A Bachelor and a Baby

Joanna could almost feel her knuckles breaking out through her skin as she clenched his wrist.

“I mean now.” The word rode out on a torrent of pain.

Crouching beside her, Rick carefully peeled her fingers from his wrist. She’d almost cut off his circulation. “Hang on, the paramedics have got to be getting here soon.”

Instinctively she knew that they’d never make it in time.

Joanna shook her head violently from side to side, the pain all but cracking her in half. “Unless they’re invisible and already here…they’re going to be too late.” She looked up at him. God, but life was strange, bringing them together like this, now of all times. “You’re going to have to help me.”

There were a great many things he’d learned how to do, felt comfortable in undertaking. Delivering a baby was not one of them. “Me?”

Even with the throbbing sound echoing in her head, Joanna could hear the wariness in Rick’s voice. She couldn’t very well blame him. This wasn’t exactly her idea of ideal circumstances, either.

“I don’t…like this any better…than…you do, but this baby…is coming…and I need…someone…on the other end.” It was getting more and more difficult for her to talk, to frame complete thoughts. The pain kept snatching away her breath, railroading her mind. Panic was attempting to push its way into her consciousness.

Desperate, Rick looked over his shoulder at the other three houses on the block. They were all dark. Why hadn’t any lights gone on? Why wasn’t anyone home?

Where the hell was everyone?

Where they were didn’t matter. What did matter was that he was here and so was she. And she needed him.

It occurred to him that for the second time in his life, he hadn’t the slightest idea what to do. And both times had involved Joanna.

Someone had to be home on the next block. “Hold on,” he told her, beginning to rise to his feet. “I’ll go get help.”

The death grip tightened on his wrist, yanking him back down to her with a strength he didn’t think she was capable of.

“You are help…” She raised her eyes to his. “Please.”

Damn it, she still knew just how to rip into his heart. Even after all this time. Rick knew he had no choice.

“Okay. I—” He saw her jerk and stiffen, her eyes opening so wide, they looked as if they could fall out at any moment.

Joanna bit down on her lip so hard, she thought she tasted blood. A scream welled up in her throat, its magnitude nearly matching the agony assaulting her. It felt as if she were a holiday turkey and someone had taken a buzz saw to her body.

“I have to push…I have to push…I have to push.” The words came out in a frantic rush.

He knew next to nothing about what was involved in delivering a baby, but it had to take longer than this. She had to be wrong. “Are you sure?”

Clutching his hand as if it were her very lifeline, Joanna managed to pull herself up into a semi-sitting position. “I’m sure…oh God…I’m sure.” How did someone feel like this and still live?

Fear gnawed at her. Belatedly, recalling something Lori had said to the Lamaze class about not being able to pant and push at the same time, Joanna began panting hard. Praying that the action would at least temporarily divert this overwhelming urge she had to push the baby out.

Nothing she’d read or heard had prepared her for the reality of this. Before she’d ever walked into the sperm bank, she had read about every possible scenario that could happen at this juncture.

Every bad one now flashed before her, stealing away her courage.

She’d been so sure about this. So sure. She hadn’t even regretted her decision when the local school board had tactfully “suggested” that she take an unpaid leave of absence until after her baby was born. Since she was a high-school English teacher, her condition in the somewhat conservative town was a source of discomfort and embarrassment to a number of the parents. But even then, she’d been sure about her choice to go this route alone.

Now she wasn’t sure about being alone or even the route itself. Now there was only a sense of panic tearing into her with steel claws.

Here she was, her house in flames, her life in shambles, giving birth to a fatherless baby on the front lawn with the only man she’d ever loved inexplicably standing over her.

She felt as if she’d lost her grasp on reality.

“Ricky…I’m…scared.”

“Yeah, me, too,” he admitted.

His words echoed back to him. Joanna had been the only one he’d ever let his guard down with, the only one he’d ever allowed to witness his more human, vulnerable side. To the rest of the world, even from a very young age, he’d always presented a strong, unflappable front. It was expected of him. He was a Masters. Only Joanna had seen him as Ricky, as the boy he’d been and the man he was struggling to be.

But all that was behind him. Years behind him.

Rick squared his shoulders. He had to set the tone. What was there to be afraid of, anyway? Taking her hand, he looked down at Joanna. “Babies get born every day, right?”

Yes, but this one was different. This one was coming out of her. Shredding everything in its path. “Not this one.”

He needed a blanket, a sheet, something. Feeling helpless, Rick looked around. There was nothing available except for the tablecloth he’d used to shield Joanna’s face. Taking it, he tucked the material under her as best he could.

“Not exactly sterile, but better than the grass,” he explained when she looked at him with huge, questioning eyes.

Oh lord, here came another one. Joanna wrapped her fingers around the long blades of grass, ripping more than a few out of the ground as she arched her back, vainly trying to scramble to a place where the pain couldn’t find her.

But there was nowhere to go. The pain found her no matter how she twisted and turned, found her and constructed a wall all around her, imprisoning her.

There was no escape.

Panting again, Joanna tried to recall what she’d learned in her Lamaze classes. Nothing came to her. All she could remember was that the four of them, she, Chris Jones, Sherry Campbell and the instructor, Lori O’Neill, referred to themselves as the Mom Squad, four single women who’d bonded because they were facing life’s most precious miracle alone.

None of that helped now.

She froze, hardly hearing what Rick was saying to her, her body enveloped in one huge contraction.

What was it that Lori’d told the class the last session? Relax, that was it. Relax.

Right, easy for Lori to say. Of the four of them, she was the one who had the longest to go. Lori didn’t know what it felt like to be a can of tuna with a jagged can opener circling her perimeter.

But she did.

Joanna let loose with a blood-curling scream as another contraction, the hardest one yet, ripped into her on the tail of the last one. There was no end in sight. She was going to keep on having these contractions until she died.

Rick jerked back, covering his ear. She had risen up and screamed right against it. He could still feel the sound reverberating in his head.

“Good thing I’ve got two ears. I’m not going to be using my left one for a while.”

He shouldn’t be the one here, helping her give birth to another man’s baby, he thought. This should have been their child fighting its way into the world.

A sadness gripped his heart. He looked at her. “This is all wrong.”