J.J.?
Copy.
How are you doing?
The worry in Katies voice made him respond with more confidence than he was feeling. Doin fine. I think we have everything we need.
Okay, Ridgecrest says youre going to have to help her push.
Uh-huh. Lord, how do I do that?
They say when the contractions come you should lift her so she sits up, dont let her lie flat. Gravity helps.
Gotcha.
And J.J.? They say dont let her push too hard. You, umdont want her to tear.
No, I sure as hell dont want her to do that. He swallowed down another wave of queasiness and muttered, Ten-four. And then, although he wasnt exactly a praying man and it had been a long, long time since his last appearance in Sunday school, he sent up a little one: Okay, Lord, I could use a little help, here!
I have to push again.
The sound of her voice startled him, it had been so long since shed spoken. And when he looked at her he got a jolt that startled him even more. He wasnt sure what it was, something about the determination in her voice, maybe, contradicting the stark fear in her eyes, but whatever it was, it made something kick in his chest, and the next thing he knew he had a lump in his throat and a big ball of fear in his belly. Because that went against his grain and everything he thought he knew about himself, his voice grated hard in his ears when he said, Okay, lets do this thing.
Those fearful eyes clung to his, and she whispered, I dont know if I can.
The truth was, he didnt know if she could, either. It seemed an impossible thing she was trying to do, and it didnt help to tell himself it had been done billions of times before, even under worse circumstances than these. Though he didnt like admitting it, he felt just plain scared, more scared than hed ever been in his life. Going into a house where a guy crazy high on PCP had just hacked up his wife and the family dog with a machete and was threatening to do the same to his kids-that had been a piece of cake compared to this. That, hed been trained for. Prepared for. Hed felt confident, capable, sure. Here, he felt lost. Clueless. What if she couldnt do it? There wasnt anybody here who could help her. Just him.
What if I cant?
Thats not like you, Jethro, he muttered to himself, and imagined he could hear his mother saying the words, the way shed said them to him so many times when he was growing up.
Whos Jethro? She was gazing at him, looking confused.
And he was saved from having to answer that when all of a sudden her face crumpled up and her eyes filled with tears and she grabbed hold of his shirt as if she was going over a cliff and he was the only thing saving her.
He got his arms around her shoulders and held her up while she made sounds that turned his insides to ice water. He realized his own body had gone rigid and his jaws were clamped tight, as if somehow that was going to help her, and to make himself stop it, he began to talk to her in a voice that sounded like a truckload of rocks.
Youre doin fine, sweetheartthats itjust a little bit moreokay, ease up nowthats itrest a minutealmost there, darlin
And it became a kind of rhythm, almost like a dance they were doing. Shed grab on to him and hed hold her, and while she strained and hollered hed talk to her and tell her how strong and brave and beautiful she was, and it never occurred to him he couldnt possibly know whether she was really any of those things because hed only known her for an hour or so. Just then, it seemed to him hed always known her, and always would. Right then, it felt like they were the only two people on the face of the earth-the two of them plus the baby she was trying to push into the world. The SUVs air-conditioning did the best it could, but sweat ran into his eyes and stung like fire, and soaked his shirt and every bit of clothing they were wearing between the two of them. Between contractions he gave her sips of water and poured some on the cloth thing shed been wearing on her head and bathed her face with it. And it occurred to him while he was doing that, that once he looked past the sweat and the bruises, she really was beautiful.
Who in the hell would hit a little bitty pregnant woman? Especially one with a face like that?
He vowed if he ever found out whod done this to her, hed give the animal a dose of his own medicine.
Yeah, idiot, and it was that kind of impulse that got you banished to this desert Siberia in the first place. Last thing you need is to get emotionally involved again.
Great advice, he told himself, but hard to follow when the woman in his arms was twisting the buttons off his shirt and soaking his collar with her tears and sweat.
One more, he told her grimly.
She screamed at him in desperate fury, You said that the last ten times!
Then, when he thought neither of them had enough left in them for one more time
Thats it-I see the head! Come on, baby, just a little bit morekeep pushingalmost there
J.J., Katies voice squawked from his shoulder, Ridgecrest wants to know And he didnt even hear the rest.
He was yelling, laughing andwho knows what else, but he didnt give a damn who heard him. How bout that, honey, we have a head!
A head? Really? She was laughing and crying, too, weakly, and breathless with relief. Is itis he?
But J.J. was too busy to answer her, using his hands and whatever else happened to be within reach, wiping off the scrunched-up face, remembering the bulb-thing to clear stuff out of the flattened lump of a nose and the puffy purple mouth. Then she was pushing again, and he gently held the head while first one shoulder appearedthen the other, and suddenly there he was, with his hands full of slippery, squirmy, brand-new living human being.
He couldnt believe it. Hed never felt such exhilaration in his whole life. Or such awe. And when, after a strangled-sounding gurgle, he heard the first mewing cry, such sheer overwhelming relief.
My baby She was struggling to sit up, sobbing, hands frantically reaching.
J.J. shoved all the habit material out of the way and placed the baby right on her stomach. Well, Rachel, he said gruffly, as he guided her hands to cradle her newborn, looks like you have a son.
Chapter 4
Time passed in a haze for Rachel. Fearful and trembling, she watched her unlikely Western movie hero tie and cut her babys umbilical cord, then wrap him in a blanket and place him in her arms. She had a sense that she might be crying; she didnt know why, she wasnt sad, except that maybe there was just too much emotion inside her, too much joy and relief and awe, and it had to find its own way out.
She could hear the womans voice on the radio giving her hero-J.J., she called him-instructions from the hospital in Ridgecrest, telling him how to help her to get the baby to nurse, which was important because that would help stop the bleeding. And it didnt seem strange to her at all that this big man with whiskers and long hair and a gun on his belt should be touching her in intimate ways; she barely registered the fact that it was the strangers rough hand on her breast, gently guiding the nipple to her sons seeking mouthanother hand cradling and dwarfing his tiny, still-wet head. All she could see was her babys facehis beautiful, perfect round little face, with black hair, wavy like Nickys. And Nickys eyes, dark slate-gray now, like all newborns eyes, but wide open and looking straight back at her.
Nickyyou-we-have a son.
She thought of Carlos then, and began to shiver.
Here, J.J.s raspy John Wayne voice said, and he unwrapped the blanket hed wrapped the baby up in and brought it around both of them, so that her baby was nestled against her skin to skin, naked against her nakedness, the two of them cocooned together inside the warmth of the blanket.
And suddenly, for the first time in a very long time, she felt not only free, but safe.
There was a lot more that needed to be done before J.J. was ready to transport his patient and her newborn son to the hospital in Ridgecrest, but thankfully, enough of the initial euphoria hung around long enough to get him through it. There was a bad moment or two concerning the placenta-hed forgotten about that little detail-but theyd gotten through that, and then it was just a matter of wrapping her up, keeping both her and her baby warm and getting them to the hospital as quickly as he possibly could.
For him, it was a strange, tense ride. Even Moonshine kept looking at him and whining, as if she knew something about him was a little bit off. The truth was, he didnt feel like himself. He wasnt normally a worrier, but he kept glancing up at his rearview mirror just to make sure Rachel and the baby were okay. They were both sleeping, exhausted after what theyd been through. He could hardly blame them, even though hed rather have her awake and talking, just to reassure him.
He still couldnt believe it, the thing shed done, even though hed seen it with his own eyes.
He couldnt believe what hed done, either. What if he hadnt found her? It occurred to him that he might even have saved her life, and her babys life, too. He thought he could be forgiven for feeling a little bit full of himself about that, but the funny thing was, he didnt. What he felt was humble. Because he knew that nothing hed done with his life up to now, and nothing he might hope to do with the rest of it, was ever going to compare with what this little fragile-looking woman had done today.
He felt something else, too, something he couldnt put his finger on, but it was what made him keep looking in that rearview mirror, tense and alert as if lives were on the line.
It wasnt until they were at the hospital, and he was watching Rachel being strapped onto a gurney, that he realized what it was he was feeling. He watched her hold out her arms for her baby, and the EMT give her son to her and then walk along beside the gurney, kind of touching her, for securitys sake. And he realized the stab of pain underneath his ribs was something akin to jealousy. Truth was, he didnt like turning her over to someone elses care. He wanted to be the one walking alongside her, protecting her. Hed delivered that baby, hed saved that mothers life, probably. Dammit, they were his responsibility.