Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series Book 3)

by Cindy Brandner

  “Yes,” she said in a tone that he’d heard her use on particularly slow and irksome people before. “I’m pretty sure this is going to be messy and I don’t want to ruin the bedding.”

  By the time he returned with the blankets, she had the bed stripped down to the mattress and was kneeling on the floor gasping.

  “Jewel, what’s wrong?” he said dropping the blankets and going round to where she knelt.

  “What’s wrong?” she snorted, easing herself slowly upright. “The man asks me what’s wrong! ‘Tis nothing at all, just that I feel like my body is about to turn inside out and there’s no doctor and the bed sheets look healthy compared to the color you’ve turned. Otherwise this is all just peachy.”

  Her sarcasm reassured him as little else would have. He spread the blankets out on the bed and then eased her back onto them, putting as many pillows as he could find at the top end to prop her up.

  He settled her as best he could, astonished and terrified at the hard ball her belly became with each contraction.

  “Now what would ye have me do, Jewel?” he asked, with the utter helplessness of a man corralled against his will into the mysterious world of women’s business.

  “Go boil the water,” she said with a strange inward look that panicked him more than anything else had done. This was happening and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to halt it. “You’ll need it to sterilize the knife.”

  “What the hell am I after needin’ a knife for?” he asked, feeling much as Moses must have felt with the Red Sea and ten thousand Egyptians at his back.

  “To cut the cord,” she replied, her eyes once again closed, hands clutching the blankets hard. “Now hurry.”

  Casey had no memory of flying down the stairs but suddenly found himself in the middle of the kitchen with no idea why he was there.

  “Boil water,” he muttered to himself, “and get a fockin’ grip man, while yer at it.”

  Just then someone knocked on the window, causing him nearly to jump out of his skin.

  He looked up to find his brother peering back through the rain-lashed pane. He had never been so grateful to see someone in his entire life.

  Pat came in a moment later, the rain still coming down hard enough to drive in the door behind him.

  “I got caught short on the way back up from Armagh, thought I’d best stop over here until the worst of the storm passed an’ make certain ye were tucked in yerself… good Christ man, yer white as a ghost! What’s wrong?” Pat looked about the kitchen and then asked, “Where’s Pamela?”

  “Upstairs havin’ the baby,” Casey said tersely, putting the kettle on and straining his ears for any noise issuing from the upper floor.

  “Seriously?”

  “Do I look like a man who’s in the mood for takin’ the piss?”

  “No,” Pat said with the bald honesty Casey sometimes found rather annoying. “Ye look like a man who needs a stiff drink though. Telephone’s out?”

  Casey merely glared in answer, casting a swift and longing glance at the bottle of Connemara Mist on the sideboard but deciding he’d best keep a clear head for the present time. Besides, if Pamela smelled whiskey on his breath just now she wasn’t likely to look upon him kindly. Still, it might go some ways towards calming his nerves. He took a step toward the bottle, only to be brought up short by a cry from upstairs.

  Pat was already halfway out the door and Casey thought he looked a little too relieved to be heading back out into the wind and rain.

  “I’ll go for the doctor, but I have to warn ye man, the roads are littered with trees all over and so it may take me some time to get back. Can ye manage?”

  “I pretty much fockin’ have to, don’t I then?” Casey said, feeling severely harassed.

  “Aye,” Pat said, “I suppose ye do. I’ll be back as soon as I can find help.”

  Casey sprinted back up the stairs, still wishing he’d a few ounces of whiskey in him for fortitude. Pamela was lying on her side, an old shirt of his rucked up around her waist, her fists clenched tightly in the blankets.

  “Pat came by an’ he’s gone off for the doctor now. He says he’ll run in and tell Gert too.”

  She nodded, face pale, eyes wide and brilliant with pain.

  “Casey, come hold me. I’m afraid and I need your hands on me.”

  “Sure an’ who wouldn’t be, darlin’?” he said in his most reassuring tone, sliding in behind her on the bed so she could relax into his body between contractions. They seemed to have gotten far closer together since he’d gone downstairs. He had a feeling this baby—nervous father be damned—wasn’t going to wait for an engraved invitation or a waylaid doctor before making its appearance.

  Pamela leaned into him, her entire body shaking with the force of the pain and pulling her out into deep water as surely as the tide.Water into which he could not follow, but he would bear her up as long as he might.

  Skin to skin they lay, the world outside so far away as to seem impossible. Every few minutes she would pull into herself as though she were trying to curl up small enough to escape the agony, somewhere far, far inside the shell of her mind.

  He sat behind her, rubbing her back in small, tight circles, kneading the muscles through each contraction with one hand while she held the other so tightly that he could picture the bones turning indigo inside his skin. Between contractions she fell back into his chest, her face turned into his neck, breath ragged but deep.

  “Sing to me, Casey,” she said after a particularly long contraction during which Casey had prayed to the Virgin Mary, thinking if anyone was likely to help in such a situation it was another mother.

  “What would ye have me sing, love?”

  “Something comforting,” she said.

  Something old, something soft and something he would naturally sing to her anyway. Something American for the country she had left behind to bring him home. He found one amongst the softer, simpler strains of the songbook he held in his mind.

  It’s not the pale moon that excites me

  That thrills and delights me, oh no

  It’s just the nearness of you

  Casey kept his voice low and soft, trying to create with the thread of music a whole cloth of comfort for her. He kept the tempo of the music even while still counting the time between contractions. They were getting closer together and from the look on Pamela’s face, he judged she was getting very near the crucial point. Even if Pat had managed to drive the entire way and then had the good fortune to find the doctor in, still it would take more time than he suspected was left for them to make it back here.

  It isn’t your sweet conversation

  That brings this sensation, oh no

  It’s just the nearness of you

  When you’re in my arms and I feel you so close to me

  All my wildest dreams come true

  He was little more than whispering in her ear now, stroking the line of her neck and shoulder and the hard, taut round of her belly between contractions, wishing to God and all his angels there was something he could do for her. He had never known such a feeling of helplessness in his life, nor such a deep and profound connection to another person. A feeling that went far down beyond the flesh, the blood, the bone and even the spirit. A thing he had known from the minute he first saw her, a thing that had been sorely tried so recently and yet for all that, still here, as present and undeniable between the two of them as it had ever been.

  I need no soft lights to enchant me

  If you’ll only grant me the right

  To hold you ever so tight

  And to feel in the night the nearness of you

  He finished on a low note, blowing gently onto her face to cool the heat that now seemed to consume her.

  She closed her eyes and smiled. He stroked the hair back from her face and k
issed her softly on the forehead.

  “Casey.”

  “Aye, Jewel?”

  “I just want you to know that I love you.”

  “I do know that,” he said, worried at the intensity with which she’d spoken the words, as though she were afraid she might never have another chance to say them.

  “In case I die, I want you to know that I have loved you from the first minute I saw you and that I don’t regret anything I’ve done for that love. My only regret is the hurt I’ve caused you.” She had hold of his hands and was pressing down hard on them, her eyes dark with pain. Despite himself, he stiffened slightly at the words, then forced himself to relax, not wanting his emotions to communicate to her.

  “I’ve not a regret either, Jewel. I love ye more than the breath in my own body an’ that’s how I know yer not goin’ to die. We’re to grow old together here, an’ yer not leavin’ me with this wee person on my own. I’d fock it up surely.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” she said, voice hardly more than a whisper. “You’re going to be a terrific father. You could do it without me if you had to.”

  “Yer not goin’ to die,” he repeated in his firmest tone, as much to reassure himself as Pamela. If anything should go wrong, if she bled more than she ought, if the baby came out backwards or with the cord caught round its throat… he should have insisted they leave before the storm started. Christ on a piece of toast, where the hell was Pat with the bloody doctor!

  “Casey!” she arched back into his chest hard, her entire body tight as a kettledrum. He eased out from under her carefully, knowing the moment had arrived and that he’d never been less prepared for anything in his life.

  He knelt on the end of the bed, wondering how one assessed a situation in which one had no clue what was normal and what was not.

  “Just make sure you catch the baby,” Pamela said. Obviously, his wife was having no problem assessing him, Casey thought, chagrined.

  “Here,” he said, a strange calm descending over him, “brace yer feet against my chest, an’ then push. We’re almost there, Jewel.”

  She was propped up on her elbows, knees bent back and legs shaking with the effort of the last hour. He took her ankles and lifted her legs, leaning his chest into the soles of her feet so she would have something solid against which to push. He’d discarded his shirt earlier and her toes curled automatically into his chest hair. He hardly noticed though, for the entire universe had stilled to this point. He no longer heard the wind howling round the eaves nor the fire snapping in the grate, just the in and out of breath and Pamela’s cries of pain and determination. He could see the top of the baby’s head now, wrinkled and red, but nevertheless a head.

  It was the most fiercely primal thing he’d ever experienced in his life, and exhilaration began to run through his veins despite his fear for Pamela. With each contraction he could see more of the head coming down.

  “Okay, just a few more, darlin’, an’ the wee one will be here,” he said, excitement infusing his words.

  “Oh God, Casey, I can’t,” she cried, collapsing back against the pillows. He felt a jolt of fear run through him. She looked terribly pale and fragile, and he wondered if she had enough strength left to see this through.

  “Pamela, look at me. Ye can do this darlin’. I’m here with ye all the way.”

  She shook her head, eyes closed, her entire body trembling with exertion. Her exhaustion was palpable, but he knew now was the crucial moment and he had to be strong for her.

  “Jewel,” his voice was gentle but commanding, “give me yer hand. I’m going to pull ye up, an’ then yer to look in my eyes an’ nowhere else, d’ye understand?”

  She nodded and gave him her hand. He pulled her up gently, sparing a quick glance downward. The head was crowning now, a full round skull in evidence, covered with a fine haze of black hair.

  She looked into his eyes then, her own a hectic and brilliant green, and he smiled in reassurance and nodded. She hesitated a moment and then nodded back. Fastening her gaze on his face, she suddenly groaned, her entire body gripped in another contraction.

  “I’m goin’ to have to put my hands down to catch the baby, alright?”

  She nodded, the veins in her neck standing out, strands of hair plastered to her face and shoulders. She had never looked more beautiful to him than she did now.

  “The head’s out,” he said a moment later, half in awe, half in astonishment that there really was a child, his child, their child in the world now. A good head of black hair and a wee, scrumpled face that looked terribly annoyed by this sudden arrival in a strange place. He could feel his wife’s body beginning to tense again. “Alright then, darlin’, one more, an’ ye’ll be done.”

  She pushed again, one last surge of exertion and the baby slid all the way out on a tide of blood and fecund water, and Casey’s son slid surely into the large hands that awaited him.

  “Tis a boy, Jewel,” he said, feeling slightly dizzy and unreal, yet more grounded than he had ever felt before in his life.

  She leaned forward and touched the tiny skull and the baby opened his eyes, eyes the color of seaweed in storm-tossed waters. The baby turned his head as though he knew precisely where his mother was and opened his mouth in a loud cry.

  “He’s perfect,” she said, her eyes filling with tears.

  Casey met her eyes above the head of their son, the cord that tied him to his mother still pulsing with blood, and put one trembling hand to her face.

  “Thank you for my son,” he said softly and bent to kiss her. Under them, the bed was awash in blood and birth matter, outside the wind was still playing havoc with the world, and inside Casey felt a deep and utter happiness that he was certain he didn’t deserve but was quite willing to accept nevertheless.

  He laid the baby in Pamela’s arms, uncertain of what to do now. Just then, a noise downstairs alerted him to the fact that help had arrived. He felt both relief and regret, sweet and sharp, for now this time alone, where the three of them had beat only to the heart of existence, was over and life, like the tide, had returned to its accustomed shore.

  Gert poked her head around the door a moment later and with her came an awareness of the state they were all in. He was still bare from the waist up and Pamela was completely naked, both of them smeared with blood and sweat, the baby working himself up to a good squall now in his mother’s arms.

  Beautifully unflappable and solid as the Hoover Dam, however, Gert did not even blink an eye at the scene before her. She came over and touched one fat, red finger to the baby’s nose. “Ja, is sweetheart, is he not?” she asked, beaming as though she herself had just produced him fresh from the oven.

  She laid one rough hand on Casey’s shoulder. “Go down and see Owen. This part is women’s work.” The bedroom became a whirl of activity after that, with Gert sweeping him toward the door and Owen waiting at the foot of the stairs to place a full glass of whiskey in his hand. He finished it off in three neat swallows, for the events of the last few hours had just hit him and he was strangely anxious, though his wife and son were only up the stairs being tended by Gert’s extremely capable hands.

  Pat came in with the doctor a few minutes later. Dr. Dooley was a brown chestnut of a man with a reputation for fearsome honesty, respected throughout the county.

  “Upstairs?”

  Casey nodded, not bothering to explain further. It would be obvious the minute the doctor stepped into the room.

  “Well then?” Pat asked, shaking the rain from his hair as the doctor headed up the stairs, battered leather bag in hand.

  “A wee, perfect little man,” Casey said.

  Pat grinned and gave his brother a hearty hug. “Can I see him when the doctor’s through then?”

  “Aye, sit an’ have a tea first. ‘Tis a bit mad up there right now. ”

>   A half hour later, the brothers were well fortified with both tea and whiskey. The doctor came down and surveyed them with a smile of satisfaction.

  “All’s fine up there,” he nodded toward the top of the stairs. “The mother has done beautifully an’ the laddie’s hale as a horse. Ye did just fine yerself too there, man. Yer wife says ye were a rock through the whole thing. Congratulations.” Casey shook the proffered hand, feeling a relief so vast it threatened to take him to his knees that he’d done nothing to damage either Pamela or the baby.

  “Please help yerself to a glass of whiskey before ye leave. Gert’s not likely to let ye out the door without a bite either.”

  He turned to his brother. “Well then, Uncle Pat, are ye ready to meet yer nephew?”

  The bedroom had undergone a transformation in Casey’s brief absence. The bed was made with fresh linens, his wife sitting up against the pillows in a clean nightgown, hair pulled up and away from her face with a ribbon, and their son, wrapped snug in a blue blanket, in her arms. A pot of tea, a delicate china cup, and a plate of toast lay on the low table to the side of the bed. The fire was built up in the grate and all traces of the last few mad hours had disappeared.

  “Can Patrick come in?” he asked.

  “Of course he can,” she said, her head bent in adoration over the tiny being in her arms.

  Pat ducked into the room, bringing with him the scents of the rain and wind.

  Pamela smiled up at him, her face flushed and glowing. “Hi, Uncle Pat.”

  Pat bent over the bed and stroked one long finger down the baby’s cheek. “Who’s a handsome boyo, then?”

  “Would you like to hold him?” she asked.

  “Are ye certain?”

  “Of course I am.”

  Pat leaned down and took the baby gingerly from Pamela.

  One tiny, splayed starfish hand came up out of the blanket and Pat caught it with a finger. The baby wrapped his own fingers tight around that of his uncle.

  “He’s beautiful,” Pat said, a catch in his throat, and Casey knew that Pat was seeing in the baby’s face all the children he would never have with Sylvie. “He takes after his Mam there.” He grinned at his brother. Casey grinned back.