Six months later

 

Jane’s pager buzzed for the second time, but she kept her attention focused on her patient as a nurse entered the room.

“Hey, Sam, do you think you can show Nurse Clark what you were just showing me?”

She grinned at the six-year-old sitting on the bed, watching as he showed the nurse how he was now able to extend and bend the broken arm that Jane had set six weeks ago.

“Sam,” exclaimed Misti, one of Jane’s favorite pediatric nurses, “you’re doing so great!”

Jane unclipped the pager from her belt loop and took a quick look at the message, and her heartbeat sped up:

Transition over. Hurry.

She gasped softly, darting her eyes to Misti. “Misti, is there any way you could handle Sam’s discharge papers?”

“Sure thing, Doc.”

“You good, Sam?” asked Jane.

“All better!” cried Sam, giving Jane a toothy grin. “Thanks, Doctor Story.”

“Thank you for healing so fast!”

She winked at her young patient, made prayer-hands thank-you to Misti for finishing up Sam’s discharge papers, then ran out of the room.

Luckily, the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, where Alice was laboring, was right next door to CHOP, so Jane could be there in about ten minutes if she hurried.

As Jane made her way out of the building to South Thirty-Fourth Street, her pager buzzed in the pocket of her lab coat, and she fished it out.

Two words—She’s crowning—made Jane speed walkthrough the hospital’s main entrance, weave around the reception area to the Ravdin elevators, and press the up button three or four times.

“Janie!”

She turned around to see her sister Margaret and brother-in-law Cameron rushing toward the elevator, their arms laden with flowers and balloons.

“Where are my nephews?” Jane asked, kissing her sister’s cheek.

“We left them with the nanny.” Margaret grinned. “Trying to change your luck, huh?”

It was a standing joke among the Story sisters that regardless of the fact that Jane worked closest to the hospital where Margaret and Priscilla had given birth to their four children, Jane, the family’s own pediatrician, had missed the main event every time, arriving seconds after the babies had already been delivered.

“Gonna be close, Janie,” said Cameron with a grin.

“I’m not missing it this time!” she said, frowning at her sister’s husband. “Damn it! I’m taking the stairs!”

She ran back to the main entrance and hoofed it up the flight of stairs, beelining for Labor and Delivery. Her CHOP identification card opened the double doors, and she stopped at the nurses’ station.

“Doctor Story!”

“Hey, Abby. You know where my sister is? Alice Story?”

“DR3.”

“Got it,” said Jane, power-walking down the hallway to Delivery Room 3.

Betsy, who was standing in the hallway outside of Alice’s room, came into focus as Jane rounded the corner. Beside Betsy was her fiancé, Merit, and on her other side, Priscilla’s husband, Shane.

“Hurry, Janie!” urged Elizabeth.

“How did you beat me here from the office?”

“Merit was on the text chain. As soon as he got the first message, he came and got me.”

“Dragged her from her desk,” said Merit, kissing the top of Elizabeth’s head.

Jane winked at her soon-to-be brother-in-law. “Nice work.”

“Go on in, Jane,” said Shane, giving Jane’s cheek a quick kiss. “P’s already in there.”

Suddenly, Priscilla, dressed in scrubs, peeked into the hallway. “Jane! Get in here!”

She didn’t need to be told twice.

Slipping between her older sister and the door, Jane entered Delivery Room 3, where a sweaty, red-faced Alice lay on her back with her feet in stirrups.

“J-J-Jaaaaaaane!” she wailed, holding out her hand.

Jane locked eyes with her sister, grabbing her hand to anchor it. “You’re almost there, Alice. Almost.”

“I tried…to wait…for you,” panted Alice, squeezing Jane’s hand in a vise-grip. “Oh, God, anoooooooother!”

“Alice, you’re doing so good. So good,” said the obstetrician. “We’ve got the baby’s head out. We just need one more big push for the shoulders, and then you’re done. You ready?”

Alice nodded, and Jane, who’d been getting messages for the past four hours, finally had a chance to scan the room for the eyes she wanted to see the most after Alice’s. Carlos stood on Alice’s other side, leaning close to his wife’s head, supporting her. There were two nurses, then Alice’s obstetrician between her legs, and then—

Standing beside the fetal monitor in a corner of the room behind her: Amity.

She found his eyes, though hers were so full of tears of love and gratitude, she could barely see them clearly.

Hi, she mouthed. I made it.

Barely, he mouthed back, grinning at her.

He glanced at the monitor, then shifted his gaze to the cries of Alice’s baby, who slid into the waiting hands of her doctor.

“It’s a girl!” cried the doctor. “Congratulations, Alice!”

There was a sudden flurry of activity as nurses rubbed the baby with towels and placed Alice and Carlos’s daughter into Alice’s waiting arms.

Jane turned and moved slowly through the chaos to Amity, who waited for her off to the side.

“Thank you for being here,” she said, letting him pull her close.

“We had a deal, Doctor Story,” he said tenderly. “If you were working a shift, I’d be here the whole time.”

“Everything went well?” she asked, leaning back to look up at him.

Two weeks after she’d returned from Saranac, Jane had been on rotation in the Ped Ward of CHOP only to run into the newest pediatric oncology fellow, Dr. Amity Atwell, who had reversed his decision to accept the fellowship at St. Jude’s and would spend the next three years in Philadelphia instead.

They’d halfheartedly looked for an apartment for Amity while he stayed at Jane’s, but as days turned into weeks, her place became his place too. Though Jane worked in the same hospital as Amity and shared the same apartment in Rittenhouse Square, she’d never get used to having him so close. She’d never get over the wonder of calling him hers.

He glanced at the monitor, then back at Jane. “Picture perfect.”

“I love you,” she said. “Thank you for being here. Thank you for choosing me.”

“I love you too,” said Amity. “Thank you for giving us a chance.”

Jane turned in his arms to look over at her sister, who held baby Melissa against her chest, her cheeks glowing, her eyes filled with love as she looked at her husband, Carlos. Surrounding the new parents were Carlos’s parents, all the Story sisters, and all their significant others: Priscilla and Shane, Margaret and Cameron, and Elizabeth and Merit, all taking turns admiring sweet Melissa, the newest in a fierce tribe of strong women.

Jane placed her hands over Amity’s, her heart swelling with love for the sisters that surrounded her and the man who stood behind her.

“Think that’ll be us someday, Jane Story?” asked Amity, resting his chin on her shoulder and speaking softly, close to her ear.

“I hope so,” she answered.

“I know so,” he said.

One of his hands under hers slipped away for a moment, and when he reached for hers again, it was to press something small and sharp against her palm.

“What’s this?” she asked, whirling around to face him before opening her hand and looking down to find a diamond ring sparkling back at her. She gasped. “Amity!”

“Bad timing,” he said, lowering himself to one knee. “It’s what we do best, remember?”

Plucking the ring from her hand, he held it out to her. “Marry me?”

Around Alice’s bed, a wall of people celebrated Melissa’s arrival, no one noticing as Amity Atwell proposed to her aunt Jane in the corner of the room.

“I’ve been carrying that ring around with me since I moved to Philly,” he admitted, grinning at her. “I bought it at the gift shop before leaving the View on New Year’s Day.”

Tears welled in Jane’s eyes and slipped down her cheeks.

He was wearing light-blue scrubs and a white coat. A stethoscope hung from his neck, and a hospital ID badge was clipped to his pocket. And in Jane’s eyes, he was the handsomest, most perfect person she’d ever seen.

“I love you. I chose this life with you. And the timing,” he said, looking over her shoulder at her family clustered around her sister’s bed, “is terrible, which means for us, it’s perfect.”

“We nail t-terrible t-timing,” she said, a happy sob breaking her words.

“My savior. My friend. My lover.” He smiled up at her with tears in his eyes too. “Be my forever too?”

“Yes.” She held out her trembling hand, nodding through her tears as he slipped the ring onto her fourth finger.

And after Amity stood up and kissed his fiancée in the corner of Delivery Room 3, Jane took her place with her sisters to welcome the newest Story into the world.

 

THE END

 

 

 

 

 

**