Baby's First Christmas. Cathy Thacker Gillen

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СКАЧАТЬ She’ll alert labor and delivery and the emergency room and meet you at the hospital.”

      Kate nodded, letting him know she’d heard. “Good thing you’re driving.” She gasped, leaned forward and clasped her tummy as yet another contraction gripped her. She whimpered. “I don’t think I could drive and endure this kind of pain, too.”

      “Do you have a labor coach?”

      “My baby sister, Lindy. She’s a teaching assistant at UNC. She’s teaching a class right now.” Kate shifted in an effort to get more comfortable and found, as Michael had figured would be the case, that it was hopeless. “You met her at the shop.”

      “Ah, yes, the one who said I was cu-u-u-te.”

      “You heard that?” She slanted him an inquiring glance as she continued to shift restlessly.

      Michael zoomed past a trailer park, a deserted country church and a farm. “I think she may have meant me to,” he confided, in an attempt to divert Kate’s attention from the pain. He smiled at her. “I had the feeling she would have liked nothing better than to set the two of us up.”

      Kate nodded, humorously conceding this was so. “And that was before she knew who you were or what your connection to me was—is,” Kate groaned.

      “You think this will up the stakes?” Michael paused at a four-way intersection, then seeing it was safe, continued on.

      “As far as Lindy is concerned, heck, yes. She’s an incurable romantic.” Kate picked up her bottle of water, ripped off the plastic seal and cap and took a tiny drink.

      Michael slanted her another glance. “But not you.”

      “Nope. Not anymore.” Kate handed him the bottled water. “I am a very practical woman.”

      Michael also took a small swig. “Good for you.”

      Kate capped the water, grimaced and began to pant as she was hit with yet another labor pain. “I guess it’s lucky you’re a doctor so you know about Lamaze.” Kate stuffed her belongings into her Lamaze bag. “You can coach me through it until we get to the hospital and Lindy and a nurse take over.” Thirty seconds. Forty-five. Sixty. Seventy-five.

      “No problem,” Michael retorted as they passed a road sign that said, Chapel Hill, twenty-four miles. “I could coach you through the Bradley and Gamper methods, too. But my real talent—” noting her contraction was continuing some two and half minutes after it began, he reached over to give her hand a comforting squeeze “—is in catching babies.”

      Kate forced a weak smile and let herself take comfort from his touch, even as the pain increased. “With or without a mitt?” she asked, panting.

      “Without.” He winked at her playfully. “Though I imagine it could be done either way.”

      “That’s it,” Kate gasped, looking as if it was taking everything she had to resist the urge to scream with the pain. “Keep the banter coming,” she advised.

      Michael nodded at her bright red cheeks. “You hurting a lot?”

      Kate concentrated on her breathing. “Oh, let’s just say it feels like an eighteen-wheeler truck is inside me roaring to get out.”

      “Hang on. We’re less than twenty minutes from the medical center.”

      “Oh, no.” Kate raised her hips off the captain’s seat.

      “What?” Michael was beginning to look as panicked as she felt.

      “Oh, no-no-no-no,” Kate wailed in distress.

      “What’s going on, Kate?”

      She leaned back and gripped his forearm, hard. “I feel the baby coming.”

      “That’s natural.”

      Kate shook her head vigorously. She was trembling. “No. You don’t understand. The baby’s starting to come out of me, Michael. I can feel it. I can feel the—baby’s head!”

      Michael guided the Gourmet Gifts To Go van into the first safe place he saw, the dirt road entrance to a farmer’s field. He put the van in park, switched on the hazard lights and set the emergency brake but kept the motor running, the air on. “I’m coming around,” he said.

      He got out of the van, circled the front and opened her door. “I’m going to hit the recline button on your seat, take your seat belt off and lay you back.” He put his hands beneath her shoulders and hips, leaned in and scooted her back and up. “I’m going to have to take a look.”

      She turned her head from him as he eased the hem of her jumper up and did what was necessary with clinical care.

      “Well?” Kate asked when he’d assessed the situation.

      “You’re right,” Michael said grimly. “There’s no time to spare. We’ve got to get you to the back of the van. Put your arm around my neck. That’s it.” He slid one arm beneath her knees, the other beneath her shoulders, then swept her effortlessly into his strong arms and carried her to the back. He opened the door and laid Kate gently on the carpeted floor of the van, pushing aside the gift baskets.

      Perspiration streamed down her face. He went to get her Lamaze gear and shut the door. Kate struggled against the pain that was gripping her nonstop. “I’m going to have the baby here and now, in the back of my delivery van, aren’t I?” she panted as one contraction slipped into another.

      Michael climbed in beside her and shut the rear door so there’d be no draft on her or the baby. “Looks like it, yes.” His expression all business, he lifted her hips and slid the blanket from her Lamaze bag beneath her.

      “I can’t believe this,” she moaned. “First the mix-up at the sperm bank and now this!”

      Michael knelt beside her and quickly divested her of her shoes, stockings and panties. “Maybe it’s just a Murphy’s law kind of year for us.” Swiftly, he checked on the position of the baby.

      “Not for me.” Kate shook her head as he pushed the hem of her jumper high enough to allow him to work yet left it low enough to afford her some modesty. “I plan things out meticulously. Always have, always will, only to have everything suddenly go awry now in such a big way.” Kate groaned helplessly and tightened her hands into fists.

      “If there’s one thing you can count on in this life, it’s that nothing ever goes according to plan anyway.” Working rapidly, Michael ripped into one of the undelivered gift baskets and extracted a bottle of wine. “Besides,” he continued, working to give her as much confidence as possible as he splashed his hands and then the birth area with germ-killing alcohol, “it’s been my experience that the best things in life are unplanned.”

      “Well, you being the father of my baby and my going into labor now are the two absolute exceptions to the rule,” Kate muttered cantankerously. “As far as I’m concerned, the screw-ups stop here,” she said, looking panic-stricken as another contraction gripped her. She grabbed his arm. “I have to push.”

      “Not yet, Kate.” Knowing he had to have something to cut the cord with, Michael СКАЧАТЬ