Just Once More (Escape to New Zealand Book 7)

by Rosalind James

  “Are we going to the hospital?” Hemi asked.

  “Well, yeh,” Reka said. “Obviously. I’ll feel better. And ring Drew’s mum and dad along the way. Let them know.”

  “I’m coming too,” Kristen said. “Liam?”

  “Of course,” he said. “Though I’m thinking right now that I want to drive you home.”

  “The hospital first, though,” she said with surprise. “Don’t you want to?”

  He laughed a bit. “I meant, home to Welly. In fact, we might look into a hotel room next to the hospital. Because I’m terrified.”

  The three of them left, and Hugh and Josie were left standing on the pavement with Nic and Emma, Nate and Ally, and Finn and Jenna. The crowd around them hadn’t dispersed any. In fact, it had grown.

  “Well,” Hugh finally said blankly, “that isn’t exactly how I pictured today going. Bit of relaxation, I thought, before the wedding. Not exactly.”

  “Babies tend to have bad timing,” Emma said. “But Hannah and Drew are both so calm and collected all the time, it’s ironic that they’d be the ones to go through all that drama. You’d think they’d have better-organized babies.”

  “A bit exciting, always,” Finn said. “No matter how well-organized the baby is. Nothing better than watching your baby be born, and nothing worse.”

  “Nothing worse?” Jenna said, staring at him.

  “I mean,” he hastened to say, “because you’re so helpless. You can’t do anything. Nothing but watch. And that’s…” He exhaled. “Hard.”

  The moment Drew jumped in on his side, he was slamming the door shut.

  “Go,” he told Koti, and Koti went.

  “Grace Hospital,” Drew added. “Go down Maunganui Road to 29. That’ll be the quickest.”

  “Did you…call the midwife?” Hannah gasped.

  “You heard me do it, sweetheart.” He took her hand in his, feeling so helpless. Useless. What was he meant to do? He wanted to tell Koti to hurry, but he was already driving as quickly, as aggressively as he dared, and Drew could see it. Anyway, this was normal. Wasn’t it?

  “This is normal, right?” he asked. If only he’d been here for the other babies, he’d know. And he’d know what he was meant to do, too. It didn’t look normal to him, because Hannah was panting now, her face strained.

  It was supposed to go slower. Wasn’t it? And not be this…hard, at the beginning? They’d talked about walking around in labor, in those classes. Reading. All that. Hannah didn’t look like she was going to be doing any reading or walking. This must just be how it was, though, how it really was, and all he’d say was, men had got off way too easy.

  People drove to hospital to have babies every day, though. Every single day. And every one of those women was in labor. Every one of them must look like this. But none of them was his wife.

  She wasn’t answering, he realized. “This is normal, right?” he asked again. “Somebody? Koti?”

  He got a look back in the rear-view mirror that told him Koti didn’t think it was normal at all, and his heart was hammering now.

  “I don’t…know,” Hannah said on another gasp. “Not…really. Uhhh…Drew.” She had one hand on the armrest, the other squeezing the hell out of his own hand, her fingernails digging in.

  “Aw, shit.” He unsnapped her seatbelt, then got behind her, pulled her against his chest and held on. He could feel the tension in her, the strain, the rock-hard belly under his palms. Her panting breath filled the car as the contraction gripped her and she struggled to breathe through it.

  “How long, mate?” he asked Koti.

  Koti’s eyes in the mirror again. “Fifteen minutes.”

  It didn’t sound long, and yet it sounded much too long, because the anxiety was trying to take over now, the fear clawing in his chest.

  They were inching through a red light, and traffic was heavy. How could the bloody traffic be this bad, two o’clock in the afternoon in Mt. Maunganui? How the bloody hell? Tourists, who needed to get out of the way. Right now.

  “Uhhh…” It was Hannah again. “I think…Oh, God, Drew. I think the baby’s coming.”

  “Geez. Now?”

  “Now,” she said. “He’s coming now. Oh God, Drew. I can feel it. He’s coming.”

  He made his decision. “Pull over,” he barked at Koti.

  Koti glanced in the mirror again, didn’t argue, just swung to the side of the road and into the first clear spot. It happened to be a bus stop, which didn’t matter one bit.

  “Ring 111,” Drew told him. “Tell them to get here right the hell now.” Because Hannah had a hand up under her dress, and the look on her face, the sound of her rapid, keening breath, the fact that there hadn’t been any of those quiet minutes there were supposed to be between the contractions, had already told Drew everything he needed to know.

  “We’re not going to make it to the hospital, are we, sweetheart?” he asked her, shoving the fear ruthlessly down, trying to sound sure and calm. For her. “We don’t have fifteen minutes, do we?”

  “No,” she said, and it was a sob. “Oh. Drew. I think…I think he’s coming. Can you…can you do this?”

  “We’ll do it together,” he promised, because that was what she needed to hear, and because that was what they were going to do. “We’re having a baby. Good as gold.”

  He scooted himself out of the way as he was talking, laid her down on the seat, got the door open and stood on the pavement.

  Her hands were on her belly, and she was blowing breaths out in puffs now, and that wasn’t good. That was meant to happen at the end. He’d been to the class.

  “What did they say?” he asked Koti, who’d got out of the car as well to stand beside him.

  “Said they’re coming,” Koti said. “Just a few minutes. Any minute,” he went on hastily.

  “Right, then.” Drew took a breath of his own, exhaled, worked to focus, to beat the fear back, because Hannah was doing that rapid panting again. “You got any idea what to do?”

  “Yeh,” Koti said, not sounding much steadier than he was himself. “Read up on it, before Maia. Just in case. Because I was nervous.” He was nervous now too, it was clear.

  “Then…what?” Drew asked, trying to stay patient, and it had never been harder. “What do I do?”

  “You don’t have to do much. Just…catch the baby. Don’t pull it, don’t twist anything. You sort of…support the head, when it comes out. And catch it,” Koti repeated. “That’s what I know. Sorry, mate. That’s all I know.”

  Drew nodded, leaned in, because Hannah was trying to twist around, and put a gentle hand on her belly. Rock-hard again. Still.

  “Get my…underwear off,” she gasped. So he did. Soaked, of course. He dropped them on the floor, pushed her dress up. Modesty be damned. He needed to see.

  “I’ll just…” Koti said.

  “Don’t you dare,” Drew said fiercely. “Need you here to tell me what to do. You read it, I didn’t.”

  “Right, then.” Koti blew out a long breath. “Get her closer to the…the edge. So you can get in there. Feel for the head. If it’s coming.”

  Drew reached under her, pulled her towards him so one of her feet could brace itself against the car’s side column. That helped, he could tell.

  “Just going to check,” he told her. He put a few gentle fingers, then his entire hand, because it fit there, inside a place that was surely wider than it was meant to stretch, but of course it had to stretch, didn’t it? And felt…something, blocking his way.

  “Is this it?” he asked her. “Is this him?”

  “I think so,” she managed to say. “Oh, Drew. I have to…”

  “Tell her to pant again,” Koti said beside him. “Not to push hard.”

  “Don’t push hard,” Drew told Hannah, feeling so helpless. How was she supposed to stop? It didn’t seem to him that she could stop.

  He was right. “I…have to,” she gasped. “Ohhhh….” It was a wail, nearly a scream, and she was pushin
g, he could feel it.

  “Put your hand over the head,” Koti was saying in Drew’s ear, leaning over next to him, his voice tight with urgency. “Don’t let it pop out too fast.”

  Hannah’s entire body was straining with effort, the sweat standing out on her belly, her thighs, the red blood running, and Drew swallowed. Was that normal, or was it bad? Was she in danger? He didn’t know, and he’d never been more terrified, because she was screaming, the sound reverberating in his head, sending his pulse rate spiking even higher.

  But there was something there now. Something dark. He put his hand over it, and it was his son. The top of his son’s head. He was touching his son.

  Another heave, one final scream from Hannah, trailing into a wailing cry, and the head was there, and Drew was gasping along with Hannah, along with the wrinkled, screwed-up little face emerging from her.

  “One more push,” he told Hannah. “He’s here, sweetheart. He’s almost all the way here. One more push and let him come.”

  He had a gentle hand under the head, because he wasn’t dropping that, no matter what. Ever. He saw her gather her forces and bear down again, moaning with the pain and the effort, and there was a tiny red shoulder, and, in a gush of fluid and blood, his baby. His boy. His son.

  He was here. He was born.

  Drew gathered the little body in his hands as it emerged, taking care to keep a hand under his head, supporting his neck. The baby was slippery, wet, wriggling and surprisingly strong, and he’d never caught anything with more care, not in the most important game of his career. He’d never held onto anything so desperately. Because nothing had ever mattered more.

  The little chest heaved, the mouth opened, and a squall came out, high, surprisingly loud, the unmistakable cry of a newborn, and it sounded so good.

  “He’s here,” he told Hannah, his voice shaking. “He’s here.”

  She was still lying there, gasping and crying with effort, shaking now herself, and he wished he had something to put over her, but there was nothing. And the baby. What was he meant to do with the baby now?

  “Put him on her belly,” Koti said urgently. “Against her skin. To stay warm.”

  “Uh…” Drew had both hands around the baby, and Koti was the one who gently pulled Hannah’s dress further up her body, bared her from the breast down, so Drew could place the tiny body, the baby fully wailing now, wriggling angrily, onto her belly.

  Her hands came up instantly to cradle him, and the baby quieted, because somehow, he knew her. He knew she had him, and that he was safe.

  “The cord, though,” Drew told Koti. Because it was still there. Of course it was still there. It had to come out. Didn’t it? How did that happen? “Are we meant to cut it?”

  “Leave it,” Koti said. “They’re coming. They’ll deal with it. Leave it. He’s fine, and so is she. It’s all good.”

  Drew realized that was a siren in the distance, intruding at the edge of his consciousness. And that a bus had pulled up behind him, blowing its horn.

  He didn’t even look up. Some of the adrenaline was leaving his body now, and he realized that his hands were covered with blood, and Hannah was bloody too. She was shaking. She was cold, and the baby was cold. They shouldn’t be cold.

  He pulled his T-shirt off with unsteady hands. “Give me your shirt,” he told Koti, who got the message immediately, yanked his own shirt over his head, handed it to him.

  People were getting off the bus behind the car, and Koti was turning to them, explaining, talking, forming a screen for the little tableau, but Drew barely noticed. He laid his shirt over his son’s little body, saw the tiny pursed mouth nuzzling at Hannah’s skin, searching for the comfort of her familiar body, and felt a rush of tenderness so strong, it nearly sent him to his knees.

  He murmured something, some nonsense that would embarrass him later to recall, covered her as best he could with Koti’s shirt, knowing it would matter to her if she registered that the bus passengers—and the driver now, too—were looking, and for when the ambos came.

  He covered her, then laid his hand over her own through the fabric, still warm and damp from his own sweating body, that blanketed their baby.

  “It’s all good, sweetheart,” he told her, the siren closer now, thank God. He heard the tremble in his voice, and didn’t care. “They’re coming to help you. It’s all good.”

  She opened her eyes and looked into his, and smiled with so much fatigue, and so much sweetness. She smiled.

  “It was the tunnel,” she said, her voice thin, shaky, so tired. “We were in the tunnel. But you got to us. You were there, Drew.”

  “Yeh,” he said, and if there were some tears now, he didn’t care about that either. “I was there. I’ll always be there. Because the dream was wrong. I’ll always be there.”

  Hannah found, afterwards, that the minutes and hours that followed the birth of her third child were hazy in her memory, the scenes seeming to fade in and out.

  The uniformed paramedic, his voice soothing, kind, bent over inside the car, shoving Drew out of the way, and she wanted Drew.

  Two of them transferring her, baby and all, from the back seat of the car to the gurney, both her hands clutching the little body for dear life, a paramedic’s hand on the other side of hers just in case.

  The little semicircle of onlookers she hadn’t been aware of until then, some of them with their phones held in the air. Not really interested in her, she dimly knew. Photographing Drew and Koti with their shirts off, and a dramatic moment.

  It would be on the news, and it should have bothered her, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. Drew would handle it. He could handle the police, too, because a couple of them had materialized from somewhere, were standing in front of the little crowd. She didn’t have to worry about that.

  The men were lifting her into the ambulance then, Drew beside her again, holding her hand, and the doors were closing, and it was quiet again, and that was better.

  She barely noticed when they cut the baby’s cord, when they asked her to push, when they delivered the placenta. She only knew that her shaking was slowly subsiding under the blanket, that she had the baby at her breast now, that he was sucking, that he was warming up too, and that he was strong. That he was all right.

  The siren sounded, loud and piercing, and she wished it would stop. Then the vehicle turned, slowed, and stopped. The doors were opening again, she and the baby were being passed out the back, and Drew was jumping down with her, walking beside her as she was wheeled into the building, down tiled corridors that could never have been anything but a hospital, and into a room.

  The baby was being taken from her by capable hands, starting to cry again, but that was all right too, because he was being looked after, and he was still here, still in the room with her, which meant that they weren’t worried, and the relief of it melted the last of her tension away. A woman was doing some stitching down below, a doctor or a midwife, Hannah didn’t know. She had torn, but that didn’t matter. She barely felt it. She was so tired, though. So tired.

  “Drew,” she said.

  He looked down at her. He still had her hand in his, and she realized for the first time that both their hands were dark red with drying blood.

  “What is it, sweetheart?” he asked.

  She turned her head so she could see him better. His face, that could look so fierce, so frightening, held only gentleness and concern now. His face made her choke up.

  “That was scary,” she said. It wasn’t nearly enough to say, but she was too tired.

  He laughed a little. “Yeh. That was. We had a baby in a car.”

  “Oh,” she realized with distress. “Oh, no. Koti’s beautiful car.”

  “What?” Confusion in the gray eyes now.

  “What a…what a mess. It must have been. It must be.”

  He laughed again. “Sweetheart. He doesn’t care.”

  She closed her eyes and sighed. “Tell him you’ll pay to have it cleaned.”<
br />
  “Hannah…”

  “Please,” she murmured, because she was too tired to talk much more. They had the baby in his little cart now, so she didn’t have to worry, because he was all right. A nurse was cleaning her up, wiping away the blood that covered half her body, handing Drew more wipes to clean his hands and her own. But she had to say this first. “Tell him. Promise.”

  “All right,” he said, and shifted around, because they were about to wheel her into her room. “We’ll get his car cleaned. I promise.”

  “And, Drew…”

  He sighed. “And the cinema. I promise.”

  She reached for his hand once more, smiled a little, though it was wobbly. “Thanks. But it wasn’t that. It was…I love you. And…thank you. For being there. For being…mine.”

  His face worked for a minute, his eyes shining with unshed tears, and his voice, when the words finally came, was husky. “I…me too. I’m so proud of you. You…” He stopped, got himself together with a visible effort. “You did awesome. And I love you.”

  He stopped again, then laughed, though it came out a little choked. “I’m rubbish at speeches, eh.” He bent down, gave her a soft kiss on the mouth, smoothed her hair back with a gentle hand, and she sighed and closed her eyes again and let them wheel her away.

  He didn’t have to say it. He didn’t have to say anything. She knew.

  The day when Hugh Latimer married Josie Pae Ata turned out to be just about perfect.

  A few white clouds traced wispy patterns in an azure sky, their delicate outlines mirrored in the placid waters of Katikati Harbour below. From where she sat in a wooden pew next to a window of the little white church, Reka had a view over green lawns to the teardrop-shaped harbour, and all the way across it to the Pacific stretching beyond.

  So peaceful, and so much like her own wedding day. Another tranquil December afternoon with the cicadas buzzing forth their summer song, in a little church at the edge of a quiet town on the sea. The familiar hymns and prayers of the Church of England, a congregation made up of white and brown faces. And the big men in their black suits, turning up as always to support their teammate on this latest adventure.