Rough Around the Edges

The light showers that were falling when he’d entered the pub had turned into a full-fledged storm while he’d been inside. He turned the collar of his jacket up, but it did little to keep the March rain off his neck. He hunched his shoulders in. But it was more than the rain that was making him feel beaten down.

There had to be something he could do.

He knew that if he didn’t come up with a solution—and soon—everything he’d worked for these past few years, everything he’d dreamed of over these past ten years, would mean nothing. He’d be done for. It didn’t seem fair that a random act of birth could have such an effect on a man’s life, a man’s future and that of his family’s.

O’Rourke hurried to the rear of the building, to the postage-stamp-size parking lot that was filled to capacity tonight. He dug into his pocket for his car keys.

Had he been born on the other side of the Atlantic, today would have been just another day in his life, a day in which he was working toward the culmination of his dream.

Instead, it was one day less he had. One day closer to when he had to leave. Leave the country, leave his hopes and his dreams. Sure, he could attempt to start over again back home in Ireland. After all, the dream had begun there, in his head. But it was right here, in a converted loft in Bedford’s Industrial Plaza, that all the visible components were housed.

To Shawn Michael O’Rourke, America really was the land of opportunity. He’d found everything he’d needed on this side of the ocean: the education he required and the financial backers, both men of experience and dreamers like himself. Dreamers who weren’t content only to dream, but to do.

All that wouldn’t mean anything anymore come thirteen days from today. That was his deadline. In thirteen days, he was to be gone from these shores. To return home just another failed dreamer.

Muttering words under his breath he knew his late, sainted mother would have taken a very dim view of, O’Rourke got into his van. The rain followed him in, covering the steering wheel and everything else in its path with a fine layer of mist before he shut the door. He hardly noticed. He jammed his key into the ignition and turned it. The motor hummed to life, along with the CD he’d left in his CD player, a compilation of songs from the seventies and eighties. He loved everything American.

Gloria Gayner began extolling the need to find some “hot stuff” as he drove out of the parking lot. He didn’t need any hot stuff, he thought. He needed a miracle, pure and simple.

O’Rourke frowned as he looked out the windshield. It wasn’t the state of his brain but the rain that was beating down that made it hard for him to see. Had he imbibed enough at the Shamrock to cloud his mind, he would have happily continued until he would have gotten good and drunk.

No, he wouldn’t have, he thought, turning down another street. Drinking to the point where his problem no longer seemed important was only a temporary fix, one with a huge price tag on in. Namely the morning after. Tying one on with his friends would only bring him a huge headache and interfere with his being able to think.

He needed to be clearheaded. There were responsibilities weighing on his shoulders, people depending on him, both here and in Ireland. People he was going to let down in thirteen days. Not that anyone would say anything. But he’d feel as if he was letting them down.

Damn, there had to be a way.

Without realizing it, he fingered the St. Jude medal he wore, a last gift from his mother, as he waited for the light to change. St. Jude, patron saint of lost causes. That had been him, once, a lost cause, until something had brought him around, taking him away from a life of carousing to something far more steady. His mother swore it was her prayers to the saint whose medal he wore around his neck. He figured it was his finally coming to grips with his father’s death that had done it.

Maybe if he thought long enough and hard enough, he’d come up with a solution. One that would keep him from being sent back to his native Ireland with his tail between his legs now that his visa, and every single extension he could put on it, was finally up.

The streets he was driving through were close to being deserted, even though it was only a little after nine in the evening. On a night like tonight, people stayed in their homes.

And that’s where he should be, O’Rourke decided. Home. For as long as it still was home to him.

He noticed that the rain seemed to be coming down harder. Angel’s tears, his mother used to say. She also said the angels were shedding the tears because of him.

He could see her, even now, fixing him a look with those deep blue eyes of hers, her arms crossed before her as she watched him come staggering in in the wee hours of the morning. Following the same path his late father had before him.

“When are you ever going to amount to something, Shawn Michael? You’re my firstborn, boyo. What am I going to say to my Maker when the time comes to face him and let him know what I did with the life he sent me to guide?”

O’Rourke smiled now, his mother’s words echoing in his head as clearly as if she’d actually spoken them. “You died before I could show you, eh, Mum?” he murmured to the memory that existed in his mind. “Except, I guess I won’t be showing you at that, not if this fine government has its way,” he added with a sigh as he turned down the next block.

Kitt Dawson didn’t think the day could get much worse. But each time she had thought that today, fate, with its twisted sense of humor, had gone out of its way to prove her wrong.

Kitt gritted her teeth together, grabbing on to the steering wheel even though she wasn’t moving. Here it came, another one. Another killer contraction. She held her breath, praying for it to end.

The top of her head felt as if it was going to come off. And then the contraction ebbed away, leaving her shaken, sweaty and scared.

She loosened her fingers from around the steering wheel. The baby wasn’t due for another two weeks. The fact that it was coming didn’t really surprise her, not beyond the initial salvo of disbelief when her water broke fifteen minutes ago. Nothing was going the way it should have gone today, why should this be any different?

It was a day for the record books. She’d lost her job because the aerospace company she was working for had lost its contract. She’d come home, hoping for a word of comfort, only to discover that she’d lost the foundation of her life as well. Jeffrey, the man to whom she’d given her heart, not to mention half her apartment, had left. Cleaned out the apartment the way he never had while they were living together. He’d taken everything of worth, including the new car he was supposed to have taken in for an oil change today. Taken it and every single dime she had in the world. He’d cleaned out the joint bank account as neatly as he had the apartment.

It had been her bank account, really. She’d been the one to put the money in. The only time he touched it was to take money out. She’d made herself a million excuses, saying things would get better once Jeffrey was back on his feet again.

He’d found his feet all right, she thought now. Found them and used them to run off with her things and the leggy brunette down the hall.

She should have seen it coming, Kitt upbraided herself. Maybe she had at that, but had refused to acknowledge it because love was blind. And she had loved Jeffrey. Dearly.

And now she was paying for it. Also dearly.

Okay, so love was blind, but she was supposed to have brains.

She was also supposed to have an umbrella, she thought as she looked through the windshield of her dead car with mounting exasperation.

It was raining. Not drizzling the way the weatherman had laughingly promised, but raining. Building-an-ark-and-collecting-two-of-everything kind of raining. And her car, the second-hand lemon that had actually belonged to Jeffrey, had just died a few feet passed the intersection, refusing to come back to life.

Just like Jeffrey after he’d discovered that she was pregnant, she thought, struggling hard not to give in to bitterness.

Well, the car was not about to suddenly rise from the dead and the rain was not about to abate. She had no choice but to get out and walk.

“It just keeps getting better and better,” she muttered, snapping off her seat belt.

Opening the door, Kitt wiggled out from behind the steering wheel she was wedged against. Another contraction began to build. Kitt froze. The pain that ran through her felt almost lethal, stealing her breath away with a vengeance. She had to get to the hospital. Now. She was in no mood to give birth on the corner of MacArthur and Fairview.

The way her luck was running, the next thing that would happen would be a flash flood.

With growing despair, she looked up and down the street. Nothing.

Why didn’t they have cabs prowling the streets here? She’d heard they did that in the big cities, why was that a restricted practice? For that matter, where was a police car when you needed one? If she’d gone through that light, she bet one would have popped out of the ground with a pre-printed ticket on the dashboard.

Maybe that wasn’t fair, but she didn’t feel very fair right now. She felt angry and cheated and in pain.

The rain lashed at her from all directions, pushed around by the wind that went first one way, then another. Kitt struggled to keep her orientation. She started to feel dizzy.

Thoughts began to slip in and out of her head like pulses of lights on a faulty circuit.

Maybe she could find a phone and call 911. The police were bound to get here faster than any cab she’d call.

Now all she had to do was find a phone.

Now all she had to do was see in this godforsaken awful weather, she amended. It seemed as if actual sheets of rain were coming down, wiping out any visibility beyond two, maybe three feet. Squinting, Kitt could barely make out the traffic signal across the street.

A haloed green ball of light shone like a feeble beacon. Kitt stepped off the curb, praying she could get across the street before another contraction hit, incapacitating her. Biting her lower lip, her head down against the wind, she tried to cross the intersection as quickly as possible.

Her own bulk combined with the lashing rain slowed her down. The light turned yellow just as she’d made it hardly more than halfway across the street. Pushing herself, she strove to move faster. Her eyes were half closed, trying to keep the rain at bay.

The squeal of brakes from the oncoming vehicle had her screaming in response. The next second, there was water hitting her not just from above, but from the street as well, drenching her legs as her foot made contact with the sidewalk.