Heart & Soul

by Nicole Williams

  “Not in the least. I want my baby to learn what family should be, not what they shouldn’t. He can learn that from all of you Walkers. You guys sure made a believer out of this skeptic.” I wiped at my eyes to show those forming tears who was in control, but one snuck past me.

  That was when we heard the telltale sound of tires crunching over gravel. Colt’s truck sounded more like Garth’s beefy diesel than Jesse’s, but they both made the same amount of noise rumbling up the driveway.

  “Your coach awaits.” I gave a grand flourish of my arm at the window Lily was already smiling through.

  “Do you want me to grab you anything before I leave?” She rose out of the chair and waved out the window when Colt’s truck rolled to a stop outside.

  “I’m good. Thanks though.” I waved at my easel beside my bed, prepped and ready with a blank canvas. My morning was off to a brighter start from thinking of what I’d create that day.

  “If you need anything, give me or Colt a ring. I think Mom and my sisters are at the library in town, and Dad and Jesse might be out in no-reception land.”

  “And by no-reception land, you mean they could be just about anywhere on the ranch?” I said.

  She chuckled with a nod. “Isn’t Montana great?”

  “The best. Hey, have fun,” I called as she moved out of the living room with a wave. “And remember, people suck.”

  “People suck.” The words came out a bit more natural sounding, almost as though she might be able to convince herself of it the next time she heard a nasty rumor circling around her and Colt.

  After the door slammed shut behind her, Colt’s truck rested in the driveway long enough that I could guess what they were doing. Especially with all of the parental figures and overprotective older brothers out of seeing and hearing range. I couldn’t help smiling. Lily was happy. With Colt Mason. I might not have ever considered the possibility, but that was what made it so wonderful. The thrill of the unexpected. The reminder that just when we think we might be starting to figure life out, it went and surprised the hell out of us.

  A few minutes later, Colt’s truck pulled out of the driveway, and I got to work getting my supplies and canvas ready to go. I’d learned yesterday, through trial and error, that positioning was everything. If I had too many blankets or pillows stacked around me, it inhibited me. If I had too few, I got weird aches and pains in my back and neck. If the table holding the easel was too far away, my arm started to shake after five minutes. If it was too close, it cramped. Two months on bed rest, and I’d lost whatever semblance of strength I’d possessed. I would probably get winded taking the baby out for a walk after all of this.

  Today I was planning on working with charcoal, and I’d just made my first few sweeps across the canvas when the charcoal fell from my hand. My body froze at the same moment I felt a chill crawl down my spine. My breath caught for what felt like a long moment, then, as if someone had just pressed a pin into my frozen balloon, everything turned to chaos within me.

  My breath restarted, but it found an erratic pace and couldn’t be calmed. My heart matched my lungs’ crazed pace. Before I knew what I was doing or rationalized that I shouldn’t have been doing it, I shoved the table with the easel away and leapt out of bed. As was typical every morning I got out of bed for the first trip to the bathroom, I felt a wave of dizziness, but I didn’t give myself a moment for it to clear before I lunged forward.

  Instinct took over. As my feet rushed for the front door, I at least found the sense to grab one of Jesse’s big canvas coats. I was in my standard bed rest wear, and a tank top and cotton shorts weren’t the best things to be rushing around outside in, especially when I was still braless.

  As soon as I was out the door, I paused, reason catching up with me. What was I doing? Why was I out there? What had hit me so violently and suddenly, it was like my subconscious had just been smashed into by a semi?

  I cleared my head for a second and calmed my breathing for that same moment, but it was enough. A sound. I’d heard a sound. A loud one. An unnatural one. That sound had been followed by a feeling as jarring and violent as the sound.

  Looking around at what was close by, I couldn’t see anything, and I didn’t know where the sound had come from, but I started down the dirt road leading in the direction of where I knew they’d recently moved the cattle. Part of me felt crazy for rushing down a bumpy, grassy road when I was supposed to be on bed rest, but the other part of me couldn’t be coaxed back. Reason and instinct were battling it out, but instinct was winning. I kept going, holding my stomach and trying to keep my heart and breath from getting away from me.

  I might have had the sense to slip into a coat to ward off the morning chill, but I’d forgotten all about shoes. With every step, more mud and dirt lodged between my toes and spackled up my calves. The earth was cool, cold almost, and it sent a chill up the pads of my feet that seeped into the rest of my body.

  I kept pushing forward, fighting the name going through my head and what had happened to ignite this primal feeling. I shoved the what ifs aside and kept running, convincing myself that I didn’t know exactly what I was rushing to or what I’d find when I got there, but also knowing who I’d find and what I’d find.

  It was a gut feeling. I knew it with absolute certainty, though I had no way to explain it or go about proving it if I was asked to. The farther I ran, the more I wished I had grabbed a set of keys for the ranch trucks. I was eight months pregnant—eight months pregnant and on indefinite bed rest. I shouldn’t have been sprinting down some back road, feeling one lunge away from tripping over my own feet as I charged forward.

  That gut feeling rolled to a boil in my stomach and came to an explosive burst when I reached the crest of the small hill I’d just tore up. My stomach leapt into my throat, my throat into my mouth, and I came to a screeching stop. I teetered in place, the sound of my hurried breath echoing in my ears.

  My knees felt like they were about to give out and my legs were screaming from the exertion, but I forced myself to keep moving. I made myself take another step, then another, until I was back to sprinting. But this time I knew exactly where I was sprinting.

  Old Bessie was off the side of the rudimentary road, the front half of her wrapped around a tree.

  I choked on a sob, knowing who’d been behind the wheel. I choked on another when I found myself wishing it was someone else, anyone else, who’d asked to borrow Jesse’s truck to make a quick run.

  With the road being so rough, a driver couldn’t go much faster than twenty-five down it, but from the direction Jesse had been coming before hitting the tree, I guessed what had happened to make Old Bessie look as though the tree had crushed her entire front half: Jesse had fallen asleep at the wheel, and the truck had picked up speed coming down that hill. Enough speed to cause that kind of collision.

  It couldn’t have been more than a quarter of a mile from the top of the hill where I’d first seen the wreck to actually getting to Old Bessie, and I was running as fast as my short legs would take me, but I felt like something had gotten its claws into me and was holding me back from where I was desperate to get.

  “Jesse.” Why was my voice a whisper? I was trying to scream. I needed to scream. I needed to get someone’s attention and get some help. “Jesse.” Another sob burst up my throat when my word came out so softly, I could barely hear it.

  I tried again, but nothing came out that time. No words were possible, because I’d finally gotten close enough to see him. He’d been driving, just as I’d known. His head was angled away from me, his arms and chest wrapped around the steering wheel like he was giving it a hug. His hat was missing, and there was a round fracture in the windshield where I guessed his head had hit on impact.

  My feet finally got away from me. When I was a few steps away, I tripped and went sprawling to the ground. I managed to get my arms around in front of me to break my fall enough that my knees took the brunt of it instead of my stomach. I felt the cool mud caking
my knees and shins, and at the same time, I noticed a robin in the tree above me. The tree Jesse had crashed into. The bird was chirping, singing a song, carrying on with its life as if life was still going on. But it wasn’t. It couldn’t be.

  Planting my hands into the dirt, I pushed myself up, using the door handle to help. “Jesse.” I wasn’t sure if I’d managed to verbalize it that time or not, but his name echoed in my head.

  The driver’s side window was rolled down, so I reached in to settle my hand on his shoulder. I gently shook it. He didn’t move. I ran my hand over to his other shoulder and gave him another shake. Harder this time. He still didn’t move. When I pulled my hand back, I found it painted red. It wasn’t the kind of color I was used to streaking my hands. It didn’t look the same or even feel the same. It was warm. Sticky. It made my stomach roil.

  His name slipped from my lips as I tried to wipe his blood coating my hand off on the coat. I couldn’t. It wouldn’t all come off. It had worked its way into the lines and creases of my palm and would not be rubbed away.

  “Jesse.” I stopped wiping at my hand and ran around to the passenger side. I threw the door open, crawled inside, and slid across the bench seat toward him. “Oh my god, Jesse. Don’t do this. Not now. You were supposed to be the one our baby had as a guarantee. I was the one who was supposed to go if one of us had to. Not you.”

  I draped myself around him, almost like he was draped around the steering wheel, a string of silent prayers on my lips. I was in my own world, stuck in it with the man I loved and the one it seemed like I’d have to spend the rest of my life without.

  That might have been why I didn’t really hear the truck rush up behind us or hear the doors being thrown open or the voices crying our names. I didn’t really hear anything until someone’s arms wrapped around me and tried to pull me back. Then I fought. I didn’t want to be pulled away. I wanted to stay right there with him. I didn’t want to be separated from Jesse.

  “Rowen?” a familiar voice cried behind me. “What are you doing here? Oh my God. Is he okay, Colt? Is my brother okay?”

  I continued to fight against Colt’s strong grip, but he pulled me out of the truck and handed me off to Lily before crawling back into the truck, his cell phone to his ear. I struggled against Lily at first, but it didn’t last. My fight gave out a few squirms later, and all that was left were my tears. I dropped to my knees, and Lily fell to the ground beside me. She wasn’t crying though. Her face was white with shock, her eyes so wide they seemed to take up her whole face as she went from staring at her brother trapped inside the car to the front end of the truck buried against that giant tree.

  “I need to report an emergency,” Colt said into the phone, his fingers pressed to Jesse’s neck.

  Oh, God. He was checking for a pulse. Why hadn’t I thought of that? How had I known? Why had I run what had to be close to a mile when I wasn’t supposed to walk up a flight of stairs? Why were Lily and Colt here? What would happen?

  So many questions spilled through my mind, piling up one upon the next. Then the one I wanted to hide from more than all of the others: was he alive?

  I didn’t want to ask Colt what his fingers felt, pressed into the side of Jesse’s neck. I didn’t want the answer, because part of me knew that Jesse didn’t look like his eyes would ever open up again. Those eyes that could express so much with so little effort might never see the face of the child we’d made together. He might never feel what it was like to cradle a firstborn for the first time in his arms. He might never hear the first hiccup or coo or cry our baby would make.

  As Colt talked to the operator, I wept. I wept for what might have been and what had been. For would could be and what might never be. I wept until my breaths turned into gasping sobs while beside me, Lily remained a pale statue. Colt was the only one with a semblance of calm.

  Colt was still on the phone, giving what sounded like directions, when I crawled back toward the truck. Back toward my husband. I needed to be near him. Lily didn’t hold me back this time. All she could do was stare inside the cab of Old Bessie and shudder. My crawl came to an abrupt stop when something ripped down my stomach. I couldn’t help the howl that rushed out of my mouth. Wrapping my arms around my stomach, I rocked onto my side, totally bowled over from the pain. I lifted my hand to my face, sure I’d find it coated in blood again. My stomach felt as if it had been torn open.

  There was no blood, but when the next jolt of pain came, I knew what was happening. I’d felt it weeks ago, though nothing to this degree. It was the whole reason I’d been put on bed rest. The whole reason I’d been confined to a bed for two months.

  To keep my body from going back into labor.

  Too late. They might have been able to stop it the first time, but something about this whole doomed day told me there’d be no stopping my labor a second time. The baby was coming.

  When the third contraction hit me, I cried louder, but it was less due to the pain and more to the thought that the very day our baby would be born was the same day it lost its father and I lost my husband. A new love of my life was entering the world, and another was leaving it.

  “Lily,” I panted, trying to sit up to get her attention. I could barely move. “Lily.” When I tried a third time, it came out as a scream thanks to the contraction tearing my body down the middle. “Lily!”

  Her eyes cleared before they moved to me, spread out on the ground in front of her. They went wide again when she noticed the way I was breathing and holding my stomach.

  “The baby,” I breathed. “It’s coming.”

  Her eyes went wider for one second, then a look of resolution fell over her face before she scooted toward me and placed my head gently in her lap. “Colt!”

  He stopped mid-word.

  “Tell them to send another ambulance.” When his brows pinched together, Lily sucked in a deep breath. “Rowen’s in labor.”

  THE AMBULANCE TOOK me first. It took me instead of him.

  The second one had arrived as they were loading me, so it wasn’t like more than a few minutes had passed since the time the first one arrived, but they’d taken me first. Why? Was it a simple case of there being two lives endangered with me—mine and the baby’s—or did something else go into the prioritization of rescue victims? Something having to do with who they could save versus who was past the point of saving?

  Lily leapt into the ambulance with me, leaving Colt with Jesse. She kept shushing me and running her fingers through my hair as I fired off questions, demanding the medics tell me why they’d picked me and not my husband. No one gave me an answer, so I was left with my guesses.

  I hated leaving Jesse like that. I hated being unable to do anything about it too. When he needed me most, I’d left him. Colt stayed and promised me he’d ride in the ambulance with him and call the Walkers, but I didn’t miss the way Colt couldn’t seem to look me in the eyes when he talked to me. I didn’t miss the streaks on his shirt, painted red with the blood of my husband.

  The drive to the hospital was surprisingly fast. I supposed that was what a set of blaring sirens and trained drivers would do, but once I was rolled through the emergency room doors, I went one-track minded. The quickening contractions were the only thing that could distract me from firing off question after question to whatever hospital employee was close enough to hear me. I wanted to know if Jesse had arrived yet. If so, where had he been sent? Could we be placed in rooms next to each other? Could they please go and check on his status? Could they let him know our baby was about to be born and I really wanted to wait until he was awake and nearby to witness it?

  Whenever I got back around to that last question, I crumbled around another bout of sobs, knowing that even if he did make it, he wouldn’t make it to the birth of our child.

  Lily stayed with me the entire time—they let her too. When they got me settled in a room and started hooking me up to every last machine and monitor in the place, I blurred everything out. I had to. None of this was g
oing the way I’d planned, hoped, or even guessed it would. Yes, I knew my pregnancy was high risk, but I’d never thought that would translate to delivering weeks early after sprinting a mile, when I was supposed to be on bed rest, to discover my husband had wrapped his truck around one of the old trees on Willow Springs. A tree that had seemed so beautiful had become a device of death.

  Lots of shouting and brash words were thrown around in my room, but I didn’t pay attention long enough to catch what was being said. Between thinking about Jesse and trying to keep from vomiting from one contraction to the next, those efforts took up all of my energy.

  When the contractions felt like they were on top of each other—the fall of one easing into the peak of another—my tireless questions ended. I couldn’t even manage a word cursed in pain, so countless questions hollered down halls were out of the question. I wasn’t sure how my heart was managing it or how much longer it would, but in the midst of the fear I was losing Jesse, it felt like some invisible strength of will branched out from deep inside of me and gripped on to the baby for dear life. I wouldn’t lose them both. I wouldn’t allow it.

  For the moment, my heart seemed to be cooperating with me. For once.

  Through it all, Lily stood beside me, holding my hand and standing tall. Every once in a while, when I glanced over, I’d find her skin had that same pallor and would feel her hand tremble in mine, but she didn’t leave. She never eyed the door like she wanted to leave. She stayed beside me, in the middle of no doubt worrying about her brother like I was.

  One of the nurses had been yelling at me to push for a while, but I continued to answer her with a shake of my head. I was still holding on to some sliver of hope that Jesse would come rolling into the room, in a wheelchair with a few bandages and maybe a cast or two, and make it for the birth. It was a fool’s hope, but right then, I was the very epitome of a fool. If being a fool meant holding onto the hope that he was alive, then make me a fool forever.