A Family of Her Own

by Brenda Novak

  But risking himself was one thing. Risking Katie was another…

  “Please?” she whispered.

  Cursing, he turned left at the highway. Fifteen minutes later, he passed Hatcher’s dark office and hoped to God he was making the right decision.

  KATIE TRIED TO REST between contractions, but they were coming too hard and fast.

  Work with me, baby. Come on, she pleaded and glanced over to see that Booker was as focused as he’d been from the moment he’d picked her up off the floor. Jaw set, he grasped the wheel with two hands—distinctly different from his usual careless pose—and he seemed to mark each of her contractions by tightening his grip.

  Katie silently drew comfort from the fact that she was on her way to the hospital and that, barring an experienced doctor, Booker was the one person among her friends and acquaintances she wanted with her right now. He had good instincts, loads of common sense, and he could drive really fast. If anyone could get her to Boise in time, he could.

  The weather, especially with the twisting, turning highway, was no help at all. Katie braced herself against the door as the truck swerved around one corner and then the next, listening to the wipers swish across the windshield. Sixty swishes between contractions…Fifty-eight swishes…

  Thoughts of Andy and her missing computer threatened to creep in, but she willed away the desolation that loss inspired. She’d deal with the rest of her life later. One hour at a time….

  “Did something happen tonight?” Booker asked, reaching out to support her so she wouldn’t slide off the seat as they took a particularly tight curve. “Why was your door standing open when I got there and that chair overturned?”

  Katie couldn’t answer right away. She felt another contraction coming on. Gritting her teeth, she focused on breathing through it as best she could. Her baby would face enough difficulties even with a normal delivery. She had to pray she didn’t deliver in Booker’s truck.

  The pain finally released her, and she sagged against the door.

  “Katie?” Booker prompted.

  She forced her eyelids open but didn’t have the energy to lift her head.

  “What happened before I arrived?”

  “Andy stopped by,” she said.

  “Did he want you to come back to him?”

  She chuckled bitterly. “No, he wanted me to give him money.”

  “Did you do it?”

  “I didn’t have any to give him.” She seemed to make an effort to calm down. “I’ve landed a couple of Web site jobs, but I haven’t got far enough to warrant a progress payment.”

  “So…what happened?”

  She shook her head, staring at the glowing instrument panel as thunder cracked overhead and the rain fell harder. She couldn’t talk about Andy, couldn’t let dark thoughts steal her resolve. “Nothing.”

  “He didn’t hit you, did he?”

  “No.” The pain swelled suddenly with another contraction—only this time it was much worse because she wanted to push. Panicking, she fought the urge, knowing it would be at least an hour before they reached Boise.

  Stall. Refuse to let go of the baby. Hang on…

  But it was no use. Her body no longer seemed to be taking orders from her brain. Another contraction ripped through her, and another, just seconds apart. Soon she was sweating and shaking so badly, she knew that in a few minutes she’d run out of strength.

  To her alarm, she felt the baby move lower, into the birth canal. Then Katie experienced a new kind of pain—the pain of delivery?—and knew they weren’t going to make it.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  BOOKER GLOWERED AT THE wet, shiny road. They’d only been driving for fifty-three minutes, but he’d spent every one of those minutes cursing the rain. And the road. And the pain. And the panic. And Andy. And Mike Hill—he didn’t know why he was angry at Mike, he just was. And everything and everyone else he could think of, including himself and his inability to drive any faster without risking their lives. He’d been crazy to let Katie convince him to take this chance. Except he couldn’t help siding with her in wanting to reach Boise and real help, if at all possible.

  “Booker?” Katie said breathlessly.

  He grunted, following the dotted white lines in the center of the road like a safety rope.

  “Booker?” she repeated, the pitch of her voice significantly higher.

  “What is it?” He finally looked over, but he didn’t like what he saw. She was crying and sliding closer to him so she could lie down.

  “You have to…pant, pant…stop.”

  “We can’t. There’s nothing here, no one to help us. We’ll make Boise in another forty-five minutes. Just hang on, okay? The road will straighten out in a few more miles and then I can shave off—”

  “Booker, please!” The words, torn from her, filled him with dread.

  “The baby’s coming right now?”

  Tears pooled in her eyes. “I can’t stop it.”

  At that moment, he would rather have faced a whole gang of Hell’s Angels bent on taking him apart piece by piece than help Katie deliver her premature baby out in the middle of nowhere. But what choice did he have? The worst seemed inevitable. There was no way out.

  Swallowing a fresh string of curses, he slowed and looked for a safe place to pull over. After a short distance, a narrow road materialized on the right, heading into a forest. It was remote and muddy, but Booker had a four-wheel drive, and they had to take what they could find.

  Tree branches scraped the sides of the truck as they bounced through potholes and puddles. When they’d traveled a hundred yards or so from the highway, he parked but left the engine running so he could keep the heater on. Warmth was the one thing he could provide.

  Katie was turned the wrong way for him to assist her, but he knew it would be a lot harder for her to change positions than for him. Reluctant to get out in the rain and blast her with cold air, he flipped on the cabin light so he could see and carefully maneuvered his large body around hers in the cramped space. A moment later he was on the passenger side, crouching with one knee on the seat and one foot planted on the floor.

  “Close your eyes,” she said. “I—I have to take off my pants.”

  “Close my eyes?” he repeated, astonished. Somehow this wasn’t what he’d expected. “You’re worried about modesty right now?”

  “I know it seems silly, but I’m hurting and bleeding and—” her chest heaved as she worked to catch her breath “—I’ve never felt so vulnerable or unattractive in my whole life. And now my…my pants have to come off and—” She suffered through another contraction.

  “And?” he prompted.

  She caught her breath. “And I’ll be…completely exposed, at my absolute worst.”

  Booker shook his head in bewilderment. “So? I’m going to see it anyway.”

  She couldn’t answer immediately. Her eyes closed as she endured yet another pain, then she muttered, “I’ll do it myself. This…this is my problem, not yours.”

  “You’re not making sense.”

  “What will Ashleigh think about you being here with me?”

  “Forget about Ashleigh,” he snapped. “She doesn’t have anything to do with…anything. And I might not be the best person for this, but I’m all you’ve got.”

  Their eyes met and Katie’s filled with tears again. “Do you love her?”

  He couldn’t believe they were having this conversation. Katie was about to have a baby!

  “No,” he said. “I never did. Now let’s get these pants off.” Nudging her hands away when she moved to help him, he stripped off her jeans and her underwear, and tossed them on the floor. Then he turned up the heat, to make sure the baby would be warm enough, and supported Katie’s legs. At first she resisted his attempts to gently open them so he could see what was happening with the baby, but another pain convinced her she had no choice about that, either.

  “Men should have to suffer—” she swallowed “—such indignities.”
>
  Booker would’ve smiled, except he was too scared. With each contraction, blood and fluid leaked out. But he saw no baby. He thought they might have given up on the trip too soon, that they might have made it a little farther down the road if only they’d kept going. But then she cried out and bore down in earnest—and a tiny bald head slowly emerged.

  At his first sight of the baby, Booker felt as though someone had landed a right hook to his chin. His pulse raced and he saw stars. For a moment, he thought he might pass out—drop right there on the floorboards of his truck.

  “Booker?” Katie cried, obviously realizing something was wrong.

  Steadying himself with a hand on the dash, he closed his eyes and found the anger he’d felt earlier, let it bolster and sustain him. He’d handle this the best way he knew how. He would not wimp out on her. “I’m here,” he said. “I’m here. I’m fine.”

  “Okay. I believe you. But I’m so scared….”

  “You’re going to be okay. Everything’s going to be okay.” He was trying to reassure himself as much as her because he had no idea if it was normal for the baby’s head to appear without the rest of it.

  Breathing heavily, Katie tried to see the baby while Booker sorted through the snippets of childbirth scenes he could remember from various television shows or movies. Linens and boiling water. They always asked for linens and boiling water. But he didn’t have either and wouldn’t have a damn clue what to do with them, anyway.

  Using the inside of his T-shirt, because it was cleaner than anything else available to him, he wiped the blood and fluid from the baby’s face. Its eyes were closed. Its mouth, too…

  Several seconds passed. When nothing else happened, Booker felt his panic rise. Surely this wasn’t normal. Surely the baby couldn’t survive very long half in and half out. It looked dead already….

  God, what now?

  “Push,” he said because he couldn’t think of anything else.

  “Okay.” She nodded. He could tell she didn’t have any strength left, but she gritted her teeth and bore down until the veins stood out in her neck, and he’d never been so proud of anyone in his life.

  “That’s it, honey. There you go,” he said and, miraculously, the newborn slipped out, right into Booker’s hands.

  It was a boy, he realized vaguely. A very tiny, bluish boy.

  Bluish…Was he alive? Booker pulled the baby to his chest, holding him like a football and drying him off with the bottom of the blanket. After their mad dash toward Boise, and all the pain and the panic, it didn’t seem possible that the baby could be here, in his arms.

  It also didn’t seem possible that anything so tiny could live. Katie’s son couldn’t weigh more than a few pounds. And he still wasn’t moving….

  “Booker?” Katie tried to rise up on her elbows, but she was wedged between the steering wheel and the seat, and let herself fall back almost immediately, panting with exhaustion. “Is my baby…okay?”

  “It’s a boy.” He didn’t know what else to tell her. He had no idea if things were going to get better or worse from this point forward. But he was betting on worse. A lot worse.

  “Why isn’t he crying?” she asked. “Can he…gasp… can he breathe?”

  Booker passed one finger through the baby’s mouth to check his air passage for mucous or a blockage of some sort, found it clear, then gently turned the slippery infant upside down and spanked its tiny bottom. Whether that was the correct thing to do or some old wives’ tale, he had no idea. But he had to try something.

  The baby just hung there, limp and unresponsive.

  “Booker?” Alarm rang through Katie’s voice when she saw what he was doing.

  Sweating from the stress and the heat in the truck, he spanked the baby’s butt a little harder, just enough to get a response—he hoped—then held his breath and prayed. He hadn’t appealed to God since he was a young boy. It’d been that long since he’d felt particularly deserving of divine intervention. But he pleaded with Him now. Let this baby live, God. Please. Not for me. For Katie.

  A split second later, the baby let out an angry squall.

  BOOKER USED A calling card to phone home, then leaned against the wall, still wearing his bloodstained T-shirt and jeans, because he had nothing to change into. He’d spent the past hour staring blankly at a television screen in the hospital waiting room, trying to calm down. But he could barely stand. He’d never experienced such a rush of adrenaline in his life—and he’d taken more than his share of risks, including the dare that had landed him in prison.

  On the other hand, he’d also never experienced such incredible relief as when he’d pulled up to the Emergency entrance at Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise, and watched Katie and the baby being whisked away to receive medical care. The doctors had assured Booker he’d done the right thing in drying off the baby and keeping him warm—they’d driven the last forty-eight minutes with the infant tucked against Katie’s breasts, skin to skin, and covered with Booker’s leather jacket. Fortunately, the baby’s lungs were well enough developed for him to breathe properly, or so the doctors said. And although Katie was bleeding a lot, the doctors didn’t seem to think it was excessive.

  Delbert finally answered the phone. “Hello?”

  “Hi, Delbert.”

  “Who is it?” he said, sounding a bit apprehensive.

  “It’s me—Booker.” Remembering the strange phone call he’d received earlier, he added, “Why? Has someone else bothered you since I left?”

  “Bothered me? No. But…why aren’t you in your room?”

  “I’m at the hospital.”

  “What hospital?”

  “Saint Alphonsus in Boise,” Booker said, even though he knew Delbert wouldn’t recognize the name. Delbert had only been to Boise once. After his father died, Booker had taken him to have a look at the special home where he could have lived. They’d both decided it wasn’t the right place for him, and that was settled.

  “What are you doing at the hospital, Booker? Are you hurt?”

  “No, I’m fine. Katie had her baby last night.” Booker had washed his hands and face in the restroom shortly after they arrived at the hospital, but there wasn’t anything he could do about the blood smeared on his T-shirt. He gazed down at it now, shaking his head in disbelief. “It’s a boy,” he told Delbert.

  “A boy?” he shouted excitedly.

  Booker winced and held the phone away from his ear. “Yes. A very tiny one.”

  “What’s his name? Pete? Or Henry? Or Chase, like Chase at work? Huh, Booker? Or—”

  Booker broke in, knowing Delbert could go on all day. “I don’t know yet.”

  “Oh.” He paused. “Can I talk to Katie?”

  “Not right now. The doctors are checking her. I just wanted to let you know where I am. I won’t be back in time to open the shop today, so I’ll call Chase and have him do it. You just stay put until I get back.”

  “Stay put? Does that mean I can’t go to work?”

  “I won’t be there to give you a ride.”

  “I can hitchhike. I always hitchhike. Don’t I, Booker? Don’t I always hitchhike?”

  Booker considered the raspy voice of his mystery caller: You might not want to let your little retard ramble around on his own anymore, Booker. Poor thing might get hurt again. “You normally do,” he said, “but I don’t want you hitchhiking for a while, okay, buddy? You can get rides from me or Chase or someone else you know well, like Rebecca or Delaney. But don’t walk alone.”

  Delbert paused for a long moment, and Booker imagined a confused expression on his face. “Why?” he said at last.

  “Because I think Jon Small might be holding a grudge.”

  “Oh.”

  Booker started to end the call, but Delbert interrupted.

  “What’s a grudge, Booker?”

  “Nothing you have to worry about,” he said with a chuckle. “Just do as I say for a while, and everything will be fine.”

 
; “Okay.”

  When Booker hung up, he called Jon Small. This time Jon’s daughter answered.

  “Is your daddy there?”

  “He’s asleep.”

  “Tell him Booker’s on the phone.”

  She hesitated, but finally agreed. “Hang on.”

  He heard her set the phone down. A few minutes later, Jon picked it up, sounding groggy and not pleased to be disturbed. “What do you want?”

  “I want to know if it was you who called my house in the middle of the night.”

  “What?”

  Booker pulled a handful of change out of his pocket to see how much money he had for breakfast. “Do we have a continuing problem, Jon?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Someone threatened Delbert last night.”

  “It wasn’t me.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Call Earl Wallace. I was playing poker with him and some other friends until two o’clock.”

  “What about your brother?”

  “He was playing poker, too. If you don’t stop harassing me, I’m going to call the cops,” he said and hung up.

  Booker slowly returned the phone to its cradle. He didn’t want to believe Jon, but Jon had seemed genuinely surprised by the whole conversation. Which meant last night’s call was a crank.

  Or someone else was out to hurt Delbert…

  MESMERIZED, KATIE STARED down at the tiny infant in her arms. Four pounds, two ounces. That was all her baby weighed. But, thank God, the doctors were very hopeful that her son would thrive. He needed to be kept in an incubator for a while, they said, to maintain his body temperature until he could put on some weight. But he could breathe and suck and swallow, which meant he wouldn’t have to be on a respirator or be fed through a tube.

  How she’d pay for everything was an entirely different question, but she refused to let reality steal the peace of these few moments with her son. She’d just finished nursing for the first time. Because the baby’s temperature seemed stable, they were letting her hold him a little longer.

  Adjusting the blue knit cap that was supposed to keep him from losing heat through his head, she tried to think of a name for him.