by Robin Wells
Katie’s face heated. “Annette, I…”
“I just want to say that Paul would want you to be happy.” Annette gathered up her keys. “Gotta run—the weather center is predicting this storm will be a bad one.”
“Would you like to stay for dinner?” The thought of being alone with Zack suddenly seemed fraught with danger.
“Thanks, but no. Dave’s cooked a pot roast.”
“He cooks?” Paul used to say his dad was totally lost in the kitchen.
“It’s a recently acquired skill.” A soft, amused expression crossed her face. “He’s got quite a few of those.” She closed the door behind her, leaving Katie to wonder just what she meant.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The storm raged like a jilted lover. Lightning blazed, thunder roared, and rain pounded on the roof, as if demanding entry.
The memory of the storm that had destroyed her house less than two months earlier made Katie’s nerves quiver. She tried to reason with the fear as she chopped a green pepper to add to the onions and garlic simmering on the stove. Just because your house was hit doesn’t mean Zack’s will be. In fact, it makes it more unlikely. Lightning doesn’t strike twice.
Or did it? It certainly seemed to, where her heart was concerned. She’d had no intention of kissing Zack again, and yet she’d done exactly that.
She wasn’t sure which had her more rattled—the storm or the fact that Zack was likely to walk through the garage door at any moment. Another rumble of thunder shook the house just as Zack stepped into the kitchen.
He inhaled appreciatively. “Mmm. Smells delicious.”
“It’s shrimp Creole. One of Gracie’s favorites.”
“Katie!” called Gracie from the other room. “Katie, come quick!”
The panicked edge to Gracie’s voice turned Katie’s blood to ice. Zack looked at her. They both dashed out of the kitchen, across the living room and to the bedroom.
Gracie sat on the edge of the bed, her face white. “I’m bleeding.”
“How bad?” Katie asked.
“Like—like a heavy period. Maybe worse. ”
“I’ll call an ambulance.” Zack grabbed the phone and dialed 911.
“Lie down.” Katie plumped the pillow against the headboard and lifted her feet. Her heart thumped so hard it should have bruised her ribs. Outside, the rain was thumping down, too—hard, then harder.
The lights flickered, then went out.
“Oh, no!” The panic in Gracie’s voice rose.
“It’s okay, sweetie. We’re going to take care of you. You need to stay calm for the baby.”
“I’m scared.”
I am, too. “It’s going to be okay.”
“How do you know?”
Because anything else is unimaginable. “Because it is. I just know.”
Zack came into the room with a flashlight. Gracie looked like a pregnant ghost in the eery beam of light. “The ambulances are all tied up. We need to take her ourselves.” He handed the flashlight to Katie. “I’ll carry you to the car.”
“I’m so scared.” Gracie’s teeth were chattering.
“That’s natural. But it’s going to be okay.” He looked at Katie. “Why don’t you grab her blanket—we’ll want to keep her warm.”
As in avoiding shock. Oh, God—this was Katie’s worst nightmare.
“It’s too soon,” Gracie said. “I’m not due yet.”
“You’re just three weeks early. It’ll be okay,” Katie said. “Are you feeling contractions?”
“No. I’m just bleeding.”
Zack picked Gracie up as if she were a small sack of potatoes. Katie walked beside them, Gracie gripping her hand. “I’ll sit with you in the back,” Katie told her.
“I’m so… so… scared.”
“It’ll be okay. When I called the hospital, they said they were calling your doctor and she’s going to meet us there,” Zack said.
The storm made it virtually impossible to see. Zack backed the car out of the driveway. Gracie started to sob—deep, gut-wrenching, breath-stealing sobs.
“Let’s do some deep-breathing exercises,” Katie said.
“I—I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. Breathe in: one, two, three, four.”
“I can’t!” Gracie sobbed harder, verging on hysteria.
“Yes, you can,” Katie said firmly. “Pretend you’re counting your baby’s toes and fingers: one, two, three, four, five. Come on. One, two, three, four, five. You can do this.”
Rain thundered on the car, oceansful of rain, pouring out in blinding streams. Zack drove as fast as he dared. He could see the road only in split-second intervals. At one point, the water on the road was so deep he was afraid it was going to wash out the engine.
In the backseat, Katie counted and breathed with Gracie, keeping the girl from giving in to panic. At last Zack pulled up to the ER entrance. He’d called ahead, and medical staff were waiting. Two men in blue scrubs opened the back door of the car, eased Gracie out, and placed her on a gurney.
Zack helped Katie out of the car. Her face was ashen. “Go with her,” Zack urged. “I’ll take care of the paperwork.” He watched her take Gracie’s hand and walk beside her as the EMTs wheeled the gurney through the electric doors.
Zack parked the car and headed inside to the ER waiting room, where he numbly gave the insurance information at the check-in window. He wasn’t a praying man. He hadn’t even thought he believed in God. But as the woman copied his insurance card, he closed his eyes and prayed anyway. Please, God. Help Gracie. Help the baby.
At long last, they let him into the back part of the ER, where he found Katie standing in the hall as Gracie was wheeled out of an examination room.
“They’re taking her up to obstetrics. Dr. Greene is already scrubbing up for an emergency C-section,” Katie said. “The placenta is detaching.”
“The baby…” Zack was scared to ask.
“Her heartbeat’s strong.”
They were already wheeling Gracie away. “Katie—Zack—I want you with me,” Gracie called, reaching out her hand.
“I’m sorry, but they can’t come,” the nurse told Gracie as the orderly pushed the gurney toward the elevator.
“But I want them there when the baby’s born. They’re my parents.”
“Sorry, but we’ll have to put you out completely. They’ll be with you the minute you wake up.”
With that, they wheeled her down the hall.
“Love you, Gracie!” Katie called after her.
The ER nurse’s face was kind. “You can wait in the maternity waiting room on the third floor. We’ll come and get you as soon as it’s over.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
A large family, armed with balloons and flowers and unwrapped boxes of cigars, filled the small waiting room. Katie selected a spot on a padded window bench across the room. Zack followed her to it and put his arm around her.
She was trembling. “She called us her parents.”
“I heard.” His hand moved up and down her arm. Her skin was soft and warm.
“I feel like a part of me is in there with her, as if I’ll just die if she…”
His arm tightened. “She’ll be fine. The baby, too.”
“What if something’s wrong with the baby?”
“Whatever happens, we’ll deal with it.”
“We?”
“Yeah. You and me and Gracie and the baby. We’re a team.”
Team. Why had he used that word, when what he really meant was family? Something about the F-word completely freaked him out.
A nurse came into the waiting room. Katie started to rise.
“Travers family?” the nurse said.
Katie slumped back on the bench.
“That’s us,” said a gray-haired woman holding a bouquet of balloons.
“Congratulations.” The nurse smiled. “Amy just gave birth to an eight pound, eleven-ounce boy. Both mother and child are healthy and fine.”
�
�A boy!”
Everyone was on their feet, hugging and clapping and cheering.
“The baby’s father is in the nursery, helping clean the baby up and weigh him. You can see them through the nursery window down the hall to the right in just a couple of minutes.”
One of the men clapped the other on the back. “Gotta go see Danny as a dad.”
“Hope he holds on to his son better than he holds on to a football!”
The boisterous group ambled off, leaving the waiting room ominously quiet. Zack ran his hand up and down Katie’s arm, wanting to reassure her.
She jumped to her feet as a woman in teal-colored scrubs rounded the corner. “Dr. Greene!”
The doctor smiled. “They’re both fine. Gracie has a little girl, six pounds, three ounces. She’s a little early, but her lungs are fully developed and she seems great. The pediatrician is checking her over and will tell you more.”
“Oh, thank God.” Katie clutched Zack’s arm. “And Gracie’s good?”
She nodded. “It was touch and go for a while there. Gracie was starting to hemorrhage. If you had been even a few minutes later…”
Katie’s fingers dug into Zack’s arm. “Thank God you drove fast.”
“Thank God I didn’t run off the road.”
“Gracie will be coming around in a few moments,” the doctor said. “You can go into the recovery room.”
“Thank you,” Katie breathed.
“Yes. Thank you.” Zack shook the doctor’s hand.
Katie grabbed Zack by both arms and bounced on her heels, her face aglow. “Did you hear? They’re both fine.”
“Yeah.” Relief flooded through him. He gathered Katie in a tight hug, then lifted her off her feet and swung her around. He kissed her soundly on the lips as he set her down.
She smiled up at him. “I’ll bet that’s a first.”
“What?”
“The first time you kissed a grandmother.”
“Oh, wow. That’s a concept.”
“It’s okay. I’ve never given a grandpa a full frontal kiss, either.”
“We’re grandparents.” He shook his head. The reality of the situation was hard to absorb. “I’m still adjusting to the concept of being a father, much less a grandfather.”
He’d missed out on so much. On a lifetime. Gracie’s lifetime.
“Yeah, well, start adjusting, Grandpa.” Katie poked his side. “Let’s go see our daughter.”
Our daughter. For some reason, the words hit him like a hammer, hard and heavy, each one abnormally weighted. Our. As in, not mine. Not yours. Ours.
Daughter. As in, the child we made together. As in, our living, breathing, commingled DNA, who has just given life to another generation.
He and Katie were connected in a profound, intense, physical way that would march forward through the years, stretching into the future beyond the span of their own lives.
No wonder he felt so connected to her. This must be how the tree felt to the soil, how the fish felt to the water, how the earth felt to the sun—bound by forces beyond mere wills and wants, beyond choice, beyond a false sense of separation.
He belonged to Katie, and Katie belonged to him. They were inextricably connected. Why hadn’t he realized this sooner? He didn’t know but now that he did, he had to do something about it.
“Here she is.” The smiling blonde nurse pushed a pink bassinet into the hospital room.
Gracie struggled to sit up. The movement made her stomach throb and painfully jangled the two tubes in her arm, but she barely noticed. Finally, finally, she was going to get to hold her baby.
The nurse lifted the pink-wrapped bundle and placed it in Gracie’s arms, avoiding the elbow with the taped needle and the tube. The baby was wrapped like a mummy. Gracie gazed down into a tiny red face.
Her heart tripped over its own beat, then dove, headfirst, into a sea of love. “Oh, my God!” She was holding a miracle—a pink, swollen-eyed little miracle. “Oh, my God!” It wasn’t an exclamation; she was genuinely invoking the name of her Creator. This must be what people meant when they said they’d had a religious experience.
The baby screwed up her face and opened her little bud of a mouth. Gracie had never seen anything so amazing in all her life. “Oh, baby,” she whispered. “Just look at you!”
The baby blinked puffy eyes and squinted at her. Gracie’s heart, like the Grinch’s on Christmas, grew three sizes.
“Am I holding her right?” she asked Katie.
“You’re doing it perfectly.”
“Look at her!”
Katie leaned forward. “She’s gorgeous.”
“Beautiful,” Zack echoed.
Gracie looked up and saw tears tracking down Katie’s cheeks. Zack’s eyes looked suspiciously wet as well. Katie’s hand sifted through Gracie’s hair, soft and gentle. “I’m so proud of you, sweetheart.”
Gracie looked at Zack. He nodded, his eyes tender and warm.
“Help me unwrap her,” Gracie said to Katie. “I want to look at her. I want to count her fingers and toes.”
Katie found the edge of the soft pink blanket swaddling the baby and gently untucked it.
“Oh, look at her little arms!” Gracie exclaimed as Katie pulled the blanket back. Chubby and fat, they appeared to have no elbows or wrists, just sweet little dimples. The baby gripped Gracie’s finger. Wonder gripped Gracie’s heart.
She lifted the baby’s little fingers, one at a time. “One, two, three, four, five.” Gracie shot a smile at Katie. “Just like I pictured on the drive here.” Katie nodded, her eyes shining and wet. She drew back the blanket further, exposing the baby’s little legs.
Gracie drank in the sight. Her baby had fat little legs, plump tiny feet, and cankles to the nth degree. Who would have guessed that cankles could be so completely adorable? Gracie counted the tiny toes, complete with rounded little toenails.
“She’s a beauty.” Zack’s voice was oddly husky.
“Perfect,” Katie muttered.
“Perfectly perfect. My miracle baby.” Gracie’s cheeks hurt, she was smiling so hard. “I’m going to name her Faith.”
“Oh, honey!” Katie’s eyes filled with tears. “That’s beautiful.”
“Great name,” Zack agreed.
Her heart felt like a hot bath—full and bubbly and warm. Thank you, God. For the first time in her life, Gracie knew peace. And she knew, beyond a doubt, exactly whose child she was.
Several hours later, Zack paced the hall of the obstetrics ward outside Gracie’s room, while the hospital’s lactation specialist nurse consulted with Gracie. Some things about women were a total mystery, and breast-feeding was one of them. Gracie had wanted Katie to stay with her while the specialist showed her something called latching on.
He felt like he needed a specialist himself, because he wanted to latch on to Katie, and he didn’t quite know how to do it. Katie was his steadying, stabilizing, life-giving force, and he needed her. He wanted her. He had to make her his.
He took another turn down the hall, impatient for Katie to come out. He had something to say to her, something to ask. Something momentous. The words had been there, swelling, heating, bubbling like lava in his heart for a while, and now they were ready to erupt.
The door opened. The lactation specialist came out, followed by Katie. Zack watched Katie take her hands and thank her.
“How did it go?” Zack asked.
“Great. They’re both getting the hang of things. The baby’s in the bassinet, sleeping. Gracie’s going to try to get some sleep, too.”
She smiled, but her eyes were wistful. “I never had a chance to do any of the stuff that Gracie’s been doing. I didn’t get to count her toes or nurse her or…” Her voice broke, then stopped.
Zack’s chest felt as if it would crack, as if it couldn’t contain all the emotions running through him. “I hate it so much that you had to give her up. And I hate it that you went through all this alone.”
She lifted her s
houlders. “I wasn’t entirely alone. There were people from the adoption center.”
“Yeah, but that’s not the same as family.”
Even as he said it, he realized how ironic it was. Hypocritical, even. Him, espousing the importance of family? All of his life, he’d told himself that relationships didn’t matter, that connections were temporary and replaceable, that people pretended family was important so they didn’t have to face the cold fact that everyone is really alone. And yet here he was, talking as if connections mattered.
Because they did. Good God—they did. All his loner bull—it was just that: bull. A way of dismissing something too painful to look at.
All his denial about how much relationships mattered—it was because they did. How much had he wanted a family, a real family, when he was a boy? A mother and a father who wanted him and loved him, who listened to him and talked to him and actually enjoyed being around him?
He’d wanted that more than anything in the world. And when he couldn’t get it… well, he’d pretended it just didn’t matter. His life had turned into a great big exercise in denial.
What a fool. How could he not have seen what was so obvious? Families mattered. Families were the place where love was stronger than bad behavior, where forgiveness wasn’t a single act, but a continuous choice.
He had to talk to Katie. The pressure built within him. “Want to go down and get a cup of coffee?”
“Sure.”
They got in an elevator. Zack punched the halt button.
Katie looked at him, startled. “What are you doing?”
“The offer of coffee was just a way to get you alone.”
The elevator alarm shrieked.
“I don’t think a hospital elevator is the best place for a private conversation.”
“Apparently not.” He punched the open button. The elevator door slid open. He pulled her out. “Let’s take the stairs.”
The middle-aged nurse at the desk frowned at them as he led her out of the elevator and down the hall to the metal door under the red glowing exit sign.