Shelter Mountain (Virgin River #2)(98)

“Okay, we’re outta here,” Jack said. “Come on, Rick, let’s do it.”

“It’ll be okay, Jack,” Paige said.

“I know,” he said, but as he said it, he was rushing for his coat and flying out the back door, Rick on his heels. Jack went to the driver’s side of Rick’s little truck, because he couldn’t ride. He was too wound up, too worried. Rick went along with this, knowing better than to argue with the guy now. He tossed him the keys and Jack started the truck, threw it into gear and tore out of town before Rick’s door was closed.

It was a long ten minutes to the cabin, and through it all Rick kept trying to talk him down. “She knows what she’s doing,” he said. “You don’t have to worry about Mel—she’d call.” Jack said nothing. He flew down the road, taking those sharp turns real tight and fast. Rick felt his own panic rising, after what he’d just been through. He tried not to let it show. “You know everything is going to be—”

Rick was cut off midsentence as Jack screeched to a stop behind his own truck, the left front of which was rammed into a fallen tree. “God,” he said, jumping out of Rick’s little truck and running to his own. “Mel!” he yelled, opening the driver’s door. Finding the cab empty, he looked for blood, for her bag. Neither was evident, so he took off at a dead run, bounding over the huge tree and racing toward the cabin.

He blew into the house and slipped on the wood floor, nearly falling on his ass, his boots and clothes dripping wet from the rain and muck. “Mel!” he called.

“Jack,” she called back, her voice small and strained.

He saw a soft glow coming from the bedroom and went toward it. She was propped against the pillows in the bed, sheet drawn over her.

“It’s happening,” she said.

He rushed to her side and knelt. “I’ll take you now. Take you to the hospital.”

“Too late,” she said. “I can’t take the ride now—I’m too far into this. But you can get John, see if he can come….” She grunted against a contraction, grabbing Jack’s hand. “Phone’s out,” she said. “Go back to town, call John, tell him my water broke and I’m at eight. Can you remember that?”

“Got it.” He ran back to Rick and repeated the message, and then the boy was gone. Jack ran back to Mel and took her hand. “Tell me what to do,” he said.

The contraction passed and she let out her breath. “Okay. Okay, listen to me. Mop up your mess before you kill yourself slipping in a puddle, get some dry clothes on, see if you can get a little more light in here and then we’ll see where we are. It’s going to be a while. Maybe John will make it. Whew,” she said, leaning back. “I don’t know when I’ve ever been happier to see you.”

Her face took on a look of pain and she began to breathe, short and shallow, panting, while he stood looking down at her, helpless. When she recovered, she said, “Jack, do what I told you to do.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Right.”

He started by going for a towel in the bathroom to wipe up the puddles he’d dragged in and there he found her clothes, hastily discarded, panties a little bloody, and wet towels left in a pile on the floor. He kicked everything aside, clearing a path in the bathroom. He opted for the kitchen mop, cleaning up the trail of water that went from the front door to the bedroom. He left his boots by the front door. Hurrying, he pulled off his jeans and shirt, adding them to the pile of wet towels and clothes, put on fresh, dry clothes and socks, and went again to her bedside.

“Do we have any more candles?” she asked him.

“Not that I know about.”

“How about flashlights?”

“Yeah, I have a couple of those.”

“Get the strongest one. If he starts to come before John gets here, I might be able to hold the light for you.”

“For…Me?”

“Jack, there are only two of us here. One of us is going to push him out, one of us is going to catch him. Which job do you want?”

“Oh,” he said, going for the flashlight. He took it back to her and demonstrated its strength by shining it right in her eyes. She winced and he turned it off.

She rubbed her eyes. “Oh, brother. Maybe you should push him out. I’m calmer. Yeah, I vote for you,” she said.

He knelt with one knee on the floor beside her bed. “Melinda, how can you be sarcastic right now?”

“You know, you own a bar and you don’t keep alcohol at home,” she said, breathless. “I could have had a shot—it sometimes slows labor.”

“We’ll have some on hand for the next one.”

“You keep talking like that’s gonna happen,” she said. “How ridiculous.”

“I think my record speaks for itself. But, Mel, I just want to make them, not deliver them.”

“I hear ya, buddy,” she said, and then was gripped by another contraction. She tried to pant through it, but they were getting tougher—longer and closer together. She looked at her watch. “Oh, man,” she said, breathless. “This is going to turn me into a much more sympathetic midwife. Yii.”

“What should I do?” he asked.

“Pull up a chair…Or something. All we do now is labor.”