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Her voice faded as he crossed back to Carly’s driveway. He didn’t think about it. Refused to think about anything except the mission at hand.
“Eric!” he called, jogging to the SUV. “We’re taking Short to the hospital. Callahan’s going to be with us. I need you to call ahead to hospital security and tell them what’s happening. I’ll be pulling up to the ER entrance. Tell them to let us through and Ellen’s car, but nobody else. It’s going to be a madhouse over there within an hour. They need to be ready for it. Tell them we can loan them men, and have them call me if they need to. Then call Katie and tell her what’s going on. Tell her I want Sean with me, and I might need her at the hospital, too. You stay put and keep the show running here. Nobody gets into either house. You understand?”
“Got it.”
Caleb glanced up to see Jamie putting Carly into the backseat of the car. “All right. Clear the barricades for me. We’re out of here in one minute.”
By the time he reached the car, Jamie had Carly inside and buckled in. He was leaning close, holding her hand and speaking soothing words in her ear, and Carly looked a little less scared than she had in her room.
“Okay, Short Round,” Caleb said as he pulled out onto Burgess and a dozen camera flashes went off. “Here’s where all your years of reckless driving pay off. Tell me again what the fastest route to the hospital is.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Carly threw up in Caleb’s nice car, and then she threw up in the wheelchair on the way to Labor and Delivery. Her headache got so bad, she wished someone would take pity on her and lop off the top of her skull. Instead, the nurses hustled her into a hospital gown and stuck her in a bed with an IV in her arm.
She’d seen that Baby Story show enough times to know the scary music was playing now, and it was time to either be brave or dissolve into helpless, mascara-streaking tears.
Carly had no problem with brave. She’d been born brave. It would be easier if she didn’t feel so astonishingly horrible, and if she weren’t terrified for the Wombat, but she could suck it up. She was going to be a mother. Sucking it up was her job now.
They’d given her some kind of steroid to help develop the Wombat’s lungs more quickly. She knew what it meant, even if no one seemed to want to say it out loud. It meant the Wombat might be breathing air soon. It meant they might have to take the Wombat out of her body before being pregnant killed her.
Being brave meant not thinking too hard about this. Which wasn’t a problem, because the ice pick in her head made thinking kind of unpleasant anyway.
Every single inch of her skin itched like mad. “Scratch me,” she told Jamie, who sat beside the bed, holding her hand.
“Hmm?”
“I’m itchy. Make yourself useful.”
He smiled at about a quarter of his usual wattage and shook his head. “It’s the magnesium sulfate,” he said, gesturing toward the IV. “The nurses said it might do that. I don’t think scratching’s going to help.”
The magnesium sulfate was to keep her from having a seizure. Another thing she didn’t want to think about. “Then distract me,” she demanded, squeezing her eyes shut. “Tell me something good.”
She felt the bed dip beside her as Jamie sat down on the edge. Behind her lids, she could see him—his tousled blond curls and those blue eyes soft with co
ncern. He had on jeans that probably cost as much as her car payment and a Western-style shirt with pearl snaps that made him look like a rodeo cowboy. The sexy kind, not the real kind with manure on their boots. She hoped she hadn’t puked on it. She really liked that shirt.
“This would probably be a bad time to tell you I love you,” he said.
“Terrible,” she agreed. But she squeezed his hand tighter, and something near her sternum got all warm and buttery. Heartburn.
The mattress bucked and creaked as Jamie maneuvered awkwardly, moving behind her, curving his body around hers. He wrapped an arm over her and snugged their clasped hands to her breasts. “Okay?”
She took a deep breath and relaxed against him, grateful for his warmth and the rise and fall of his chest. Grateful he was here. She tried to remember why she hadn’t been speaking to him, but her head hurt, and she decided high blood pressure and the possibility of seizures gave her a free pass.
“The Shrimp has hair now,” he said in his warm-honey voice. “He weighs more than three pounds, which is the same as four navel oranges.”
“That’s the least helpful weight comparison ever.”
He smoothed her hair back and kissed behind her ear. “Don’t blame me, I read it online. He has toenails, too. I figure that means he’ll do okay, even if he has to be born soon. Hair and toenails—those are the finishing touches, right? He’s all done cooking. The rest of the pregnancy is just to fatten him up.”
It was a comforting thought, and she liked knowing Jamie had been reading about the Wombat on the Internet. Also, her headache didn’t bother her as much with him holding her.
“It could be a girl,” she said.
“Yeah. What are you going to call her?”
“I don’t know.”
