Sweet Promise (25 page)

"My God! It's the baby!"

"Now, Matt, calm down," Claire cautioned as he rushed forward, but before she could get all the words out he was scooping her up in his arms.

He swung around and barked, "Sean, call Dr. Harris. His number is by every phone in the house. Joanna, you run upstairs and get her bag. It's right beside our bed. Move! Both of you!"

Sean's face was even whiter than Joanna's, but when she rushed out the door he swallowed hard and followed right behind her. He grabbed the phone in the hall, and as she sprinted up the stairs on legs that felt like rubber sticks she heard him demanding to be put through to Dr. Harris. When she raced back down with the overnight bag a few seconds later, he was just hanging up the phone, and Matt was striding toward the front door with Claire in his arms.

"Sean, go get my car and bring it around to the front. Joanna! Hurry with that bag!" he yelled without even looking around.

"Matt, I can't go out in this weather without a coat," Claire reminded him.

Swearing, Matt swung back toward the closet. Before he got there Joanna had already pulled Claire's coat from its hanger, but when she held it out to Matt he just stood there with his wife in his arms and scowled.

"Darling, you have to put me down so I can put it on."

Matt looked at Claire in sheer horror. "Do you think, you can stand?"

"Of course. I'm fine, darling. Really."

With a great deal of reluctance, Matt very gingerly lowered her to her feet. Joanna helped her mother into her coat, but she had barely gotten the first button fastened when Claire gasped and bent over, clutching her distended abdomen.

"What is it?" Matt cried in alarm.

"It's... okay, it's... just... a labor pain," Claire gasped.

Matt's face turned ashen. His curse turned the air blue.

He started to snatch her up in his arms again, but Joanna stopped him. "Give it time to pass first. And in the meantime, here, put your coat on."

Cursing fluently under his breath, his eyes never leaving his wife, Matt snatched the coat from her outstretched hand as Joanna pulled her own from the closet. By the time they had scrambled into them the pain had eased and Claire had started to straighten. Before she could finish, Matt swept her up in his arms again.

"Dammit! What the hell is keeping Sean?" he roared as he headed for the door.

As if on cue, a car horn blasted outside. Carrying the overnight bag, Joanna rushed out the door after Matt, and gasped when she was hit full in the face by blowing snow.

"When did this happen?" Matt grumbled as he bundled Claire into the back seat, and Joanna scrambled in beside Sean. "The weatherman said we were in for a light snow, for Pete's sake!"

Sean sent the car shooting down the gravel drive toward the highway, a mile away. "He miscalculated," he said tersely, leaning forward to peer through the swirling flakes. "This has all the earmarks of a blizzard."

Matt muttered a curse and Claire murmured soothingly to him. Staring straight ahead Joanna held the overnight bag in her lap and gripped the handle with both hands.

Visibility grew worse by the minute. By the time they reached the highway it didn't extend the length of the headlight beams. Grimly, his jaw clenched, Sean eased the car onto the paved road, but they had barely gone ten feet when it began to fishtail. By the time he brought it to a stop they were almost in the ditch.

"It's no use, Matt. That sleet has formed a solid layer of ice over the road. We've got to go back."

"We can't!"

"Matt, we have to. If we don't we'll end up freezing to death in a ditch."

Matt opened his mouth to argue, but at that moment another pain hit Claire, and he clutched her to him, his panic-stricken eyes seeking out the other two over the top of her head.

Joanna checked her watch and swallowed around the knot of fear in her throat. Striving to keep her voice calm, she said, "It's only been six minutes since the last pain. Matt, we have no choice but to go back."

Without waiting for his reply, Sean put the car in reverse.

When Matt rushed back into the house with Claire in his arms she was in the grips of another wrenching contraction. With Joanna and Sean right behind him, he took the stairs two at a time and hurried to the master bedroom. Joanna darted around him and flipped back the covers, and Matt eased Claire onto the bed, then sat beside her and gripped her hands tightly.

"Hang on, sweetheart," he said with gruff tenderness when the pain had passed. He snatched up the phone on the bedside table and began punching out numbers. "We'll get you to the hospital, don't worry."

Two minutes later, Matt had Dr. Harris on the phone. Quickly, in a voice bordering on panic, he told him what had happened. "I want a helicopter out here, Bob, and I want it now," he ordered. "The damned pains are already less than six minutes apart."

There was a moment of silence, then, his face livid, Matt shouted, "What the hell do you mean, they can't fly in this weather? They have to!"

Chapter Fourteen

"
D
ammit, man! Don't you understand? Claire is in pain! She's going to have the baby! She needs help!"

Sitting on the opposite side of the bed, Joanna held her mother's hand and cast anxious glances at her stepfather. The knuckles on Matt's left hand were white where they gripped the phone. His face was a rigid mask of fear and rage, his eyes wild. He looked ready to commit mayhem. Joanna didn't have to be told that the news was not good. She had seen Matt angry before, but never this close to losing control.

"What!
Are you crazy?" he roared into the receiver. "We can't deliver this baby! You've got to do something, dammit!"

As Matt listened to the doctor's reply Joanna watched his expression grow more desperate, and fear crawled up her spine. "Now listen to me, you sonofa—"

Claire cried out and clutched her abdomen, and the vitriolic curse cut off in mid-spate. The phone slid from Matt's grasp and dropped to the floor unnoticed as he sank back down on the edge of the bed and grasped both her shoulders. "Easy, sweetheart. Easy," he crooned desperately as Claire writhed in the grip of a clawing pain.

Joanna looked at Sean, but he was standing at the foot of the bed, an expression of sheer horror on his face. Gathering her courage, she rose, circled around to the other side of the bed and picked up the receiver from the carpet. "Dr. Harris? This is Joanna Andrews, Mrs. Drummond's daughter."

"Ah, good," Dr. Harris said in a relieved tone. "I'm glad you're there, Miss Andrews. From the sound of Matt, he's not going to be of much use. I'm afraid it's going to be up to you to deliver that baby."

Terror washed over Joanna in an icy wave, sending a shudder rippling through her. She wanted to run and hide. Dear, Lord! She couldn't deliver a baby! But when her panicked glance fell on Claire's pale face Joanna drew in a deep breath and clamped down on the fear. ^"Tell me what we have to do."

Joanna listened intently to the doctor's instructions, and scribbled on the notepad by the phone the list of supplies she would need. "You will stay on the phone and guide me?" she asked shakily when he had finished.

"Yes, of course. Now you just stay calm and do what I say, and everything will be fine."

"All right, doctor. Hold on just a moment." Joanna put the phone down on the bedside table and started issuing orders as she headed for the master bathroom. "Sean, you man the phone and relay Dr. Harris's instructions. Matt, you stay right where you are and do
what you can to help Mother."

Matt came up off the bed with a roared,
"No!"

Joanna spun around and found him glaring at her, his rugged features distorted with anguish and stark fear.

Putting a bracing hand on his shoulder, Sean said, "Matt, take it easy. Can't you see we don't have a choice?"

"He's right, Matt." Joanna walked back to him and gripped his upper arms, feeling the tense muscles ripple beneath her hands. "There is no way on earth we can get to the hospital, and like it or not, that baby is going to be born tonight. Probably within the hour, Dr. Harris says. We just have to do what we can to help Mother."

A shudder shook Matt's big frame, and he squeezed his eyes shut as though in agony.

"Darling, please don't worry," Claire called softly, and Matt spun around and dropped down on his knees beside the bed. He grasped one of her hands between both of his and brought it to his mouth, his blue eyes darting frantically over her face, wide with fear and concern. She looked at him tenderly and touched the silvered hair at his temple with her other hand. "It will be all right, my love. Women have been having babies since the beginning of time/'

"Oh, God, Claire!"

Joanna left them and went to look for the things she needed. She returned a few minutes later carrying clean sheets and towels, scissors, a ball of string, a bottle of alcohol, newspaper, and a plastic dry cleaner's bag.

With Matt's help, she stripped Claire of her soiled clothes and dressed her in a warm gown. Joanna then spread several layers of newspaper over the plastic, covered both with a sheet and slid the makeshift pad under her mother's hips. As she covered Claire with a sheet another pain bore down on her.

Joanna checked her watch and looked at Sean. "Tell Dr. Harris the pains are now four and a half minutes apart."

Matt muttered a frantic "Oh, God" and gripped Claire's hand tighter as he dabbed the beads of perspiration from her forehead with a tissue.

Stepping to the side of the bed, Joanna touched her mother's shoulder and studied her with concerned eyes. "Are you okay?"

"I... I'm fine," Claire panted.

Swallowing down another rush of fear, Joanna hurried away to finish her preparations. When Matt came storming into the bathroom a few minutes later she had just finished removing her nail polish and was hurriedly clipping her nails.

"For God's sake, Joanna!" he yelled. "What the hell are you doing? This is no time for a manicure!"

At any other time Joanna would have taken offense at his tone, but she knew that Matt was distraught. "Matt, I'm trying to make my hands as germfree as possible," she explained patiently. "As soon as I scrub I'll be there. Now go back to your wife."

"Well hurry it up," he snapped, only partially mollified. "Claire needs you."

As if on cue, they heard a stifled scream from the bedroom. Matt paled, cursed, and shot back through the door. When Joanna followed him a couple of minutes later another hard contraction was building. Anxiously, her eyes sought Sean, and he muttered, "Two minutes apart."

Fear clawed at Joanna. Claire was drenched in sweat, her golden curls darkened and plastered to her head. Her hands gripped two of the oak spindles in the headboard above her head, and she was pulling and straining, writhing from side to side. Her lovely face was ravaged with pain, her eyes and jaws clamped tightly shut, but little sounds of distress came out with every breath.

Joanna climbed onto the foot of the bed and knelt between Claire's knees. She placed her hand on her stomach, and her eyes widened as she felt the rippling movement against her palm. Claire's moans built to a hoarse scream that seemed to tear from her throat, and her back arched off the bed as her abdomen tightened into a tortuous hard ball.

"Dr. Harris says not to fight it, Claire," Sean advised in a strained voice a moment later as the agonized sound faded away. "Pant with the pains and relax in between."

When the next pain hit a minute later Claire tried, but toward the end her breathless pants dissolved into a high, keening wail. Two more spasms came before Joanna cried out, "I can see the head!"

Sean related the news to Dr. Harris and announced, "He says it won't be long now."

The undulating contractions were so close together now there were only scant seconds of respite in between.

"You're doing fine, Mother. Just fine. Okay, here comes another one. You're going to have to push now."

Claire gulped in air and strained with all her might as the wrenching pain twisted her insides/Her face turned an alarming purple-red with the effort. She dug her heels into the mattress and pushed, and her hands pulled at the oak spindles until her knuckles were bone-white and the tendons in her neck, shoulders and arms stood out like taut wires.

"That's it. That's it. You're doing great. Just a little harder," Joanna coaxed.

As Claire strove to comply the sharp crack of splintering wood sounded above the guttural moans that rasped from her throat.

Three pairs of eyes went to the split and bowed oak spindles still held in Claire's iron grasp.

"Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God," Matt chanted weakly.

Sean stared and swallowed hard. "Christ."

Gritting her teeth, Joanna forced her gaze back to the birth area, and her eyes widened in delight. "Oh, here it comes! The baby's coming! Oh, this is so beautiful!" she cried, laughing and sobbing as the head emerged. "You're doing terrific, Mother. Just a little more. There, that's it. That's it. Oh, my," she murmured in breathless awe as she caught the slippery newborn in her hands.

Joanna looked up, her eyes swimming with emotion. "Oh, Mother, you have a son. A beautiful little son."