Joelle nodded from the bed in one of the antenatal rooms, but didn’t open her eyes. If she opened her eyes, the room would start spinning again.
Carlynn was at her side, holding her hand, and she was grateful for the stabilizing force of that gentle grip.
“It’s 7:00 p.m.,” Lydia said. “Am I correct in assuming you don’t want anything to eat?”
Joelle nodded again, but this time with a smile. “You’re correct,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll want anything to eat ever again.”
The magnesium sulfate made her feel hot and sick, as she knew it would, but she welcomed the drug into her veins because it gave her baby a chance to stay inside her longer. The monitor strapped to her belly let her know the baby was still all right; she could hear the comforting sound of the heartbeat, the whooshing reminding her of the underwater sound of whales or dolphins trying to find their way home.
“You don’t have to stay here,” she said to Carlynn without opening her eyes. “I’m pretty boring.”
“I’m not here for the entertainment,” Carlynn said, and Joelle managed another smile.
She was trying hard to stay calm. That seemed important, somehow, as though her calmness could prevent her cervix from dilating one more centimeter. Three or four centimeters would be “the point of no return” in a woman experiencing premature labor, Rebecca had said. She would be delivering her baby, then, ten weeks early, and she couldn’t allow that to happen. They’d given her a first shot of betamethasome, just in case, but that would take time to have any effect on her baby’s lungs.
She should call her parents, but she didn’t want them to worry or to come down to Monterey just to watch her lie in bed with a monitor strapped to her belly. If it looked as though she was going to have to deliver, then she’d have someone call them, but not before.
Even though she knew every nurse in the unit, and each of them had come in to see how she was doing, she still felt lonely. And no one—not her parents, not the nurses, not even Carlynn sitting next to her—could take the place of the person she was longing for.
Joelle could hear Lydia moving around the room, and she imagined the nurse was checking her monitor and the IV bottle. Suddenly she heard a voice at the door.
“May I come in?”
Liam. Her eyes flew open, and the room gave a quick spin before settling down again. Liam was poking his head in the open door, and she felt tears burn her eyes, she was so happy to see him there.
“Sure,” Lydia said, heading for the door. “Buzz me if you need me, Joelle.”
Liam walked into the room, and Carlynn let go of her hand and stood up.
“Since Liam’s here, I’m going to take a break and get a cup of tea, dear, all right?” Carlynn asked her.
“Of course, Carlynn,” she said. “Thanks for being here.”
Liam held the door open for Carlynn, then walked around the bed to sit in the chair she had vacated.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi.” She squinted, trying to get a better look at him in the dim light of the room. “Oh, God, Liam, your face.”
“You should see the other guy.”
She tried to read the expression on his wounded face. His smile was small, maybe tender, maybe sheepish. She wasn’t sure.
“Are you in tons of pain?” she asked.
“I bet not as much as you are,” he said. “They’ve really got you hooked up here.”
“Hear her heartbeat?” she asked. They had talked so little about this baby that she was almost afraid to draw attention to the sound filling the room.
“She sounds healthy and strong,” he said.
“God, I hope so.”
“You’re not feeling at all well, are you,” he said. It was not a question, and she knew she must look as terrible as she felt.
“The mag sulfate,” she said. “It’s making me sick.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and she wondered if he was apologizing out of sympathy over her nausea or for something more than that. “You look stiff, like you’re afraid to move,” he said.
He was right. She could feel the intentional rigidity in her body.
“I’m afraid that if I move, I’ll throw up,” she said.
“The basin’s right next to your head.”
She made a face. “I don’t want to throw up in front of you.”
He smiled at that. “I’ve been cleaning up baby upchuck and changing nasty diapers for more than a year now,” he said. “I think I can handle it. So if you need to, you go right ahead.”
“Thanks.” She felt almost instantly better having been given that permission, and she felt her body begin to relax.
“Can you explain to me what’s going on?” he asked.
She told him about the two centimeters dilation, about the mag sulfate, the betamethasome and the baby’s fragile lungs. “If she’s born now, and she makes it, she could have severe problems,” she said. “Cerebral palsy. Respiratory problems. Brain damage.” She expected him to flee from the room at that last one, but he stayed in his seat.
“Is there a chance she could be born now and be all right?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “With a lot of luck and good medical care in the NICU.”
Liam sighed. “I seem to jinx my women when it comes to delivering babies.”
The sentiment itself meant nothing to her, but the fact that he’d included her in “his women” meant everything.
“It’s hardly your fault that that guy kicked me.” She shook her head.
“I asked you to take the case.”
“You didn’t know.” She shifted her weight carefully in the bed, trying to ease the pain of her cracked ribs. “Did you call Carlynn to come?”
He nodded. “Is that all right?”
“Of course. Thank you. It can’t hurt to have an official healer here, though I’m still not sure I’m a believer.”
“Me neither.” He touched the bandage on his jaw with his fingers, wincing a little as he did so. “You know what I do believe in, though?” he asked.
“What?”
“You and me,” he said. “With this baby or without her.” He nodded toward her belly. “Somehow, Jo, you and I are going to make this work.”
She felt her eyes fill again with tears. What had happened to Liam? What sort of epiphany had he experienced in the last couple of hours? She didn’t dare ask him; she would just enjoy it.
“That would be wonderful, Liam,” she said.
“I called Sheila and told her I would be working late,” he said, looking at his watch. “But I think I’d better call her again and see if she can keep Sam all night.”
“You don’t need to do that, Liam,” she said. “I’ll probably just sleep tonight, and I may end up being in here for days. Maybe even weeks.”
“Well, you’ve got my company, at least for tonight,” he said. “I’d like to make up to you for giving you none of it over the past seven months. Unless you’d rather I didn’t stay.”
“I’d love you to stay,” she said. “But you may just be watching me sleep.”
“Fine,” he said, getting to his feet. “I’ll call Sheila.”
“What will you tell her?” she asked.
“The truth,” he said. He was standing now, his hands on the back of the chair. “She already knows the baby is mine.”
Joelle was shocked. “She does? How?”
“She guessed, and I told her she was right.”
Her hand flew to her mouth. “What did she say?”
“She beat me up with her purse.”
“Are you kidding?” She laughed.
“I wish.” He smiled and left the room.
She woke herself up with her own moaning, the sound coming from somewhere deep inside her. There was cramping low in her belly.
“What is it, Jo?” Liam asked.
She opened her eyes. The room was dark, except for the light pouring through the open door from the hallway, and for a moment Joelle was not ce
rtain who was sitting next to her.
“Carlynn?” she asked.
“She went home, Jo,” Liam said. “Are you okay?”
“I think…” she said. “A contraction, I think. What time is it?”
“Two in the morning.”
She could see the paleness of his eyes in the light from the monitor. “You’d better get the nurse,” she said.
He was back in a moment with Lydia, who examined her, then stood up.
“You’re four, almost five centimeters dilated,” she said. “The mag sulfate didn’t work. I’m going to call Rebecca.”
She looked at Liam after Lydia left the room. “I’m afraid this is it,” she said.
He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. “I’ll be with you,” he said.
“My mother was supposed to be my birth partner,” she said.
“Do you want me to call her?”
“She didn’t take any of the classes.”
“I’ve had all the classes, Jo,” he said. “I’m a pro.”
Another contraction gripped her belly, and she tightened her hold on his hand. When the pain had passed, she looked into his eyes. “I’m scared,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “Me, too.”
“I’ve been having these terrible nightmares lately,” she said. “That I get the headache.”
He pressed his lips to her hand. “You know that’s not going to happen.”
“What did Sheila say when you called her?”
“Essentially, nothing. I said that you were in labor, that if she could keep Sam, I would like to stay with you. And there was a long silence, and then she said, ‘Fine,’ and hung up.”
“Oh,” Joelle said. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“She could have said she wouldn’t keep him.”
“You can’t blame her. This must be terribly difficult for her.”
“I know.” He swallowed hard, and she saw the blue of his eyes darken for a moment. “Let’s not talk about it now, okay?” he asked. “Let’s just focus on you.”
Within thirty minutes, they had moved her to the birthing room, and, as though her body knew she was ready, her contractions started in earnest. The anesthesiologist, someone she didn’t know, came in to give her an epidural. It only numbed her right side, but that was enough to let her sleep, and when she awakened she was surrounded by people. Her legs were in the stirrups, Rebecca between them, and she recognized a neonatologist from the NICU standing to the side, at the ready. Liam was next to her, brushing her hair back from her forehead with his hand.
“You slept right through the hard part,” Rebecca said to her. “It’s time to push.”
What?
“What time is it?” she asked. There was an intense pressure low in her belly. “I thought I had an epidural.”
“It’s a little after six in the morning,” Liam said.
“You did have an epi,” Rebecca said. “It’s probably worn off by now, but it’s time to push, Joelle.”
Somehow, she’d slept through five centimeters’ worth of dilating. She felt the pressure again, and the urge to push was tremendous.
“I want to push!” she yelled, and several people laughed.
“Good!” Rebecca said. “We’ve been begging you to for the last ten minutes.”
She could feel everything as the baby slipped through the birth canal. It felt good, actually, the pushing, but she feared the whole process seemed so simple because her baby was very, very small.
“I’ve got her,” Rebecca said, instantly swiveling to hand the baby over to the neonatologist.
“Is she okay?” Joelle strained to see, but the neonatologist’s back was to her as he worked on her baby girl at the side of the room. She heard a whimper. “Was that the baby?”
“Want me to go see?” Liam asked her, and she nodded.
She watched Liam’s battered face as he talked to the neonatologist. He was asking questions, then looking down at the table where her baby lay. Much as she tried to read his face, his expression remained impassive.
In a moment, though, he was back at her side. “She’s tiny, Jo, but she looks good,” he said. “She weighs three pounds, and the doc seemed impressed by that. She’s not crying exactly, but she’s making noises—”
“I could hear them,” she said, still trying to look through the neonatologist’s back to see her baby.
“Her Apgars were six and eight,” Liam said. “He said that was good, considering.”
The neonatologist wheeled the incubator toward her. “Quick peek for Mom,” he said. “Then we’re off to the NICU.”
It was hard to see through the plastic. The baby was just a tiny little doll with arms and legs no bigger than twigs, and before Joelle had even had a chance to make out her daughter’s features, the incubator was whisked away.
“I want to get up,” she said, raising herself up on her elbows. She wanted to follow the incubator to the nursery.
Rebecca laughed again. “Soon, Joelle, for heaven’s sake. Let me finish up here.”
Less than an hour later, Liam pushed her down the corridor to the neonatal nursery in a wheelchair. She could have walked, but her nurse insisted on the chair, and she wasn’t about to argue. She didn’t care how she got there, as long as it was quickly. She left the chair in the hallway, though, wanting to walk into the nursery on her own steam.
The NICU was familiar territory to her, and she showed Liam how to scrub up at the sink and then dressed both of them in yellow paper gowns. Inside, Patty, one of the nurses she knew well, guided them over to the incubator, and Joelle sat down in the chair at the side of the plastic box.
“She’s bigger than I expected,” she said, smiling at the tiny infant, who had a ventilator tube coming from her mouth and too many leads to count taped to her little body.
“Bigger?” Liam asked in surprise.
“I’ve seen a lot of babies smaller than her in here,” she said.
Patty brought a chair for Liam, setting it on the opposite side of the incubator, then she came around to Joelle’s side and rested a hand on her shoulder.
“She looks good, Joelle,” she said. “You know the next couple of days will be critical, but you have every reason to hope for the best.”
Joelle smiled up at her, then returned her attention to her baby as the nurse walked away.
“Can we touch her?” Liam asked.
“I was just about to.” She reached through one of the portals on her side of the incubator, and Liam reached through his. Joelle smoothed her fingertips over her daughter’s tiny arm. It was like touching feathers. She watched Liam touch the little hand with his index finger, and the baby wrapped her tiny, perfect fingers around his fingertip.
“Have you thought of a name?” Liam asked. His voice sounded thick.
She didn’t answer right away. She had, actually, but it had been a fantasy name, one she could never use because it meant combining her name with Liam’s, and although he had been with her all night and all morning, she didn’t yet trust this change in him.
“You have, haven’t you?” He looked at her quizzically, and she knew her hesitancy had given her away.
“Yes, but I don’t think you’ll like it.”
“What is it?”
“Joli,” she said, looking across the incubator at him, and he broke into a grin.
“I was going to suggest that,” he said.
“Really?” She laughed.
“Did I hear you just name her?” Patty had been working behind Joelle, and now she moved closer to the incubator, pulling the little name card from the plastic holder in the front of the box and withdrawing a marker from her pocket.
Joelle grimaced at Liam. She hadn’t realized the nurse had been close enough to hear.
“We’re naming her Joli,” Liam said firmly. “J-O-L-I. It’s a combination of our names.”
Patty cocked her head at him quizzically. “Are you…?” Her eyes were wide, and she didn’t finish he
r sentence.
“That’s right,” Liam said with a smile. “I’m this baby’s father.”
CHAPTER FORTY
Carlynn rested her head against Quinn’s shoulder. They were in their bed at the mansion, and the night was so clear that she could see the stars through the window from where she lay. She’d returned from the hospital a couple of hours ago, exhausted after spending much of the evening visiting Joelle and her new baby. So far, things looked good for that little one. Carlynn had touched her through the portals of the incubator, but only to stroke her twiglike arm. She told Joelle that her touch was no more mystical than her own. And she told her much, much more.
“You’ve wanted to tell her everything from the start, haven’t you?” Quinn asked her now.
“Yes, and I’m not sure why,” Carlynn said. “I remember my sister saying she felt drawn to Joelle when she was an infant, and I felt drawn to her, too.” She tapped her fingers against Quinn’s bare chest. “Are you worried that I told her?” she asked.
Quinn chuckled, and she loved how the sound resonated through his body beneath her ear. “I’m an old man,” he said. “You know I stopped worrying years ago. Just don’t tell Alan that you told her.” He hesitated. “Did you tell her about Mary, too?”
“I had to,” Carlynn said. “When I told her the truth about us, she said she felt sorry for Alan, so I just had to tell her that Alan has had a wonderful soul mate and lover for the past fifteen years. I think that shocked her more than anything.” Carlynn chuckled at the memory of Joelle’s response.
“I thought Mary was a housekeeper,” Joelle had said, stunned. “And I thought Quinn was a gardener.”
They were quiet for a moment. Carlynn watched the light of a plane move slowly across the dark sky until it disappeared behind the frame of the window. She had never felt so tired, and she knew her exhaustion marked a change in her body. She had so few nights left to sleep next to her husband.
“Do you regret our ruse?” Quinn surprised her with the question, and she lifted her head to look at him.
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