Dance Away with Me(92)

Savannah cried out.

“Are you sure about that?” he asked.

“The night’s clear. The roads are dry. She can be at the hospital in no time.”

“You’re the authority.”

Tess carefully returned the stool to the back room. The crowd around Savannah had grown. Savannah cried out again. Ian returned to Tess’s side. She licked her dry lips and focused on the bridge of his nose. “Some women vocalize more than others.”

“That’s a lot of vocalization,” he said.

Savannah’s next outburst was the shriek of a woman in terrible pain. The intense pain a woman might experience if she were in precipitous labor.

Tess winced.

Ian regarded her quizzically. “This isn’t normal, is it?”

She managed a jerky shake of her head.

“Is there time to get her to the hospital?”

Before she could answer, Savannah screamed again. This time with a specific purpose. “Tess!”

Kelly spun around. “Tess, where are you?”

Panicked, Tess gazed up at Ian. “I can’t do this.”

“Sure you can,” he said.

“No! You don’t understand.”

“I do understand.”

“Then you know why.”

He looked into her eyes, taking his time, seeing everything, and then he nodded. “Okay. Tell me what to do.”

She looked away. “I can’t tell you what to do!”

“Sure you can.” But even as he said it, he was guiding her forward, a gentle hand in the small of her back. “I’m right here.”

“Let Tess in,” Kelly exclaimed.

His soothing, encouraging hand sifted up her spine, settled lightly on her shoulder, eased her through the women clustered around Savannah.

Savannah lay on the floor, her black knit maternity pants soaked, her face blotchy with pain and fear. Tess remembered how Savannah had kept pressing on the small of her back throughout the day. She’d been in labor and hadn’t known it.

Savannah’s breath came in short, hoarse gasps. “I didn’t want to be like Mom. Making a scene every time she had a cramp. I thought it was false labor.”

“If you’d a kept your legs crossed, you wouldn’t be in this fix,” Mr. Felder said.

“Out!” Ian ordered. “Everybody out of here!”

Artie grabbed Mr. Felder by the neck. “Let’s me and you have a little talk outside, Orland.”

Tess reached blindly for the hand of the woman standing closest to her. “You stay.” Only as the woman knelt beside her did she realize it was Kelly Winchester.

“It hurts so bad!” Savannah cried, looking younger than her nineteen years. “You didn’t tell me it would hurt this bad.”

Tess couldn’t control her own trembling. “Somebody call an ambulance.”

“Already on it,” Phish said.

The closest emergency service was in Valley City, fifteen miles away. Not that far.

Savannah gazed up at her from under her green spray of hair. “I’m scared.”

“You’re going to be fine.” The same words Tess had uttered to Bianca.

“What do you want me to do?” Kelly asked.

Tess searched her mind and couldn’t come up with a thing. She simply stood there, frozen and stupid.

“Phish, do you have a plastic tablecloth we can put under her?” Ian said. “And cover up the windows so she can have some privacy. Mrs. Winchester, find some clean dish towels, string, and scissors.”

Ian remembered what Tess couldn’t.

“The fire department’s on its way,” Phish said.

Only fifteen miles. They’d get here in time. They had to. Because Tess absolutely could not do this.

“Do something, Tess!” Savannah pleaded. “Make it stop hurting so bad.”

Tess stood there unmoving. Not speaking. Watching Bianca’s life drain away in a sea of blood.

A familiar male voice whispered in her ear. “Don’t make me slap you, sweetheart. I’m an artist, not a fighter.” And then he pinched her rear. Hard.

Tess’s head came up. She sucked in a fresh stream of air. “I . . . need to wash up.”

Ian turned her toward the sink behind the counter. She moved. One step at a time. She passed Kelly carrying a stack of clean dish towels. She unlocked her jaw and heard her own tremulous voice. “Get Savannah’s pants off.”

She began scrubbing up at the sink. Phish was at the windows, closing off the view of the crowd who’d gathered outside as Ian spread a plastic tablecloth on the floor. Tess stared at a box of disposable food preparation gloves, and then picked them up. After all Michelle’s talk of precipitous labor, it was her daughter who’d fallen victim.

Kelly had Savannah’s pants off. Swallowing hard, Tess knelt between her legs. Savannah’s water had broken. A vaginal exam in these conditions would risk infection, but without it, she couldn’t know how far Savannah’s labor had progressed. In the old days, she would have relied on instinct, but her instincts were shot, and she was paralyzed.

“Tess! Help me! Why aren’t you helping me?”

Swallowing her nausea, she rubbed Savannah’s arm. “Can you get on your hands and knees? Would that feel better?”