It Happened One Night

by Lisa Dale

  “Hold on.” Karin was leaning forward in the driver’s seat, both hands wrapped tight around the wheel. Her concentration was intense. “The roads are… not really that great back here. I’m sorry. They were fine on the highway. But don’t worry. I’ll get us home.”

  “Not. Home.” Lana braced herself for another contraction, pushing down hard on the floor with her heels. Nothing in the books had prepared her for how quickly the intervals between contractions shrank, and nothing could have warned her against the pain. In a matter of minutes, the cramping had taken on a life of its own, a furious monster raging within. No, she thought. No, I’m not ready yet. Please, not yet. She fought hard against the cramps, against the urges of her body, but there was no stopping them. When she spoke again, she was crying. What would make the misery go away? “Karin. Please—God, Karin—please pull over.”

  “What? Pull over?” Karin craned her face around nearly backward, so her cheek pressed the collar of her coat and her thick red scarf. “What’s wrong? Are you oka—”

  There was a loud, almost deafening bang on the roof of the van. And then the whole world slowed to a crawl. Between the moment of the bang and the moment a million little shards of ice went tinkling around the windows, Karin lost control. Lana watched her hands grip the wheel, she felt the tires lock beneath them, but still they were moving, sliding, slipping smoothly and inevitably off the road.

  “Hold on!” Karin shouted.

  Lana grabbed the armrest, holding on for her life. The noise was terrible, branches like millions of fingers screeching along the windows and doors. She felt the pressure of the seat belt tightening around her hips, then the jerk of a sudden halt. And when the minivan finally came to a stop they were resting at a dizzying angle, the hood braced roughly by the rocks and shrubs at the bottom of a ditch. The engine was still going and heat continued to blare from the vents, but the van was stuck. Between the ice and the angle, there was no way they would be able to back out to the road.

  “Are you okay?” Karin yanked at her seat belt and climbed into the backseat.

  “I’m not hurt,” Lana said, breathing hard. The seat belt was digging into her skin. She fumbled with it to get it off, her fingers made worthless by panic and fear. She couldn’t let herself come apart. She couldn’t. She swore to herself they would be okay. “Are you?”

  “No. Tell me what’s wrong.”

  Lana meant to speak gently, to break the news with cool aplomb. But the words came rushing out. She worked at the waistline of her jeans. “I’m in labor.”

  “It just started now?”

  “No. Hours ago.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t know.” The pressure of the wide elastic of her maternity jeans was too much, and she was cold and drenched from her crotch to her shins. She didn’t care enough to tell Karin to look away: She just did her best to tug her pants down her hips, not watching for the panic and shock that she knew she’d find in Karin’s eyes.

  “Oh, my… Lana, are you sure? Because it might just be—”

  Lana paused to glare, breathing hard. “Karin!” She was irrationally angry, furious. She wanted to break something. To put her fist through glass. To scream. But she forced herself to be rational. She knew she didn’t have long before the pain came back again. She had to use this window to get things done. “My water just broke.”

  Karin blinked. She moved toward Lana’s feet to help tug her jeans off over her heels, and Lana started to work on getting off her jacket. She was sweating hot, boiling, and she could feel the first embers of her next contraction firing up inside, like the tremors of some advancing army. There was a battle ahead. She tried to talk herself down from the panic. But she was scared out of her mind. She wasn’t prepared for labor. She wasn’t prepared to have her baby in a car. And she was afraid of what would happen to the child if she did. “We have to do something. We have to get back!”

  “Okay. No problem. There’s no problem here. I’ll just call an ambulance. We have time.”

  Lana shook her head, clenching her teeth. “We might not have time.”

  “How far apart?” Karin asked.

  “I don’t know exactly. Five minutes?”

  “What!”

  For a second Lana caught herself laughing—on the brink of hysteria and fear. The look on her sister’s face was so exaggerated, so replete with surprise, it was almost funny. But the contraction that had been gathering speed like a tsunami rose up from her core and crested with new ferocity, the pressure making her feel like she might split apart.

  “I lied. Oh, God, I lied,” she said, shifting and twisting her body against the pain, trying to find a way to make it stop. She couldn’t seem to keep herself from shouting. “LESS than five minutes now. Oh, God, Karin. Please. Help me!”

  “I can handle this, I can handle this,” Karin was saying, digging around in her purse.

  Lana clenched her teeth. Time slowed. The contraction seemed to last forever, and when it withdrew, she prayed the pain would stop. Prayed hard that somehow it might just go away, wait a little while, until they could get help. Burning, stretching, cramping—she felt as if her body were turning itself inside out. Every nerve inside her fired pain. It scared her. She was supposed to be like the women in the films, quiet and focused and calm. But this hurt so bad. There had to be something wrong. “Karin. Please help.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know,” Lana said. “It hurts. Oh, God, it hurts.”

  Karin smoothed Lana’s hair from her eyes. “Lana. Honey. Look at me. It’s supposed to hurt. It’s going to hurt like hell.”

  Lana gripped Karin’s hand and squeezed. “I’m scared.”

  Karin nodded. “Me too.”

  Through the haze of pain and panic, Lana could see that her sister had turned so pale her color nearly rivaled that of the icy landscape around them. “What is it?” Lana asked, trying not to hyperventilate. “What are you not telling me?”

  Karin’s mouth pressed into a thin, grave line. “My charger. I left it at my house when I moved in with you.”

  “So what does that mean?”

  Karin held up the dull face of the phone for Lana to see. “It means we’re on our own.”

  Eli drove the long roads back to Burlington, the ground getting slipperier by the moment. He drove slow, concentrating. He passed an empty car on the side of the road, abandoned by its driver, and he took his foot off the gas pedal just a fraction of an inch.

  Patience, he told himself. His windows were fogging up. He switched the heat in his car to high, but it did little good. It had been a long time since his old car had any serious heat. He turned up the radio, hummed a little, and tried to make himself relax. He was feeling anxious, but it was more than just the driving that had got to him. It was the hope and expectation of knowing that he would see Lana soon—for better or worse. And yet, beneath that, beneath the anxiousness, he couldn’t shake the strange, impractical feeling that something was wrong.

  When at last he got to Lana’s, he saw Calvert sitting in an old pickup truck, the engine running and the windows fogging at the edges on the inside. Immediately, he went on high alert. Eli parked quickly beside him, then braced himself against the cold and ice to knock on Calvert’s window. “What are you doing here?”

  Calvert rolled down the glass. “They went to volunteer or something. Should have been back by now,” he said, lifting the brim of his baseball cap so he could better see Eli’s face.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Calvert huffed, frustrated. “They went to Montpelier. Should’ve been back an hour ago.”

  “The roads are bad,” Eli said.

  “I already factored that in.” Calvert shook his head. “Karin said to meet her here. I called her cell phone four times, but it goes right to voice mail.”

  Eli ran his hand over his face, less and less confident by the moment. All morning, he’d had the niggling feeling that something j
ust wasn’t right. But he’d doubted himself—he’d thought it was just nerves. “I don’t have a good feeling.”

  “Truth be told, neither do I. I’m wondering if they’re at the hospital.”

  Eli nodded. The same thought had occurred to him as well. “Did you call over there?”

  “No cell phone,” Calvert said.

  Eli shook his head. Like father, like daughter. “Why am I not surprised?”

  “Look, you want to ride over with me?”

  Eli paused, looking over the rusted and falling-down truck. “Where’d you get the wheels?”

  “On loan from a guy at work.”

  Eli nodded. He didn’t have time for follow-ups and didn’t really care. “No offense, but I can’t imagine Lana would be happy to see you if she is at the hospital having the baby.”

  Calvert frowned. “Lana and me are square.”

  Eli crossed his arms, ducking his head down into the collar of his coat to keep the ice off his glasses. There was something in Calvert’s eyes that made Eli know he wasn’t lying. He didn’t like the man, but that didn’t matter at the moment. He had to find Lana. And Calvert was his only ally.

  “I’ll take my car,” Eli said.

  “No offense. But the truck’s better in the snow than your Bug.”

  Eli glanced toward his small green car, little more than an ice-coated lump of emerald on the street. “Fine,” he said. “Let’s just hurry.”

  “Get in,” Calvert said.

  Along the desolate roadside, Karin pulled the frozen air deep into her lungs, wincing against the chill, and then she watched her breath going up in white streaks toward the heavy sky. She scanned the long road in both directions. Not a car in sight. They were in the middle of wide and sweeping farmland, and though Karin had driven the road often enough to know that there were houses nearby, the closest one was a half mile away. There was no time for walking that far through the ice.

  She put her hands on her hips and quickly surveyed the area, racking her brain to see if she could think of one last thing that might help alert a passing driver that their minivan—not visible in the craggy and shrub-tangled trough—had gone off the road. She’d attached an orange emergency flag to a tree branch and stood it up between two rocks. She’d taken everything in the minivan that she didn’t anticipate needing and she’d strewn it along the roadside, hoping it would pique someone’s curiosity. Because of the mess she’d made, she was sure some attentive and alert person would investigate. But until then, they had to sit tight.

  Slowly and carefully, she climbed her way through the gleaming and frozen underbrush into the craggy ditch. She heaved her weight against the sliding door to open it, then thrust her body as quickly as she could inside the van. The door slammed shut with the finality of a falling blade.

  When she looked at her sister, fear gripped her gut. Lana looked terrible. Her eyes were wild, panicky. Her mouth was pursed into an open “O” as she pushed air—machinelike—in and out of her lungs. The floor of Karin’s minivan was ruined, blood and fluid soaking the carpet. Lana was shifting and arching her back and moving her legs around, and Karin had to hold back tears to see it. She had to be strong. For both of them. She said a prayer, pleading that Lana and the baby would come through, that someone would find them, that somehow it would all be okay.

  “How are you?” Karin asked.

  Lana looked at her, her breathing fast, her forehead shiny with sweat. She’d braced her legs against the passenger seat and the driver’s, the van so slanted that the angle of her body was more reclining than lying down. Tears were streaming down her face. “Karin…”

  Karin didn’t press her to talk. Though Lana was in hideous pain, the labor seemed to be progressing as it should—except that it all was happening so fast. Karin wrapped her arms around her sister, Lana squeezing her so tight it hurt. She whimpered like some small, dying animal, and Karin brushed her hair back away from her face.

  “Was there anyone up there?” Lana managed, her voice full of vulnerability and hope. Karin got the feeling that the words were incredibly hard to muster—not just the sounds, but the focus to say them.

  “No one yet. But someone will find us. I’m sure of it. Someone will see.”

  Lana pushed the flat of her palm hard against Karin’s shoulder, pushing her away. “Oh, God… Not again. Not—I can’t do this anym—”

  Her sentence dropped off halfway through, and Karin could see from her face the force of the contraction that gripped her. Lana had wrapped one of the seat belts around her palm, holding on as if her life depended on it. Karin trembled. How could she deliver a baby? What if there was a complication? If Lana started bleeding? If the baby wouldn’t breathe?

  With her free hand, Lana reached for her sister and gripped her fingers so hard it burned. She cried out through the pain. What if the baby was born backward? What if the cord got in the way?

  Stop it, Karin, she told herself. Stop. She couldn’t allow herself to think the worst. She had to stay positive.

  Gently, she pulled free of Lana’s hand. She moved carefully between Lana’s legs, and to her shock and horror, the baby was crowning—just the faintest patch of skin and a slight sheen of blonde, baby-fine hair. She swallowed hard, hoping not to let her fear show.

  She would have to deliver the baby. Now. There was no choice. It was coming, ready or not. There was no telling what was going on in Lana’s body—if something had gone wrong. But at least the baby was facing the right way, so Karin said a prayer of thanks for that.

  She watched until the tension in Lana’s body momentarily waned, Lana’s muscles going loose as an overstretched rubber band. Her breathing was loud and deep. “You’re almost done, Lanie. Sweetheart, give me your hand.”

  Lana reached for her sister’s fingers, no doubt meaning to hold on for dear life. But instead, Karin guided Lana’s fingers to touch the baby’s head.

  “Oh, God!” Lana’s gaze slammed against Karin’s. “What will we do?”

  Karin kept her voice calm. “It’s okay. I promise. It’s all going to be fine.”

  She gave Lana’s foot a squeeze through her sock, then moved quickly to the glove compartment, where she kept her extra antibacterial gel. She took off her cotton gloves and smeared it all along her forearms. She pulled on the sterile latex gloves in the emergency kit that Lana had bought for her last Christmas. She thought now that the gift must have been providence. It dazzled her, sometimes, how the world worked. While she’d been planning for her own baby, she’d probably seen more video footage of births than a first-year med school student. She was no expert. But as long as nothing went wrong, by God’s grace she would know what to do.

  “Another one!” Lana shouted, holding tight with both hands to the strap of the seat belt over her head. Her forehead was beaded with sweat. “I have to push. Please. I’m pushing!”

  “You’re doing great.” Karin moved back into place, scared and yet mesmerized at the same time. She could see how efficiently Lana’s body worked, the way her muscles moved the baby along the birth canal with perfect certainty, the way the fullness of her belly shifted slightly as each contraction bore down. Lana was red-faced and sweaty, her face more panicked by the moment. A blood vessel in her eye had burst and turned the white pupil a bright, fiery red. Karin could tell the moment the contraction waned, her own body relaxing with her sister’s.

  Lana pushed her hair out of her face. “Are you… okay?” she asked between breaths.

  “Me? Yes. Why?”

  Her arm shot over her head, searching for the seat belt that had somehow become her lifeline. “Because I’m ready to have this baby now.”

  At the hospital, the receptionist—who wore reading glasses studded with a million tiny beads—had stopped being friendly toward them. “I told you, Mr. Biel. Your daughter isn’t here. Asking me the same question in three different ways is not going to change my answer.”

  Calvert frowned and Eli stepped away from the high counter, pu
lling off his hat and angrily scratching his head. The emergency room was a mess, the snow bringing all sorts of people to the hospital for all sorts of reasons. Frustrated, Eli slunk away from the receptionist’s desk, toward the waiting area. “I don’t like this.”

  “Me neither,” Calvert said.

  Eli sat down hard on one of the chairs in the waiting area, planning his next move. He couldn’t just sit here and wait. He had to take action. Somehow, he had to find Lana. And then he had to tell her that he loved her, that he’d been an idiot, that he wanted her back, if she’d have him. “Here’s what we’re going to do,” he said. “I’m going to take your friend’s truck and start looking for Karin’s minivan. You’re going to stay here in case they show.”

  “You want to take the truck?”

  Eli nodded. “I know the roads better. Where did you say they were coming from?”

  “Montpelier.”

  “And where were they going after?”

  “Lana’s.”

  Eli pushed his glasses higher up on his face, thinking of which road Karin would have taken to get from Montpelier to her house. He decided his best shot was to backtrack, to start at her house and then head in the direction of their seminar. Unless they decided to change their course, he knew the roads they would most likely take. He held his hand out to take Calvert’s keys. “Good. That gives me at least some idea of where to look. I can guess which roads they’d take.” He went to the nurse’s station to borrow a pen and paper, and when he returned he’d written his cell phone number down. “Call me the second you hear anything.”

  “You’re a good man. And you’ll be a good father to that baby. I can tell.”

  Eli nodded once, then walked through the automatic doors of the hospital and flipped his collar up to block the wind.

  “I think… oh, God… this is it.” Lana drew her knees wider and pulled them in a V toward her chest. Her eyes were bright with terror.