Annie smiled reassuringly. “I’ve been doing this a long time, Rachel. You won’t be dying. Not as long as I have anything to say about it. But crying won’t help things and shall only make you feel worse. Now, I’m going to change the sheets and help you into something more comfortable.”
Usually her words calmed anxious mothers. Rachel only cried louder. Bill flung the door open. He dropped to his knees beside his wife’s bed, clutching her hand. His face paled. “Why is the bed wet? What’s going on?” He raised frantic eyes to Annie’s. “Something isn’t right. My Rachel wouldn’t be crying like this if everything was all right.” He shot to his feet, looking like a little boy confronting another on a playground. Far too young to be thinking of fatherhood. “My wife’s in danger! You’re too young to help her. I’m gonna get someone else. Stay with her till I get back. Don’t leave her!” He flung the words over his shoulder as he raced from the room.
Had she been in any other profession, Annie might have been insulted. She was six years his senior. At least. Yet no one ever behaved like themselves in a delivery room. Whom would he fetch more competent than her?
There was only one person. And she didn’t want to think about Travis Hart right now.
“Where’d he go? Where’d Bill go?” Rachel stared in the direction of the door.
“He’ll be back. Don’t concern yourself with him right now. You must put all your concentration into bringing your baby into the world.” Sometimes it paid to put a bit of sternness into her tone. “You want to keep your baby safe, right?”
Rachel nodded.
“Of course you do. Then you must stay calm.” Annie found a set of clean sheets in one of the drawers. She made short work of changing both them and Rachel’s nightgown, then performed an internal examination. The girl quieted, and her cries during each contraction held less hysteria and more concentration. Outside, rain still pelted the roof. Having nothing better to do, Annie sat beside the mother to wait out the duration of this stage of labor.
And to hope against vain hope that Bill Monroe would bring anyone but Travis Hart to the delivery room this night.
As a practicing physician for over six years, his hands shouldn’t shake during house calls. Though his concern wasn’t due to the situation of the patient—a laboring first-time mother.
It was due to the other person Travis would find inside.
He climbed the steps, rain leaving a puddled trail in his wake, an anxious Bill Monroe at his heels. “She’ll be all right, won’t she, Dr. Hart? You can save her, my Rachel?”
Travis turned, placing a hand on the young man’s damp shoulder. The boy’s—for he hardly looked a man—throat jerked.
“She’ll be fine, Bill. But I won’t be, if someone falls and breaks their neck on these slippery stairs. Get a towel and wipe this mess up.” He continued up the stairs toward the keening noises coming from behind the closed door. He opened it and stepped inside.
The second their gazes met, Annie’s breath faltered for the briefest of instants. Overwhelming need swept through him. To pull her into his arms, soothe away that haggard look in her beautiful eyes. Reassure her that all her fears were for naught, that he would wait as long as it took for her to forgive herself. As long as he could be sure that in the end, the prize of her heart would be his.
But for now, she was the midwife. He, the doctor.
Both must work together to help this young woman bring forth a new life.
“Fetal heartbeat is a steady one hundred and forty. Contractions are every two minutes. Waters broke over an hour ago. I’d say delivery is imminent.” Hair straggled down Annie’s face, dark circles haunted her eyes. Yet as she knelt beside the mother, her expression was brimful of passion and purpose.
“Good.” Travis washed his hands, noting the perfect order of Annie’s instruments. “We’re right here with you, Mrs. Monroe. Just do exactly as Mrs. Lawrence says.”
He only half-listened as Annie helped the girl into the proper position for delivery, intent on sorting through his own bag. Forceps, but only if they were absolutely needed. Surgical thread, in case of tearing.
Then he knelt beside Annie, and together they worked with Rachel Monroe, as her little boy slipped into the world. Face like a wrinkled old man’s, crying lustily. Perfect in everyone’s eyes.
Annie handed the baby to the beaming Rachel. As she turned to Travis, he glimpsed sorrow flash across her tired face. Of course. What person, having witnessed this moment, could not help but wish it for themselves? And not only Annie. He wanted to be in Bill’s place. The anxious father, bursting into the bedroom, hearing his child’s cries for the first time.
He wanted to experience these defining moments. As a man with something at stake, instead of the shadowy figure of attending physician.
Shared with no other but her.
After the baby was washed and wrapped, the couple cooed over their new addition, while Annie sat, watching with an absent expression.
He couldn’t take her silence any longer, and once she moved to clean her instruments, he stepped behind her. “Do you like apple pie?” Thunder in Texas, how inane could he be?