* * *
The eight-minute drive from his work site to Cassie’s office was brutal. He had to remain calm. To be strong. And he was shaking so hard he could hardly dial the phone.
With Cassie’s line on hold, he phoned 911, getting an ambulance to the law office. If someone else had called, then there’d be two. He didn’t give a rat’s ass at the moment. He’d foot whatever bill resulted.
And then he flipped back to listening to what was going on in her office. Cassie was moaning, and it didn’t sound good. He heard someone call her name and then heard urgent tones but couldn’t make out words.
Something was horribly wrong. There were no breaks in Cassie’s moans. No seconds, let alone minutes, in between contractions. If it was contractions at all.
He knew all about healthy births. But nothing in their class had taught them preparation for anything like this.
He was almost there and hoped to God that she held on, that he wasn’t going to lose her. Or his son.
Sweating, he hollered, “Hello! Hello! Please pick up!”
“There’s no time to move her. Lay her back!” The voice was female. He didn’t recognize it, but then, other than Cassie’s paralegal, he’d never met anyone she knew. Not her partners, her friends, her family.
Suddenly that seemed abhorrent. Unbearable.
“Hello!” he screamed at the top of his lungs.
“Hello? Who is this?”
“Wood. Wood Alexander...” He wasn’t going to panic. He was going to be strong. And calm.
“Wood? Where are you?”
“I’m almost there.” And not making a lot of sense.
“This is Marilyn. I met you the...”
“...yes,” he interrupted as he pulled into the lot. “What’s going on?”
He heard the siren before he saw the ambulance.
“She’s having her baby,” Marilyn said. “We’ve called the paramedics, but I don’t think they’re going to make it.”
An almost inhuman scream of anguish came over the line.
Throwing the truck in Park, Wood grabbed the keys and ran.
Chapter Twenty-One
Memories of those next hours were going to stay with Wood forever. Marilyn had been waiting for him when he got in the door and took him back to the hallway of private offices. He hadn’t even thought about the locked door between the lobby and Cassie.
He saw bodies as he ran into the room, huddled behind Cassie’s desk, but wouldn’t have been able to identify a single one of them. There were at least three. One, a woman in dress pants and a light-colored blouse, was kneeling between her legs. He saw Cassie’s black dress bunched up around her, saw bare skin, and then saw her eyes. They were stark, glazed, like she was losing her mind.
He knelt at her shoulders, lifting her head, cradling it against him as he’d learned in class, sort of. He wasn’t helping her push. Or supporting her while she did. He had to be her calm.
“I’m here, Cass. I’m right here. You’re doing great. Everything’s fine. It’s fine. You’re doing great.” Over and over he said the words. As she moaned. When she screamed. He just kept repeating the words. Watching her face. Holding her gaze when she stared up at him.
He wasn’t even sure she knew he was there. Knew who he was. But he held on. Gave her his strength. Because that was what he did.
Everything changed when paramedics burst into the room. He caught a glimpse of worried-looking lawyer faces in the hall when the door opened, and then saw the blue-suited first responders as they went to work. Without any sense of panic, they instructed everyone to move away.
Wood stayed right where he was. He wasn’t leaving her. Leaving either of them. “I’m the father,” he said.
Maybe there were shocked gasps from whoever had been assisting Cassie. At the moment, none of that mattered.
“It’s going good,” he said to Cassie as a young man knelt between her legs and assessed the situation. “You’re doing fine,” he told Cassie, who’d been groaning since they came into the room.
“Boy or a girl?” the young man asked while an associate knelt beside him.
“Boy,” he said. “Alan.”
A stretcher appeared at the door, was in the room.
“It’s too late to move her,” the young paramedic, a redhead, announced. “He’s already half out. Okay, Mama, one more push and he’s here,” he said.
Whether Cassie heard him or just pushed because her body forced her to, Wood didn’t know, but she gave one more scream and then lay still.
He saw a small body pass from one set of hands to another, and then was focused on Cassie.
She was breathing. But still. Her eyes were closed. And her gorgeous features were no longer scrunched up in pain.
For the moment, at least, she was at peace.
There was rustling farther down her body. A lot of quick movement. A sheet appeared. Some talking, too low for him to make out—he suspected so Cassie wouldn’t hear.
And one thing was missing.
There’d been no baby crying.
* * *
Cassie felt herself being lifted. Heard Wood’s voice telling her that she’d done great. That everything was fine. He’d been there through the worst of it. She’d heard him. Had focused on his words. They reminded her of something important.
Mostly though, she just remembered excruciating pain. So much of it. And then...numbness. She just wanted to sleep.
“I’m going with them.” Wood was angry. She’d never heard that tone from him before. She opened her eyes to see his head at the end of the stretcher, but she couldn’t see the rest of him. Thought maybe she was in heaven and he was on earth.
“Wood?” Her throat was dry, and she could hardly get the word out.
“I’m right here, Cass.” His tone changed, was the calm in her storm just like always, and then his body was there, too. Sitting next to her. They moved. Fast. Sirens blared.
“I had the baby,” she said, aware now that she was in an ambulance. And hooked up to an IV.
Wood nodded. He wasn’t smiling.
“Where is he?”
“He’s right here,” he said, nodding toward a little bassinet-looking thing by the door, someone official-looking bending over it.
“Is he okay?” She hadn’t heard a cry, but knew that you didn’t always. Some babies just took their first breath without squalling.
“We don’t know yet.” His beautiful blue eyes looked so sad. “They think he needs a blood transfusion. Something about oxygen levels.”
She closed her eyes. Oh God. No bad waves. No bad waves. Let them bring in the good. If You never give me another good wave in my life, please let this one be good. I won’t want any more. I swear to anyone who will listen. I won’t use Wood for my own personal gain. Just let my baby live...
She prayed all the way to the hospital.
And then she waited.
* * *
Cassie and Alan were whisked away as soon as they got to the hospital. Wood was told to follow Cassie’s stretcher and then was asked to wait outside a door through which they took her. He’d yet to even get a good look at their son. No one had offered to let him see or hold the baby. They’d been too busy hooking him up and tending to him.
If it were possible for a human being to explode, he was fairly certain he’d have done so.
And Cassie, other than that brief moment when he’d first gotten in the ambulance, had had her eyes closed. She’d lost a lot of blood. He’d seen it on the floor of her office as they’d lifted her. But wasn’t sure if childbirth regularly produced an alarming amount of liquid or if her life was in danger. A minute or two after they’d shut the door behind Cassie, he called Elaina. She was in the hospital someplace. She’d at least be able to give him some idea of what might be going on.
She came righ
t down and waited with him instead.
“You’re shaking,” she said, taking his hand as they found a couple of chairs, pulled them across from the door and sat. She’d told him that based on the situation, taking Cassie in as they had was protocol. She’d be checked over. Might need some stitches.
And it could be worse. Much worse. She didn’t say that, but he knew.
“You’re in love with her.” The nurturing tone in Elaina’s words felt odd coming at him.
“I just need to know that they’re okay. You should have heard her, Elaina. I’ve never...” Elbows on his knees, he hung his head, unable to get the sound of Cassie’s wails from reverberating through his brain.
“I know.” Elaina’s tone didn’t change. But he believed she knew exactly what he was talking about. She’d been trapped in the car with Peter as he’d been lying there with protruding bones, still conscious.
“It’s all right to feel helpless, you know,” she told him. “You aren’t superhuman, Wood. No one is okay all the time.”
He didn’t want to hear that.
“This isn’t about me,” he said and stood as he heard the doorknob across from him turn.
“We’re moving her to a room,” a nurse told him. Gave him the number. “She’ll be there in about ten minutes. If there’s anything you need to do, anyone you need to call, now would be a good time. You can meet us at the room.”
Yeah, fine, he wasn’t going anywhere. “Is she okay? And Alan?”
Another woman came out of the room. “I’m Dr. Abbot,” she said, reaching out a hand to Wood. “Are you the father?”
“I am.”
She glanced at Elaina, at her white coat and scrubs. “I’m a resident upstairs, nuclear radiology. I’m his sister,” was all Elaina said.
“Are they going to be okay?” Wood asked again, his muscles about ready to split.
“She’s going to be fine.” Dr. Abbot smiled. “She did twelve hours’ work in less than one and is extremely tired,” the doctor continued. “But the tearing was minimal. And everything else looks great.”
It sure hadn’t looked that way to Wood half an hour before. But he wanted to believe what the doctor was telling him. Planned to be just fine, too, when he walked into Cassie’s room in ten minutes.
In the meantime, his head was swimming, and he had to sit down.
* * *
Cassie saw Wood waiting in the hallway as she was wheeled to her room. Reaching out a hand, she grabbed his as he held it out and, attached to her, he walked the rest of the way with her.
They’d already settled her into a bed before bringing her down, and it was less than a minute before her IV pole was set and she and Wood were alone.
So much had happened, she had no idea where to begin. And was so scared, she could hardly think of anything but Alan.
“They said they’ll probably be taking this out soon.” She motioned toward the needle in her hand. “It’s just sugar water. Precautionary. In case something more was needed.”
He nodded. Stood by her bed, looking at her. Just looking. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but he was different. Less...calm.
Almost...vulnerable as he held the rail on the side of her bed so hard his knuckles were white.
“They said Alan was in distress,” she told him.
He nodded. “I called Elaina. She was down here, actually. She’s going to see what she can find out for us.”
Tears brimmed her eyes. She’d never been a weeper. Had cried more since her pregnancy than in the ten years prior to it. From hormones, or new levels of love, she couldn’t be sure.
“He’s going to be fine,” he said, now sounding like the Wood she knew. The voice she remembered from the blur of memories of giving birth in the office that morning. He reached out a hand, smoothing it down her cheek, and beneath her eye. Then brushed her hair back away from her face. Sometime in the middle of everything, her ponytail had come undone.
“They said his oxygen levels were low,” she said, just because she kept hearing the words in her head and needed to give them to him. As though doing so somehow made them less threatening.
“I know. But that’s not uncommon in premature births. They’re just doing extra tests on him because of the earlier anemia.”
Which was more than she’d been told.
“Have you called your mother?” Wood held her hand, hooked a chair with his foot and pulled it closer as he asked the question.
She was so tired. And completely wound up, too. Her eyes ached as she looked at him. “Are you trying to distract me?”
“Yes. And I also think your mother would want to know what’s going on.”
“I already called her,” she said. “A nurse helped me get an outside line while I was waiting for them to come get me to bring me here. She’s getting the next flight out and will get a cab to the hospital. She’s going to call when she lands. I...gave her your number.”
“Good.”
She sipped at the orange juice they’d left on her tray for her, and he asked how she was feeling. If she was in pain. She felt surprisingly not horrible, physically. Sore, of course, but nothing like she’d have expected, having felt as though she was being ripped in half such a short time before. Because the baby had come so quickly, the doctor had explained. She’d likely dilated from three to ten in minutes instead of hours.
She mentioned needing her things, her bag at the house. Some underwear. Her cell phone. Her satchel, which had her keys in it. He gave her his phone to call her paralegal to see if she’d mind seeing to all of it. Marilyn had been panic stricken as they’d driven away, Wood told her, and was overjoyed to hear from Cassie and know that she was okay. And to bring whatever she needed to the hospital.
Wood wasn’t planning on leaving. Cassie didn’t argue. He was Alan’s father. He should be there.
And he wasn’t her...anything but her sperm donor. And friend. She might not remember some things about that morning, but she very clearly recalled her deal with the waves. Alan had to be okay. And Cassie had to give up, once and for all, any wayward hope that Wood would ever be more than a dear friend to her.
No matter how much she might love him. Because she did. Having him there in her worst moment...she’d known, as clearly as she’d ever known anything in her life, the man was her one and only.
She was pretty sure she’d agreed to give up any future husband as well, but she didn’t see that as much of a problem.
A dietitian came in and offered them lunch. Wood insisted that they accept. That she at least try to eat.
“If you’re going to be breastfeeding, you need to tend to your own nutrition,” he told her. They both knew not all women were able to breastfeed or even pump to provide milk for their children. But she nodded. Ordered a cheeseburger and ate half of it.
And every thirty seconds or so, she looked from the door to Wood’s face. Scared to death, and finding her calm. Her son was already a couple of hours old, and she hadn’t even seen him.
A knock came on the door shortly after they finished eating. She called for whoever it was to come in, afraid she was going to lose her lunch in the seconds it took for her to see who was there. A doctor with good news?
Bad news?
How did a woman just lay there and wait to hear the fate of her baby?
Could Alan be on the other side of the door? Would they just bring him in to her if he was well enough?
And if he wasn’t... The terror in her chest was blocking all air.
The door pushed open and she didn’t recognize the stunning woman who came through, but she saw the white coat and everything in her clenched for the bad news. They would get through this. Her baby and her. He was alive. She knew that much. And they were strong. They’d make a plan and deal with things one at a time...
The doctor smiled at Wood. Walked up to him
and put a hand on his shoulder. “Hi, Cassie,” she said. “I’m Elaina, Wood’s sister-in-law. It’s good to finally meet you.” The brown eyes were kind looking. Compassionate.
Cassie liked the woman on sight. But then, Wood had married her—she had to be an amazing person. She also felt a pang to her heart like none other. That hand on Wood’s shoulder...looked so natural, like it was no big deal. Casual. Allowed.
Cassie had just had his baby, but had no right to touch his shoulder like that.
“I just wanted to let you both know...the doctor will be coming down to see you shortly. He got called in to an emergency when I was in the nursery asking about Alan, and he said I could give you a preliminary rundown until he can make it here. Because he knows you’re worried...”
“And?” Wood’s tone with Elaina was different than Cassie was used to. Not warmer. Or more distant. Just...different.
Elaina’s smile reached out to Cassie. “He’s a beautiful baby and going to be just fine,” she said. “They were preparing to do a red blood cell transfusion. The red cells transport oxygen to other parts of the body, but his numbers have all leveled out. They’re still monitoring him, working on him, and will be keeping him a bit longer, but he might even be in here by nightfall. If not, they’ll take you to see him.”
She started to cry. She was all alone, with this former couple who’d been family for a long time and, even after a failed marriage, still had each other. But she didn’t begrudge them their togetherness, or feel jealous at the fact that she couldn’t be a part of them.
Her prayer had been answered.
Her son was healthy.
* * *
“Can I talk to you a second?” Elaina asked Wood as she was leaving Cassie’s room. She’d shared a picture of Alan from her phone to Cassie’s and answered about a dozen of Cassie’s questions about their son. She’d also asked Cassie if she could be recognized as Alan’s aunt.
An honor Cassie had tearfully granted on the spot.
Elaina had a procedure scheduled and wanted to get back upstairs to prepare.
Her Motherhood Wish Page 18
