Chapter 16: Seat's Taken

The streets below the Harbor Grand were running with water, so Orin took the back road to the hospital with the wipers on high.

"Talk to me," he said.

"I can't." I gripped the door handle as a pain went around my back. "Call Maeve."

He did it with one hand, with the phone against his beard.

"She's on shift at seven," he said. "She's already at the hospital."

"Tell her."

He told her.

I heard her voice come out of the phone, tiny and sharp, and I heard the word "Garrick" and the word "drive."

"She says breathe out slowly and don't push," he said.

"I'm not pushing."

"She says if I get you killed, she'll bury me in the gutters."

I laughed, and the laugh turned into a groan.

He drove with both hands on the wheel and his eyes steady.

Twice the truck slid on standing water, and each time he said, "Got it," in a flat, quiet voice.

I held onto that voice.

Maeve met us at the emergency doors with a wheelchair and two other nurses.

She had her hair tied back, and she was already in scrubs.

"Hi, Gwen," she said. "You're having a baby."

"It's too early!"

"She doesn't know that. Orin, park the truck and get back here. You're on the list."

"I'm on the list?" he said.

"I wrote you on it last week."

They took me through a pair of doors, and the doctor on call said the same thing Maeve had, in more words.

The medicine that had stopped labor last time did nothing now.

I was too far along, and the baby was coming.

I had no time to be afraid.

The pain took all of me, and then it gave me back, and then it took me again.

Orin came in and sat down in the chair beside the bed.

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