The Rescue Doctor's Baby Miracle

by Dianne Drake

  “Take it up with Jussara,” she said, laughing as she positioned herself to deliver the baby’s head. As she did, a strong contraction hit the woman and she straightened her legs, pushing her bottom into the air. Then suddenly, baby! She came out easily and Gideon set about finishing the delivery as Lorna got ready for the next birth, which followed in only a few minutes. This time, a boy.

  Two babies, big and healthy! And, blessedly, full term, judging by the size of them. That had been the one unknown factor in all this. She could handle a delivery, Gideon, as a surgeon, could have handled a Caesarean, if that had turned out to be needed. But the condition of the babies…the great big unknown, and the one fear she hadn’t vocalized because it hit too close to losing her own baby. The Azevedo twins were big and healthy and fussing at the world already. As she finished cleaning up Jussara, Lorna glanced briefly over at Gideon, who was holding the little boy now, counting fingers and toes.

  Rescue medicine was his element without a doubt. But so was this. He would have been a good father.

  When mother and babies were finally settled in as best as they could be under the circumstances, Lorna went out into the other room and collapsed on the floor.

  “You’re amazing,” Gideon said, coming out to join her. He slid to the floor next to her. “Her vital signs are good, I checked the twins and they’re doing fine. Zé is in there with her now, and all’s well with the Azevedo family. So, are you OK?”

  “Fine. Tired, exhilarated, but fine. Except that we can’t get out,” Lorna said. “And the roof is creaking, and the side windows have busted out.”

  He looked across the room, and sure enough… ”I’m going to go have a look around and see if there’s any way to get us out.”

  She knew there wasn’t, but she also knew Gideon had to try. “We should have talked about it years ago, Gideon. I should have talked about it when you wouldn’t,” she said, giving his hand a squeeze before he stood. “But I was so hurt by that time…Back then I wasn’t the assertive, confident person who could speak up the way I do now and while you were shutting me out I let you do it.”

  “And I always assumed that going along on two separate tracks like we were worked out just fine. My parents are brilliant at it after all, and they were my examples, unfortunately.”

  “Well, if it’s any consolation, after we split, I started a group for couples who have suffered a miscarriage. It’s a time when you need to be closer, to heal, but so many people don’t get through it. They push each other away, like we did.”

  “I’m proud of you,” he whispered. “In so many ways, including what you do on television.”

  “Are you really?”

  He nodded. “It was never the television program that was the threat, only I couldn’t see it. All I could see was something I wanted so desperately being taken from me. I never considered that you weren’t like my parents, that you wouldn’t push me away, like they did. It was just some leftover feelings of one very hurt little boy coming through, and I’m sorry it happened. But I didn’t know, Lorna. I didn’t realize…”

  She brushed back a tear streaking down her muddy face. “I’m proud of you, Gideon. Everything you’ve done…Being even a small part of something so important has helped me understand you in ways I never did before. Ways I should have.”

  “Not a small part, Lorna. Even though I’ve been hard on you, you’ve fit in here. But this has been a bad one, with Tom…” His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat. “There were a lot of things we should have talked about years ago. But sometimes, when you’re going through it, you can’t see things clearly enough to know what to do. I honestly had this picture in my head of the three of us living a normal life. You, me, baby. But all this…” He pointed to the mud that had oozed in through the window. “It’s not normal life, is it? And it can’t be. That’s not who I am.”

  “Not who either of us are.” From the other room, the cries of two babies caught their attention. “That’s normal life, though,” Lorna whispered. “No matter what else is going on here, that’s truly normal life.”

  “Lorna, I…” The rest of Gideon’s words were drowned out by the creaking roof overhead. It was beginning to give under the weight of the mud sliding down from up top. “We need to get everybody into the most secure area.”

  Lorna jumped up. “I’ll drag the kitchen table into the doorway, and get everybody under it.”

  “No! That’s a common misconception. Doorways and tables collapse, and if you’re under them…Get everybody on the floor, right up against the bed. If the ceiling comes down, that’s the best bet for safety…the spot next to a bed or sofa can provide a little empty air pocket.”

  Lorna nodded. This was why he was the best. Search and rescue—it was where he belonged. Not for the first time, her heart swelled with that knowledge. “Could I interview you about safety procedures for my television program some time?” she asked hesitantly, following Gideon to the front door. The last time she’d mentioned an interview, he’d gone all moody and snapped at her, and even though they’d cleared away so much of their personal debris, she still wasn’t sure.

  He turned around and gave her a quick kiss. “Name the date, and I’ll be there.”

  Definitely a much better outcome than last time. Maybe things truly were turning around for them. Not simply wishful thinking any longer, but a real, solid base that could lead to a future. “You be careful out there, Gideon. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  “When this is over Lorna, when we get back home…”

  She pressed her index finger to his lips. “It’ll keep until later,” she said.

  “Until later,” he repeated, then dashed outside and forced the door shut behind him.

  She would have gone to the window to watch, except the rain was pouring in, and what little view there might have been was obstructed by a large tree that had fallen and missed the house by mere inches. “I love you, Gideon,” she whispered, then turned and ran to the bedroom.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  JUSSARA AZEVEDO waved farewell to Lorna as the volunteers carried her and her babies up the hill behind the house where the helicopter had found a little patch on which to set down. Little Zé tagged along behind, skipping playfully through the mud, completely oblivious to the fact that when the rains were over his home might be gone. To a child that age, those things didn’t matter. Jussara was aware, though, because she carried her family pictures with her, along with a hand-made lace tablecloth from her grandmother. Nothing else, and she wasn’t sad about it. Her children would soon be safe and nothing else mattered.

  Max was being evacuated, too. Priscilla was leading him away because Gideon didn’t want to put him at any more risk. In a while, when the first rescue was completed, the helicopter would return for them.

  “Glad that’s over,” Gideon said, letting out a sigh of relief as he stepped back to appraise the structure. It was sound enough, and because the rains had diminished, along with the winds, the Azevedo family might turn out to be one of the lucky ones who had a house to return to. Damage, but not total destruction.

  “Could we walk out?” Lorna asked. “The way we came in?”

  “We could try, but we’d have to go an awful long way around, and nothing below here is stable enough yet. I’d rather wait.”

  His teams were already out on search, combing the debris in safer areas. By now the majority of the people who had lived here on the outskirts of Francisco do Monte were gone, and only those who remained to pick through what was left of their homes lingered behind. In such a short time the area had become like a ghost town…from so many people trying to get away to only a handful who’d chosen to stay. “What happens next?” she asked Gideon.

  “Well, I’ll keep the team here as long as the rains keep coming and the local authorities think we’re needed, but we might move a little further north in a few days. There’s another area of mudslides, larger overall area but with fewer houses, probably about fift
y kilometers away. They’ve already got their rescue teams in place, but we may go in as the second responders if they need us. If they don’t, when the rains quit and all our patients are sent to proper facilities, we all go home until next time.”

  “And you never know when next time will come.” Lorna opened the door of the Azevedo house and went back inside, then sat down on the floor near where she’d spent an hour huddled next to the bed with two babies, one mother and a very anxious little boy. Not to mention a dog. “That’s quite a way to live a life.”

  Gideon chuckled, sliding down to the floor next to her. Instinctively, he slid his arm around her shoulder, and she leaned into him immediately. “You get used to it. You keep everything ready to go and when the call comes in it’s all organized. Maybe not by a regular schedule, but by the standards of what anybody who lives on call is used to. And it’s not a bad life. Not traditional, not the way most people would choose to live. But it’s good.”

  “Jason said you don’t go by the rules. Gwen said the same thing. You force everybody else to do as you say, but you don’t. Why, Gideon?”

  “Gwen has a husband and a brand-new grandchild. Jason has Priscilla and two children. Brian has a companion. When I put them at extreme risk, I’m involving so many other people.”

  “So you put yourself at extreme risk because there’s no one else involved?”

  He shrugged. “I’m not reckless and, trust me, I don’t have a death wish. But it’s easier for me to do some of the things I wouldn’t ask others to do. And I’m not being a reluctant hero or anything. Just practical.”

  “It’s not practical putting yourself in the way of harm, Gideon.”

  “You sound like you’d almost be worried.”

  “Of course I’d be worried. I always was when we were married. Did you ever know that on the nights you were gone I didn’t sleep? I paced the floor, stayed by the phone. It was awful, never knowing.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know.”

  “I always thought you should have, that you should simply know. I should have told you, Gideon. Maybe if you’d known…” Her voice broke, and she swallowed back a lump in her throat. “Anyway, when I miscarried, you’d already been shutting me out for months. It was like I lost the one thing I thought would be the bond that would keep us together. I just didn’t want to deal with the pain, didn’t want to see you walk away from me any more than you already had. So I walked away from you.”

  “We were quite a pair, weren’t we? Both of us a mess of issues and conflicting lives. Me shutting you out, you not able to tell me how you felt.”

  “Both of us fighting rejection issues by rejecting each other.” If only they’d talked then like they were talking now.

  He pulled her even closer. “Do you realize how alike we are?”

  “If you’d said that to me five years ago, I’ve have told you that you were crazy. But I think you’re right. We do thrive on the edge more than most people do, don’t we? You in your crazy lifestyle and me in mine.”

  “Crazy by whose definition?”

  She laughed. “Would you take me on to do an occasional rescue?” she asked, out of the blue. “After I’ve had some proper training? I’m going to make some changes in my life, and that’s one I’d like to make.” She’d been giving it thought for a while, not sure if she would actually take the big leap and ask.

  “God, Lorna, that scares me.”

  “You mean the two of us together? Because we don’t have to…”

  “No that. But even the thought of you being in danger…”

  “Priscilla and Jason survive that, and it works for them. I think it makes them even closer.”

  “But there’s Dani and Tom…” He let out a weary sigh. “Lorna, I’ve thought about that day a thousand times since then, thought about how close you were to being there, to being the one who could have gone in to rescue the child. And you did go in. It scared the hell out of me, and I felt so damned helpless outside, holding onto the radio, waiting to hear something from you. Wondering if something bad was happening.”

  “The way I always felt when you left me at home. I want to do this, Gideon. I’m sure I can find another team, but I want to do it with you. I mean, when we were married I wasn’t ready for it. But had we waited a few years before we met and married, maybe we’d be Jason and Priscilla, trooping off together and leaving the kiddies with their grandparents. Living on the edge of something normal, but not quite.”

  “Can’t go back,” Gideon said almost regretfully.

  “And I’m not sure how to go forward.” She twisted to look at him, and caught his intent gaze on her. “What are we going to do, Gideon?” she whispered.

  “If I were to say yes, how could you fit it into your schedule? My people are on call twenty-four seven. We don’t have the luxury of accepting or declining an assignment based on what else is going on in our lives. It’s an all-or-nothing commitment.””

  “And you don’t think I can do all or nothing?” she snapped.

  “Actually, I know you can. But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m developing these rather intrusive, protective feelings about you.”

  “Protective?” She laughed. “Care to tell me more?”

  “No,” he grumbled. “I don’t care to tell you more.”

  “You know, Gideon, while I was sitting there on the floor with the Azevedo family, knowing that Jussara Azevedo knew she might never return to her home, it started me thinking about the important things in a person’s life. When you get right down to it, nothing is as important as the people…the friends we make, the people we love. Everything Jussara had in her home might be gone, and all she wanted was her mother’s tablecloth and the family photos. I want to join your team, Gideon. I want to be part of the work, and I can do that. If I move to Texas, they can transmit my daily medical segments to the network by satellite, and I may have to go to New York a couple days a week to tape my Sunday program, but that’s easy enough.”

  “And your hospital work?”

  “There are hospitals in Texas that would have me.”

  “Lorna, do you know what you’re saying? That you’re willing to fit your schedule around Global Response and, in a large way, around me?”

  “I’m not your parents, Gideon,” she said gently. “I’m not looking for a reason to leave. I want to be closer to you, and what I do won’t get in the way.”

  “So, is this the two of us starting over? A new relationship? Marriage? “

  “Maybe, if that’s not being too presumptuous. Because I want to stay close to you, Gideon, however we work it out, and see what happens. We lost so much the first time because we weren’t close enough…because neither of us truly let the other one know what we needed. I mean, it was like we both had our own little lives and we met in the middle occasionally. And that’s not a marriage, not really. You were right, though, when you said we weren’t ready, because we weren’t. I hadn’t found myself, Gideon, and you were just finding yourself, and that’s what killed us. We were never together, emotionally. So, maybe I’m seeing this the wrong way, but I think you might want me here. Of course, maybe you don’t want me here at all. And if that’s the case, tell me now and we don’t have to talk about this again.”

  “Dear God, Lorna. I want you here! I’ve looked for every excuse to push you away, tried hard to do it, tried hard to convince myself I’d be better off without you. But I never have been. Not once, in all these years because…I don’t know how to put this into words.” He drew in a ragged breath. “I’ve known for a long time that we weren’t over. I didn’t know how we would come together, didn’t know why, didn’t have a clue about an outcome. Would we be friends or lovers? Would we finally get through the past, the loss of our child…do it together as we couldn’t before? Or would the old animosities still be there? I’ve had all these years to think about our next meeting, planning how it would happen, then there it was, yet I hadn’t figured out anything at all. To be
honest, it scared me, Lorna. I’ve never hated you. You needed something from me that I didn’t know how to give because I was too busy expecting you to fit into my mold instead of working on a mold for the two of us. And now I know that you needed something from yourself that you didn’t yet have, and I didn’t support you in finding it.” Gideon bent down and brushed a kiss to Lorna’s muddy cheek, then one to her lips. “I’m glad you came here,” he said on a deep sigh, pulling her head to his chest. “I’m sorry I didn’t fight harder for us before.”

  Lorna laughed. “I should have, too, but I didn’t know how hard marriage was. Happily-ever-after takes a lot of work!”

  “We weren’t all bad back then, though.”

  “You know, for the longest time all I could see was the bad, but lately it’s not so clear as it was, and I’m beginning to remember more of the good…like our walks on the beach when we had a chance to get away, and how I used to love it when you’d read to me in bed.”

  “Romance novels,” he said, turning up his nose in jest.

  “With those happily-ever-after endings I’m just now coming to appreciate for what they take.”

  “Happily-ever-after in the days when we thought we’d have it,” he said.

  “But happily-ever-after beginnings are nice, too,” she added, tilting her face to kiss Gideon. “Second beginnings and second chances.” Just as their lips touched, though, the ceiling overhead shrieked an agonizing protest and they both looked up.

  “If we want to get to that happily-ever-after second beginning, I think we’d better get the hell out of here!” he cried. Gideon jumped up and pulled Lorna up with him, then dragged her to the door, shoving her out ahead of him. By the time they’d both cleared the house by a few meters, the ceiling went crashing in. Lorna tried to pause for a look, but Gideon had a firm hold on her hand and kept pulling her down the hill with him. Running frantically, slipping and sliding in the mud and trying to keep themselves upright, once they came to a relatively flat spot, off to the side of what could be a glide path for the house, he dragged her into a clump of trees, where she collapsed to the ground. But he wouldn’t let her stay down. Not even for a second. “We’ve got to keep going” he shouted breathlessly, as he turned back for a momentary appraisal, trying to figure out what next to do as the Azevedo house literally shimmied to the side, then buckled in on itself. “It’s coming down,” he said, pulling Lorna deeper into the little wooded thicket, thanking heaven they weren’t tall straight palms.