Wyoming Bride (40 page)

Hannah didn’t contradict him because she was concentrating on the horses’ rumps in front of her, watching them plod, willing them to get where they were going before this baby was born. Flint’s attitude toward the child she was carrying convinced her she’d done the right thing. Once he delivered this baby, once he held the tiny being in his large hands, he couldn’t help but love it as though it were his own flesh and blood.

The contraction finally ended, and Hannah let out a long, soughing breath of air.

“It’s another five minutes to the house, Hannah,” Flint said. “Take it easy, if you can.”

Hannah smiled ruefully. “I don’t seem to have much control of the situation. The baby’s making all the decisions.”

“Scoot over, Emaline. You, too, Hannah,” Flint said as he maneuvered from his saddle onto the buckboard’s bench seat next to Hannah. He tied his horse’s reins on an iron ring, then took the buckboard reins from Emaline. “I don’t know what you thought you were doing, Hannah. Why the hell didn’t you say something sooner?”

“I wanted this baby to be born at home,” she replied.

“Hang on,” he said to both women. Then he lashed the horses from a walk to a fast trot. “Are you okay with this?” he asked Hannah as the buckboard bumped and heaved over the rutted road.

She replied by grabbing her stomach to protect the baby inside from being jolted. Another contraction attacked her, causing her to wince and moan.

Emaline’s arm came around her shoulders to steady her. “What can I do, Hannah?” she asked. “How can I help?”

In the grip of an excruciating contraction, Hannah said nothing. She clutched Flint’s forearm with one hand and grasped Emaline’s hand with the other, then closed her eyes and held on for dear life.

The contraction seemed endless. Hannah was counting the seconds. By the time she got to thirty, she thought she would go mad. When would it end? How much longer? She was in agony.

She sobbed when the contraction ended and opened her eyes to discover that the wagon was stopped at the kitchen door of the ranch house. Emaline climbed down off the buckboard on her own, while Ransom ran to open the back door. Flint was already on the ground and reaching for Hannah.

She slid gratefully into his arms and leaned her head against his chest as he carried her inside and up the stairs.

“Set some water to boil,” she heard him tell Ransom. Then he turned to Emaline and said, “Get me some clean sheets, some newspaper, twine, and a pair of scissors. Have Ransom bring that water up when it’s hot.”

Hannah was in the middle of another contraction by the time he reached their bedroom door. The guttural groan that erupted from her mouth sounded like the death throes of a wounded animal.

“Easy, Hannah. Easy, girl. I’ve got you. You’re all right. It’ll all be over soon.”

Hannah didn’t recognize the words Flint spoke, just the tone of his comforting voice. He promised it would all be over soon. She prayed it would, because she wasn’t sure how much more of this agony she could bear.

Flint tried to set her down on the bed, but she clung to him, in the clutches of yet another unending contraction. By the time she went limp, Ransom was at the door asking, “What else can I do?”

“Pull down the covers,” Flint said. “And put a match to that wood in the fireplace.”

By then Emaline had arrived with some of the supplies Flint had asked her to retrieve, and he ordered, “Spread the sheets with newspaper.”

As soon as she was done, Flint laid Hannah down and adjusted a pillow under her head. He spread the clean sheet and used it to cover her.

“I’ll undress her,” Emaline volunteered.

Hannah saw the fear in her eyes and said, “I can undress myself.”

“I’ll help her,” Flint said. “Leave us alone.”

“You sure, Flint?” Ransom asked.

“I’m sure.”

A moment later, the door was shut, and they were alone.

“You’re cold,” Flint said when he saw Hannah shiver.

“The fire will warm me up.”

Quickly and efficiently, Flint got Hannah out of her coat and boots. He left her socks on, because he could still see his breath in the bedroom. By the time he was done, she was in the grip of another contraction. She clung tightly to his hands until it passed.

He could see the torment in her eyes as she met his gaze. His heart was beating so hard he thought she must be able to hear it. “Are you all right?” he asked as she relaxed her hands and let out a
whoosh
of air.

Despite the cold, sweat had popped out on Hannah’s forehead. “Labor is well named,” she muttered.

Flint couldn’t believe he was going to have to deliver McMurtry’s baby. What if something went wrong and the child died? Would Hannah blame him for the loss of the last thing tying her to her first husband? He’d often wondered whether Hannah had loved McMurtry, but he’d never asked because he was afraid of the answer. Maybe she was still in love with a ghost. Maybe that was why she’d never said she loved him.

“Let’s get you out of those clothes and into a nightgown.”

“I can do it myself,” she said, ducking her head shyly. “I’m enormous.”

Flint met her gaze solemnly and said, “Yes, you are. Enormously beautiful.”

She looked up at him in surprise. “What?”

He laid his hands on her pregnant stomach, so he felt the next contraction begin. Her hands grabbed his wrists, and he watched with awe as her body struggled in an effort to expel the child inside her. When the contraction ended, he swallowed past the sudden knot in his throat and said, “That was amazing.”

“I’m glad you think so,” she said irritably.

He resisted the urge to smile. “Let’s get you more comfortable.”

“I don’t think that’s possible,” she shot back.

He went to the clothes chest and looked in the two drawers Hannah used until he found one of her nightgowns. He returned to the bed and undid the buttons on her dress, then pulled it off over her head. He drew the nightgown down over her head and waited while she shimmied out of her underclothes. Before he could even throw the clothing aside, she was caught by another shuddering contraction.

“Let me know when you have to push,” he told Hannah.

Hannah wasn’t speaking. She was grunting, animalistic, guttural sounds that seemed to come from her very core, as the contraction went on … and on … and on.

Flint was afraid to count the seconds. Toward the end of labor, he knew the contractions were longer and closer together. Hannah seemed racked with pain, and he had no laudanum to ease it.

“I wish you’d said something sooner, Hannah. The baby’s early. We could have used a doctor.”

Hannah exhaled noisily when the contraction ended and then gulped air into her heaving lungs. “It’s too late now, Flint.” She looked up at him and said, “I trust you.”

Those three words didn’t have quite the same effect as
I love you
, but they were a step in the right direction. Flint didn’t want to fail her, but he was going to be in trouble if something went wrong with the delivery, or if the child wasn’t able to survive on its own once it was born.

“Are you sure about the date you got pregnant?” he asked.

“Good God almighty! Why would you ask me something as stupid as that?” Then she gasped and grabbed her belly and began making those raw, grating sounds again in her throat.

Flint had asked because he was wishing for a full-term baby, rather than a child whose lungs might not be fully developed or one who might be too frail to live outside the womb.

“I have to push!” she cried.

Flint wasn’t ready. “Get that hot water up here!” he yelled. “Where the hell are those scissors? Get me that twine!”

The door burst open and Emaline stood there, white-faced, scissors and twine in hand. “The water’s not boiling yet,” she said in a small voice.

“Set those things down on the chest and get over here,” Flint snarled.

“But—”

“Move, Emaline!”

Emaline dropped what she carried on the chest and hurried to his side, then stood frozen with her hands wrapped around her elbows.

“Sit down beside Hannah. Hold her hands. Talk to her.”

“But—”

“Do what I say!”

Emaline sank onto the bed beside Hannah, but Flint was too busy to notice whether she’d followed his instructions.

“Fliiiiinnnnnnt!” Hannah cried.

“It’s all right, sweetheart,” Flint said. His insides cramped as tears of pain slipped from the corners of her eyes. “Scream all you want,” he croaked past a throat knotted with emotion. “It won’t bother me.”

“It’s bothering me,” Emaline muttered. “Look at me, Hannah. Look at me!”

Flint couldn’t afford to pay attention to Emaline. He made sure both Hannah’s feet were flat on the bed and lifted the sheet that had covered her for modesty’s sake to see whether the baby’s head had crowned.

Flint realized that Hannah had stopped screaming and shot a look at her to see what was wrong. He saw that the two women were speaking to each other in hushed tones. “What the hell is going on, Hannah?”

“Shut up, Flint,” Hannah snapped. “Shut the hell up!”

Then she was writhing on the bed and wailing like someone had died.

“Push, Hannah. Damn it! Push!” he ordered.

“I aaaaaammmmm!”

“The head is out, Hannah,” Flint said.

“What did you say?”

Flint turned and saw Ransom standing in the doorway holding a pot of steaming water and looking stunned. “Set that down and bring me those scissors and the twine from the chest,” Flint ordered.

“I have to push again!” Hannah cried.

Flint saw the shoulders slide out and then the rest of the baby slipped out easy as butter. He turned the baby over and saw it wasn’t breathing. He opened the baby’s mouth and slid out a wad of mucus, but still the child didn’t cry.

“Give me the damn scissors and twine!” he said to Ransom. He cut the cord and tied it off, then took the baby in his hands and turned his back on Hannah, so she couldn’t see it.

“Flint? What’s wrong?” Hannah said, pushing herself upright.

“Don’t get up,” Emaline warned. “You still have to deliver the afterbirth.”

“What’s wrong?” Hannah insisted.

“She’s not breathing,” Ransom said.

“It’s a girl?” Emaline said.

It’s a dead baby
, Flint thought. And then,
Like hell it is!
He checked the child’s mouth again and found more mucus, which he removed. Then he put his mouth over the baby’s mouth and nose and breathed air into its lungs. He watched the chest expand and then deflate. And nothing.

Breathe, kid. Damn it, breathe! I’ll do anything, God. I’ll be a perfect husband. A perfect father. Please, do not let this baby die
.

He put his mouth over the tiny girl’s mouth and nose and gently, carefully, breathed air from his lungs into hers again. “Come on, sweetie,” he begged. “Breathe. You can do it.”

The baby coughed. And then gave a feeble wail.

Flint’s eyes closed in hosanna.

He heard Hannah laugh and say, “Lauren! Is that any way to greet your father on your birthday?” Then she said, “Oh!”

Emaline said, “That’s the afterbirth.” She wrapped it in newspaper and set it aside to be taken out and buried.

Flint rose and realized he hadn’t thought far enough ahead to have a blanket in which to wrap the baby.

“Get one of my long john shirts out of the top drawer,” he instructed Ransom.

“I have clothes for the baby,” Hannah protested.

“You can dress her when you’re up and about. Right now she’s going to turn into an icicle if I don’t get her wrapped up snug and warm.”

Ransom spread the shirt open in his arms so Flint could lay the little girl—Lauren, he amended—in it and wrap her up like a papoose. Flint smiled as he met his brother’s eyes and said, “I have a little girl.” He took the bundled child in his arms, then turned to Hannah and said, “We have a little girl.”

Hannah felt like her prayers had been answered. She would treasure Flint’s words for the rest of her life:
We have a little girl
. “May I hold her?”

“Lauren, your mama wants to hold you,” Flint said, laying the tiny child in Hannah’s arms.