“’Tis too soon,” Ceara cried, echoing his own thoughts.
“It’s fine,” he lied. “I’ll get you right in. On the way, I’ll call Stevenson, and she’ll meet us at the ER. They can give you a shot to stop the labor.” They could do that, couldn’t they? Quincy prayed to God that was normal procedure. “You’ll be fine; our baby will be fine. No worries, okay?”
Quincy got Ceara comfortably settled on the rear seat, slipped back out of the cab, slammed the door, and checked to be sure he’d brought his cell phone before leaping in on the driver’s side. Pawing the dash cup for his damned keys, he swore viciously when he didn’t find them. They had to be here. He’d left them in the truck earlier that day. He was sure of it.
Just before the dome light blinked out, he caught a glimmer of metal from the corner of his eye.
Floorboard
. In the dark, he skimmed his hand over the rubber mat, finally found the keys, and shoved them into the ignition.
“Ah-hhh-h!” Ceara wailed behind him. “’Tis bad, Quincy. ’Tis verra bad.”
Quincy gunned the engine, jerked the shift into reverse, and backed away from the house at such a speed that clumps of grass and gravel struck the roof of the cab and rained down over the windshield. As he headed toward the main gate to his property, his first instinct was to crawl along the gravel road so as not to jar Ceara in the backseat. But then he remembered the afternoon Symphony had dropped her foal. At high speeds, his truck had sailed over the rough spots. Pedal to the floor mat.
Once he reached the asphalt two-lane road and turned toward town, Quincy called the ER, instructing the head nurse to prepare for Ceara’s arrival and call Stevenson. When he’d done all he could, he focused on his driving, not caring when the speedometer bumped the hundred mark. He knew this road and could have taken the curves in his sleep. Unless an elk stepped out in front of the truck, Quincy would deliver Ceara safely to St. Matthew’s ER in record time, faster than any damned ambulance would, anyway.
As he maneuvered the truck, Quincy could no longer hold the fear at bay. Twenty-five weeks. Could a baby survive when it came so early? He had no idea. Their little girl might die. Just the thought brought a burn to Quincy’s eyes and a sharp ache to his chest. And, oh, God, what about Ceara? This had been brought on by her healing the deep cut on his wrist. He just knew it. Using her gifts, even for small things, made her woozy and sometimes weak at the knees. What kind of energy drain had it caused her and the baby to heal a bleeding, gaping wound?
He heard a muffled scream and jammed his foot harder against the pedal. Over the roar of the engine and the road noise he heard her sob, “Me babe. I’ve kilt her. How ye must hate me fer that.”
Quincy’s stomach lurched. “No!
No
, Ceara. Don’t even think such a thing. I love you with all my heart, and I always will. This wasn’t your fault, honey. It just happened, and you reacted. Knee-jerk response, we call it. You didn’t have time to think. You just did what had to be done.”
“And our wee girl is dying because I did. I’ve kilt her, Quincy. I know it.”
“She’s
not
going to die.” He heard the rising note of hysteria in his own voice and somehow found the strength to clamp it down. “It’s going to be okay! I promise you! Stevenson is the best OB in Crystal Falls. She’ll be waiting for us. She’ll know just what to do.”
Ceara moaned as another pain struck. It seemed to Quincy that they were coming hard and fast. He hadn’t thought to time them, damn it. How could he be such an idiot? He glanced at the dash clock.
Twelve twenty-two
. “Breathe, Ceara. Try not to tense up. Can you do that for me?”
He heard her trying to haul in a deep breath. Then she let out a keening wail. He wanted so badly to pull over and help her through this. But every second counted, and he didn’t dare.
“Ach,” she said faintly, “’twas bad.”
“Better now?”
“Yes, better. But it’ll come again.” She sighed shakily. “Quincy?”
“What, sweetheart?” Quincy braked, wrestled the truck around a tight turn, and floored it again.
“Yer words that ye say. ‘I love you.’ I ken that they mean much to ye. Tonight, right afore I bumped ye and ye cut yerself, ye looked sore disappointed because I dinna say them back.”
Right then, the last thing Quincy cared about was hearing those words. Hell, if Ceara didn’t have that depth of feeling for him, he loved her enough to make up for it. And he’d spend the rest of his life making her happy.
Please, God, let her live so I can do that, and please protect our baby. It’ll break Ceara’s heart if our little girl dies, and it’ll break mine, too
.
“’Tis na the way of it to home,” she pushed out, her voice barely reaching him over the roar of the truck engine. “We say it with different words, ye ken.”
Quincy thought of all the times he’d squirmed when she’d tried to tell him of her feelings for him, using her different words.
The sight of ye fills me heart with joy
. Or,
When ye enter a room, me heart warms
. She’d been describing her feelings all those times, now that he thought about it, and he’d been foolish enough to make light of that and want the pat phrase everyone in his time spouted:
I love you
. God help him, when he considered it, he knew that Ceara’s way of expressing love was probably a lot more sincere. She never took the easy way out by saying three simple, overused words. Instead, she dug deep and tried to convey precisely how he made her feel. If there was a Ditz of the Year award, he deserved the crown, the unrivaled king of
dumb
. Suddenly the beam of his headlights blurred on the asphalt, and he could barely see the center line.
He felt rather than heard her tense up again.
Shit
. His gaze shot to the clock. Only four minutes had passed since the last pain.
“I . . .
love
. . . you!” she screamed at the peak of the agony. And then, on the downside wave, she repeated the words between pants. “I”—grunt, pant—“love”—pant, pant—“you.”
Well, shit, now he couldn’t see the frigging road for sure. He even felt his mouth jerk and spasm as he battled emotion to regain control. “No!” he yelled back. God, hearing her parrot the words half killed him. She never said
you
. She nearly always said
ye
. To her, it was like one of his crazy sayings.
Right as rain. Fine as a hair on a frog’s back
. Nonsensical expressions to her that she’d picked up. She probably had no clue what they meant. She said them only in an attempt to fit into his world.
And now she was saying
I love you
, which clearly meant little in her time. Hell, Quincy bet that more than half his country’s population said those words thoughtlessly, and seventy-five percent of those probably didn’t even mean them. He gulped, blinked to clear his vision, and said in a more normal voice, pitched just loud enough for her to hear, “Tell me your way, sweetheart. How I make your toes tingle. How I make your heart do a happy jig. How, when I walk into a room, you feel warm all the way through. My words—hell, they’re kind of like fake crystal balls. When I say them, I mean them from the very bottom of my heart. Please, please believe that, but to you, they are just words. Right? And I’m sorry I’ve never dug deep, like you do, to tell you how much I love you in other ways.”
Just then he saw cop lights flashing up ahead and realized the patrol car he’d requested was waiting beside the road. Sentiment had to be put on hold. He started flashing his headlights and pounding on his horn to alert the officer. “Thank Christ! There’s our escort!” he called over his shoulder, flashing the lights again. To his immense relief, the state boy got the message. The police vehicle spun out on the graveled shoulder of the road, fishtailed when the tires caught hold on the asphalt, and then straightened in the lane. Quincy floored his accelerator to catch up and ride the trooper’s back bumper. He clenched his teeth in frustration when his speedometer needle hovered around ninety.
Bastard
. That damned cop’s wife wasn’t in the backseat, having contractions every—
“Ach, God’s
teeth
!”
Quincy glanced at the clock. Every
three
minutes.
Holy hell.
He’d never paid much attention to the hen chatter about Loni’s labor pains, but for some reason ten minutes stuck in his brain. He saw city lights and sent up a disjointed prayer of thanks to his Maker. Was the baby coming now? Quincy didn’t know. He’d delivered or helped deliver nearly a hundred foals, and he didn’t frigging know
anything
about human birth. How did that equate?
The cop decreased speed to fifty in town, yet another frustration for Quincy. When, quicker than a blink, Ceara screamed again, Quincy said, “Son of a frigging
bitch
!” Then he shoved his foot down hard on the accelerator, swerved out into the oncoming lane to go past the police car, hit the flashers, pressed his hand to the horn, kept it there, and hit eighty, slowing to fifty only when he cut a sharp right onto the street that led to the hospital. At any other time, his mental calculator would have been going at warp speed, tallying the cost of the ticket he’d get, but moving violations be damned. He wouldn’t let Ceara deliver on the backseat with her body cocooned in a thick comforter. Their little girl would never have a prayer of survival.
The cop turned on his siren and sped up to stay on Quincy’s ass. “Well, asshole, if you think I’m pulling over, you’ve got another think coming,” he said.
“Quincy!” Ceara cried shrilly. “Ach, Holy Mother, help me. I canna hold her back. She’s coming!” With an elongated moan and then an equally dragged-out grunt, Ceara yelled, “’Tis done! Sweet Mother, help us. She’s here, Quincy. I feel her between me legs.”
Quincy darted his Ford into the ambulance lane, slammed on the brakes under the portico, shoved the damned rig into park, and literally spilled out of the truck, stumbling, scrambling at a foot-and-knee sprint around the front of the vehicle like a clumsy runner pushing off from the starting line, regaining his balance as he opened the rear door, and jerking the thick, smothering comforter off his wife. Sure as shit, she’d delivered on the bench seat. Only their bloody, mucus-smeared baby wasn’t anywhere close to being as big as Quincy’s hand, and she looked deader than a doornail, not moving, not crying, not
breathing
, for Christ’s sake.
Black spots swam in front of him. Bursts of light went off, like dud fireworks in the gravel on the Fourth of July, little flashes and then a fizzle. Somebody shoved him out of the way, and he staggered, grabbing hold of his truck bed to keep from dropping to his knees. In a daze, he watched ER personnel grab the baby, slash the umbilical cord, and race back into the building, while two male attendants tied off the cord, and then shoved a thick plastic board inside the vehicle, one hopping inside, Quincy guessed to get the flat under Ceara. A moment later they pulled her out. He saw blood and other fluid all over her thighs and gown. The next thing he knew, his wife was being expertly transferred onto a waiting gurney and rushed back into the building.
Quincy staggered, forced some strength back into his noodlelike leg bones, and raced after his wife. Only problem was, he felt as if he were running against a headwind. Not going anywhere. Was there glue on the soles of his boots? The ER doors loomed in front of him, a barrier he had to get past. He turned a shoulder to push them open, but the damned things were automatic. He rammed into empty air and entered the ER in a baseball slide for home, his cheek rub-a-dubbing on the tile until he came to a stop.
Shit
. Now lighted sparklers were swirling madly in his brain, as if held by little kids who were wagging them wildly in the air and turning in dizzying circles to make trails of brightness in the dark. Quincy well remembered doing that, dancing around Sam, who still needed their dad to hold her hand and help twirl the stick.
“Mr. Harrigan?”
Quincy felt a feminine hand grasp his shoulder. He blinked, trying to see.
“Mr. Harrigan, are you injured? Are you all right?”
Hell,
no
, he wasn’t all right. His baby girl had just been stillborn, and his wife might be dying.
Chapter Seventeen
Q
uincy staggered woozily to his feet. One side of his head hurt like a son of a bitch, and bright spots still danced before his eyes. Placing his feet wide apart, he shook like a dog shedding water in an attempt to regain his senses. He didn’t know if he’d struck his temple and, bottom line, he didn’t give a shit. He’d live through it. He couldn’t say the same for Ceara.
He strode in a zigzagging line to a little admittance window to the right and leaned over the shoulder of an old, frail gentleman who was yelling, “I don’t want medicine this time, damn you. I just want my fucking shoulder fixed! And I wanna see a
real
doctor, not some goddamned nurse practitioner!”
Dimly, Quincy registered the gist of what the oldster was saying and could have told him nurse practitioners were every bit as good as doctors in most instances, but he didn’t have time to dole out advice. He focused on the plump lady inside the cubicle, a blonde dressed in a smock the color of merlot.
“Where’d they take my wife? My name’s Quincy Harrigan, and I need to find her!”
The woman’s green eyes snapped with irritation. “Sir, you are standing in the
privacy
zone. Please walk over to that little window at the other side of the hall, give them your information, and wait your turn to be called.”
“Yeah,” the old man shouted, crimping his wrinkled neck to glare up at Quincy. “I been here for hours, asshole. You can’t just barge in and expect instant service.”
Brains still joggled, Quincy blinked again, trying his damnedest to collect his thoughts and speak sanely. “Sorry, sir, but my baby girl just came in stillborn, and they’ve taken my wife somewhere. I need to find her, you know? She might be dying, too.”