Rough Around the Edges

by Marie Ferrarella

  Being made aware made it harder.

  So? When the day came that Kitt finally left, he told himself, he’d get one of his brothers or sisters to come to Bedford to live.

  Hell, he amended, taking a turn to get into his apartment complex, he’d bring them all to America. Wasn’t that the ultimate plan once he got his company up and running? To have his entire family come out here to live? Working alongside of him, maybe, but most assuredly living in this country, enjoying all the fine benefits that went hand in hand with being a citizen of the United States.

  He liked the sound of that.

  Taking another corner, O’Rourke laughed at himself. He was beginning to sound just like an infomercial.

  That was because for the last two days, when they weren’t working on the actual computer design, he and Simon were meeting with and listening to the ideas of a pitchman who was going to help them get an infomercial on the air in order to make the public aware of their product. When the time came. He was putting the horse before the cart.

  But damn, the horse was eager to run.

  It was all coming together, he thought, a grin forming on his lips. The ideas, the backers, the dream, all of it was coming together.

  Part of him was afraid that it would all turn to dust on him at the last minute. There was only so much luck to go around and he had a fear that perhaps, just perhaps, it would be used up before it became his turn to dip into the magic well.

  Or surely before anything came of it.

  As God was his witness, he swore silently, he didn’t intend to be a failure. Failure was for other men, not him. He wouldn’t stand for it. He’d paid his dues and worked as hard as any man—harder—just so his dream could become a reality. For him and for everyone.

  It occurred to O’Rourke as he let himself into the house quietly that night, that Kitt had become part of that inner circle. She’d become part of “everyone.”

  He couldn’t help wondering if she’d want to be, once she knew.

  The sound he’d heard just as he walked up to the first-floor garden apartment, the sound he’d taken to be a cat somewhere in the distance, protesting some grave injustice against it, turned out to be coming from within his apartment.

  They didn’t have a cat.

  It was the baby.

  The thought hit him just as he turned the key and opened the door. The baby was crying like that, like something was very wrong with her.

  O’Rourke felt his heart speed up just a little. “Kitt? Kitt, it’s me, O’Rourke. I’m home.” He pocketed his key, looking around the room. “Where are you?”

  She came into the living room then, her eyes huge, haunted and frightened. She was carrying the baby, rocking the infant as she walked.

  “It’s Shawna,” she told him needlessly, every word etched with concern. “She’s been crying all afternoon, all night,” she amended. She felt so helpless, so powerless to do anything. Kitt hated the feeling. “I don’t know what to do to make her stop.” Trying very hard to keep the edginess from her voice, she told him, “I’ve been walking the floor with her for hours.”

  She looked it, he realized. Appearing far more worn and tired than even when he’d first seen her. He held out his arms to her.

  “Here, give the baby to me. You sit down and get some rest,” he ordered, taking Shawna from her. There was not even a glimmer of recognition in the baby’s eyes, the way there had begun to be in the last week. He felt his heart sink a little.

  “She won’t eat,” Kitt told him. “And she hasn’t slept all day except for a couple of minutes at a time. Every time I start to put her down, she wakes up and starts to cry all over again, even harder.”

  There was nothing to be alarmed about, he told himself. Babies did this all the time. Still, all he could remember was Mrs. Flannery and Tara. Tara had died at two months from causes no one could ascertain. Mrs. Flannery was never the same again.

  “Why don’t you call the doctor?” he suggested, beginning to pace.

  “I did.” That had come out too loudly. Getting hold of herself, Kitt continued. “I put in a call to her pediatrician an hour ago. I got his answering service. They said they’d relay the message, but he hasn’t called me back.”

  O’Rourke looked down at the little girl in his arms. She felt warm to him, warmer than he was willing to accept. “All right, if Mohammed won’t call the mountain, the mountain is going to call Mohammed.” He began to head for the door. “You drive to the hospital, I’ll be in the back seat with the baby.”

  It took a second for his words to sink in. She’d half expected him to laugh off her concern. She was incredibly relieved that he hadn’t, that he seemed as concerned as she was. But that also made her frightened. It meant that he thought there was something wrong, too.

  “You?”

  He nodded. There was no room for discussion here. He didn’t like the baby’s color. “I know infant CPR.”

  It didn’t seem like something he should be familiar with. “How…?”

  “It wasn’t an entirely backward town I lived in,” he said. “The local nurse specialized in CPR. It was something she thought I should know.” He hoped and prayed that it didn’t come down to that, that he wouldn’t need to use CPR on the infant. He didn’t know if he could stand it if he had to.

  Chapter Ten

  “Damn.”

  The bitten-off curse rang in her ears. Her heart already hammering harder than she thought possible, Kitt darted her eyes darted toward the rearview mirror, praying everything was all right.

  It wasn’t.

  O’Rourke was unstrapping Shawna’s restraints and taking the small body out of the infant seat. Her daughter was limp.

  “What are you doing?” Kitt demanded.

  “Just drive,” O’Rourke ordered, not sparing the necessary second to glance in her direction. There wasn’t time.

  Schooling himself to go slow and to remember the steps, he began giving the baby CPR the instant he had her lying on her back. It took him a beat to recall the differences in technique for infants. Fingers pressed against tiny chests instead of hands and puffs of air gently administered instead of mouth-to-mouth contact. He counted mentally before starting the cycle again, more quickly this time.

  Watching Shawna intently since the moment he had gotten into the car with her, he’d seen the infant’s color drain away and then her tiny chest cease its movement altogether. The baby had stopped breathing.

  There was no time to speculate why. All he knew was that he had to get her breathing again.

  “Oh, my God,” Kitt said, craning her neck and turning around. “She’s stopped breathing, hasn’t she?”

  Frightened, agitated and feeling more helpless than she had ever felt in her life, Kitt barely missed plowing into the green-and-white moving van making a turn in front of her. Working the brakes, she managed to turned the wheel just in time to narrowly avoid the collision.

  She could feel her heart slamming into her rib cage, not because of the near miss, but because of the drama being played out in the back seat.

  “Is she…is she…?”

  Trying to push out the word, Kitt couldn’t make herself say it. It was too horrible to even contemplate. Saying it would make it real.

  The silence from the back seat was only because O’Rourke couldn’t spare the breath to answer her, not because her worst fears were being realized, Kitt insisted fiercely.

  Blinking back tears, numbing her mind, she drove exactly the way she felt—like someone trying to out-race death.

  The hospital seemed as if it was located an eternity away instead of the few miles it actually was. By the time Kitt had made it to the emergency room parking lot, she was shaking so badly, she wasn’t sure if her legs could support her.

  There wasn’t time to think about herself.

  Slamming on the brakes, she fled the car before the engine had ceased its final revolution.

  “I need help here!” she shouted as she burst into the room, b
umping against electronic doors that were still yawning open. “My baby’s stopped breathing! She’s in the parking lot!”

  The next moment, she was moving out of the way of the ER team that hurried past her: a physician dressed in periwinkle-blue scrubs, followed by a nurse.

  The latter was a blur to her. As she followed them, Kitt saw that O’Rourke was already at the doors, Shawna in his arms.

  “I got her to breathe again.” Infinite relief throbbed in the declaration.

  The physician took Shawna from him. Words were buzzing around Kitt’s head, words aimed at her as well as O’Rourke. She saw him looking at her oddly. She was having trouble assimilating the questions. Nothing seemed to penetrate or make sense.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Kitt?”

  The world was swiftly receding from her, blanketing itself in darkness until all that remained was a tiny spotlight, no larger than the head of a pin. And then that almost disappeared, too.

  But then it held on. Just as the strong arms that closed around her held on. Catching her. Sheltering her.

  The spotlight disappeared.

  A voice seemed to reach out to her, coming from a great distance that seemed almost insurmountable at first. Bit then it began growing closer and closer.

  The voice took on texture.

  She began to understand.

  “Kitt, the baby’s going to be all right. Kitt, can you hear me? She’s dehydrated, but she’s going to be all right. Kitt, damn it, wake up, do you hear me? Wake up this minute.”

  She heard concern beneath the rough words. Or did she only think she did? Things were still swimming together, but there was light now, light and feeling and sound.

  Someone was rubbing her hands.

  O’Rourke.

  The realization came to her a moment before she actually opened her eyes and focused. She was lying on a stretcher. No, a gurney, it was a gurney, and O’Rourke was standing over her. He was scowling, but she saw a glimmer of concern and then relief in his eyes as she looked up at him.

  He was holding her hand in his.

  Suddenly everything came flooding back to her. “Shawna,” she cried, trying to sit up. A large, strong hand pushed her back, making her lie down. “Is she…?”

  “Just fine,” the ER physician informed her, pushing back the white curtain that surrounded the hospital bed as he came in. “Your daughter’s going to be fine. I just stopped in to see how you are feeling.”

  “Very foolish,” she admitted, this time successfully managing to sit up.

  She was still a little woozy, but she struggled against giving in to the feeling. It was only after a beat that she realized that O’Rourke, instead of trying to keep her down, had placed his hand at her back and was propping her up.

  Kitt flushed, embarrassed at the scene she must have caused. “I’ve never fainted before.”

  The doctor nodded, taking a second pulse reading. “So your husband said. If he hadn’t caught you, you’d be checking in for the night right now along with your daughter.”

  Husband. It felt so odd to hear that word in connection with herself. Odd and yet very comforting at the same time. She supposed it was just because she’d been raised to buy into the whole “happily ever after” scenario. That had been a disservice her parents had done her, making her believe that there was a marriage in store in everyone’s future.

  And then the rest of what the doctor had said penetrated.

  “You’re admitting Shawna?”

  “Only overnight,” the older man was quick to reassure her. “To make sure her fluid levels are back to normal and remain that way. She was a little dehydrated. There was a mild strain of flu going around a few weeks ago. Looks like your little girl caught the tail end of it.”

  Kitt dug her fisted hands into the mattress on either side of her. She wanted everything crystal clear and spelled out. “But she’s all right?”

  “Almost perfect,” the doctor guaranteed. “If you’d like, I can have a nurse take you up to the pediatric ward once you’re ready and you can see for yourself just how almost perfect she is.”

  “Thank you.” Kitt swung her legs over the side of the immobilized gurney, sitting up.

  The physician made a notation on the chart and signed it. “There, you’re free to go. You know, you two came in with Shawna just in time.” Kitt looked at him quizzically. “Lucky thing your husband knows CPR.” The older man looked at O’Rourke. “You saved her life.”

  A chill went over Kitt’s heart.

  Telling the doctor they knew the way to the pediatrics ward and that there was no need to have a nurse leave the floor to accompany them, Kitt and O’Rourke left the emergency room area. Walking beside him to the elevators in the rear of the building, Kitt was silent as the physician’s words sank in.

  She could have lost her daughter. Just like that. From something as common as the flu.

  Gratitude filled her until there was no room for anything else. She took O’Rourke’s hand in hers as the elevator doors opened.

  “That’s twice now,” she told him softly.

  He pressed the button for the appropriate floor. The doors began to close. They were alone in the elevator. “Twice?”

  She pressed her lips together. “That you saved Shawna.”

  It took him a second to understand what she was referring to. “The first really doesn’t count. I was just there to help her be born.”

  He was being unduly modest. She’d noticed that about him. He didn’t like taking credit, even when it was due him.

  “Either way, that makes her yours officially.”

  Gratitude made him uncomfortable. He never knew what to say, so he shrugged it off. “She’s already mine,” he reminded her. “We put my name on the birth certificate, remember?”

  That had been done to strengthen his claim that he was Shawna’s father. Since the baby’s real father had wanted nothing to do with Shawna, Kitt hadn’t raised any objections when the subject had come up. They’d returned to the hospital the day after the wedding to place his name in the space she’d left empty on the form. In her heart, Kitt had a feeling that, rough around the edges or not, O’Rourke seemed far better suited to the role of father than Jeffrey ever would have been.

  “Yes, I know, but this makes it real. You breathed life back into her.” Tears sprang up to her eyes as they reached their floor. “If you hadn’t been there…”

  They stepped out of the elevator and he paused to look at her. Tears always undid him, even tears that were only threatening to be shed.

  “But I was,” he told her firmly, taking hold of her arms. He wanted to hold her but was afraid. Afraid that if he did, he wouldn’t let go. “Don’t go there, Kitt-with two-t’s,” he told her softly. “Don’t plague your mind with ‘what-ifs.’ It’s a waste of time and it settles and solves nothing.” He looked at her, his expression solemn. “Always keep your face forward. It’s the only way any of us can ever make it in this world.”

  She knew what he was doing. She’d learned a little about this stranger the rain had swept into her life. He was trying to keep her at bay because her gratitude made him uncomfortable. Too bad.

  “That still doesn’t stop me from being grateful.” Rising up on her toes, she brushed her lips against his cheek.

  The same warm wave of sweetness washed over him, just as it had when he’d first kissed her at the altar. O’Rourke felt his gut tightening while other parts of him demanded attention and tribute.

  He ignored the demands. It wasn’t going to go that way, he told himself. A deal was a deal. He’d given his word and his word was his bond. He wasn’t about to start behaving like a real husband, no matter how much a part of him wanted to.

  “No harm in being grateful,” he told her crisply. He fooled neither of them.

  Three hours later, O’Rourke closed the door behind Kitt as they walked into the apartment. Kitt’s arms were empty. Per the physician’s suggestion, backed up by Shawna’s own pediatrician
, Dr. Rafe Saldana, Shawna remained overnight at Harris Memorial for observation. With O’Rourke holding her hand, Kitt had agreed that it was the safest way to go. Knowing that didn’t make the ache she felt now any the easier to bear.

  O’Rourke pocketed his keys as he turned on the light. It seemed dreary in here now. And quiet. He hadn’t realized how quiet the house would feel without the baby in it.

  Planted in the middle of the living room, he slipped his hands into his pockets and looked around, as if seeing the place for the first time.

  “Listen,” he said to her after a beat.

  “To what?” There was nothing to hear, she thought, cocking her head to see if she’d missed something. It had gotten to the point where she could sense a second before Shawna got ready to let out with a wail.

  But there was nothing to listen for now. Her baby wasn’t here.

  “To the silence.” He turned around to look at Kitt. “Who would have thought something so tiny could leave behind such a huge void?” And she had, he thought. He felt Shawna’s missing presence acutely.

  Would it be the same with her mother? Down the line, when they were both out of his life, would it feel this way to come home and know that that was all there was? Just him and the walls?

  It gave him sincere pause, O’Rourke thought. He was not happy about the direction his thoughts were taking.

  The comment, especially coming from him, surprised Kitt. Surprised her because it was so sensitive. Surprised her because it had been exactly what she was thinking.

  She smiled at him. “Don’t look now, O’Rourke, but someone’s going to start accusing you of being sensitive.”

  One corner of his mouth rose in bemusement. Sensitive was the last thing he’d ever be accused of. “There’s an entire town back in Ireland that might take exception to that.”

  She stepped out of her shoes, wondering if the dinner she’d forgotten about, warming in the oven, was ruined yet. Would it be worth the effort to try to save it?