LITMIR.BIZ

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he began, then changed what he’d been about to say. Since a lot of mothers today were single parents, he wouldn’t ask about a husband. “The baby’s father?”

      “Dead.”

      “I’m sorry.” Uncomfortable now, he decided to stop asking personal questions. “We’ll need something to put the baby in once she’s born.”

      Fay smiled slightly. “She, again. I bought a baby bed, one of those you strap into a car, but that’s where it is—in the wrecked car along with other baby stuff. And mine, too.” She glanced at a window and shook her head. “You can’t possibly go out into that horrible storm. So we’ll need something temporary.”

      His gaze fastened on the handcrafted wood-box his grandfather had made to hold his logs and kindling. He rose, strode to the fireplace and dumped the contents of the box onto the floor.

      “Once I clean this up, we’ll have our temporary crib,” he said.

      “Looks fine to me. Have you thought about diapers?”

      Diapers? Naturally not. As far as he knew most babies wore disposable ones these days. Which didn’t help in the here and now. “I saw a stack of old flannel sheets in the cedar chest. I can line the wood-box with some, and I could cut up some for diapers and others for baby blankets.”

      “Good idea.”

      He handed her his watch so she could time her own contractions, while he went to fetch the sheets.

      Coming back, he cleaned the wood-box carefully and lined it with a flannel sheet, using two more folded for a pad at the bottom. While he worked he kept glancing worriedly at Fay. Finished, he settled the padded box near the fireplace for the heat to warm it, trying to imagine a newborn baby nestling inside. He couldn’t.

      Shaking his head, he brought the flannel sheets he meant to cut up back to where Fay lay on the couch, pulled a chair over and sat next to her. He started to ask her if she was okay, then noticed that, her face tense, she was timing a contraction. Finally she sighed and relaxed.

      “How long did that one last?” he asked. When she told him, he realized the contractions were lasting a little longer each time.

      For several minutes she watched him pile the pieces of cloth onto the coffee table he’d pushed aside. “I’m certainly inconveniencing you,” she said finally.

      “Emergencies are what cops are for.” He reinforced his words with a smile. Poor kid, she needed all the reassurance he could dig up.

      “I’m so glad—” she paused, wincing. “Another one. Really powerful.”

      A minute or two later, she said, “Um, Dan?”

      “What is it?”

      “I didn’t have a partner for my birthing classes. If I tell you what to do, would you mind holding my hand and helping me breathe the right way?”

      Between contractions, she explained his role. He edged the chair closer, took her hand in his and breathed with her. “You’re doing fine, Fay. We’ll get through this together.”

      “Together,” she murmured and then moaned, caught up in a contraction he thought would never end.

      “Come on, breathe with me,” he told her.

      Damn. He figured that pretty soon he’d have to do more than put a hand on her abdomen and that scared the hell out of him. The baby’s head comes out first, he reminded himself. Normally face down. That’s when he was supposed to tell her to push. He thought he remembered the instructor saying to try not to let the baby pop out too fast because it might injure the mother. He gritted his teeth, unsure of how to prevent that. Tell her not to push?

      When the contraction ended, he got up, hurried to the phone and lifted the receiver. Still dead. As it undoubtedly would be until the storm was over. He straightened his shoulders. Okay. It was up to him. He could do this. He’d never failed an assignment yet. He’d never had one this tough, though.

      “You’re limping,” Fay said.

      To think she’d noticed with as much strain as she was under. “My leg’s almost healed,” he said.

      Her contractions came closer and closer together. “I think something’s leaking out,” she said after the last one. She’d already put her knees up, with her feet flat on the couch, legs spread apart.

      “I feel like pushing.” She gritted the words out.

      He didn’t want to keep the baby from coming out, but he placed his hand against the opening as she pushed.

      Fay’s breathing came in gasping grunts now and he took his hand away and saw the baby’s head. He then caught the baby as it slid out.

      But something wasn’t right. She wasn’t crying. Was she breathing? The instructor’s voice came back to him. “Hold the baby upside down, insert your little finger in its mouth and extract any mucus that might be blocking the baby’s airway.”

      Holding his breath, he followed through. A glob of mucus dribbled from the baby’s mouth, she coughed, then emitted a tiny wail. A moment later she was howling full throttle. He expelled his breath in a great sigh of relief.

      “She’s a girl,” he told Fay as he laid the baby on her abdomen.

      Fay raised her head to look at her daughter and smiled. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

      “She sure is,” he answered absently, alarmed anew at the amount of blood soaking the towels.

      “Is it all over?” Fay asked after a minute or so.

      “Not yet.”

      “In my prenatal class, they said the nurse would massage my abdomen after the baby was born to help expel the afterbirth.”

      Dan was willing to try anything. He slid the baby higher up on Fay, and as gently as he could, he began to massage Fay’s abdomen.

      “I think you have to do it harder,” she said.

      He increased the pressure. The afterbirth came out and the blood flow diminished. But it seemed to him she’d lost quite a bit. A lot more than that woman who he’d helped deliver her fifth child. Too much?

      “All over,” he told her.

      Once he’d tied off the cord and severed it, he wrapped the baby girl in one of the small blankets he’d cut and lifted her cautiously, supporting her along his left arm while holding her there with his right. He eased her into the wood-box and returned to Fay.

      “Got to get you cleaned up,” he told her. “I’ll let the back of the Morris chair down and carry you over there while I fix up the couch. You’ll be able to look into the crib from there.”

      As she watched him, she said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a chair like that. It’s sort of like a lawn chair but made of wood.”

      “Really old—my grandfather’s.”

      “Put plastic over it first.”

      Dan obeyed, then lifted her into his arms, surprised at how light she felt. Once she was settled into the Morris chair, he disposed of everything that had been on the couch.

      “I wish I felt strong enough to clean up my baby,” she said when he returned. “I’m pretty well out of commission right now, though.”

      “Don’t worry about it. After what you’ve been through, you need to rest.”

      Her gaze met his and, for the first time he noticed that her eyes were hazel, somewhere in between green and brown. Her pallor disturbed him.

      “After what we’ve been through,” she corrected. “You said we’d do this together and we did.”

      Her words warmed him as he put new plastic on the couch and covered it with the last of the flannel sheets.

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