Mommy Midwife (22 page)

There was no clock in her bedroom, and she wasn’t wearing her handy wristwatch with the stopwatch function. She tried to measure the time between the first contraction and the next. It seemed like more than ten minutes. And the pain was nowhere near as severe as the first. Her tension eased. Yes, she was in labor. But it could last for hours or even a day. By then, Troy would find her and rescue her and their baby.

She closed her eyes and continued to breathe quietly and steadily. She was an expert. She could control this birth.

While managing the pain from another contraction, she was aware of the doorknob turning. If Jarvis charged into the room, she didn’t know if she could hold back her cries.

The door cracked open and quickly closed again. She heard Troy’s voice. “Olivia, where are you?”

“In the bed.”

He slid between the covers beside her. His body was cool from the night air, and his embrace soothed the heat of her pain. She snuggled against his chest. He was here, he was really here to save her and their son.

Her whisper was nearly inaudible. “Jarvis wants our baby. To make up for the son he lost.”

“Not going to happen.”

“How did you get in here?”

“We should go to the bathroom and close the door. They won’t hear us.”

“I’m afraid to move,” she whispered. “I’m in labor.”

“I know.”

She had no idea how he would know that she was about to have the baby, but she didn’t question or dispute his claim. “Tell me.”

His lips were so close to her ear that his breath tickled when he spoke. His quiet words slipped into her mind, joining her with him in sweet intimacy.

“I felt your labor,” he said, “in a flood of anticipation that permeated every cell of my body, my mind and my heart. In that moment, I knew my life was about to change forever.”

She pressed her face against his chest. Tears squeezed through her eyelids.

“Go ahead and cry,” he whispered. “I can take it.”

“How are we going to get out of here?”

“Not the same way I came in. I scaled a wall on the back side of the house, broke a window and slipped into a bedroom. Then I waited until the guard outside your door took a pee break. I picked the lock, and here I am.”

In her condition, there would be no scaling of walls or dropping from the second story. They definitely couldn’t take that path to escape, but her earlier tour of the house had given her another possible route. “There’s a basement. If we can get down there, I think there might be a storm door or a window we can use.”

When he nodded, the bristles on his cheek scraped against her skin, and she welcomed the sensation. He made her hope again, made her feel that there was a chance that they could survive.

“I’m going to the door. When the guard is gone, I’ll give you a signal and you come to me.”

She wasn’t dressed for an escape. Her panties had been drenched when her water broke. But she had her shorts. And her shoes were under the bed. Lying quietly and concentrating on her breathing, she waited. In the darkness, she could just make out his form near the door. He seemed to have his ear pressed to the crack.

Minutes dripped by as slowly as molasses. Another contraction came, peaked and subsided. A regular pattern for the labor pains had not been established, and that was a good sign; she wasn’t close to the final urge to push.

His whisper reached her ears. “Now.”

Moving as quietly as possible, she left the bed, grabbing her shoes and shorts on the way. Outside her room, the hallway was empty. Troy took her hand and led her toward the far end, away from the main staircase. The last door at the end of the hall was nearly flush to the wall. He opened it, revealing a narrow stairwell.

As she slipped inside and he closed the door, she heard voices behind them. Two of the guards were talking about who should get the next shift and who got to sleep. Pressed tightly against Troy, she stood very still. Another labor pain arose from the small of her back. She gripped his arm with all her strength and held on.

“Breathe,” he whispered in her ear. “Breathe.”

Forcing a slow exhale, she got through the contraction without making a sound.

The hallway was quiet again, except for the shuffling noises of the guard outside her room settling back in his chair. Together, she and Troy descended the narrow staircase. He used the light from his cell phone for illumination. She moved carefully in her bare feet. Taking a tumble would ruin everything.

The stairwell ran all the way down to the basement. When they reached the concrete floor on the bottom, Troy opened the door and shone his light around an enclosed room that was obviously used for storage. She felt more protected in here. Taking a moment, she put on her shorts and shoes.

“What do we do next?” she asked.

“When we’re safely out of the house, I use my cell phone to signal Alex. He’ll contact your father and—”

“Alex is here?” She hadn’t expected his doctor brother to act as backup.

“Alex and Carol. We never would have found this lodge if it hadn’t been for her.” He ran his hand along her back. “Your father has put together an assault team. They’re in Dillon, waiting for the go-ahead to move on Jarvis.”

“What happened with your men in New York?” she asked.

* * *

T
ROY LEANED HIS
back against the basement wall and stared down at the glow from the cell phone. He hadn’t spared a single thought for his team since they got to Dillon. If ever he needed a sign that his priorities had changed, this was it.

“I haven’t spoken to Nelson,” he said. “My team is on their own, and they can handle it. All I care about is you and our baby.”

“You really mean that, don’t you?”

“You’re everything to me.”

She collapsed into his arms, holding him tightly. Her grasp became a grip. He felt the strength of her contraction. When it subsided, he said, “That one came close on top of the other.”

“I haven’t been able to time how far apart they are,” she said. “I wish I could tell you exactly when the baby was coming, but I don’t know.”

“Is that your expert opinion?”

She stifled a chuckle against his chest. “A few hours ago, I didn’t think I’d laugh ever again. I wasn’t even sure that I’d survive.”

He wrapped her up in his arms. How the hell were they going to get out of this? They couldn’t stay here. As soon as Jarvis figured out that she’d left the room, he’d tear this place apart trying to find her. Going outside wasn’t much better; she couldn’t make any kind of long-distance run through the forest.

“I have an idea,” she whispered.

“Good, because I’m fresh out.”

“The original house that was on this property is about a hundred yards up the hill from here and over a ridge. It sounds like a ramshackle place, but it does have a well, which means running water.”

“That’s where we’ll go.” As soon as they were safe inside, he’d put through the call to Alex.

Using the cell phone light, he led her through a rabbit warren of unfinished rooms in the lodge basement. The high windows would have provided a viable escape route if she hadn’t been pregnant; her belly was too unwieldy to squeeze through.

Finally, at the opposite end of the house from the staircase they’d descended, he found a room that was packed with firewood and had double doors that led up to outside.

Her contractions were coming more frequently. He waited for the next one to pass and pushed open the doors. They were free.

With his arm slung around her waist, he helped her climb through the forest. Her heavy breathing worried him. “Are you okay?”

“Not okay.” She gasped and leaned against the rough trunk of a pine tree. “In labor.” Another gasp. “Exhausted. Scared.”

He scooped her off the ground. Pregnant Olivia wasn’t a featherweight, but carrying her was easier than half dragging her up the hill. In the dark of the forest, he didn’t see the house she’d said was in this direction. If he went past it, they could be wandering for hours.

Then he caught a glimpse of a trail and followed it along a ridge to the back door to the cabin. Though he would have preferred kicking down the door, Troy had to be careful not to make unnecessary noise that would alert Jarvis and his men to their escape route. He set her down, picked the lock and led her inside.

Filthy was a nice description for what they found in the old cabin. Dust an inch thick covered every horizontal surface, animal droppings scattered about the floor and cobwebs draped from the corners. Near the bathroom, he found a closed closet. Inside were sheets and towels that probably hadn’t been used in years but were relatively clean.

He spread a sheet over the mattress in the bedroom for Olivia. “Lie down.”

With a groan, she sank onto the bed, lying on her side. “How much longer?”

“Not much.”

Using his cell phone, he sent a text to Alex.
We’re safe.

It was close to dawn. Oddly, his idea of staging the attack at that time had been accurate. The return message came in just a few minutes.
Assault in twenty minutes.

Troy sat beside her on the bed and held up the phone so she could see. “Twenty minutes.”

The thinning light of dawn filtered through the dirty window and shone full on her face. Slowly, she shook her head. “We don’t have that long. This baby is coming now.”

Chapter Twenty-One

The fear Troy had experienced in battle was nothing compared to Olivia’s declaration.
Now. The baby is coming now.
And there was nobody but him to help. “What should I do?”

“This place is supposed to have a well. See if you can get the water running. And bring me all the sheets.”

He dashed to the closet in the hall and grabbed every scrap of material, which he then deposited on the bed. She was standing, sorting through sheets and assembling a kind of nest.

“Should you be lying down?” he asked.

In answer, she flung out her arm and grasped his hand. The squeeze of her fingers was tighter than a hungry python. Her lips pressed together, and he knew she was holding back the urge to cry out. If there had been any way for him to take on her pain, he wouldn’t have hesitated.

Gradually, she released. “Get the water.”

In the kitchen, he found a couple of bowls in the cabinets and stuck them under the cistern faucet on the sink. Each crank of the pump elicited a squawk. When the water finally started running, it was muddy brown. He kept cranking. Eventually, the liquid turned clear.

He carried a bowl of water back to the bedroom where she was sprawled on the bed, half-covered by an array of sheets and towels. In spite of the chill in the room, a film of sweat coated her forehead. Her blond hair was plastered to her cheeks, and she was gasping like a fish out of water. His heart went out to her. Olivia hadn’t wanted her labor to be like this. A dozen times, she’d talked about how she wanted a mood of serenity and peace for the moment when their son came into the world.

“I wish it could be different,” he whispered. “After all the babies you’ve delivered, you deserve a beautiful experience.”

“This is perfect.” She grabbed the front of his shirt and yanked him down onto the bed beside her. “Life is a struggle, and our son is going to be tough enough to handle anything the world throws at him.”

“Okay.” He tried to be encouraging. “That’s one way of looking at it.”

“Don’t have a choice,” she snapped.

“And that’s another way.”

“From now on, you’re my coach. Take one of these washcloths, get it damp and wipe off my forehead. You need to hold my hand and remind me of how to breathe.”

How many ways were there to breathe? In his experience, gritting his teeth was the way to handle pain. “Inhale and exhale? Faster? Slower?”

“There’s a pattern,” she said. “I’ll explain.”

He listened to her instructions and did exactly what she said. For the next contractions, he held her hand and helped her breathe through them. They were setting up a rhythm, and she seemed to be calmer, definitely more in control. The process was working.
We’re having this baby now.

Daylight was growing stronger by the minute. In the light, his son would be born. He heard the first shots from the assault on the other house. Jarvis was under attack.

“Good news,” he said. “Starting now, you can scream as loud as you want.”

“You have no idea what that means to me.”

On her next contraction, she opened her mouth and let out a yell. The sound crashed against his ears. Still, he encouraged her. “That’s good.”

“Damn right it is.”

The yell seemed to relieve her pressure. “Next time, you can get even louder.”

“And I need to keep to the pattern of breathing,” she reminded him.

As he worked with her through the contractions, his admiration grew. She struggled. She fought with all her strength. And she was handling the labor, probably better than he would, and he’d been awarded a Purple Heart for battle injury. His suffering had been nothing compared to what she was going through. Every woman who had a baby should be awarded a medal for bravery and fortitude.

After a particularly fierce contraction, she lay back against the pillows, gasping. He wiped the damp cloth over her forehead. “How much longer?”

“Not much.” She exhaled with repeated puffs. “It’s time to push. Check the baby’s progress.”

“How do I do that?”

“I think you know where babies come out.”

This was the next phase, the inevitable phase. Panic rushed through him. He wasn’t sure he could handle this. But there wasn’t a choice. At the foot of the bed, he pulled apart the sheets and separated her legs. “I see him. I see the head.”

She bore down and pushed. The shout that came from her was a battle cry, and she was winning. They were winning. He didn’t have time to think or to worry. The baby’s head was freed. Acting on instinct, Troy helped the shoulders to slide through.

“Again,” he said. “Another push.”

Heroically, she put in the effort. The baby, his son, was born. The tiny face was wet and covered in goop, but the kid was beautiful. His nose wrinkled and he made a weird snuffling noise—a cross between a cat’s meow and a sneeze.