Impossible Dreams (17 page)

She grimaced as the pain in her back lapped in waves around
to her front. Straightening, she clung to a chair until the ache rolled past.
She was overdoing it. The ache had steadily worsened throughout the day. She
eased herself into the chair.

The telltale burst of water down her thigh hit her with
shock.

Oh, God, not now.

Of course, now. That’s the way her life worked.

The baby was coming early.

All right, Maya. Let’s not panic. First babies took
their time. She really wasn’t even having labor pains yet, just the usual
backache.

Clutching the stair rail, she worked her way down to the
lower bathroom. This business of the bathroom and kitchen on the first floor
could be a real pain when the baby arrived, she realized. Maybe she could adapt
one of these lower rooms for living in and fix an upper one for school. Be
creative, Maya. There’s a solution to every problem.

She washed herself and rinsed the wet dress. She needed to
clean the mess upstairs. She should have kept a change of clothing here.
She’d look real cute with a Pampers taped to her when help arrived.

She clung to the wall while another ache rolled past, then
aimed for the office telephone. Who should she call first? Emergency services?
She couldn’t afford the ambulance bill, but she knew Selene had a meeting
this afternoon. Axell? She hated to rely on him. He’d already gone far
beyond the call of duty and was paying the price. But even if Teresa picked
Matty up after school, the teenager couldn’t take care of him for long.
Someone would have to take him in tonight. She’d better call Axell.

She hadn’t planned this very well. She’d never
been real good at planning. Her life was just a series of happenings she
couldn’t stay ahead of. She’d packed her suitcase for the hospital,
but it was back at the apartment, probably buried in an unopened box. Selene
had promised to find a sitter for Matty when the time arrived, but she should
have remembered Selene wasn’t always available.

Things would work out. She just had to take them one at a
time. She picked up the telephone and started dialing 911 before she realized
the phone wasn’t making any noise.

Maya stared at the dead receiver in disbelief.

This just couldn’t be happening. Was her name Job? Was
God trying to tell her something? Or had Mercury gone retrograde and she
hadn’t noticed?

Grimacing, she waddled over to the window and looked out.
What did one look for when phones went dead? Hanging wires? And what difference
did it make? It wasn’t as if she could call someone and tell them it was
dead.

Summoning curse words she didn’t even know she knew,
Maya cuddled a quilt around her and paced up and down the front office. Walking
was supposed to be good for laboring mothers, she remembered. Maybe walking
would clear her head. Or ease the ache. She winced and grabbed her belly as a
muscle in her lower abdomen squeezed hard. Well, so much for the backache
theory. That was definitely a contraction.

She picked up the phone again. Maybe it had just been a
fluke the first time.

Still no dial tone.

Would Selene have left her cell phone?

She rummaged through the desk and found nothing. She glared
at the computer. No phone: no e-mail, no fax.

All right,
think, Maya.
She could walk. How far was
the nearest house? Or the shopping center they were building over the hill.
Would any of the crew still be there? Would they have telephones?

She glanced out the window at the pouring rain. It looked
like California during an El Niño winter. Rivers of red mud poured down the
gravel drive. The lovely babbling brook through the side yard had turned into
an ocean, swamping the azalea garden with a muddy, leaf-strewn pond that seemed
to rise as she watched. She couldn’t cut across that way.

All right, was it safer to wait in the warmth and safety of
the dry house, praying the telephone would come back on and that the baby would
wait, or should she risk the weather and mud and floods to seek help?

Instinct said wait. Instinct didn’t like getting wet.

At least the electricity worked. She could fix a cup of tea.
Selene had hooked her CD player to the intercom. She could find a few good
songs and think.

***

Soaked to the bone, his expensive Johnston & Murphy
loafers caked in mud past his ankles, his dry-clean-only linen shirt plastered
to transparency against his back, Axell stumbled out of the downpour and onto
the wide front porch of the school, panting from the exertion of fighting mud
and water and his own anxiety.

He could see lights in all the windows, and relief poured
through him. She was here. She was fine. He was the jerk. That was okay.
He’d survive.

Throwing open the door, Axell walked into a blast of Aretha
Franklin screaming “
Respect
!” with the thundering power of a
class five tornado. They must have wired the entire school with an amplifying
system.

Holding on to the door frame, Axell peeled off his shoes and
socks. He’d like to peel off the rest of his sopping clothes too, but
striding through the house naked didn’t strike him as particularly
polite.

Figuring there wasn’t much point shouting for Maya
over the noise, he padded through the hall and toward the kitchen. Maybe they
kept coffee pots there. Surely Selene didn’t drink that damned tea.

Axell stumbled into the kitchen and grabbed the doorsill for
support at the sight in front of him.

Maya sat wrapped in a quilt, sipping tea from one of her
precious cups, and rocking in a chair he remembered had once adorned the
schoolroom. Her auburn curls spilled in abandon over shoulders that appeared
distinctly naked above the cover of the quilt.

At sight of him, she looked up and her pale face beamed with
a tremulous smile that cleaved his heart clear in two.

“Virgo to the rescue!” she breathed happily.
“Did you bring your forceps?”

***

November, 1945

She made a spectacle of herself in front of the whole church,
nearly cost me my job when she ripped Dolly’s hat off and threw it in my
face. I explained it all away to the old man, but when I went to tell her this
had to stop, I ended up in her bed again.

She makes me laugh. She makes me think there ought to be more
to life than twelve hour days over the mill books. She’s the devil in
woman’s disguise. I want her every minute of every day.

I sent her my mother’s teapot today. It doesn’t
match her mother’s teacups, but she’ll understand.

Make it idiot-proof and someone will make a better idiot.

“
The baby is coming
?” Axell shouted.

“I’d offer you a cup of tea, but I think
we’d better start for the hospital.” She unwrapped her feet from
the quilt and stood up. She was barefoot, and her toenails were painted copper
brown.

Axell gaped at her shapely feet rather than staring at her
shoulders or anywhere between. “Hospital. Right.” Stunned, his
brain ceased functioning.

The baby was coming. His car was in three feet of water a
mile down the road. Maya was naked.

“Axell?” she asked patiently. “Is
everything all right?”

He summoned his courage and looked up. She didn’t eat
enough. Still, her thin face glowed with expectation and her eyes were
blue-green lanterns of excitement beneath her mound of auburn hair. Something
odd inside him stirred. He figured it was terror.

“Have you called for an ambulance?” he demanded.

“The phone’s out,” she said.
“That’s why I’ve been sitting here waiting for someone to
show up. You’re my lifeline. I knew God couldn’t be so cruel as to
not offer me a way out of this. Let me see if my dress has dried yet.”

Shakily, Axell reached in his sopping back pocket and
retrieved his wet cell phone. “God works in mysterious ways,” he
reminded her with a sarcasm she didn’t deserve as he punched the buttons.
“My car died a mile down the road. And the road is washed out.”

Her smile froze on her face as she anxiously watched him
dial.

The line crackled but he could hear the phone ringing on the
other end. Clinging to desperate hope, Axell glanced away as Maya’s face
stretched taut with pain, and she eased back into the rocker. Fingers gripped
into fists, he waited for the emergency operator.

He barked the problem and the directions into the phone as
soon as he had the operator on the line. He reminded them the road was washed
out. He repeated everything. Twice. The operator seemed enormously slow at
grasping the immensity of the problem. Taking a deep breath, Axell fought for
calm. Maya bent over in agony and he nearly lost it.

“Hurry, will you?” he shouted into the phone.
“She’s going to have the baby on the kitchen floor if you
don’t get here soon!”

Frantically listening to the curt voice on the other end of
the line, Axell nodded, then waited until Maya straightened. “Is there a
bed in this place?” he demanded.

She grimaced and nodded toward a small room on the right.
“The infirmary. I’ve already made it ready, just in case.
Can’t they get here?”

Axell clutched the phone as he would a life raft in a raging
river, but Maya looked so scared, he lied. “They can always send a
helicopter.” Grimly, he turned back to the voice on the line. If he was
all she had, he’d damned well better do this right.

He’d never done anything right in his life that
involved a woman.

“Look, I’m on a cell phone. The lines are down
out here. I’ve got to preserve this battery. Give me basic instructions
and get someone here as soon as you can.”

He scribbled as fast as he could across a
first-grader’s alphabet pad. Panic wouldn’t help. Screaming at Maya
for her boneheadedness might relieve his frustration, but it wouldn’t get
the baby delivered. If he didn’t think about what he had to do, maybe he
could get through this. Maybe he could pretend he was talking to a mechanic
telling him how to replace a faulty carburetor.

Maya studied him soberly as Axell flung down the pen and
closed the phone. “We’re stranded, right?”

He took a deep breath. “Pretty much. The water goes
down quickly once the rain stops. There might be time. How far apart are the
pains?”

“Maybe four minutes.” She grimaced at his
reaction. “My water broke hours ago. I decided it was safer to deliver
the baby myself than try to make it through the flood. I’m sorry. I never
meant to get you involved.”

“You’re nuts. You’re completely
certifiable. What if the baby is breech? What if you’re not big enough?
Did you ever think of that?” Axell paced, trying to work off some of his
terror. Under his father’s tutelage, he’d learned dozens of ways of
controlling temper and panic. He hadn’t given into excess emotion in
decades. Even when his son had died, he’d managed a stoic calm, probably
because he’d already been frozen in shock at the loss of his wife. He had
no such buffer this time.

Mechanic. Make like a mechanic. Get the chassis on the ramp.

“All right, let’s check out the infirmary. I
suppose that means you’ve got Band-Aids and Tylenol.” He strode
purposefully toward the room she’d indicated and threw on the overhead
light. It had probably been a generous pantry at one time. It was little more
than a closet now. The narrow cot filled the interior. She’d piled it
high with pillows and stuffed animals.

“Ace bandages, stuff for poison ivy, bacteria
preventive, whatnot,” she agreed. “I can boil water,” she
added helpfully, before gasping in pain and bending double.

“On the bed,” Axell ordered, throwing open the
cabinet door and searching for the alcohol. Sterilize everything, they’d
said.

“I’m not ready for this,” she stalled,
glancing in the direction of the front door. “The baby isn’t due
for weeks. Couldn’t we try...”.

“Into bed!” Axell roared as another contraction
chopped her sentence short.

“Pisces swim,” she choked out, bent double but
not obeying orders. “Maybe it would be better to find your car.”

He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t deliver a
damned baby. He couldn’t even get the friggin’ airheaded mother to
lie down. “In the bed or I’ll carry you there!” he shouted in
frustration.

Straightening, Maya glanced at the narrow cot as if it were
a spaceship prepared for takeoff.

“Aries,” she murmured. “The baby will be
an Aries. I’ll never survive.”

“What?” Terrified by her last words, Axell
nearly dropped the alcohol bottle.

She adjusted her bulk onto the cot, settled against the
stack of pillows, and cried out as the next contraction caught her by surprise.

Cautiously, Axell set the alcohol bottle down before he
crushed it.

Biting back her cries, Maya struggled through the pain. Then
wiping the damp curl of purple hair from her eyes, she continued as if she
hadn’t been interrupted. “Aries can have explosive tempers. And
self-centered
,
you wouldn’t believe. His father is an Aries. I don’t suppose one
can divorce children?”

She must be hysterical. Breathing again, Axell washed his
hands. Discovering a box of antiseptic gloves, Axell nodded. All good
bartenders could handle small talk. “Or trade them in for a different
model? I’ve thought about it. Is the baby going to be a boy?”

She grunted and breathed in short quick bursts before
shaking her head. “Don’t know. Damn, this
h-u-ur-r-ts
.”
The last word emerged as a scream.

Faulty carburetors didn’t scream.

“I’m supposed to look for the head,” he
warned. The contractions were coming much too swiftly.

Following instructions helped. If he concentrated on one
step at a time and didn’t think about what he was doing...

He barely had room to bend over. The sight of the woman
lying in the bed, adjusting the quilt to hang over her bent knees, terrified
the shit out of him. Lifting the quilt terrified the shit out of him, he
amended. This was too up close and personal, and he didn’t do personal.