“How are you feeling?” Cody asked Devon, concerned. The color seemed to be draining out of her.
“Woozy,” she answered. “Wonderful, but really, really light-headed.”
“Well, you did good,” he told her. Very carefully, he reached out and, ever so lightly, stroked the baby’s downy head. “Feels like peach fuzz,” he commented quietly with a warm smile.
“It’ll grow,” Devon told him, struggling not to slur. “My mom said... I was bald until I...was one, now it grows like...crazy.”
She sounded exhausted. He didn’t blame her. He was feeling a little depleted himself. He just had one more question for her. “What are you going to call her?” he asked.
She barely heard him at first, and then his words replayed themselves in his head.
“I don’t know,” Devon answered honestly. “I was...really sure I was having...a boy, so all I have...are...boys’ names.”
A thought hit him. It seemed almost like fate, he thought. “My mom’s name was Layla. I always thought that was a pretty name.”
“Layla,” Devon repeated weakly. “You’re...right... It...is...pretty.” She looked down at the baby in her arms. Her daughter was looking up at her with wide, wide blue eyes. A peacefulness was descending over Devon. Her mind began to drift, but she did her best to focus. “Layla,” she repeated again to see if the name fit. It seemed to.
“You like that?” The infant made a tiny noise. It wasn’t in response, but Devon took it that way. She glanced up at the man who had been there for her when he could have just kept going. “Looks...like it’s...unanimous.”
“What were you doing out here by yourself?” he asked. If he’d been in her place, he wouldn’t have been driving around in the middle of nowhere. Where was the man who belonged to that ring? To that baby?
“Looking...for a cowboy...to deliver...my baby,” she told him weakly.
She wasn’t going to tell him, he thought. Well, that was her business, he supposed. He could respect that. Cody was just glad that he had been running late this morning. If his Jeep hadn’t decided to die, who knew what might have happened to the pregnant woman?
He glanced at her face. She appeared frighteningly pale. “You need to be checked out by a doctor,” he told her. He would have suggested it even if she looked fine, but, at the moment, she didn’t.
“You have...one of those...with you, too? In...your...pocket?” He was so resourceful, she thought, she wouldn’t have put it past him. But he’d have to have big pockets...
“Not with me,” he said wryly. “But in town, we do. We’ve got two of them, actually. They’re both at the clinic,” he told her. “Along with a couple of nurses. All really top-notch. They’re certainly not in it for the money.” He glanced over to the backseat. “Why don’t I make you and Layla more comfortable in the backseat? There’s more room to lie down there. And then I’ll drive your truck into town.”
Even if she’d wanted to protest, she didn’t have the strength to do so. Devon felt way too tired.
“Whatever...you...say.”
It was the last thing she recalled saying to the man who had come to her aid. In the next moment, everything suddenly and dramatically turned pitch-black.
She lost her hold on the world.
“Ma’am?” Cody asked uncertainly when he saw that she had shut her eyes. He got no response. “Devon?” he questioned more urgently, seeing her head nod to one side.
The next second, he quickly took the baby from her. Devon’s hold had gone lax. The baby would have fallen if he hadn’t moved fast.
“Damn,” he mumbled. “New plan, Layla. We buckle your mom in where she is in the front seat and I drive into town, holding you in one arm. That okay with you?” He added under his breath, “Good thing Connor was always on us to multitask.”
Getting out of the cab with the baby in his arms, Cody came around to the other side of the passenger seat to secure the seat belt as best he could around the unconscious woman.
He continued to talk to the baby, keeping his voice at a soothing level, the way he did when he worked with spooked horses or cattle.
“Connor’s my big brother. You’d like him. He’s kind of bossy, but he had to be. He stuck around to raise my brother and sister and me when our dad died. Our mom died some years before that. Old Connor, he always came through.” As he talked, he found that the sound of his voice was not just keeping the baby calm, but it was helping to do the same for him.
This wasn’t exactly something that was covered in his deputy’s manual. He was fairly certain that as far as his duties went, this was all brand-new ground he was crossing.
Slipping the metal tongue into the seat belt receptacle, he secured it. When he looked to make sure it would hold, that was when he became aware of the blood. There was a great deal more of it than there had been just a few minutes ago when Devon was struggling to push out her daughter.
Adrenaline spiked all through his veins. This was serious. Really serious.
He had to get this woman a doctor and fast or the baby in his arms was going to be an orphan before the sun set.
It took him a split second to make another decision. Running around to the rear of the truck, still holding the baby, Cody untied his horse. If he drove into town at a normal pace, the horse could easily keep up. But this was now a race for time. He intended to go as fast as he could. If still attached, the horse would be dragged in the truck’s wake.
He spared the stallion one look and shouted a command. “Follow the truck, Flint. Follow the truck! Town, Flint. Town.”
Telling his stallion the destination—a command he’d given often enough, except then it had been from the vantage point of a saddle astride the horse’s back—he raced around to the driver’s side and got in.
He didn’t expect Flint to keep up, but, with luck, the horse would follow and reach town sometime after he did. If the horse didn’t reach town by the time Cody would be able to look around for him, at least he knew that Flint wouldn’t just run off aimlessly. Cody had spent long hours training the stallion. He was completely confident that, since the terrain was familiar to both of them, the horse would eventually find its way to Forever.
Climbing into the cab, still holding on to the baby who was now whimpering, Cody awkwardly buckled himself in. A quick check told him that, mercifully, Devon had left the keys in the ignition.
He started the truck, stepped on the gas and they were off.
Driving with one hand while holding the baby against him with his free arm proved to be tricky and definitely not something Cody had ever even remotely prepared for. But he didn’t have the luxury of doubting that he was up to it or of looking around for an alternative method. There was no time for any of that. A woman’s life—Layla’s mother’s life—depended on him being able to handle both the emergency and the baby.
Cody felt like he was running out of time.
He spared Devon an apprehensive glance. She was still unconscious, but he did see her chest rising and falling. At least she was still breathing.
“You hang in there, you hear me?” he ordered Devon. How could he have missed that she was still bleeding? How could he not have seen all that blood soaking through her dress? he upbraided himself. “I’ve never lost a mother after she gave birth to her calf and I sure as hell don’t intend to start with you.”
Cody stepped down harder on the gas. He could see Flint trying to keep up in the rearview mirror, but the stallion was falling behind.
“I’ve got a feeling that you’re all this little girl has, so don’t even think of checking out. You’re going to live, you understand? You’re going to live! We’re almost there,” he told her, saying anything and everything that came into his head.
If he stopped talking, he was sure he was going to lose Devon.
“The town
’s just over that hill. It’s not all that much to look at, but Forever’s got really good people. People who take you in and look out for you. They don’t care what your story is—although Miss Joan’ll ask. Miss Joan, that’s the woman who runs the diner. She’s like a mother to all of us. Acts all grumpy, but she’s got a heart as big as the state. She’ll make sure you’re warm and fed—she did with the four of us after our dad died. Did it so that it didn’t seem like charity because Connor, he wouldn’t have accepted any charity. Ever,” Cody said. “He’s way too proud. But Miss Joan, she always found a way to get around that. She’ll just melt when she sees this baby of yours, even if she tries not to show it. And she’ll give you advice you’ll think you don’t need—but you will.”
The road ahead was wide open and empty. One hand clutching the steering wheel, he allowed himself to look in Devon’s direction.
She was still unconscious. Her head was moving ever so slightly because of the vibrations caused by the increased speed.
Fear clawed at him. Fear that he wasn’t going to make it to the clinic in time.
“You’re not going to die, you hear me?” he told her. “I’ve never filled out a death report because of someone dying on my watch and I’m not going to start now. They’re too long. They’ve got to be at least nine, ten pages long. You can’t put me through that after I helped to deliver your baby, you hear me?”
Pushing down on the accelerator as hard as he could, he saw the outskirts of Forever rushing closer to him. It was just up ahead, within reach.
And then he breeched the city limits.
Keeping an eye out for any pedestrians and other cars, both of which were scarce, Cody tore straight through the center of Forever. The next moment, he was passing the town square, where the annual Christmas tree was always displayed.
Veering to the right and then to left, he didn’t slow down until he reached his destination.
He practically put his foot through the floor as he pushed down on the brake as hard as he could.
The tires screeched in high-pitched protest as they came to a halt inches away from the front of the clinic.
Chapter Three
As usual, the waiting room of Forever’s lone medical clinic was very close to filled. It was the only available medical facility for fifty miles and the people of Forever were grateful for that. It wasn’t all that long ago that the clinic had stood empty, its last physician having moved away thirty years ago. There was something comforting about having someone to turn to because they felt ill, or just because a husband or wife had nagged them into availing themselves of an annual—or bi-annual—exam.
Startled by the combined, unnerving sound of screeching tires and squealing brakes, everyone in the clinic’s waiting room turned in unison toward the noise. As a rule, Forever was thought of by its residents as a sleepy little town that no one outside of the area ever really noticed and where nothing of consequence ever happened.
That meant that no one, either out of boredom or a sense of competitiveness, engaged in car races or harrowing displays of one-upmanship.
So when the teeth-jarring noise pierced the morning air, every patient within the waiting room, as well as the one nurse manning the desk, Debi White Eagle, instantly glanced in the direction of the bay window. The window looked out toward the front of the clinic.
“What the hell was that?”
Rancher Steven Hollis jumped to his feet, verbalizing what everyone else in the room was thinking.
The question didn’t go unanswered for more than a couple of quick beats. Almost immediately thereafter, the roomful of patients witnessed what all would have readily agreed was a very unlikely sight: a bare-chested Deputy Cody McCullough bursting into the clinic with what appeared to be a newborn baby in his arms. The baby was wrapped in his uniform shirt.
Debi, a surgical nurse by vocation as well as one of the most recent additions to Forever’s population, vacated her desk and rushed over to Cody.
“What happened?” she asked.
Cody quickly transferred Layla into her arms. “The baby’s mother is in the truck. She’s lost a lot of blood and I need help.”
“Holly!” Debi yelled over her shoulder toward the rear of the clinic. “We need a doctor out here, STAT!”
It was an order she was accustomed to issuing when she worked at the hospital in Chicago. Here, however, the word left more than one of the patients looking at the others in bewilderment.
Grabbing the fresh lab coat she’d brought in for one of the doctors, Debi quickly removed Cody’s shirt from around the tiny body and rewrapped the newborn in the lab coat. Acting in the interest of practicality, not to mention cleanliness, she figured the doctor would forgive her.
“Here,” she said, giving Cody back his shirt. “You don’t want to be out of uniform, Deputy.”
With that, Debi immediately turned toward the most maternal patient available to her, Anita Moretti, who had five children and a brood of grandchildren of her own. “Anita, hold the baby,” she requested, then looked at Cody. “Where’s the mother?”
“Out here.” He threw the words over his shoulder as, shrugging back into his shirt, he ran outside, secretly almost afraid of what he would see once he opened the truck’s passenger door.
“Where is she?”
The question came from Dan Davenport, the doctor who had initially reopened the clinic and who was currently in charge of it as well as the care of the citizens of Forever.
Cody was already at the truck. He threw open the passenger door and unbuckled the seat belt that was the only thing holding Devon in place and semiupright.
As carefully as he could, he lifted Devon out of the vehicle. The lower half of her dress was soaked with her blood.
Dan attempted to take the unconscious woman from him, but Cody shook his head. He wasn’t about to let her go. “No, I’ve got her.”
“This way,” Dan said needlessly as he and Debi went back into the clinic ahead of Cody. “What happened?” Dan asked. “Did you find her this way?”
More than a dozen set of eyes looked in their direction as Cody carried the woman in.
“No, she was conscious and screaming when I found her,” Cody answered, giving no indication that he even saw the other people in the room.
“Was she still in labor or had she given birth already?” Dan asked, leading the way to the room where he and his partner, Dr. Alisha Cordell-Murphy, performed both the simple surgeries and the ones that were classified as emergencies.
“As far as I could see, she had just started,” Cody told him, aware that every word was being greedily absorbed by all the people in the waiting room. “I tried to help her. When she gave birth, I thought she’d be okay,” Cody went on. “I didn’t realize...” His voice drifted off helplessly.
It was clear to Dan by Cody’s tone that he felt guilty that the situation had somehow devolved to this point.
“Not your fault,” Dan told him, indicating the freshly prepared gurney in the room. “People don’t realize that there are a lot of unforeseeable elements that can go wrong as a baby’s being born.”
“What have we got here?” Alisha Cordell-Murphy asked, peering into the room in response to Holly’s summons. Her eyes widened when she saw the unconscious woman. “Omigod, who is she?” she asked, looking from Dan to the man who was covered in the woman’s blood. She had only been in Forever a little over a year now, but she was acquainted—at least by sight—with everyone who lived within the area. This one was definitely not anyone she knew.
“Cody found her and brought her in,” Dan answered.
Cody gave her the highlights. “Her truck was pulled over on the side of the road. I wouldn’t have even seen it if she hadn’t screamed,” he confessed.
“I need plasma,” Dan declared. “It looks like she’s lost
more blood than she can afford to.”
Debi, who had come into the room with them, was cutting away the woman’s clothing, preparing to put a sterile gown on her. Holly, who had already brought in the plasma, was now wordlessly preparing what she assumed the doctors were going to need to stop the hemorrhaging as well as to get a transfusion going.
Cody took a step back, and then another, giving everyone else there room to work. He felt as if he was just in the way.
“I’ll just wait outside,” he said to no one in particular as he took another step back.
Dan looked up, sparing him a fraction of a moment. “Don’t go too far away. I’ve got a few more questions you might be able to answer.”
“I don’t know more than I just told you, but sure, I’ll just be in the waiting room,” Cody told the doctor, but he knew he was talking to himself. Everyone else in the room was busy, doing their best to try to save the woman’s life.
Concerned and more than a little agitated, Cody slipped out.
The minute he was back in the waiting room, a barrage of questions rose all around him, coming from all different directions.
“You know her?”
“Where’d you find her?”
“Is this her baby?”
“Where’s the father?”
There were more, all mingling with one another until it was just a huge wall of sound.
“Everyone, hush,” Anita Moretti scolded, raising her voice to be heard above the rest. She was still holding the baby and rocking her as she patted the baby’s bottom, doing her best to soothe the infant the way she had with each one of her children and grandchildren in turn. “Can’t you people see that he’s been through a lot, too?” Turning toward Cody, Mrs. Moretti smiled at him, the perennial, protective mother. “Don’t pay them any mind, Cody. They’re just looking for something exciting to talk about over dinner tonight. You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to.”
“There’s not much to talk about,” Cody told her, taking a seat and glancing around at the others. He was grateful for the woman’s concern, but he was also very familiar with and understood a small-town mentality, especially since he’d become one of Sheriff Rick Santiago’s deputies. “I was running late and only noticed the truck on the side of the road when I heard screams coming from it.”
COWBOY AND THE BABY, THE Page 3
