She felt as if she was being turned inside out and still she pushed, pushed until her chest felt as if it was caving in, as if her very body was disintegrating from the effort.
And then she heard a tiny cry, softer than all the other noise. Sweeter.
Her head spinning from lack of oxygen, Joanna fell back against the tablecloth, the grass brushing against her soaked neck. She was too exhausted even to breathe.
Rick stared at the miracle in his hands. The miracle was staring back, eyes as wide and huge as her mother’s. He felt something twist within him. He was too numb to identify the sensation.
“You’ve got a girl,” he whispered to Joanna, awe stealing his voice away.
He dripped with perspiration, but he knew it was chilly. There was nothing to wrap the baby in. He stripped off his shirt and tucked it around the tiny soul. The infant still watched him with the largest eyes he’d ever seen.
Several feet away from him, a fire truck came to a screeching halt. He hardly acknowledged its arrival. All he could do was look at the baby he’d helped to bring into the world.
Joanna’s baby.
The scene around them was almost surreal. People were shouting, firefighters were scrambling down from the truck, running toward them. Running toward the fire.
In the midst of chaos, an older firefighter hurried toward them, his trained eyes assessing the situation quickly. Squatting, he placed a gloved hand on the woman on the ground as well as one on the man holding the newborn. “You two all right?”
“Three,” Rick corrected, looking down at the new life tucked against his chest. “And we’re doing fine.” The smile faded as he looked at Joanna. “I mean—” She’d gone through hell in the last few minutes. He might be fine, but she undoubtedly wasn’t. “She needs to get to a hospital.”
Rising to his feet, the firefighter nodded. “I can see that.” Turning, he signaled to the paramedics, who were just getting out of the ambulance. The firefighter waved them over, then glanced back at Rick as the two hurried over with a gurney. He nodded toward the burning buildings. “Anyone else in there?”
“I don’t know.” Rick looked to Joanna for confirmation. She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I just got here myself,” he explained.
“Not just,” the firefighter corrected, looking at the baby in Rick’s arms.
Rick had no time to make any further comment. A paramedic took the baby from him. He felt a strange loss of warmth as the child left his arms.
“We’ll take it from here,” the paramedic told him kindly. “Thanks.”
The firefighter and a paramedic had already lifted Joanna onto the gurney. Strapping her in, they raised the gurney and snapped its legs into place.
“You the father?” the first paramedic asked.
Rick was already stepping back. He shook his head in response. “Just a Good Samaritan, in the right place at the right time.”
He avoided looking at Joanna when he said it.
She and the baby were already being taken toward the ambulance. The rear doors flew open. Rick remained where he was, watching them being placed inside. For one moment, he had the urge to rush inside, to ride to the hospital with her.
He squelched it.
He was in the way, he thought, stepping back farther as hoses were snaked out and firefighters risked their lives to keep the fire from spreading.
“Lucky for the little lady you were in the neighborhood,” the older firefighter commented, raising his voice to be heard above the noise.
The rear lights of the ambulance became brighter as the ignition was engaged. And then it was pulling away from the scene of the fire.
Away from him.
“Yeah, lucky.”
Rick turned and walked toward his car. Behind him, the firefighters hurried about the business of trying to stave off the fire before it ate its way down the block and up the hillside.
There was no doubt about it, Rick decided. He should have his head examined.
After he’d gone out to look over the proposed site for the construction of the new corporate home office, instead of returning to the regional office he was temporarily working out of, he’d taken a detour. Actually, it had been two detours.
He’d gone to see just how much damage there’d actually been to Joanna’s house. He was hoping, for her sake, that it wasn’t as bad as it had looked last night.
In the light of day, the charred remains of the last house on the block—a call to the fire station had informed him that the fire had started there with a faulty electrical timer—looked like a disfigured burned shell. But the firefighters had arrived in time to save at least part of Joanna’s house. Only the rear portion was gutted. The front of the house had miraculously sustained a minimum of damage.
Still, he thought, walking around the perimeter, it was going to be a while before the house was livable again.
With a shrug, Rick walked back to his car and got in. Not his problem. That problem belonged to her and her significant other, or whatever she chose to call the man who had fathered her baby.
As far as he was concerned, he’d done as much as he intended to do.
For some reason, after Rick had gone to what was left of Joanna’s house, he’d found himself driving toward Blair Memorial Hospital, where the paramedics had taken her last night.
Joanna didn’t look surprised to see him walk into her room.
The conversation was awkward, guarded, yet he couldn’t get himself to leave.
He had to know.
“You said last night that you weren’t married.”
He’d promised himself that if he did go to see her, he wasn’t going to say anything about her current state. The promise evaporated the moment he saw her.
“I wasn’t. I mean, I’m not.”
“Divorced?” he guessed.
“No.”
“Widowed?”
She sighed, picking at her blanket. Had he turned up in her life just to play Colombo? “No, and I’m not betrothed, either.”
She was playing games with him. It shouldn’t have bothered him after all this time, but it did. A great deal.
“So, what, this was an immaculate conception?” Sarcasm dripped from his voice. “What’s the baby’s father’s name, Joanna?”
She took a deep breath. “11375.”
He stood at the foot of her bed, confusion echoing through his brain. “What?”
“Number 11375.” She’d chosen her baby’s father from a catalogue offered by the sperm bank. In it were a host of candidates, their identities all carefully concealed. They were known only by their attributes and traits. And a number. “That’s all I know him by.”
Trying to be discreet, Joanna shifted in her bed. She was still miserably uncomfortable. No one had talked about how sore you felt the day after you gave birth, she thought. Something else she hadn’t come across in her prenatal readings.
She raised her eyes to Rick’s. His visit had caught her off-guard, but not nearly as much as his appearance in her bedroom last night had. All things considered, it was almost like something out of a movie. A long-ago lover suddenly rushing into her burning bedroom to rescue her. After that, she doubted very much if anything would ever surprise her again.
What kind of double talk was this?