Thirty
Daria blurted the cruel words out on a sob. “I’m pregnant, Nate.”
“You’re…you’re pregnant?” The words hung stagnant in the air between them, and Nate’s mind spun out of control at the ramifications.
She was trembling and completely unaware, he was certain, of how her announcement had affected him. How it had taken away his hope in one moment.
He looked at her now and wondered how he had missed the fact that she was pregnant. The thick corduroy shirt, which she wore unbuttoned over a long-sleeved T-shirt, concealed the fullness of her figure, but still, it should have been obvious to a physician.
“It’s too early, Nate! I’m only seven months along,” she breathed. “Something’s wrong. Oh, dear God, I’m so scared. What should I do?”
A thousand thoughts went through his mind, but when they’d all sifted through his subconscious—long after his physician’s instincts should have kicked in—one thought remained principal. And it horrified him.
He held a terrible power in his hands. The child Daria was carrying was the one thing that tied her to Colson Hunter. This unborn child had the potential to keep him from Daria and from his own precious daughter—the daughter he already loved with a father’s heart, the daughter who stood wide-eyed now watching them.
He knew he should call an ambulance. Daria was continuing to have contractions and seemed on the verge of hysteria. If she didn’t get to the hospital quickly, she would almost certainly give birth prematurely. And if she was no further along than she said, the baby’s chances were not very good. But if they could stop the contractions, they might very well be able to stave off labor long enough that the infant would have a chance. Medically these things sometimes happened for a reason—because the developing fetus was malformed or blighted or because the womb could not adequately support the pregnancy. Couldn’t it be for the best to simply let nature take its course? Perhaps this was God’s solution.
He stood there, looking into Daria’s eyes, seeing the depths of fear in them, seeing in her gaze that she trusted him to help her. And he felt as though he existed in another dimension, as though all time waited while he made his choice. He was aware of standing on that mental precipice between prudence and justification. The rationalizations to do nothing were coming at him hard and fast, and he knew he was but a half-step from plummeting into an abyss where wisdom would not be found.
It took every ounce of will to back away from the desires of his basest self. Help me do the right thing, God, his spirit cried out. Then, as though a curtain had suddenly parted to reveal the truth, he knew what was right, and he allowed the panic in Daria’s eyes to compel him to compassion. Gratefully aware that she had no idea of the profound struggle that had taken place in his mind, he helped her to a chair and picked up the telephone. While they waited for the ambulance, he timed her contractions and tried to determine how heavily she was actually bleeding. Within minutes they heard sirens.
Now that he had made his decision, he embraced it fully. He ran to the door and directed the paramedics to the breakfast room where Daria was. With Nate’s help, they lifted Daria onto the stretcher and loaded her into the ambulance. In the corner of the breakfast room, Natalie stood, sucking her thumb, a bewildered look on her tiny face. Daria reached out to comfort the little girl, reassuring her with soft words as she passed. Watching them, an ancient love for Daria welled up in Nathan’s chest.
“You stay with Nate, honey. Mommy needs to go to the hospital for a checkup.” Her smile was pitiful.
“Do you want me to ride with you, Daria?” he asked. It was a struggle to keep his voice steady.
“What about Nattie?”
The driver of the ambulance tilted his head toward Natalie. “I’m sorry, but she can’t ride with us.”
“Stay with her, Nate, please.” Daria raised her head and looked at Natalie, as though memorizing her face. “Mommy will be okay,” she told her, but Nate wasn’t sure her weak smile hid her desperation, even from a two-year-old.
He reached down and scooped his daughter into his arms. “It’s all right, Natalie,” he reassured her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and clung tightly to him. “They’re just going to take your mommy to the doctor so they can check her over and make sure everything is okay. She’ll be back before you know it.”
The paramedics closed the door of the ambulance, and the driver went around to take the wheel. As the ambulance backed down the driveway and headed up the street, Natalie put a thumb in her mouth. Her gaze grew vacant, but she didn’t cry or even whimper. Again Nathan felt the overwhelming desire to enfold her tightly to himself. Even with Daria, he’d never known a love so fierce and protective, and he was astonished that it had blossomed so quickly inside him. She was his, and his heart grasped that truth.
But in spite of the love that remained for Daria, the awful knowledge of her pregnancy made her seem a stranger to him. Her pregnancy was a vivid reminder that she had another whole life that didn’t include him. He could scarcely fathom that Daria had a home and a family apart from him, that her life had gone on—and quite happily, it seemed. He shuddered involuntarily. He didn’t like the feelings and emotions that were welling up in him. He had never been a jealous man. Daria had never given him reason to be, even when they were in college and she’d had plenty of opportunities. But to know now that she carried another man’s child—and the intimate history that fact entailed—called up primitive emotions over which he seemed to have no control.
He stood in the driveway, staring down the street until the ambulance was out of sight. But his gaze was trained far beyond the place where the street dissolved into the horizon. His eyes were fixed on some great gulf in time. And he could not begin to see to the other side. Tightening his hold on Natalie, he went into his parents’ house to call ahead and give the hospital his trained appraisal of Daria’s condition.
Colson Hunter was en route to a meeting in Wichita when Carla Eldridge reached him on his cell phone. Cole knew from the quaver in her voice that the news wasn’t good.
“Cole, I think you’d better come back. A hospital in Kansas City just called to say that Daria’s been admitted there.”
“What? What’s going on, Carla?”
“They wouldn’t tell me. They said she was in stable condition, but they need you to call them right away.”
“Did you get the number?”
Carla repeated the number twice while he scribbled it on the palm of his hand, trying to stay in his lane on the interstate. He jabbed at the handset until he had a dial tone again, then tried twice before he could get the phone’s minuscule buttons to register the numbers his fingers punched in.
An eternity later, his call was transferred to a nurse who gave him the information he needed.
“Your wife is fine, Dr. Hunter, but she is having contractions and we need to get them stopped. The doctor has her on full bed rest, and we’re doing everything possible to save the baby, but I think you should know that it’s very tentative at this point.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“We’ve managed to get the bleeding stopped, but she’s still having contractions. Dr. Hammond has started her on a different medication, but we won’t know for a while if it’s going to do the trick.”
The nurse launched into a string of medical jargon, but he had all the information he needed. Daria was losing his baby, just as Bridgette had.
“I’m at least three hours from Kansas City now,” he told the woman, “but I’ll get there as quickly as I can. Please tell her I’m on my way.”
Cole got directions to the hospital, ended the call, and kicked the cruise control up several notches. He turned around at the first exchange on I-35. He was halfway to Topeka when he thought to wonder where Natalie was. With a sinking feeling, he realized that he already knew in his heart exactly where she was. She was with her father. He was ashamed of the petty jealousies and fear that rose up in him. Shaking off the self-centered feelings, he thought of how frightened and alone Natalie must feel, and his heart broke for her. He longed to see her, to comfort her and assure her that her mommy would be all right. He inched the cruise control up again and prayed that God would get him there safely.
It was almost dark when he pulled into the parking lot of the Medical Center—the same hospital where Nate had stayed.
Five minutes later he was standing in front of the door to Daria’s hospital room. He paused, wondering what he could say. Without knowing what had transpired between Nate and Daria, he didn’t know how he should act with her.
Finally he took a deep breath and pushed the door open. Daria was lying in the bed, her head barely elevated. If she heard him come in, she gave no indication. She stared blindly out the window at the darkening sky.
“Daria.”
She took in a short breath as though she’d been awakened suddenly. “Cole? Oh, Cole, the baby—” She started to cry.
He rushed to her side. “Did you lose… Is everything all…?” He couldn’t make his words come out right.
“No, no…the baby is fine, Cole. His heartbeat is strong. See?” She pointed to a monitor that sat ominously on a table beside her bed. He hadn’t noticed before that she was hooked up to the monitor and an IV.
“It’s just that it’s too early. They’re trying to get the contractions stopped. Oh, Cole. I’m so sorry! I know this was what you were afraid of all along, Cole. I’m so sorry it happened. But it doesn’t have to be like Carson. Even if they can’t stop my labor, the baby might still be okay. We’ve just got to keep praying.”
“I prayed all the way here, Daria.”
“I know.”
She sounded stronger, confident almost. He wasn’t sure he liked hearing this resolve in her voice. What did it signal? Something had changed since he spoke with her last. He was afraid to know what it was.
“Where’s Natalie?” he asked abruptly.
“She’s at Jack and Vera’s. She’s fine.”
“What can I do, Daria? I want to help, but I don’t know what you want me to do.”
She bowed her head for a moment. When she looked up, it was to gaze directly into his eyes. “Just keep praying, Cole. For the baby and…for everything…”
“Do you want me to stay with you, or do you want me to go?”
She didn’t have a chance to answer before the door to the hallway inched open and a tall, thin man with pale, close-cropped hair poked his head in. Thinking it was a nurse or an orderly, Cole stepped away from Daria’s bed and waited, expecting the man to ask him to leave while he took her blood pressure or something. But then the door was wrenched from the man’s hands and flung wide open as Natalie burst into the room crying excitedly, “Mommy! Mommy!”
The little girl stopped short when she saw Cole standing there. Instantly her cries turned to squeals of joy. “Daddy! It’s my Daddy!” she said, turning to the man in the doorway. She galloped across the room.
“Hi, punkin.” He knelt to embrace her, and she wrapped her arms around his neck and nuzzled his face with her own like a puppy beside itself with happiness. He stood with Natalie in his arms, and a sob rose in his throat, taking him completely by surprise. Over Natalie’s shoulder, he looked into Daria’s eyes. She was looking at the other man, her face veiled in anguish. He now noticed the scars on the man’s arms and hands and realized that this man he’d thought to be a stranger was indeed Natalie’s father. Cole squeezed her tightly to himself, amazed at how featherlight she was in his arms, how sweet her silky fine hair smelled.
Natalie let loose of his neck long enough to lean down and touch Daria’s toe through the sheet. The little girl smiled shyly at her mother and wrinkled her nose. “You look funny, Mommy.”
Daria’s lovely features had been transformed into a mask of utter misery. This couldn’t be good for the baby. What must this stress be doing to her?
“Daria,” he started.
Nate apparently saw the same thing in her face, for he strode to her bedside and bent to read the monitors. “Are you all right?” he asked. But it seemed to Cole to be the loving, possessive husband, not the physician, who was asking the question.
Daria nodded. Smiling wanly, she looked from one man to the other. “Nate,” she said softly, her voice quavering. “This is Cole. Cole, Nathan.”