her head fell back onto the pillow. She felt miserably dizzy, and there was a fierce ache at her forehead. She lifted her hand to put pressure on the spot and felt a large lump. Oh, my. She must have hit something hard.
If only the seat belt hadn’t been so uncomfortable around her large abdomen—but who knew what condition she and the baby would have been in if she had been strapped to the seat?
Then there was the pain that burned from beneath the bandage on her arm.
She felt awful. And confused. Where was she? In a hospital, of course, but where? She looked around the small, sterile room, but it gave no clue.
She tried to stay awake. She was aware that she dozed off, then awakened again. That was all right, as long as she did not fall into a deep sleep. She had to be sure….
“Here you are,” said a high, cheerful voice, startling Polly fully awake. A uniformed nurse stood beside the bed, smiling. “Doc Snyder examined this little darling again. He’s a careful one. And then he had to check with Dr. Fletcher to make sure it was all right for you to have a little visitor. Dr. Fletcher is your attending physician.” In moments, Polly felt a soft bundle being snuggled against her right side. She heard a small squeaky sound and looked down.
There, swaddled in a white receiving blanket, was the most beautiful sight she had ever seen: a tiny pink face, with just a smattering of light brown hair. The eyes were closed.
“Oh,” Polly said wonderingly, suddenly engulfed in a wave of deep emotion that was a conglomeration of relief, tenderness and fierce protectiveness. Ignoring the fuzziness in her head, she maneuvered with care to pull the baby into her arms, mindful of the IV still attached to her, and the pain when she moved. Nuzzling the little head, Polly smelled the soft sweetness of baby powder.
Uncertainly, she unwrapped the baby. She’d had little experience with infants, but she would learn. Quickly. And right now, she had to be certain that this little one was truly all right.
Exposed to the coolness of the hospital air, the baby made little gasps of protest. Her blue eyes opened, though they didn’t focus on Polly, and her dimpled little hands punched unevenly at the air. She had the right numbers of tiny fingers and toes, and the little dark stump of her umbilical cord was a contrast against her pink skin. A disposable diaper was fastened over her, and rather than removing it, Polly pulled it away from the baby’s tiny tummy and peered inside.
“Perfect,” she sighed as she wrapped the baby back into the blanket. She held the small form protectively against her side. I won’t let any of this touch you, she thought.
“How are you doing?” asked a deep, male voice.
Startled, Polly looked up. It was the same doctor who had come in earlier: R. Snyder. The one who looked and sounded familiar. Standing beside her, he seemed tall, though it was hard to tell how tall while she was lying in a hospital bed. His gingery hair, lighter than his brows, was tousled, as though he had just gotten out of bed. There was a shadow beneath his deep-set eyes and a gauntness in his cheeks that also indicated he could be tired. But the boyish smile he aimed at her with his wide mouth was contagious, and she found the corners of her lips twitching in return.
“I think they’re fine,” said the nurse. “Both of them.” She was much shorter than the doctor, and her platinum hair formed a mass of short waves about her round face. Her chin was just a little too shallow, but she beamed at Polly and the baby as though she had something to do with everything being perfect.
Maybe she did. “How did I get here?” Polly asked. “And the baby…I mean the delivery…Were either of you here? I don’t remember anything about it.” She felt sore all over.
“You were in good hands for the delivery,” the doctor said. “Dr. Larry Fletcher is Selborn Community Medical Center’s obstetrician. The baby’s heartbeat was a little weak, so he delivered her by cesarean section nearly as soon as you were brought in.”
“Don’t be so modest, Doc,” the nurse ordered. “I’m Nurse Frannie Meltzer, Polly. This is Dr. Reeve Snyder. He stopped you from bleeding to death from that lacerated arm of yours at the accident site. And then, soon as she was born, he took care of the baby. Right, Doc?”
“Well, more or less.” The man sounded nonplussed. Polly had to be reading that wrong. Doctors were like politicians, weren’t they? Egotistical? Never wrong?
She shuddered, and the movement enhanced the pain in her head, her arm. “Thank you,” she said stiffly. She noticed that his expression froze. Had she sounded aloof? She didn’t have to trust him, but neither did she need to be rude. “Thank you,” she repeated more fervently, gently hugging the baby to her. “For everything.”
“You’re very welcome.” He smiled once more—not with the same warmth as before, though. She felt suddenly sorry, as though she had somehow lost a friend.
She shook her head a little. He wasn’t her friend. No one here was her friend.
No one anywhere, except for her former roommate, Lorelei.
“So where am I?” she asked. The doctor had mentioned the name of the medical center, but Polly couldn’t recall it.
“Selborn Peak, Colorado,” the nurse said, arranging a blanket around the baby. “It’s a ways west of Denver, but much, much smaller.”
“Our medical center serves half a dozen communities around here,” Dr. Snyder told her, crossing his arms in his lab jacket. Even when he spoke about trivialities, his voice was low pitched and soothing. Polly enjoyed listening to it. “If you had to be injured at all, you were fortunate,” he continued. “You were closest to Selborn Peak, even though we’re several miles off the interstate. But when I first saw you in the car…” A haunted expression that she couldn’t interpret crossed his face but it made her suddenly want to offer him words of comfort. Strange. He was the doctor, she the patient.
And she was hardly in a position to comfort anyone.
“I’ll stop in later,” he said, “if that’s all right.”
The baby began to cry, a gaspy, sad sound, and Polly rocked her gently. “Please come back,” she said to the doctor, realizing she meant it. Maybe she could pretend, at least, that she had a friend here.
“Okay,” said Nurse Meltzer after Dr. Snyder had left. “We’ve been taking care of this little one, but I know she’s been waiting for you.”
She discussed with Polly how to breast-feed, then showed her how to hold the infant, who quieted immediately.
Then they were alone—Polly and the baby, whom she moved again, into a position that didn’t put so much pressure on her aching side. Laurel. That was what she would call her, after Lorelei. Laurel Black, just as her ID showed her to be Polly Black.
Polly reveled in the tiny, uneven tugging as the newborn suckled at her left breast. She hugged her warm, sweet baby to her, watching her in wonder.
Her baby. Hers alone.
“We’re going to be just fine, Laurel,” Polly whispered. “Just you and me.” She began to hum a soft, soothing song to the nursing infant, moving again slightly to ease her pain.
This hadn’t happened the way she had planned: to give birth by C-section in a hospital in some small Colorado Rockies town while running away
