The contraction rippled out of her, and she blew a breath out. She fell back on the bed with her eyes closed, and I was stricken with awe. Her face was too pale, her lips were as red as blood, the hollows of her eyes were a deep purple. She looked like a painting. Ethereal. A goddess of life and death. How arrogant of me to assume she needed me.
Before I could turn to leave, she opened her eyes and met mine in a hard, intense stare. I was anchored to the floor. She reached a hand out to me, her intention unreadable on her face. In a trance, I moved toward her. She was irresistible. If she meant to kill me, break my heart, break my body, well…I couldn’t imagine a better way to go.
“Nick?” she whispered as I pulled a chair to her side.
“Yeah,” I said in a hushed voice. “Carmen, am I…” I’d already said the word out loud, thought it to myself, confirmed it to the nurse…but now that I was here, in front of her, suddenly I couldn’t say it.
“You’re the father,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “And it’s too early, Nick, it’s too—oh!”
She curled around herself once more, and I instinctively put my hands on her shoulders, pulling back instantly the second I touched her clammy skin. I didn’t know if I could, if I should, if she wanted me to comfort her. But her pain and panic were palpable, all I wanted to do was try and help.
A minute passed in tense silence, broken only by the occasional whimper from between her crimson lips. On the other side of eternity, Carmen collapsed against the pillow again, blowing hard and shaking.
“I tried to find you,” she said, tears slipping down her cheeks. “I—I couldn’t, you weren’t there. I’m so sorry, Nick, I’m really—oh, oh!”
To my shock, she grabbed my hand this time as the contraction contorted her body. I winced as she squeezed it tight—she was stronger than I would have ever imagined—but I held on. Maybe she didn’t need me, but then…maybe she did.
One of the machines by Carmen’s side began beeping frantically, and the room was suddenly filled with medical staff, all briskly doing whatever it was they were there to do. One stern-faced nurse squatted down beside the bed, took Carmen’s other hand in hers, and looked into her eyes.
“Carmen, we have to get this baby out right now. You understand me?”
“But it’s too early!”
“Let us worry about that. You just concentrate on getting through this.” As the nurse spoke, a doctor was setting up shop at the foot of Carmen’s bed, while two nurses were fussing with some kind of plastic box with a hood.
“All right, Carmen,” the doctor said. “Your next contraction is the big one. You’re going to push.”
Carmen gasped. “I never took the Lamaze class. I thought I had more time. You said I had more time!”
“Your body knows what to do,” the nurse said firmly. “Find your calm place. When I say push, you push. Just like going to the bathroom. You understand?”
A different kind of panic ignited Carmen’s eyes.
“Carmen.” My voice sounded far calmer than it should have, considering how frantic my brain was. But I’d been here before. Not at the bedside of a laboring woman, obviously, but as the coach to a person who had reached the limits of their own pain and was getting lost in their panic. Surgery on the battlefield left a lot to be desired, anesthetically speaking.
She met my eyes as I said her name, and I locked her gaze to mine. “You’re going to be fine,” I told her. “You are strong.”
She tried to shake her head, tried to crumble, but I squeezed her hand and said her name again, a little sharper. “Carmen! You can do this because you have no choice. Understand?”
It worked on most soldiers, but it was definitely a gamble. Those words could easily have sent a different kind of person spiraling into a panic so deep that they could no longer hear me; I’d seen that, too. Carmen, however, was exactly the right kind of person. I saw her steel up inside as she matched my gaze. Her breath came hot and quick, her grip turned to a vice. I never flinched.
“Good. Now push, Carmen,” the doctor said loudly. “Push!”
“Push, Carmen,” I repeated, keeping her gaze locked on me.
She pushed. Her screams didn’t sound like panic or pain, but something primal and ancient. The growl of a warrior queen, of a million generations of powerful women. It was a warning, a war cry, a demand. It built on itself, intensity growing until the room rang with it.
Carmen cut off with a gasp, her eyes rolling back in her head as sweat poured down her chest.
“Good job, good,” the nurse was telling her.
“Almost there, Carmen,” the doctor said. “But I need you to do that again.”
She looked hopeless for a fraction of a second, but I pulled her eyes back to me. “You can do this. You have to do this.”
“I can do this,” she said, locking her eyes on mine. The next contraction started, and her battle cry with it.
“I see the head,” the doctor said.
Suddenly, the room was spinning, the world going black at the edges.
Breathe!
I gasped, wrenching myself back. I had never fainted before in my life, and I wasn’t about to start now. So he could see the head, so what? Babies had heads, after all. But now it was real. Now it wasn’t just a medical crisis, and my presence wasn’t gallant at all, but necessary. I put that kid in there, and I’d be damned if I was going to be unconscious when it came out.
“One more big push, Carmen,” the doctor said.
“One more push,” I repeated to her. “You’ve got this.”
No panic now. She nodded, her eyes shining with power and determination, her face tight and exhausted. Her scream mixed with a new sound; a tiny, thin sound, barely a sound at all. An emotion I had never felt before in my life answered that sound, meeting it in a rush that leaked out of my eyes.
“Okay, okay, you’re okay.”
I couldn’t tell if the doctor was talking to Carmen or to the tiny baby in his hands. It was so small…too small. And pale, so pale it was almost blue. Before I could resolve my idea of a newborn with the image I could see, the nurses had whisked the baby away.
At the same time, Carmen’s lips had lost their color, and her eyes were going hazy. The doctor and nurses were snapping brisk orders back and forth.
“Carmen, look at me,” I ordered.
She did…sort of. Her eyes didn’t seem to be able to focus.
“Stay with me. You have to stay awake.” Her hand had grown limp and cold to the touch, and all around me people were moving with the heightened efficiency of professionals faced with an emergency.
I might not know what birth is supposed to look like, but I knew a hemorrhage when I saw one. The nurse was massaging Carmen’s belly, and I didn’t understand it until I saw that the doctor was working just as hard over the baby, who was now inside of the little warming box.
Carmen gasped suddenly and cried out as a flash of sickly color returned to her face.
“Got it!” the nurse at the end of the bed cried out triumphantly. “That’s the last of it.”
I met the nurse’s eyes in confusion.
“Placental abruption,” she as if that would clear everything up for me. “But she’ll be okay.”
“And the baby?” I asked.
“Stable,” the doctor answered from across the room. “She’s a strong little girl.”
A girl. My girl.
Time seemed to slow down and stop as reality registered in my shocked brain. I almost couldn’t believe it. I really couldn’t believe the rush of joy that followed his statement.
I had a daughter.
The words repeated over and over in my head, spinning as if they were trying to find something to hold on to.
Eventually, the doctor brought the baby over and let Carmen hold her and feed her. It didn’t feel real somehow; that the tiny little thing in her arms was a person. A human I unintentionally created. It didn’t seem right that something so important could happen by ac
cident.
The nurses didn’t leave Carmen alone for long. “She needs the incubator,” the stern-faced nurse said gently. “We’ll bring her back to you as soon as we can. We’ll send someone in to wheel you to your room in a few minutes.”
I was going to ask Carmen if she wanted me to come with her, but I couldn’t. As soon as the nurse had said the word “rest,” Carmen fell back against the pillow with her eyes closed. Makes sense, I decided. Bringing life into the world has to take a lot out of you.
Chapter 18
Nick
Carmen barely stirred on the short trip to her new room. I followed behind, carrying her things, then settled into the chair at her bedside while she slept, and slept, and slept. In fact, she didn’t wake up at all for the next three hours, which gave me plenty of time to think things over and come to a decision.
In the end, I had firmly and unequivocally decided that the decision was Carmen’s to make. Yeah, it sounds like a copout, but let’s be real here. We’d been on two dates. Who could have said that she even liked me at that point? Especially considering how we met, and the fact that our baby was a girl. If I were her, I’d be real suspicious of the abilities of a man like me to raise a daughter properly.
I wanted to be there for her. I wanted to be the best damn father a girl has ever known. And I didn’t just want to be there for the baby, I realized. As I watched Carmen sleep, I knew my heart had been on the right track all those months ago, and I kicked myself for letting fear and bullheadedness distract me. I felt like I could love her, and my God did I want to try.
“Knock, knock,” a woman sang from the doorway. “I have somebody here who wants to see her mommy!”
The tiny, mewling cries from the warming bassinet just about broke my entire heart, and they jolted Carmen awake. A slow, tired smile spread across her beautiful face, and she held out her arms for our daughter. The nurse helped to get them situated and gave Carmen a lot of gentle instructions about latch and position and things that I would have needed a lot more context to understand.
“All right, looks like she’s starting to catch on,” the nurse said warmly. “I’ll leave you to it. Just ring if anything happens or you need us to take her.”
“Thank you,” Carmen said, sounding as if she were speaking through a dream. She gazed down at the baby, stroking her fine black hair with the gentlest of touches.
“I still can’t believe how small she is,” I said with awe in my voice.
I hadn’t meant to speak. It broke the spell instantly. Carmen’s head snapped up to look at me, her eyes guarded and her lips pressed tight together. I wanted to look away, to hide from whatever pain and fury hid behind those eyes, but I couldn’t. This was too important. They were too important. But to my surprise, I didn’t see either pain or fury there; only an intense, gripping sort of curiosity, and more than a little guilt.
“She looks like you,” she said slowly. “But I understand if you want a—”
“Paternity test?” I interrupted with a little smile. I shook my head. “Can I hold her?”
Carmen opened her mouth to speak, then decided against it. Ever so gently, she slid the tiny baby into my arms.
The baby—our baby—opened her eyes and gave me a look so stern and analytical that I had to laugh. I’d seen that look a thousand times.
“There’s no doubt in my mind,” I said, choking on a whirlwind of emotion. “This is my daughter. She’s got her grandma’s eyes.”
“Does she?” Carmen asked, perking up a little bit and looking at the baby once more. “I wish I knew.”
She should, shouldn’t she? I gazed at her, then back to my baby. I didn’t only see my mother in my daughter’s face, but Carmen as well, and my own reflection. This baby brought two families of virtual strangers together. I knew at that moment that I didn’t want my daughter growing up that way, as a bridge between fractured, isolated people who never knew one another.
“Nick…the way we left things…I need to ask you something.”
“Mm?” I was lost in my daughter’s eyes and the feel of her fuzzy little cheek under my finger.
“Please look at me. This is important.”
The stress in her voice caught my attention instantly, and when I looked up, there was steel around her eyes. She was braced against something, and I found myself oddly anxious with her.
“Nick, I need to know if you want to be a dad. We aren’t married, and there’s no reason I need to put you on the birth certificate if you don’t want to be. I won’t even go after child support. I’ve spent the last several months figuring out how to do this alone, and I’m prepared.”
Her question shocked me, and I couldn’t respond for a moment. Carmen took my silence in a different way and continued in a rush.
“What I mean is, you aren’t obligated to stick around. It wasn’t like we had a real relationship or anything, and I know you never wanted this, and I would feel terrible if you felt trapped. It was my decision to have her, and my decision to keep you in the dark until it was too late to find you. I don’t know how you found out, but I’m glad you did… You deserve the chance to make this decision yourself.”
She was going to go on, but I held up a hand. “Hold on a second,” I said. I searched for the words, but they were lost, swirling around with a tangle of emotions I’d never had to deal with before. I groped around for a while before landing on the one thing in the world that I was certain of in that moment.
“Look at her face,” I said as a tear sprang into my eye. “Look how beautiful she is. How could I say no?”
Meeting Carmen’s eyes again, the tear slipped down my cheek. “Listen, Carmen, I haven’t been able to get you out of my head for months. I tried. I tried everything, but I couldn’t do it. It was so bad I quit my job. I haven’t dated since we stopped talking—personally or professionally.” I took a breath and cuddled the baby closer.
“Wait. You disappeared from your job because of me?” The guilt was back again, this time tinged with hope.
“Don’t feel bad,” I told her gently. “It wasn’t a real job anyway. I missed you. I’ve never missed anybody like that before, not in the same way. Women come and go, but you, Carmen, you’re something special. You’re like a friend wrapped in a woman wrapped in a…” I trailed off. I was going to say “sex queen,” but I didn’t want to say that in front of the baby. Not about her own mother.
“Nick, what are you saying?” She sounded breathless, like she was about to cry.
“I’m saying that I want you, Carmen. For real this time. I want to give it a try. Yes, I want to be this little girl’s father, but I don’t want to be some weekends-only dad. I want to be her daddy. I want to raise her with you because I want to be with you. It’s all I’ve been able to think about.”
Damn these tears. I brushed them away quickly with the back of my hand. The baby wriggled in my arms and started to fuss, and Carmen reached out for her.
As I handed her back, Carmen’s arms touched mine for a long moment. Our eyes locked as we held the baby together; two grown people supporting four and a half pounds of condensed love. I wanted to kiss her. I didn’t know if she wanted me to. Carmen’s face was unreadable, like a brewing storm which could hold any kind of weather within its dark, roiling clouds.
She pulled away before I was ready to let her go, and nestled the baby to her breast. She relaxed liquidly against the pillows, watching my face as her expression cleared and calmed. She was analyzing me again, and my heart leaped for joy. Nobody had looked that closely at me since the last time I saw her.
“It’s an emotional moment,” she said slowly. “Lots of novelty, lots of romance…the heroic sort of romance. You might be seeing yourself as some kind of white knight leaping to my rescue, or a gallant hero sweeping in at the last second to save the little princess from loneliness.”
“Would that be a bad thing?”
“Novelty wears off,” she said in that same slow, even tone. “This is going to be work.
Hard work.”
“I’ve never been afraid of hard work.”
She smiled slightly. My heart pounded almost painfully hard with hope.
“Please, Carmen. Let me show you all of the things that I’ve been dreaming about.”
A little spark of humor glittered in her eyes. “Did you dream of dirty diapers? Midnight feedings? Ridiculous arguments over nothing because you’re so damn tired you can’t even see straight?”
“Yes,” I said truthfully. “That, and a house, and a business good enough and big enough to support a family. Picking apart my parent’s relationship in my head to see what I’d do differently if I ever had a chance at it. Examining my friends’ lives to see what they’re doing. I took a page out of your book, Carmen. I’m tired of floating through life. I’m ready to analyze my place in it. I’ve made my own life plan, and it’s incomplete without you two.”
The steel around her eyes softened and melted away. Tears perched on her eyelashes, glittering like tiny jewels, but there was a smile around her lips.
“And mine was always incomplete without you,” she whispered. Her liquid gaze cut straight through my eyes down into my heart, and I moved close to her.
“Do you want to make a go of this?” I asked huskily.
“For real this time?” she asked.
“You couldn’t get any more real,” I promised.
“Then yes, Nick, yes of course!” She was laughing and crying all at once, reaching for me with her free hand.
Embracing her and the baby at once, I kissed Carmen’s forehead, then her cheek. My lips hovered for a breathless second over hers, but she was the one who made the move, kissing me with that fiery passion I had almost convinced myself that I had made up, imagined, idealized in my loneliness for her. But there it was, as hot and real as anything could be.
As we separated, I glanced down at our daughter. She was awake, watching us with avid interest. I scooped her up out of Carmen’s arms and cradled her close to my chest. Love tightened in a knot in my throat.
Dr. O's Baby (Baby Surprises Book 5) Page 14
