That's Our Baby!

by Pamela Browning

  “GET THAT IV GOING STAT,” barked the doctor. From the gurney where she lay, Kerry tried to stop the holes in the acoustic-tile ceiling from spinning into dizzying patterns. She struggled to raise herself on her elbows.

  “No, dear, don’t do that,” said the friendly emergency-room nurse, pushing her back down again.

  “Is the baby okay?” Lying flat on her back, Kerry couldn’t see the monitor and she was terrified that harm would befall the baby.

  “So far, so good,” the nurse said briskly. “Is there somebody you’d like me to call to come to the hospital?”

  Kerry closed her eyes. She couldn’t think of anyone. Emma was far away. She didn’t think Mr. Lagunoff would be much help. And she had no other friends in Anchorage.

  Sam.

  No, she couldn’t. She wouldn’t.

  “Mrs. Anderson? I’ll be glad to call someone for you.”

  She opened her eyes and looked into the concerned face of the nurse. “There’s no one,” she whispered and turned her face to the wall.

  FOR THE THIRD TIME in two days, Sam parked his car and walked up the sidewalk to Emma’s house. Damp brown leaves had blown across the porch and stuck to the railing, and the curtains were drawn across the windows. He knocked at the door. When that didn’t produce Kerry, he rang the bell. Nothing happened. Could she have left for her parents’ so soon?

  He stamped his feet impatiently on the wooden boards of the narrow porch, looking around, wondering if he’d see her coming down the street toward him, her hair wisping around her face. Or in braids, like the second day at Silverthorne when they’d walked to the plane. He smiled faintly at the painful recollection. She’d looked so pretty with her hair tied up in blue satin bows.

  He wasn’t aware of anyone behind him until he heard someone clearing his throat. He whirled to see the man next door, the same guy he’d noticed peering through the curtains yesterday, standing there with his hands thrust deep in his coat pockets, hunched against the wind.

  “Hello, I’m Serge Lagunoff. Are you looking for Kerry, by any chance?” The tone was polite, the eyes behind the glasses curious and penetrating.

  “I’d hoped I’d catch her at home,” Sam said.

  “Oh, no chance of that. Not after the ambulance.”

  “Ambulance?” A frisson of alarm shot through him, zinging every cell in his body into alert mode.

  “An ambulance came. Took Kerry away. I didn’t get over here in time to find out what was wrong, but I hope it’s not because of the baby. Kerry really wants that baby.”

  “Where did the ambulance take her? Where is she?” Sam felt panicked, scared, as if he’d had his feet knocked out from under him. Kerry in the hospital? It was unthinkable.

  “They took her to St. Francis Hospital. I know that much because I saw the writing on the ambulance. I wonder if I should try to reach Emma. She told me how to contact her in case of emergency.”

  “Maybe you’d better,” Sam called over his shoulder as he made a dash for his car, but he wasn’t sure Serge Lagunoff heard him.

  THE HOSPITAL STAFF wasn’t cooperative.

  “Kerry Anderson. She was admitted this afternoon.”

  The sour-faced receptionist ticked a few keys on her computer keyboard and squinted at the monitor screen. “There’s no Kerry Anderson here at the present time,” she said.

  “Damn it, I know she came here in an ambulance! I want to talk to your supervisor.” Sam was steamed and didn’t mind showing it.

  “Very well, sir, but I’m telling you, there’s no one here by that name.” The woman was snippy, one of those maddening people who glory in finding themselves in a position of authority, however minor, because it ensures that they can repeatedly put the rest of the world in its place.

  “Is there some problem?” An older woman, buxom, motherly and with the mien of an administrator, appeared in a doorway. The snippy one, looking miffed, got up and marched away.

  Sam started over. “I’m looking for Kerry Anderson, she was admitted this afternoon, she must have been, it was an ambulance from this hospital.” He couldn’t help running all his words together. He was so terrified that something had happened to Kerry that he was on the verge of incoherent.

  “Anderson, you say?” The woman sat down gracefully at the computer and typed in a few characters. “No, I’m afraid there is no Kerry Anderson. Do you know why she was admitted?”

  “No. Maybe a—a miscarriage. Maybe—I don’t know.” In his frustration, he wanted to strangle someone. Not this kind person who was trying her best to help, but someone. Anyone.

  “Perhaps she’s on the maternity floor. I can double-check.” She watched intently as another chart unfurled on the screen. Sam thought, What if something terrible has happened? A slip on the ice, a fall, a disease, a coma? All the ramifications of Kerry’s being brought to this impersonal place crashed in upon him. He prayed that nothing would happen to her. Had happened to her. He prayed for the baby.

  “I’m afraid I can’t find a Kerry Anderson, but we did admit a Barbara K. Anderson this afternoon.”

  Relief hit him then. He recalled that Barbara was Kerry’s first name, and she’d always gone by her middle name, which was her mother’s maiden name. When Doug had teased her, he’d liked to call her Barbie Doll, which made Kerry mad.

  “That’s it. The initial K stands for Kerry. May I see her?”

  “There’s no notation about limiting visitors. I assume it will be all right. She’s in room 208. The elevator is to your left.” The woman smiled at him.

  “Thanks,” he managed to say before taking off at a sprint.

  Sam was the only person on the elevator and he cursed out loud at its slowness as it began its ascent. Once on the second floor, he burst into the corridor, read the sign on the wall that pointed toward her room. He reeled through the hospital miasma of alcohol and antiseptic fumes until he reached the nurses’ station. He clutched the counter as though it would impart strength. “Kerry Anderson? Room 208?”

  “Right down the hall.”

  He rushed there, only to come to a skidding stop when he realized that someone was in the room with Kerry. The man looked up when he saw Sam and scribbled a quick notation on a clipboard.

  He walked toward Sam, a tall, robust figure in a doctor’s coat, and closed the door quietly behind him. “You’re a friend of Mrs. Anderson’s?”

  “Yes. What’s happened?”

  “I’m her doctor, Ned Wellerman. She’s had some cramping.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “We hope it’s not serious, but we’ve started intravenous medication to stop it. There’s no bleeding and no dilation of the cervix, and those are good signs. She’s asleep now. She needs her rest. She can go home tomorrow if all goes well.”

  “The baby? The baby’s okay?” It was his baby, and he couldn’t bear the thought of anything happening to it. Or to Kerry.

  “The baby looks fine so far.”

  Sam’s knees went weak with relief. “May I go in? To sit with her?”

  The doctor hesitated.

  “Please? I don’t want her to wake up and find herself alone.”

  Something in Sam’s manner must have made the doctor decide to let him stay; perhaps his earnestness, or maybe it was the nameless fear in his eyes.

  “Okay, you can go in if you like. Just make sure she gets as much sleep as she can. It’s a marvelous healer, sleep.”

  Sam opened the door a crack. The curtains were closed, and in the dim light he saw Kerry lying on her back with her eyes shut. Her face was white and drawn, her cheekbones prominent beneath the shadowy circles under her eyes. Her arm was extended across the white coverlet, and a tube dripped medication into a vein. At the sight of her so still and pale, he felt a lump growing in his throat. He couldn’t swallow around it.

  He realized with some surprise that he was still clutching the box containing the Inuit carving. He set it down on a table and moved closer.

  Kerry stirred
and opened her eyes. She blinked as though she couldn’t quite believe what she saw.

  “Kerry,” he said. Sam was afraid in that moment that she would order him from the room. That she didn’t want him anywhere near her. That she really did hate him.

  She only looked at him.

  He cleared his throat. “I went by Emma’s. Serge Lagunoff saw the ambulance. He told me—”

  “I’m so scared for the baby,” Kerry whispered, her eyes wide and dark with emotion.

  “The doctor said the baby’s fine.”

  “Sometimes they don’t tell you anything. Sometimes they don’t want you to know.”

  “He said maybe you can go home tomorrow.”

  “He said that? Really?”

  He forced a smile. She sounded like a little girl. But she wasn’t a little girl, she was a grown woman, and that’s why she was in here threatening to miscarry. “Yes, really,” he said.

  She seemed to be thinking about this. “If I lose this baby because of something stupid I did, I want to die, too, Sam.”

  He sat down in the chair beside the bed. “You’re not going to lose the baby.”

  “I keep thinking that if I hadn’t stayed at Silverthorne, maybe this wouldn’t be happening. If I hadn’t done all that walking and snowshoeing, if I hadn’t fallen down the ridge, if—”

  “I don’t want you to lose this baby, either, Kerry.” His mind overflowed with all the things he’d like to say, but he knew this wasn’t the time to say them. Bottom line was that he had to keep her feeling up, not down. He had to let her know that she wasn’t alone in this, that she would never be alone, that he would always be there for her. But he was sure that she didn’t want to hear it.

  “Oh, Sam” was all she said, and she began to cry then, soft little sobs that broke his heart.

  He reached for her hand, gripped it between his, knew that they were irrevocably linked, whether she liked it or not, by the fact that she carried his child in her womb.

  “You’ll be all right. Everything will be fine,” he said helplessly. To his surprise, she squeezed his hand. At first he thought he was imagining things, but she maintained the pressure.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Sam.”

  “So am I.”

  She drew a deep breath. “Maybe I can blame hormones for that crying jag,” she said.

  “Maybe. But you’re entitled to emotion, you know. This can’t be easy.”

  “That’s for sure.” She hitched herself higher on the bank of pillows. “What’s in the box?”

  “Box? Oh, I brought you a present.” He’d almost forgotten.

  He set the box on the bed beside her free hand, and she ruffled the ribbon. “Will you open it for me? I can’t move around much with this IV.”

  He pulled off the ribbon and wrapping and lifted the lid of the box. He took out the carving of the bear and set it on the table beside the bed. “It’s an Inuit carving. Valuable, I think.”

  Kerry stared at it and began to laugh. For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what was funny.

  “I hate bears, Sam. But it’s a lovely carving.”

  How could he have been dumb enough to forget that she didn’t like bears? That she’d been scared out of her wits by a grizzly? At that moment, he felt like an idiot, a clumsy and inconsiderate idiot.

  “I didn’t think,” he said slowly. “I wanted to cheer you up, and I thought this might help.”

  She smiled at him, her eyes luminous and wide. “Well, it has cheered me up. And I don’t hate this bear. Actually it’s kind of cute.”

  “Do you want it? I’ll take it back, exchange it or something.”

  “Oh, Sam. Of course I want it. It will remind me of—well, it’ll remind me, that’s all.”

  “Of our time at Silverthorne?”

  “Of our time together.”

  It surprised him that she would say this. He didn’t think that their time there had meant anything to her. And as the realization dawned on him that it had meant something, that she still felt something for him, he knew that everything—everything—was going to be all right. Kerry might not be over her anger, and he might not know what to do about it, but things would work out between them. This time, with this woman, he was going to be the Sam he wanted to be, not the Sam he’d been in the past. He wouldn’t withdraw from Kerry and this baby—his baby. He’d be there for them, no matter what.

  “Don’t leave me, Sam. Stay with me?” Kerry’s eyes, a complex dazzle of gold and silver, implored him.

  He didn’t hesitate, only leaned over and tenderly kissed her on the cheek.

  “You bet,” he told her.

  THE STREETS OF Anchorage slipped past as Sam drove Kerry from the hospital to his house the next morning.

  “I wish you would let me go home to Emma’s,” she fretted, twisting a loose button on her coat.

  “Emma’s isn’t your home. You might as well be where I can take care of you.”

  “I don’t want to be a burden. Just put me on a plane so I can be with my parents in La Jolla, that’s all I ask.”

  He shot her an exasperated look. “There’s no need to go right away, is there? You might as well rest for a few days first. What if the cramps start again while you’re on an airplane over the Pacific?”

  Kerry had to admit that Sam had a good point. But there was a lot unspoken between them, and she was still angry with him. And with Doug.

  “Emma was all set to come back from Fairbanks. You shouldn’t have told her not to come.”

  “She’s trying to finish up that job before Christmas. And if she were to fly home, she wouldn’t be able to.”

  Kerry sighed. She’d tried to get out of moving in with Sam, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. At this point, she reminded herself, she needed to make decisions based solely on what was best for her baby.

  Sam had been so sweet all last night, holding her hand, getting her ice for the water pitcher, calling the nurse when the IV was running low. Once she’d opened her eyes and seen him staring unblinkingly at the meter that measured the baby’s heartbeat. As long as the numbers kept bouncing up and down on the monitor, the baby was okay.

  This baby has to be all right, Kerry had thought to herself, and she hadn’t even realized that she’d whispered the words out loud until Sam replied with a catch in his voice, “He will be.”

  She’d drifted away into sleep after that, wondering how Sam could be so sure.

  “Do you really think the baby is a boy?” she said now as Sam turned onto the street where he lived. His house rose ahead of them on the cliff, a big architecturally significant structure with enormous glass windows.

  “What makes you think I think that?”

  “You said last night that he’d be all right. You distinctly referred to the baby as male.”

  He was quiet for a few seconds. “I suppose every man hopes that his first child will be a son.”

  This admission rattled her, though she tried not to show it. It was hard for her to think of this baby as Sam’s, though it was. In her heart the baby had always been Doug’s. She felt torn about this and she wasn’t at all sure that she was actually better off knowing the truth. Pulling that manila file folder across the desk yesterday had opened a Pandora’s box, all right.

  A garage door in the base of the rock opened as if by magic, and the Mercedes glided in.

  “Don’t get out yet,” Sam cautioned. “I’ll help you.”

  She opened the door on her side. “Don’t be silly, Sam, I’m perfectly capable of navigating on my own.”

  He was around the car before she could swing her legs out. “Don’t take chances with our baby, Kerry,” he said, and then he swept her up in his arms. It was so unexpected that she didn’t protest, and anyway, she knew he was right. Besides, it felt wonderful to be cradled against Sam’s wide chest, to be able to rest her head on his shoulder and feel safe and secure.

  A small elevator carried them upward to a wide hall. Sam strode through it
to the living room with its vista of cliff, sea and sky, and there he set her down on a couch. He pulled an ottoman over for her feet and draped a warm hand-knit wool afghan over them.

  “Don’t move,” he said sternly. “Not even one inch. I’m going downstairs to get your suitcase.”

  “There’s not much in it,” she said. “It’s just an overnight bag that I packed for the hospital.”

  “No matter, we can send Shwano’s wife to shop for you.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t talk. Don’t do anything. For the baby’s sake.”

  She could have smiled at the worried expression on Sam’s face, but wisely refrained.

  “Okay. I’ll sit here and do nothing. I promise.”

  With one last cautionary glance, Sam wheeled and left.

  Kerry leaned her head back and surveyed her surroundings. This was a lot different from the cabin at Silverthorne and the places where they had stayed on their trek toward Athinopa. Spaces in Sam’s house were defined by swooping curved walls designed to maximize the view, and everything seemed to be leather, burled wood or fluffy carpet. She wondered where Sam slept. She wondered where she would sleep.

  This question was answered when Sam arrived with her suitcase in hand.

  “I’ve asked Shwano to fix you a cup of hot herbal tea, and when you’ve rested a bit, I’ll show you to your room.”

  She bit her lip.

  “It’s around the corner from mine,” he said evenly.

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “But I answered anyway.” He grinned at her.

  Schwano, a squat swarthy man with a bright smile, arrived with the tea.

  “My wife will be glad to help you,” he told Kerry. “She just had a baby, so she knows all about it.”

  “Thank you,” Kerry said gratefully. All of this—the magnificent house, the view, the house servant, even Sam himself—all of it seemed unreal. Her life had taken on a dreamlike quality, and she could hardly take it all in.

  She sipped her tea, and Sam sipped something much stronger.

  I wonder what Sam expects of me, she thought.

  The baby stirred inside her, gladdening her heart. She stroked her stomach, to reassure the baby that she would do whatever she had to do to ensure its survival.