Bethany stared at the ceiling as tears streamed from the corners of her eyes. “I can’t do this,” she cried. “Where’s Arch? Why isn’t Arch here?”
Reese’s heart broke into a million pieces. Arch wasn’t here because he’d taken a bullet in his chest to protect Reese. Fuck. She shouldn’t even be here. She wanted to run out of the room behind Nash and take Sloan with her. Facing a thousand Enforcers seemed less terrifying than trying to bring a baby into the world without a lick of medical assistance.
“Reese?” Bethany’s plaintive sob echoed in the room.
“I’m here, honey.”
Sloan gave her a push forward.
Reese shot him a dirty look over her shoulder. Sure, send her over to the tormented woman.
“Is this right? Should I be feeling this?” Bethany struggled to raise up to her elbows, but fell back immediately because even that required too much effort.
Reese thought frantically back to all of her mother’s deliveries. Those events had been attended to by three doctors in white coats. They’d marched into Sylvia’s bedroom and came out hours later with a newborn. There was no sound, no cries of terror and anguish. By the time Reese was allowed to see her mother, sometimes an entire day later, Sylvia was glowing with happiness.
She carefully approached the bed. “Of course it’s normal,” she assured the sobbing woman. But she had no fucking idea what constituted “normal” during childbirth. “I think you should start to push soon?”
“Push? That’s it? That’s all you have for me?” Bethany demanded, and the force of her anger brought her upright.
“I . . .” Reese’s feet had taken her too close to the bed, and Bethany snatched at her wrist.
“I’ve got a watermelon in my stomach and you’re telling me to push it out my vagina! Where are the drugs? I need some drugs!”
Reese knew there had to be drugs for this sort of thing, but in all the pharmacies and clinics they’d raided over the years, nothing had ever been marked USE IN THE CASE OF BIRTHS. The proper meds were probably only stocked in the city hospital.
Shit, and they’d used the last of the painkillers on Kade, first on trying to save him and then to give him a mercy killing.
“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do.” She tugged at the hold on her wrist, but Bethany’s grip was stronger than a steel vise. “I’m going to sit beside you, and you tell me where it hurts. I’ll rub while you push.”
Bethany, sweet, mild, wonderful Bethany, bared her teeth. “Where it fucking hurts? You’re asking me where it fu—”
The rest of that sentence was cut off by another long scream, accompanied by Bethany’s nails tunneling their way through Reese’s wrist. Holy hell did that hurt, but apparently it was nothing compared to what was going on inside of Bethany.
“Get Rylan,” Sloan said.
“Why?” Reese grumbled.
“He grew up on a farm. He told me he knows about delivering babies.”
“Get him. Get him. Get him,” Bethany scream-chanted.
Sloan rushed to the door and called for Nash. “We need Rylan. Now.” Another scream punctuated the air and the two burly men flinched. “Yesterday.”
Nash took off at a sprint.
“Good thing Arch is gone,” Bethany snarled, “’Cause I would’ve killed him for putting me through this.”
Again, Reese’s mind turned toward her mother. Had Sylvia endured this agony for each baby? And her reward had been to lose them? No wonder she went mad. No wonder she killed herself.
Bethany endured two more rounds of intense birthing pains, each one seemingly more horrible than the last, before Rylan finally—blessedly—showed up.
He stepped over the threshold, clapped his hands together and started barking out orders.
“Clean hot water. Three bottles of whiskey.”
“Three of them?” Sloan asked warily.
“Two to disinfect my hands and one for you two to share so you don’t pass out.” Rylan turned to Bethany. “Did your water break?”
Her head jerked in a nod.
Rylan nodded back. “Good. That means the baby will be ready to come out soon.” He patted the end of the mattress. “You two help her down here so her legs dangle off.”
Reese and Sloan jumped up and did as Rylan asked. He knelt between Bethany’s legs, took a long look, and then had Bethany lie back. He placed his hands on her belly, pushing harder than Reese thought was safe or necessary, but Bethany’s cry was almost one of relief.
“Feels good. Head’s down. All you gotta do is push. Might be easier if you stand up.”
“Are you crazy?” Reese exclaimed. “She can’t sit up by herself. What if the baby falls? What if—”
Rylan shrugged, cutting off her litany of bad outcomes. “Things fall. I’ll catch it.”
Bethany struggled to sit up. “Help me up.”
Reese settled on Bethany’s right side, while a pale-faced Sloan took up position on the left. As the young woman hung between them, they all stared at Rylan, who remained kneeling.
“Pretend like you’re taking the biggest dump ever,” he said with a grin.