than it found her. Drained, she tried to collect herself sufficiently to prepare for the next one.
She had barely forty seconds.
“Another one?” he asked incredulously. Her contractions were coming faster than he’d anticipated. The fastest birth he’d ever attended was just under three hours. This was beginning to have the makings of just under three minutes.
Stephanie’s lips were dry and she felt them cracking as she bit into them. Nobody had warned her it was going to be this awful. But then, no one had told her she was going to be giving birth in a parked oven in the middle of a strip mall parking lot, attended by a man she wasn’t supposed to love any longer.
“Sharp,” she retorted, vainly trying to grab something to hold on to. But there was nothing to wrap her hands around, nothing to help commute the force of the pain she felt.
Straining to hear the siren of an approaching ambulance he knew wouldn’t make it in time, Sebastian threw back the hem of her dress. Unless he missed his guess, the curtain was going up and it was show time.
A quick examination told him he’d guessed correctly. “You’re fully dilated.”
Oh, boy, this was a big one. Don’t scream, don’t scream, she thought frantically. “Tell…me…something…I don’t…know.”
Sebastian looked at her then, just one small, stray look spared in her direction. What would she say if he took her up on that? If he told her something she didn’t know? That he, despite all efforts to the contrary, still loved her. Would probably always love her no matter what, to the end of his days. That he knew, and it was a cross he knew he had to bear.
But there was no point in sharing that with her. It was just something he was going to have to deal with himself.
“Never could put anything over on you,” he murmured, looking around for a blanket or something to wrap around the babies, hoping that he’d overlooked one in the initial inspection of the van.
There was nothing.
“Sebastian!” Stephanie bit back a shriek as she clutched at his upper arm and arched her back, trying desperately to get as far away from the pain as she could. It only followed.
He hated seeing her like this, hated seeing pain etched into her features without being able to take it away.
“It’ll be all right, Stevi.” Tenderness arrived out of nowhere, filling him as he brushed the damp hair away from her eyes. “I promise.”
“I want…that…in…writing.” Damn it, this was a lousy way to have a baby. Babies, she corrected herself. Orphaned and in a parking lot without so much as a clean sheet around to wrap them in.
No, they weren’t orphaned. They had her. They would always have her, she vowed silently, her mind winking in and out, threatening to take consciousness with it. And she would give them all the love she had stored up in her heart. The love she’d never been allowed to give to anyone.
“Sorry,” he told her, “afraid I can’t oblige you right now. You’re just going to have to take my word for it.”
Panting, Stephanie struggled to keep from being steamrollered by the next contraction. Her eyes darted to his. His word. As if she could believe anything he said to her. He’d lied to her once, what was to keep him from lying again?
“Not likely,” she breathed, arching again even though she knew it did no good. The pain found her no matter where she moved.
He heard her nails striking the floor’s metal border as she again tried to grab on to something to hold. There had to be something he could give her. He thought of his wallet. Pulling it out of his pocket, he wrapped his handkerchief around it.
“Here, bite down on this.”
At any other time, she would have questioned his judgment, thinking he was crazy. But this wasn’t any other time, this was a unique, dire time and she needed something to help divert the pain, to channel the fearsome energy traveling through her body, however strange that “something” might be.
Grabbing the white linen-wrapped wallet, Stephanie clamped her teeth down on the slightly curved leather just as another contraction scooped her up and tossed her into its midst.
This one was the worst ever.
He heard the muffled scream. Just like Stevi, trying so hard to get through this without a show of pain, he thought. Some things, apparently, never changed. She’d always hated a show of weakness, however justified.
“Soon, Stevi, soon,” he promised.
Spitting out the wallet, she panted. “Soon… nothing…I…want this…over with…now.” Exhaustion threatened to overpower her as she fought to bring life into the world. “What’s…taking…so…long?”
Long was a relative word, he thought. To him this was happening almost at lightning speed. “All right, I see a head, Stevi. On the count of three, I want you to push. You hear me?” Glancing up, he saw her nodding her head. “One, two—”
Pulling her shoulders in, Stephanie was pushing before he ever reached the last number, digging her knuckles into the thin floor padding and practically lifting herself off the floor.
“Three,” Sebastian said even though it was after the fact. He glanced up to see her face growing red as she held her breath and strained with all her might. “All right, stop.”
Like a punctured balloon, Stephanie collapsed against the side of the van, panting not because it was part of the exercise, but because she couldn’t draw in enough air into her lungs. It felt as if she’d just run a ten-mile marathon in less than a minute.
“I’m…beginning…to…understand…why…they…call…it…labor.”
His mouth curved and he found himself wanting to hold her, to comfort her, but that wasn’t his function in this, nor was it his place. There was a husband out there somewhere, a husband who should have, by all rights, been attending this instead of him.
The flash of jealousy was unexpected, uncalled-for and unprofessional. But it was there, nonetheless, red-hot and hard.
Sebastian forced himself to think like a doctor. “You’re doing fine, Stevi.” They were almost there. “Now I want you to push again. This time,” he cautioned, “wait until three.”
She sneered at him. She was being torn apart and he was trying to make her obey orders like some kind of tin soldier or lapdog. She’d like to see him get through this insane tug-of-war she was experiencing.
With a new contraction overtaking her before the old one left, Stephanie didn’t even wait until the count of two before she began to push again with all her might, this time lifting herself off the floor.
“Stevi—” But it was too late. Sebastian could only pray she hadn’t ruptured something. “I’ve got the head, Stevi. Now push, push a little more.”
She didn’t think she could. Squeezing her eyes shut tight, she bore down again, biting back a guttural sound that echoed in her throat, demanding release.
“That a girl, Stevi, the
