't think colors would be that big of a deal." Brian remarked. He could tell this girl was starting to get upset. It was worrying him because he sensed that as not a good thing since she was holding the book with the spells in it.
"Can you fix it?" Brian asked.
"I think so, but it's going to take longer than I thought. You might want to send the cab driver away." Kara answered, her head down reading.
"Okay." Brian replied as he left the bedroom.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
A short, dark haired nurse entered the room and proceeded to walk up to Nick's bed and start tearing things down. She put something that looked like ski poles on either side of the bed and took the bottom part of the bed and lowered it so that Nick's legs were left dangling over the edge. She took each leg and placed them in stirrups.
"Whoa, wait, what are you doing?" Nick asked, puzzled.
"Kara, it's time to start pushing, you are at a 10 and the baby is ready to come." She smiled at Nick as she spoke.
"Oh, my god, can't we just wait?" Nick asked, worried.
"Kara Porter, honestly!" Kara's mother replied to Nick's remark.
A young, tall doctor entered the room. "Let's have a baby!" He exclaimed, a little too cheerfully to Nick.
"I'm not ready for this." Nick protested.
The doctor chuckled at Nick's remark. "You have no other choice Kara but to be ready." The doctor smoothed the sheets around Nick's legs. "I can see the top of the baby's head. Do you want to touch it, Kara?"
Nick looked at the doctor appalled. "No I do not want to touch it."
Ryan piped up. "Can I touch it?"
"You most certainly may not, keep away from me!" Nick shouted at the kid.
The nurse placed her hand on Nick's stomach. "Okay, Kara, when I say push, you want to take a deep breath in and push as hard and as long as you can while holding your breath, okay?"
Nick looked at the woman. Everyone in the room could see the fear in his eyes.
"Okay, now PUSH." The nurse commanded.
Nick obediently took a deep breath in, grabbed the poles for leverage and pushed as hard as he could. He couldn't feel anything so he wasn't sure if he was doing the right thing or not.
The nurse and doctor coached Nick on while he was pushing. "Push...push...push...push...push."
Nick kept going as long as he could. Exhausted he laid his head back on the pillow.
The pushing part, that Nick was hoping would go on until this girl got things straighten out and back into her own body, was doing that. After three hours of Nick trying to push and becoming more and more weak by the minute, the doctor simply stated the word section.
The nurse nodded.
Ryan asked the doctor what he was talking about.
"The baby is in fetal distress, the heart rate is dropping, we have to take it now. We're going to do a c-section on Kara. Since this is an emergency c-section, she will have to be put under sedation, sorry, but that means no one can come in with her."
Nick heard the word c-section and started to panic. "Oh my god, they are going to cut me open?" Nick thought to himself.
"Relax, Kara. We're taking you down to finish this for you, you did a wonderful job, you just need a little help." The doctor patted Nick on the shoulder.
As Nick was being wheeled down to the Operating Room, Kara's mother and her boyfriend were walking on either side of the stretcher. When they got to the double doors, the woman bent over and kissed Nick on the forehead. "I love you."
Nick smiled.
Ryan attempted to kiss Nick on the lips. Nick turned his face in time for him to kiss him on the cheek. "I love you baby, hang in there."
"Yep, will do." Nick replied.
Nick scanned the surroundings of the operating room. It was a cold, tiled room. A radio was playing from some place and ironically, it was playing I Want It That Way Nick took this as a good sign that things would be working out alright.
He was getting a little nervous when they had him move from the stretcher onto the operating table. They took both arms and laid them on opposite sides and strapped them down. He was getting montiors hooked up to him from right and left. He noticed the sound of the baby's heart rising and then dropping sharply.
"Hi, Kara, I'm Doctor Everett, anesthesia. You'll feel a burning sensation in your arm where the IV is and then you will be going to sleep. When you wake up, it will be all over."
"Okay." Nick replied. Suddenly he felt the sting and the burning of the medication entering his arm. Suddenly everything went dark.
Chapter Four
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