She barely heard him. Marlene began to rock, trying to hold the pain at bay. It didn’t help. It just continued coming, like an army of unrelenting soldiers.
“I shouldn’t have done this,” she whispered to herself. “I shouldn’t have gotten pregnant.”
On that point he agreed with her, not with the method she’d employed at any rate. But he didn’t think she wanted to hear that. What she needed was something positive. “All mothers feel that way just before they give birth.”
Blinking, she looked at him. It was so very hot in here, Marlene thought. She felt as if she were melting. “How would you know?”
He smiled at her. He was making this up as he went along. “Hearsay.”
She looked past his head at the red button on the opposite wall. The one that had set off the alarm. “No one’s answering.” Her eyes shifted to his face. “Why aren’t they answering, Travis?”
“I don’t know.” Impotence drummed through him. Sullivan wished he had something more hopeful to tell her. He hated not being able to do anything. “But they will. Soon.”
If there was just some way that she could call for help.
“Call,” Marlene suddenly repeated aloud. The word thundered in her brain as her eyes darted excitedly to his face.
He looked around, but there was no telephone lodged within the shiny walls. Hell of a time for him to notice poor design. “They didn’t put a telephone in,” he told her, irritated.
He didn’t understand, she thought frantically, her head throbbing in rhythm to the pain in her body. She pointed to the black object on the floor in the corner.
“No, my…” Marlene licked her lips as her breath was stolen away. “Purse…my purse…get my purse.”
Sullivan couldn’t begin to understand why she would want her purse at a time like this, but he didn’t bother asking. She wanted it and that was reason enough. He could do little for her as it was.
Stretching, he reached for the shoulder strap and pulled the purse toward him. He thought of offering to go through it for her, retrieving whatever it was that she wanted, but he had a feeling she wouldn’t want him to do that.
He handed the purse to her and was surprised when she shook her head, refusing it.
She couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t straighten her fingers. She’d been clenching them so hard for so long, they felt as if they were permanently curled. “Phone…my cellular phone…in there.”
Of course. She was head of her company. It stood to reason that she would have a portable telephone with her. He should have thought of that himself. Feeling like an idiot, Sullivan took the phone out.
But when he opened the flip phone and pulled the antenna up, static met his ear. The signal was weak. He doubted if he could get through, but there were no other options available to them.
He pressed 911 and prayed. There was a buzzing noise that sounded like ringing on the other end.
“Hurry, Sullivan, hurry.” Her breath was coming in short pants as she pushed her back to the wall.
The buzzing stopped. Something else took its place. It might have been someone answering, but he couldn’t swear to it.
“This is Sullivan Travis. I’m calling from 725 Westcliff Drive. I’m trapped in an elevator with a pregnant woman who’s about to give birth at any minute. Send an ambulance immediately—and someone to get us out of here.”
An ear-piercing squawk came out of the phone. He held it away until the noise subsided, then repeated the message, hoping that someone on the other end heard, or could piece enough of the message together.
“Did you get through?” she whispered, her eyes shut as she rocked her body. Please, please, let him have gotten through.
“Yes, I got through.”
Hoping that at the very least they could trace the faint signal, Sullivan didn’t end the call. Instead, he placed the opened telephone on the elevator floor.
She looked as if she were fading. He placed his hand over hers. “Are you still with me?”
She nodded as she rocked, her eyes remaining closed. “I wish I weren’t.” And then her eyes flew open as a new shock wave traveled through her, stronger than the last. “I think…the baby’s…coming.”
His voice was firm when he spoke, a lot firmer than his knees were at the moment. “Marlene, didn’t the doctor tell you that first babies usually take a long time to be born?”
She couldn’t remember what the doctor had told her. All she knew was what her body was telling her. “This one didn’t read the handbook.” She grasped his forearm, pulling him to her. “I know what I feel. It’s coming, Sullivan, the baby’s coming.”
He could feel the scratch marks forming beneath his sleeve as Marlene dug her nails into his forearm. Her eyes were huge, luminous with fear of the unknown. That made two of them. The only thing he knew about women giving birth he had acquired while watching television. It wasn’t a hell of a whole lot.
But what he did know was that he had to find a way to keep her calm.
Gripping her wrists, he forced her to look at him. There was no denying that he sincerely wished they were both somewhere else right now, but they weren’t and they had to deal with this brand new life that was struggling to be born.
“Okay, Marlene, you signed on for this and now it’s show time.” His voice exuded confidence. “I think we can do this.”
What “we”? How was he involved in this? It was her body being shredded apart, her body being speared with swords.
But if she had been alone in this elevator, she didn’t know if she could stand it. She kept the sharp retort to herself. “Have you done this before?”
He had to be honest with her. She would know soon enough if he lied. “No.”
She gulped in air. If only she could put a cushion of air between herself and the baby. Between herself and the pain. “That makes two of us.”
“Here, lean against the back of the elevator.” He moved her as best he could into a sitting position so that her back was flush against the tarnished silver-colored wall. “You need to brace yourself, and I can’t be in two places at once.”
She looked at him uncertainly. A sliver of embarrassment reared its head through the sea of pain. “Where are you going to be?”
They both knew the answer to that one. He phrased it as best he could. “Catching the football after you make the forward pass.”
She shivered, growing cold, then hot again. Over and over the sensations traded places. And always, there was the ring of pain. It didn’t recede any more. It was just there. Growing harder, then softer, then harder again.
“I can’t do this, Travis.”
He felt for her. “It’s a hell of a system someone thought up. The next time around when the universe is formed, maybe babies could be delivered by mail.” He saw what might have been a weak smile on her lips. “But right now, I don’t think you have much of a choice. The police may or may not have heard us and even if they did, they might not get to us in time. And I haven’t got the slightest idea where the security guard is.” He squeezed her hand. It was clammy and damp, just like the rest of her. “You seem determined to have this baby the way you do everything else. Fast.”
But that was just it. She wasn’t determined to have the baby. Not yet. She had things to do. She wasn’t ready for this. She wasn’t.
“I don’t want to have this baby. Not here.”
Sullivan searched his mind for reassuring things to say to her, things a woman in her condition would want to hear. Words materialized from deep within his soul.
“It doesn’t matter where the baby’s born, Marlene. What matters is how you take care of it, how you love it once it is here.”
He would have made sense if she could think. She would even have given him points for sensitivity. But the pain was slicing through her like the blades of a whirling blender, shredding any coherent thought she was attempting to hang on to.
She bit down on her lower lip until she felt a trickle of blood seeping into her
mouth.
Without ceremony, his eyes on hers, Sullivan lifted her dress up to her hips. Then he stopped. He sank back on his heels, looking at her incredulously.
“You’re wearing panty hose?” And heels. Nine months pregnant, and she looked like the perfect businesswoman. The woman was either incredible—or crazy. Or both.
“My legs were cold,” she said hoarsely.
He hesitated. He’d undressed more than his share of women. But this time, it was awkward. He didn’t know how to make it easy on her.
“I have to—”
She nodded, swallowing, rocking, doing everything she could to refrain from screaming.
“I know.” She waved a clenched, impotent hand. “Just do it.”
Sullivan kept up a steady stream of conversation, trying to keep her mind off the pain as much as possible. “So, do you want a boy?”
“No.” She moaned.
She sounded rather adamant about it, he thought. “A girl, huh?”
“No.”
“Those are the only two choices you get, honey.” The endearment had come out of nowhere, surprising him. He glanced up at her face to see if she had heard, but she didn’t seem to have noticed.
“No, I don’t care what it is, as long as it’s healthy. And out.” She’d dug her fingernails into her palms so deeply, she was bleeding. “I just want this to be over with.”
Amen to that. Sullivan looked down and saw the crown of the baby’s head peering out. She was ready, all right. He only hoped he was.
“It will be soon. I promise.” He braced himself. “Okay, Marlene, I’d say we were about five minutes away from a debut.” He had no idea if he was right, only that she needed to be reassured that this onslaught of pain was going to end.
She tried to lean forward and look, but the effort was too much for her. Her shoulders slid against the back of the elevator. Marlene raised her eyes to his. “Can I push?”
Even if he said no, she didn’t think she could refrain. The urge was the strongest one she’d ever experienced.
It seemed only logical to him. “Yes.” He only hoped he was saying the right thing. There were thousands of things that could go wrong between now and five minutes from now. “You can push on the count of three. Ready? One, two, three.”
Marlene screwed her eyes tight and clenched her hands as she concentrated on doing just that one thing. Sweat seemed to cover her from head to foot, flowing out of every pore in her body.
But nothing else did.
Sullivan felt his own stomach muscles contracting in empathy.
“Okay, once more. On the count of three.” He looked at Marlene. “You can do this. I know you can. C’mon. One, two, three.”
Holding her breath, Marlene squeezed hard again, pushing, feeling light-headed. Feeling as if she were going to burst.
But she didn’t.
He wondered if anything was going wrong and fervently hoped not. Where the hell were the police when you needed them? Why hadn’t they arrived yet? “Take a break, Marlene.”
She looked at him accusingly. “I am breaking.”
He had no doubts she felt that way. “Soon, Marlene, soon. Just a few seconds more.”
The scream of the emergency alarm was grating away at his nerves. What must it be doing to hers?
“You can do this, Marlene,” he repeated, trying to make her believe that. “You know you can.”
Her eyes darted to his face. “Are…you…making…fun…of…me?”
“Not at a time like this. I wouldn’t dare.” He could see the head. It was right there. Why couldn’t she make the baby come out? In preparation, unconsciously mimicking her, he took a deep breath. “C’mon, Marlene, just one more time. The baby’s almost here. One, two—”
“Threeeee,” she screamed, pushing for all she was worth. Her face turned a deep shade of red.
The air stopped in Sullivan’s lungs as he looked down in wonder. A tiny head, covered with damp, dark hair slid into his waiting hands.
“Okay, I’ve got it! Just a little more. Push out the shoulders. You’re almost done.”
“It?” Her voice quavered. She’d never felt so tired in all her life. “What…do you…mean…‘it’?”
“You pushed out the head, Marlene. I need to see the other end before I can give you a gender.”
With the baby partially in his hands, blood seeping through his fingers, Sullivan looked up at Marlene. She was flushed, exhausted—and he would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that he’d never seen anyone look so radiantly beautiful in his life.
“C’mon, push, Marlene. Push.”
“I am, I am,” she cried. Her head felt like exploding, and what light there was in the small elevator was growing dimmer. Marlene thought she was going to pass out at any moment.
The alarm sounded as if it were getting louder, pealing like church bells on a holiday as she pushed her child into the world.
“And we have a winner,” Sullivan announced. He held the baby in his hands, turning it so that Marlene could see. He’d never held anything so precious in his life. “You have a son, Marlene. It’s a boy.”
Chapter Eight
The wail of the ambulance’s siren cut through the heavy rain plundering the streets of Newport Beach like the sound of a foghorn on an ocean liner. Sullivan was only vaguely aware of the grating noise.
He looked down at Marlene as the ambulance raced down the semiflooded streets to Harris Memorial Hospital. Cars sent up sprays of water as they pulled over to the right.
He was still stunned at the chain of events that had brought him to this moment. To this woman. It sounded like something out of a movie he wouldn’t have bothered watching. It certainly hadn’t been one of the more run-of-the-mill days of his life, he mused, as he rubbed his thumb unconsciously over the hand that still clutched his so tightly.
Before today, Sullivan would have readily said that he didn’t believe in miracles of any kind. That kind of belief had died in his childhood. And yet, a miracle was what he’d been part of. There was nothing else he could have called it. He had been there to look down into the face of another human being as he drew his first breath.
Tonight, as he coached Marlene through the pain, as he held her baby in his arms, as he held her when the rescue team and paramedics finally arrived, something had occurred within him. A different sort of feeling had been born in the wake of the infant’s arrival. A satisfied happiness that he had never experienced before.
“Are we almost there?” Marlene looked up at him, indigo eyes as huge as twin pools of water in the Carolina Keys.
“Almost,” he assured her. He didn’t look up toward the front of the vehicle to verify his reply.
It felt as if they should have arrived already. They’d been traveling long enough. But looking out the windshield would have given him no further clue as to where they actually were. The street signs could have been nonexistent for all the visibility he had.
All Sullivan could really see, if he craned his neck, were the twin beams of light coming from the ambulance’s headlights, slicing through the sheets of water.
Marlene nodded, taking his word as gospel.
When the paramedics had hurried her cot into the ambulance, she’d held on to Sullivan’s hand tightly, refusing to let go. Her eyes had silently asked him to come with her. It was quite a switch from the go-to-hell attitude he’d seen her display earlier.
But then, tonight was special. Tonight was the night her son had been born.
Her body felt battered, as if she had been turned inside out. There was a sleeping baby nestled in her arms, wrapped in Sullivan’s jacket. The paramedics had cut her cord, rushed her onto the cot and then into the ambulance. It was as if she had been cast headfirst into a dream.
But it wasn’t a dream, and despite her pain and the exhaustion pressing down on her body, there was an incredible euphoria echoing through her.
Marlene looked up at Sullivan’s chiseled profile turned slightly away from he
r as he stared out of the window. It was a hard thing for her to admit, given the circumstances between them, but she knew she couldn’t have made it without him.
“Travis,” she whispered. She cleared her throat, wishing it didn’t feel so dry. “Travis.”
He realized that she was saying something. But her words were being absorbed by the scream of the siren. Sullivan bent over her. “What?”
He didn’t understand. Marlene felt groggy and hazy, but she wanted him to know. It seemed only right.
“No. Travis.” She looked down at California’s newest resident. He was so small, so helpless. She thought her heart would burst from the love she felt. “That’s what his middle name is going to be.” Marlene wrapped her tongue around the sound. “Travis.”
“Not bad.” For the moment, he pushed aside what he knew his father’s reaction to that would be. He would want Travis to be his last name, not the one sandwiched in the middle.
Sullivan just barely skimmed his palm over the sleeping infant, afraid of waking him. He raised his eyes to Marlene’s face. “What’s his first name going to be?”
The smile faded from her lips, replaced by a solemn expression that had its roots in the long ago.
“Robert.” Marlene shifted her aching body on the cot, unconsciously bracing herself as the ambulance finally came to a stop. Her throat was no longer dry. Tears filled it. “Robby.” She whispered the name fondly. “That was my brother’s name.”
Was. Which meant the man was dead. He didn’t have to be told how attached she’d felt toward her brother. He could hear it in her voice. Sullivan wondered how he had died.
The ambulance doors dramatically flew open. Suddenly, there were faces all around them, talking, issuing orders, meshing and drowning each other out as they pulled the cot from the ambulance.
Surprised, Marlene dropped Sullivan’s hand. She turned her head to see that he was beginning to recede into the background. Instantly, she grabbed for him. The movement had been involuntary, like breathing. Need had taken over.
He’d meant to let everyone else take over. Instead, his fingers clutched in hers, Sullivan found himself trotting along beside the cot as it was rushed through the automatic emergency room doors.
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