Nora left the salon feeling lighter than she had in a long time. New hair always did that. And CJ had done a bang-up job. Nora had been a little apprehensive, but CJ had had the same brands of bleach and dye her much pricier Toronto stylist used.
She paused on the sidewalk and took a deep breath of the lake air. Toronto was on a Great Lake, too, but it didn’t smell like this, like…plants and earth. Which made no sense because it was a lake. Water. She laughed at herself, the city girl trying and failing to describe nature.
All right. It was Sunday morning. She was going into the clinic tomorrow to start getting organized, so she should spend today furnishing her house.
She wanted to get the bare bones, at least. A bed, a table, a few chairs. Some dishes. She smirked. She was going to be living like a bachelor, at least initially. She kind of liked the idea. She didn’t need a Kitchen-Aid mixer she never used, a shelf full of art books she never read, or an ugly, uncomfortable sofa that cost more than she made in a month.
No, Rufus needed those things. He needed specific things. The right things. He was forever throwing away perfectly good things—her ancient hand mixer that was more than sufficient for the one or two times a year they baked anything; her sofa, which, yes, was a little worn, but a slipcover would have done the trick—and replacing them with newer, shinier models. “Upgrading,” he had called it, and because she didn’t really care about mixers and sofas, she’d been happy to go along with it.
She had even let him talk her into “upgrading” during her residency from her planned specialization in family medicine to emergency medicine—which had added a year to her studies—so they could be colleagues in the emergency department at the hospital where he was already a staff physician.
And then he’d upgraded her.
And by “upgraded,” she meant “screwed a first-year resident on the ugly, uncomfortable sofa that had cost more than she made in a month.”
Tears prickled at the corners of her eyes, but she forced them back. She was done crying. He wasn’t worth her tears.
Maybe if she told herself that enough times, she would actually start believing it.
He also wasn’t worth losing the new-hair-don’t-care feeling she was rocking—she did believe that—so she got in her car and went shopping.
Three hours later, she owned a bed, a sofa, and a kitchen table and chairs, all of which were being delivered later, and was schlepping bags of dishes and groceries inside from her car when a pickup truck came vrooming down the road.
It was going way too fast for this quiet, residential street. This was more her stereotype of small towns: dudes in trucks with something to prove. Probably the sizes of their trucks were inversely proportional to the sizes of other things.
To her astonishment the truck screeched to a halt at the foot of her driveway and Aquaman got out. His hair was in a messy bun now.
“Dr. Walsh, there’s an emergency. A woman has gone into labor on the village green. She says it’s too early.”
Nora blinked, “Labor-labor?” Labor-labor being the technical term, of course.
“Seems like. She’s screaming bloody murder. Someone called 911, but I remembered you said you were living at Harold’s place.”
She dropped her bags on the driveway. “Let’s go.”
“Do you have any more information?” Dr. Walsh asked as she scrambled into Jake’s truck. “Who she is? How far along she is? If the pregnancy is high risk?”
“No. I don’t think she’s local, though.” Jake hadn’t recognized her, but he would freely admit that he wasn’t the most social guy, so that didn’t necessary mean anything. “I came out of the general store downtown, and she was writhing around on the grass on the village green. She was shouting about it being ‘too soon.’ There’s a crowd, but everyone’s milling around in a not-very-useful way.”
“And here I thought practicing medicine in Moonflower Bay was going to be dull.”
“Do you have a phone?” he asked as he peeled down her street.
“Yes.”
“I’m going to give you a number. It’s for the lift bridge operator. We have to cross the river to get downtown. We need to tell him to have it down.” Dennis had called Jake in as backup so much in recent weeks that Jake had his number memorized.
Nora introduced herself to Dennis, and they had a brief conversation while Jake drove as fast as he reasonably could, his tires squealing as he hung a right on Huron. She disconnected the call. “He said he’s heard already and the bridge is down. He also said that someone named Sawyer has shut down the bottom end of Main Street, so there won’t be any traffic, so you can—I’m quoting here—‘drive like you just told Pearl that cake is better than pie, and she’s coming after you.’”
“That means drive fast.”
“I gathered that.”
Dr. Walsh was out the passenger-side door before he had fully screeched to a halt next to the town green. He could hear the sirens closing in on them. He’d reasoned that he could get Dr. Walsh to the scene before the ambulance from Grand View would arrive, and he’d been right but only just, from the sound of things.
Dr. Walsh was small, but as she strode toward the emergency, she took command. She started pointing to people and saying things like, “You. Find me some clean towels or blankets. As many as you can get.” And “You. Get me some hand sanitizer.”
He was following her, though he wasn’t sure why. His contribution to this event—get the doctor—was done. He had the odd compulsion, though, to hang around. To stand by and watch over things. Like a bouncer. An emergency-birth bouncer.
“Make way, please,” she said as she approached the woman. People shifted around, but they didn’t know her yet, so they didn’t really get out of the way.
“This is the doctor! Get out of the way!” he yelled. Several dozen startled faces turned toward him. Several dozen startled people got out of the way. He wasn’t much of a talker, generally. An unintended side effect of that was that when he did talk, forget yell, people tended to listen.
He stopped walking alongside Dr. Walsh once he was satisfied she had a clear path. But after two steps without him, she turned. “Will you stay? Keep people away?”
So she did need an emergency-birth bouncer. “Yep.”
As she approached the woman, who was lying on her back on the grass, Dr. Walsh’s demeanor shifted. She’d been barking orders, but she spoke now in a low, gentle voice. “Hi there. My name is Nora Walsh. I’m a doctor. I’m trained in family medicine and emergency medicine. Everything is going to be okay. Can you tell me your name?”
“I’m only thirty-seven weeks! It’s too soon. I feel like my back is breaking!”
“That’s an unusual name, but it’s nice to meet you, I’m Only Thirty-Seven Weeks.” Dr. Walsh took hold of the hem of the dress the woman was wearing. “May I?”
“Colleen,” the woman panted, and she nodded. She smiled at Dr. Walsh’s joke.
“Okay, Colleen, thirty-seven weeks is a wee bit early, but it’s nothing to worry about. Some babies just like to jump the gun. I need to ask you a few questions—”
A contraction hit, and the woman screamed.
“Just let them come. We’ll talk between them.” Dr. Walsh took Colleen’s hand but looked at Jake and jerked her head toward the crowd of rubberneckers that was reassembling. “Can you get rid of these people? And it sounds like the paramedics have arrived. Can you get them over here?”
He swallowed the lump forming in his throat—now that Nora was safely in control of the scene, emotion was seeping in around the edges of his consciousness—and nodded. When he returned with the paramedics, Dr. Walsh was talking quietly to Colleen. Another contraction hit, and she turned to the paramedics. “Nora Walsh, MD. She’s fully effaced, and I’m estimating nine centimeters dilated. So we’re going to have to do this here. First baby. Water broke an hour ago. No known complications. She’s thirty-seven weeks along. Do you have some gloves and sterile sheets and pads? And
umbilical cord clamps?”
One of the EMTs nodded, and the three of them went to work getting things ready. Colleen wasn’t freaking out like she’d been before, but she still seemed pretty agitated.
Jake had left Sawyer, the town’s chief of police, doing crowd control. He jogged back over. “Give me your phone, and show me how to do that video call thing.” Back at the birth, he crouched near Colleen’s head. Waited through a contraction that sounded excruciating.
“Eighty-one seconds,” one of the paramedics said.
“Colleen, my name is Jake. I was wondering if there’s anyone you would like me to call or…” He couldn’t remember the name of the app Sawyer had just shown him. “Facetalk?”
“Yes! My husband! FaceTime my husband! Thank you!”
“Good idea,” Dr. Walsh said.
“You can use my phone! It’s in there.” Colleen nodded at a bag that was half-spilled on the grass. He scrambled for her phone and entered the code she gave him. “He’s under husband—not very original.” She cracked a smile, but only for a second before another contraction hit.
“He’s under husband.” Sawyer had just shown him how to use FaceTime, but he didn’t exactly know what to do with “He’s under husband.”
“There should be a gray app called ‘Contacts,’” Dr. Walsh said, apparently reading his mind. “Open it, and there will be an alphabetized menu. When you find him, there will be a little icon of a camera as an option—press that.”
“Thanks. I’m not a phone guy.”
After some fumbling he connected the call, and he soon had a strange dude on the phone in front of him. “Dale!” Colleen burst into tears.
“Turn the phone to me first for a sec,” Dr. Walsh said. She introduced herself to Colleen’s husband, briefly explained what was happening, and ended by saying, “Everything’s going to be fine, and you’re going to end up with one hell of a story to tell this kid when it’s older.”
“She,” Dale said, and Jake could hear the emotion in his voice. “It’s a girl.”
It’s a boy. Jake was abruptly pulled from his memories as another contraction hit Colleen. “Oh my God, my back!” she moaned.
“You’re having back labor,” Dr. Walsh said when the contraction passed. “Can you roll over onto one side? That might take some pressure off. And if it’s okay with you, one of the paramedics can apply pressure to your lower back. Some women find that helps.”
Colleen nodded as she hefted herself to one side. “But can this guy do it?”
Wait. Jake looked around. Was he “this guy”?
Nora raised her eyebrows at him. “That okay with you?”
“Uh, sure.” It was weird that Colleen wanted him, and the last thing he wanted to do was touch some stranger’s back, but he didn’t feel like he could say no. He even kind of remembered some of this. Massage for labor. He and Kerrie had had a lesson as part of their prenatal classes.
He handed the phone to one of the EMTs, and they all shifted around. Every time Colleen had a contraction, he pressed down on her back. It seemed to help. And her husband had the ability to calm her, even through the phone. He spoke quietly to her between contractions, which were getting closer together.
Soon Dr. Walsh had her pushing. Like the other birth he’d been present at, it was awesome. In the literal sense of the word: it filled him with awe. Jake knew with his brain that childbirth was something that happened every day—thousands of times a day, probably. But to see the raw power this woman was harnessing as she tried to get a small person out of her body—well, it was awesome.
“I see the head!” Dr. Walsh said. “You’re doing great.” The next contraction came, and she said, “Push, push, push.” She had a way of exerting authority without raising her voice. She was clearly in command, but she was calm about it. “Here she comes!”
Jake was not a crier, but he had to blink back tears. Because there was a baby. A slimy, wriggly, tiny human who hadn’t been there five seconds ago, and now was.
It was funny how new humans came into this world, like it was no big deal—but at the same time it was a Big Freaking Deal for everyone around them.
Which was also true of how people left this world.
Dr. Walsh spent a minute examining the baby using a stethoscope and some tools the EMTs had on hand. “Everything looks good. First Apgar is nine.” She clamped and cut the umbilical cord. “Let’s get them onto the rig before the placenta delivers.” She put the baby on Colleen’s chest and covered them both with a blanket. “Colleen,” she said, her smile lighting up her silvery-blue eyes. “You have a beautiful, healthy little girl. And you did such a great job.”
Soon Colleen and her daughter were on a gurney, and she was tearfully thanking Dr. Walsh as the bystanders, who had returned, broke into cheers and applause.
Sawyer moved in to try to disperse the crowd again. He shot a glance at Jake, but Jake wasn’t having it. This was not the time for that. Sawyer, thankfully, turned to Dr. Walsh. “Sawyer Collins, chief of police. Welcome to Moonflower Bay, Dr. Walsh. I think I speak for everyone when I say how glad we are to have you here.”
Well, hot damn.
That had been far from a genuine emergency. It had been a low-risk, if early, birth. But Nora’s adrenaline had been pumping all the same. Unlike at the hospital, she’d been on her own, with minimal equipment. And they’d been sprawled on the grass, for heaven’s sake.
She waved to Colleen and took a deep breath as the ambulance doors shut. She could feel herself starting to crash. She needed…what? To figure out how to get home, for one thing.
“Hey, Dr. Walsh.” Jake appeared. She was glad to see him. He had a steadying presence. He pointed across the street at a bar called Lawson’s Lager House. “I’m thinking maybe you could use a drink?”
Yes. Great idea. That was exactly what she needed.
But…she was covered in amniotic fluid and blood and vernix. She gestured at herself.
His eyes slid down her body, and one corner of his mouth turned up. “Well, he probably shouldn’t, but Law does let Tigers fans into the bar.”
There was a blob of blood on the s in the Tigers logo on her T-shirt. “Even Tigers fans who are walking biohazards?”
“Come on. I’ll take you home.”
“I’m kind of gross,” she said when he opened the passenger-side door of his truck for her. “I should have asked the paramedics for a clean sheet.”
“It’s okay. This truck is a piece of junk.”
“And here I had this idea,” she said once he’d come around to the driver’s side and gotten in, “that men with trucks were really territorial about them.”
“Nah.”
She glanced around the cab. The upholstery on the seats had holes in a few spots, and there was a lot of crap lying around. Not garbage—tools mostly. But also map books and CDs—he hadn’t been kidding about not being a phone guy. And the outside of the truck had been rusty and dented in a few places. “Not a truck guy, either?” she teased.
“Nope. This is just a means of getting myself and my stuff from point A to point B.”
They lapsed into silence. She tried to think of something to say. Usually sitting in silence with strangers was awkward. Probably because in her boisterous family, someone was always talking. And Rufus. He had always been talking. And the emergency room at St. Mike’s was all about talking—and shouting.
People talking: that was the default soundtrack to her life.
Or it had been. But maybe the Moonflower Bay palate cleanser could come with a new soundtrack—or a lack of one. Because silence, it turned out, was kind of nice. Or at least this silence was. It was companionable. Jake didn’t seem like the type of guy who minded being quiet.
Which, ironically, made her want to know more about him. “So what do you do, Jake Ramsey? What kind of stuff do you haul from point A to point B in this truck?”
“I guess technically I’m a fisherman.”
“Technically?”
“Why not?” He darted a glance at her. It wasn’t an annoyed glance but more of a blank look. “Sorry. None of my business.”
“I also co-own a carpentry business with Sawyer Collins, who’s the chief of police—you met him back there. It keeps us pretty busy, so I don’t fish much these days. So mostly the stuff I’m hauling is wood and tools.” He pulled into her driveway and turned to her as he cut the engine. “You were, uh, really great back there.”
“You were really great.” He had been. Solid and steady and thoughtful. “That idea to call her husband was genius. And you were cool and collected. Most people aren’t like that in emergencies.” Most bystanders, in her experience, fell somewhere on the spectrum of minorly panicked to utterly useless.
He looked out his window, so his face was turned away from her as he spoke. “I had a son who died. His mom was determined to have a natural childbirth, so we took a lot of classes, and I read a lot of books.”
“Oh,” she breathed. “I’m so sorry.” That was the last thing she’d expected this gruff man to say. “What was your son’s name?”
He turned to her, his eyes slightly wide—like he was surprised? That couldn’t be right.
“His name was Jude.”
They stared at each other silently for a long moment. “Do you want to come inside for a drink? I have bourbon.” She looked out the window for her abandoned shopping bags. “I think.”
He kept looking at her, his expression impossible to read. What if he thought she was hitting on him? That was the last thing she was going to be doing during her palate-cleansing sojourn in Moonflower Bay. He’d been the first to suggest a drink; she was just suggesting a different location.
Just as the previously easy silence between them was starting to morph into a more uncomfortable variety, he finally spoke.
“I can’t.”
Paradise Cove Page 2
