LITMIR.BIZ

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She had to finish it tonight. She had to—

      Bang. Bang. Bang. Like a garbage can bouncing down a fire escape.

      —open the door.

      Nell hauled herself to her feet. Her eyes were gritty. Her mouth was fuzzy. Her brain wasn’t working at all. If she had any kind of sense, she’d be home at this time of night. If she had any kind of life…

      Someone was at the clinic door, pounding hard enough to threaten the glass. Her heart tripped. Trying to get her attention? Or trying to get in?

      The panic button was up front, under the registration desk. It hadn’t been used in… Nell couldn’t remember the last time it had been used.

      She hurried down the hall, switching on lights along the way. The Ark Street Free Clinic wasn’t the county E.R. Her practice specialized in preventive medicine and family care. Not belligerent drunks or whacked-out junkies or gangbangers who had to be strapped to their gurneys to stop them from finishing in the hospital what they’d started on the streets.

      Bang. Bang.

      Pulse racing, Nell flipped the entrance lights. A pale face leaped at her from the darkness beyond the glass. Her heart rocketed to her throat.

      Joe Reilly?

      Dazed, Nell stood with her hand still on the switch plate and her feet rooted to the linoleum. What was he doing here?

      He rattled the door in its frame.

      Shaken from her surprise, Nell jumped forward to slide back the bolts.

      “What is it?” she asked. “What do you want?”

      And it better be good, her tone announced. She was tired. And she still hadn’t forgiven him for his “play doctor” crack.

      “Not me,” he said immediately. “Her.”

      He turned and reached down to the bundle of rags huddled in the shadow of the building. The bundle gasped and struck his arms away.

      Not rags. A woman. A girl, really, her dark eyes huge in her thin face, her hair covered by a plain scarf, her body draped in shawls.

      Nell took a step forward. “Help me get her inside.”

      “I can’t,” Joe said tersely.

      She spared him a brief, assessing glance. “Your ankle?”

      “No. She’s Muslim. Unless her life is in danger, it’s not permitted for me to touch her.”

      His sensitivity surprised Nell. But she was already bending down, offering her arm to the young woman. “How did you get her here?” she asked over her shoulder.

      Joe looked grim. “I convinced her her life was in danger.” The girl cried out. And Nell saw what the shadows and the shawls had hidden until now.

      “She’s pregnant,” she said stupidly, staring at the girl’s rigid, distended abdomen.

      Great diagnosis, Dolan.

      “Not for long,” said Joe. “She’s in labor.”

      Holy Mary, Mother of God.

      Adrenaline rushed through Nell, jolting her fully awake. She wasn’t set up for a birth. She hadn’t helped deliver a baby since her OB rotation in nursing school.

      “Right. All right.” Nell supported the girl to her feet with a strong arm around her shoulders. “Come on, sweetie, let’s get you inside. I can have an ambulance here in ten minutes.”

      “Not good enough,” Joe said. “She could have the baby here in five.”

      Had she really thought this dolt was sensitive?

      “Let’s try to be a little more reassuring, okay? She can hear you.” Nell turned back to the girl, who had the sweet, exotic prettiness of a Princess Jasmine doll. “What’s your name, honey?”

      Joe stretched his arm past them to open the door. He smelled like warm male and coffee. Nell would have killed for a cup.

      “Her name is Laila Massoud. And she doesn’t speak English.”

      Oh. Oh, dear.

      Nell held Laila as another contraction wracked her swollen body. How many minutes since the last one? “Then how do you know her name?”

      “I picked up a little Farsi in Afghanistan.”

      Nell didn’t have time to be impressed. She steered the girl down the hall toward the acute-care room. The poor kid was shaking so hard she could barely stand. How had she managed to walk here?

      “Ask her how far along she is.”

      Joe gave her a disbelieving look. “I’d say pretty far along.”

      “Not the labor,” Nell snapped. “The pregnancy. How advanced is her pregnancy?”

      Joe said something to the girl, pausing once as if searching for words.

      Laila’s brown eyes were wide and unfocused as her body contended with the momentous task of birth. But she answered him readily, even holding up her fingers to make sure he understood.

      “She thinks thirty-eight weeks,” Joe translated. “She’s not sure.”

      Thirty-eight weeks. That meant her baby was full term, its lungs developed enough to cope outside the womb. Assuming the girl could count.

      Nell eased Laila up a step so she could perch on the end of the exam table.

      “Raise the head,” Nell ordered Joe. “Does she have a doctor?”

      He hurried to comply. He was limping, Nell noted with the clarity of crisis, clumsier than she’d ever seen him. But he did as she asked, fumbling with the table’s controls to adjust its angle.

      With one arm around the girl, Nell yanked on the side rail of the bed. Joe saw what she was doing and raised the rail on the other side.

      “No doctor,” he said. “Her husband is a business student at Illinois Circle campus. They don’t have insurance.”

      Nell was lowering the girl onto her side when her abdomen—her whole body—went rigid. Her nails dug into Nell’s supporting arm.

      Two minutes, Nell noted with a glance at her watch. She expelled a worried breath. “Where is her husband?”

      “He works nights stocking shelves at the Jewel around the corner. Laila was on her way to find him when—”

      “Call him,” Nell ordered. As soon as the contraction ended, she dashed to the sink to scrub. “There’s a phone book under the front desk. And call an ambulance. I have to do an exam.”

      Joe escaped as she pulled on latex gloves.

      With murmurs and gestures, Nell coaxed the laboring woman onto her back with her knees bent and spread apart. Blood and fluid soaked her skirt. Nell lifted the wet material out of the way as Laila moaned and writhed. Her vaginal opening bulged.

      Nell caught her breath. Okay, baby was on the way. Head first, which was good. And fast. Not so good.

      She flipped the skirt back down as Joe hobbled into the room.

      “I called 911,” he announced. “They’re sending an ambulance. And I left a message with the father’s supervisor.”

      Laila wailed, an indistinguishable stream of words.

      “It’s all right, sweetie.” Nell stroked her leg, calculating the distance to the supply cart. She needed blankets. Towels. A suction bulb. Cord and scissors.

      Joe’s face was white. “I have to leave.”

      Nell glared at him. “Forget it. I need you here to talk her through this.”

      “You don’t get it. I can’t stay. I’m male. She’s Muslim. I can’t see her like

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