Father On The Brink

But there were many kinds of poverty, she now understood. And William suffered from the basest kind Emotional poverty. Moral poverty. Poverty of the soul.

He wasn’t her husband, she reminded herself again. Which was good, now that she thought about it. Because that would give her a little more leverage when he came to take her son away from her.

She cried out as a new kind of pain shook her, and for the first time, she became afraid—really afraid. Afraid that something was going to go wrong with the baby, afraid of being alone for the rest of her life, afraid that no matter how hard she tried, she’d already ruined things irreparably.

She splayed her hands open over her belly, the closest thing she could manage to an embrace of her unborn son. “I’m sorry,” she whispered as tears stung her eyes. “Oh, sweetie, I’m so, so sorry.”

Cooper pounded the door with his closed fist for the third time, cursing Patsy with every other breath for giving him the wrong address. He punched the doorbell over and over and over, listening in helpless frustration. He was lifting his hand for one final knock when the radio in his pocket buzzed and crackled, and Patsy’s voice came over the line.

“Cooper?”

He withdrew the two-way with a snarl and lifted it to his lips. “Yeah?”

“Um, sorry, hon, but I think I sent you on a wild goose chase.”

He let every four-letter word he knew—and some more that he made up on the spot—parade across the front of his brain before he responded quietly, “What?”

“Uh, yeah. That dialysis note was from this afternoon. The guy’s been in and is safely back home now. I’m sorry. You don’t need to be where you are.”

Cooper was about to agree with her, was about to tell Patsy that where he actually needed to be was lying in the arms of a willing woman who cradled a big snifter of very expensive, very warm, brandy beneath his lips, when he heard an almost unearthly feminine scream erupt on the other side of the door he’d been about to pound off its hinges.

Immediately, he dropped his hand to the knob and twisted hard. But it wouldn’t budge. Another scream raged at him from inside, and without thinking, Cooper lifted his metal first-aid kit and brought it crashing down on the knob. Over and over again, he repeated the action, until he’d bashed what had been an elegant collection of brass curlicues and engravings into a twisted metal mess. Finally, the entire fixture failed, and he shoved his shoulder against the door, hard.

Inside, the house was dark. Only the reflection of a street lamp on the other side of the street colliding with the quickly falling snow prevented the foyer from being completely black. He heard someone gasping for breath somewhere beyond his vision, and assumed it to be the woman who had screamed. Cautiously, he took a few steps forward.

“Hello?” he called out. “Who’s there? Are you all right?”

His only reply was a stifled, disembodied groan.

“Hel-looo?” he tried again. “It’s okay. Don’t be scared. I’m a paramedic. I can help you.”

At first, he thought the woman had stopped breathing, so silent did the room become. His heartbeat quickened, rushing blood to warm the parts of his body he’d begun to fear had frozen. He pushed the hood of his sweatshirt back off his head, then raked his fingers through his snow-dampened, overly long, pale blond hair. He held his own breath, waiting for something, some indication that he wasn’t too late to remedy whatever had gone wrong in this house.

Finally, a tiny, feminine voice called from the other side of the room, “H-h-help me?”

Cooper took a few more strides in the direction from which the question had come. “Yeah, I can help you. Just tell me where you are.”

“H-help. Please.”

He opened his first-aid kit and pulled out a flashlight, switching it on to throw a wide ray of white light all around the room. The hazy halo finally settled on a woman in the corner. A woman whose dark hair was soaking wet with perspiration in spite of the chill in the house, and whose huge, gray eyes were terrified. A woman who was clutching a belly distended in the very late stages of pregnancy.

“Oh, no,” Cooper muttered. “No, no, no. Not this. Anything but this.”

The woman lifted her hand to him. “Help,” she whispered, her voice sounding thin and weak and exhausted. “Please…my baby. Help my baby.”

He threw his head back to stare into the darkness above him. Great. This was just great. Of all the damned, stupid, crazy luck, he had to wind up with a home birth. Because there was no way he was going to try to get this lady to the hospital. The only thing worse than a home delivery was a back seat of a Jeep in a blizzard delivery.

He sighed his resignation to the situation, set his flashlight and first-aid kit on a nearby coffee table and looked at the woman in the corner again.

“Are you here all alone?” he asked her.

She nodded. “Husband’s…out of town.”

He scrubbed a hand over his face, a singularly troubled gesture. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to get you to the hospital in time. Looks like we’re going to have to deliver that baby right here. Is that okay with you?”

She nodded weakly, but said nothing.

Cooper felt the chill winter wind sweep past him from behind and went back to close the front door. He spied a fireplace upon his return, noting gratefully that it was already laid for a fire and needed only the flick of a match to provide some much needed warmth. There was a box of matches on the mantel, settled amid a half dozen framed photographs of the woman who was crumpled into a ball in the corner of the room. He ignored the pictures, scratched a couple of matches on the side of the box and tossed them into the kindling. Within moments, the flames began to flicker upward into the wood, bathing the room in a faint yellow glow, warming his face and hands.

He turned back to the woman. “Okay. That’ll get us started. We’ll have to deliver the baby down here, since I assume there’s no heat anywhere else in the house. We’re going to need some clean sheets, some water…I think I have everything else we’ll need in my kit. So, where do you keep all that stuff, and where can I wash up?”

Katherine stared back at the huge apparition that had come out of nowhere, feeling anything but relieved. In the weak ray of the flashlight, with the scant flicker of flames in the fireplace illuminating him with an odd play of light and shadow, the only impression she had of him was that he was big, broad and blond. His voice, nch and masculine and anything but comforting, told her he was none too thrilled to be acting as midwife. But he’d said he was a paramedic. That meant he had to know something about childbirth, right? Certainly more than she knew herself.

The pain in her midsection seemed to have abated some after pelting her repeatedly with one severe spasm after another, and she took advantage of the opportunity to inhale a few deep, calming breaths. When she trusted her voice to remain steady, she gave the man the information he’d requested, then pointed toward the kitchen and told him he could wash up in there. Immediately, he disappeared into the direction she’d indicated, and Katherine slumped back against the wall. She had changed into a nightgown after her water had broken, but the fluid continued to leak from her in a steady flow. Now the white cotton fabric was cold and damp She wanted to be near the fire.

She was struggling to stand when the man returned and saw her intentions, so he helped her to her feet and led her to the sofa. Again she was struck by his size and solidity. She told herself if she were smart, she’d be afraid of him. But Katherine had never been any too intelligent where men were concerned, as evidenced by her current predicament. And for some reason, in spite of his size and demeanor and the fact that he was a complete stranger, this man didn’t frighten her at all.

“Where did you come from?” she managed to ask him as he settled her on the sofa. “How did you know I was here?” She couldn’t quite stop herself from asking further, “Did…did William send you?”

The man had turned his back to her and was busying himself with what looked like a very substantial first-aid kit. “Who’s William?” he asked, though his mind didn’t seem to be on the question.

“My…my husband. Did he…are you here because of him?”

The man shook his head, but still seemed to be preoccupied with making the proper preparations for bringing her son into the world. “Nope,” he said. “It’s just sheer, dumb luck that linked us up, lady. Sheer, dumb luck.”

She was about to ask him to elaborate on that, but a faint pain rippled up inside her again, and she squeezed her eyes shut, clenching her teeth together in an effort to ease the ache a bit.

“How long has the power been out?” the man asked her when he spun back around to look at her.

She dropped her hand to her belly, rubbing at another, less intense, contraction. “I don’t know. It was still daylight when my water broke—about four, four-thirty maybe. What time is it now?”

The man turned his wristwatch toward the dim glow of the flashlight. “Just past nine. You’ve been in labor for five hours?”

Katherine thought for a moment. The pains hadn’t really started until some time after her water broke, but for the life of her, she couldn’t quite remember now how long. “I don’t know,” she said again.

The man dropped to his haunches before her, bringing his face level with hers. She was able to tell a little bit more about him when he was up close this way, the growing light from the fire illuminating one side of his face, but not much more. At least one good cheekbone, she noted. And at least one vivid green eye. And a pair of lips, one half of which anyway, that were full and beautiful and still managed to be very, very masculine.

He started to extend his hand toward hers, then seemed to think better of it, and wove his fingers together on one knee. “What’s your name?” he asked her.

She opened her mouth to tell him the truth, then realized the truth was in fact a lie. She wasn’t Katherine Winslow. There was no Katherine Winslow. William had made her that with his farce of a wedding. Without him, she had no idea who she would be now. So she told the man, “I’m Katie Brennan.” It was what she had been called in her other life, a million years ago. And it seemed to suit her now.

“Katie Brennan,” the man repeated.

He smiled, and for the first time in what seemed a very long time, Katie felt a warming sense of relief seep into her. This time when he reached out for her, he carried through, taking her hand in his.

“Nice to meet you, Katie,” he said. “I’m Cooper. Cooper Dugan. And, like I said, I’m a paramedic. But I’ll be honest with you. I’ve never delivered a baby before. I mean, I know what to do—pretty much—but I’ve never actually…” His voice trailed off when he seemed to detect her growing sense of misgiving. “Is this your first?” he asked quietly.

She nodded, her sudden conviction about feeling safe faltering a little with his announcement.