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“No bars. How should I do this?”
He was partnering with her, not insisting. She, too, had expertise here.
“I agree. We’ll do your plan. But I think, if you can take most of the mother’s weight, I can add stability on her other side and take one of her legs.”
“How long until the baby gets here?” he asked.
“Her contractions are a steady five minutes apart. But under these circumstances, all bets are off.”
“Let’s move then.”
When Halo pulled the child from Mary’s arms, walking away from the car to put her in her seat, she began screaming and fighting him. That child must be terrified. Unfortunately, there was zero time to calm and cuddle her. Their focus had to be single-mindedly on getting the mother to the hospital. It was a really bad sign that she’d been unconscious for as long as she had. And using Halo’s medical equipment to make her assessments, Mary wasn’t sure the woman would survive the drive.
They could try.
The most they could do was try.
With the little girl strapped in her seat and Max against the passenger side window, Mary sat in the middle so she could reach forward and get to the mom. Halo had placed the mother in the front with the seat pushed back as far as possible, then leaned her back as far as possible.
Mary hoped that by laying her out, they might slow her labor.
Was that a thing?
Was it the right thing?
Mary wasn’t a labor and delivery nurse. They didn’t take laboring women on the helicopter under any circumstances. In the hospital, she was the one racing in with a crash cart. These were very different skill sets.
“Drive, Halo.”
And he threw them into gear and continued down the road. Slower than she would want. But Halo was balancing their speed. Fast enough to get them to safety, slow enough not to risk that safety on the way.
Mary was clinging to good fortune—a functional car, a man who had expert driving skills. There was no reason to dwell on what-ifs.
There was plenty of big and bad and dangerous up the road.
They were basically driving blind.
Though the child, strapped into her seat, screamed and screamed without cease,
As near as Mary could figure, the kid—though old enough to get out of the seat and out of the door—was still very young. She had been quiet all the way through the forest, wrapped in a plastic tarp and held securely in Halo’s arms. The screaming began when Halo took her from Mary to move her to the rental car.
And now, nothing would soothe her.
The entire route was dark.
The electricity was down.
If the mother didn’t rouse, this was probably going to be a cesarean. And if the mother was to die en route, the baby would die, too. Mary didn’t say that out loud, but she was sure Halo understood.
The wipers screeched back and forth along the windshield, doing little to improve the view.
Halo seemed to find his sweet spot between fast enough to make progress and slow enough not to get them into worse trouble.
Imagine getting in yet another accident on the way.
Halo’s magic shirt was their guide. As they left the scene of the car accident, he’d used his handheld device to program in the nearest hospital. And if Mary watched closely enough, she could see the forearms swell and decrease.
Braced in that moment, Mary was startled when her phone rang.
