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The room began to spin. She thought she saw Rick Masters, her tablecloth wrapped around his head and shoulders, reaching out to her.
The next moment, she felt herself being wrapped up in the tablecloth. He was pressing it to her face, over her mouth. It was dripping wet. Joanna tried to drag in air and only felt smoke clogging her lungs.
“Let’s go!”
The order echoed in her head, sounding so like Rick. She was going to die in some stranger’s arms, remembering Rick.
The man’s arms were around her as he urged her blindly on through what felt like an entire wall of fire.
Joanna tried to protest that she couldn’t make it, but the words never rose to her lips. The man who looked like Rick was pushing her.
She felt herself stumbling. Falling.
The next moment, she felt his arms encircling her. And then suddenly, she was airborne. He was carrying her, carrying her through the inferno.
The heat was everywhere. She could hear it, feel it. And there was pain everywhere as well. Pain that was radiating not from the outside, but from within.
Something was tearing her in two.
Joanna bit down on her lip, but the scream came anyway. It shook her body, traveling down toward the center, toward the source of the pain. The pain wouldn’t stop.
And then suddenly, the heat was gone.
She was being lowered.
Grass, there was grass beneath her.
Desperate, Joanna clawed her way out of the singed fabric enclosure that was still over her head and face. And then it was off, lying in a heap on the ground next to her.
Gulping in air, Joanna looked around frantically, trying to get her bearings, trying to clear her head of the hallucination that insisted on sticking to her like a second skin.
She blinked several times, but the man sitting on the front lawn beside her, panting, with the smell of smoke clinging to every surface of his body, didn’t resume his shape.
Didn’t transform from who she thought she saw to who he really was.
He stayed the same.
Was she dead? Was that it? Was that why she was still staring up at Rick Masters?
There didn’t seem to be any other possible explanation for it.
Rick dragged air back into his lungs. The house next to Joanna’s was encased in flames. He saw no signs of anyone having escaped. His legs shook as he rose to his feet. He felt her grab his arm, pulling him back.
He looked at her over his shoulder. “Let go, I’ve got to see if I can get anyone out.”
“There’s no one there,” she gasped out. “They’re away on vacation.” Her eyes still burned and she squeezed them shut for a moment, then opened them again. He was still there.
“How about in your house?”
She thought she shook her head. She wasn’t sure if she did or not. “Nobody.”
Rick sank down on the ground again. His heart was slamming madly against his chest. “Are you all right?” he demanded.
He sounded angry. They hadn’t seen one another in eight years and he sounded angry. Why? If anything, she should have been the one who was angry. Angry because he hadn’t come after her the way she’d hoped, prayed that he would.
But he couldn’t be here. Could he? Was she losing her mind?
Shaken, her head spinning, she stared at him, still afraid to believe that she wasn’t somehow hallucinating all this.
“Rick? What are you doing here?”
The desire to hold her in his arms, to kiss her and make the world back off, was almost overpowering. But it was at odds with the renewed feeling of betrayal that seared through him. He might not have moved on with his life in the full sense of the word, but she obviously had. Moved on, married and was now carrying some other man’s child in her body.
The sting he felt was unbelievably sharp and deep. Though he’d never talked about it, he’d thought of having children with her. Lots of children. Children with her face and his sense of logic.
Damn it, Joey, why did you do this to me?
“I asked you a question,” he said his voice harsh with anger, with hurt. “Are you all right?”
Her mouth fell open. She wasn’t dead. She was alive. And he was real. He was here. After all this time, he was here. Looking at her the way she never wanted him to look at her. She’d walked out of his life just to avoid that look in his eyes.
And yet, after all this time, here he was, looking at her as if he hated her.
She started to say something, and had her breath stolen away before she could utter an intelligible sound. What came out of her mouth was a purely guttural cry.
Joanna’s eyes widened as her hand flew to her abdomen. The pain she’d been peripherally conscious of intensified, pushing itself to center stage and demanding attention.
“What? What’s the matter?” On his knees beside her, concern pushed aside his anger.
Rick strained to hear the sound of sirens approaching, but there was nothing. Not only that, but there didn’t appear to be any activity, or even any lights being turned on from the three other houses on the immediate block.
Where the hell was everyone? Had he and Joanna just slipped into some private twilight zone of their own?
Joanna clutched his arm, her nails digging into his flesh, her face drained of all color. She wasn’t answering his question.
This couldn’t be happening, she thought, frantically Not now. She wasn’t due for another two weeks. The doctor had promised her.
Promises were meant to be broken.
The promise between her and Rick had been.
“The baby,” she gasped, pushing the words out as best she could. “I think the baby’s coming.”
Two
Dumbfounded, Rick could only stare at her. “You mean later.”
She couldn’t be saying what he thought she was saying. Rick looked from her face to her abdomen and then back at her face again. That had to be the panic talking, he decided.
Joanna could almost feel her knuckles breaking out through her skin as she clenched his wrist.
“I mean now.” The word rode out on a torrent of pain.
Crouching beside her, Rick carefully peeled her fingers from his wrist. She’d almost cut off his circulation. “Hang on, the paramedics have got to be getting here soon.”
Instinctively she knew that they’d never make it in time.
Joanna shook her head violently from side to side, the pain all but cracking her in half. “Unless they’re invisible and already here…they’re going to be too late.” She looked up at him. God, but life was strange, bringing them together like this, now of all times. “You’re going to have to help me.”
There were a great many things he’d learned how to do, felt comfortable in undertaking. Delivering a baby was not one of them. “Me?”
Even with the throbbing sound echoing in her head, Joanna could hear the wariness in Rick’s voice. She couldn’t very well blame him. This wasn’t exactly her idea of ideal circumstances, either.
“I don’t…like this any better…than…you do, but this baby…is coming…and I need…someone…on the other end.” It was getting more and more difficult for her to talk, to frame complete thoughts. The pain kept snatching away her breath, railroading her mind. Panic was attempting to push its way into her consciousness.
Desperate, Rick looked over his shoulder at the other three houses on the block. They were all dark. Why hadn’t any lights gone on? Why wasn’t anyone home?
Where the hell was everyone?
Where they were didn’t matter. What did matter was that he was here and so was she. And she needed him.
It occurred to him that for the second time in his life, he hadn’t the slightest idea what to do. And both times had involved Joanna.
Someone had to be home on the next block. “Hold on,” he told her, beginning to rise to his feet. “I’ll go get help.”
The death grip tightened on his wrist, yanking him back down to her with a strength he didn’t think she was capable of.
“You are help…” She raised her eyes to his. “Please.”
Damn it, she still knew just how to rip into his heart. Even after all this time. Rick knew he had no choice.
“Okay. I—” He saw her jerk and stiffen, her eyes opening so wide, they looked as if they could fall out at any moment.
Joanna bit down on her lip so hard, she thought she tasted blood. A scream welled up in her throat, its magnitude nearly matching the agony assaulting her. It felt as if she were a holiday turkey and someone had taken a buzz saw to her body.
“I have to push…I have to push…I have to push.” The words came out in a frantic rush.
He knew next to nothing about what was involved in delivering a baby, but it had to take longer than this. She had to be wrong. “Are you sure?”
Clutching his hand as if it were her very lifeline, Joanna managed to pull herself up into a semi-sitting position. “I’m sure…oh God…I’m sure.” How did someone feel like this and still live?
Fear gnawed at her. Belatedly, recalling something Lori had said to the Lamaze class about not being able to pant and push at the same time, Joanna began panting hard. Praying that the action would at least temporarily divert this overwhelming urge she had to push the baby out.
Nothing she’d read or heard had prepared her for the reality of this. Before she’d ever walked into the sperm bank, she had read about every possible scenario that could happen at this juncture.
Every bad one now flashed before her, stealing away her courage.
She’d been so sure about this. So sure. She hadn’t even regretted her decision when the local school board had tactfully “suggested” that she take an unpaid leave of absence until after her baby was born. Since she was a high-school English teacher, her condition in the somewhat conservative town was a source of discomfort and embarrassment to a number of the parents. But even then, she’d been sure about her choice to go this route alone.
Now she wasn’t sure about being alone or even the route itself. Now there was only a sense of panic tearing into her with steel claws.
Here she was, her house in flames, her life in shambles, giving birth to a fatherless baby on the front lawn with the only man she’d ever loved inexplicably standing over her.
She felt as if she’d lost her grasp on reality.
“Ricky…I’m…scared.”
“Yeah, me, too,” he admitted.
His words echoed back to him. Joanna had been the only one he’d ever let his guard down with, the only one he’d ever allowed to witness his more human, vulnerable side. To the rest of the world, even from a very young age, he’d always presented a strong, unflappable front. It was expected of him. He was a Masters. Only Joanna had seen him as Ricky, as the boy he’d been and the man he was struggling to be.
But all that was behind him. Years behind him.
Rick squared his shoulders. He had to set the tone. What was there to be afraid of, anyway? Taking her hand, he looked down at Joanna. “Babies get born every day, right?”
Yes, but this one was different. This one was coming out of her. Shredding everything in its path. “Not this one.”
He needed a blanket, a sheet, something. Feeling helpless, Rick looked around. There was nothing available except for the tablecloth he’d used to shield Joanna’s face. Taking it, he tucked the material under her as best he could.
“Not exactly sterile, but better than the grass,” he explained when she looked at him with huge, questioning eyes.
Oh lord, here came another one. Joanna wrapped her fingers around the long blades of grass, ripping more than a few out of the ground as she arched her back, vainly trying to scramble to a place where the pain couldn’t find her.
But there was nowhere to go. The pain found her no matter how she twisted and turned, found her and constructed a wall all around her, imprisoning her.
There was no escape.
Panting again, Joanna tried to recall what she’d learned in her Lamaze classes. Nothing came to her. All she could remember was that the four of them, she, Chris Jones, Sherry Campbell and the instructor, Lori O’Neill, referred to themselves as the Mom Squad, four single women who’d bonded because they were facing life’s most precious miracle alone.
None of that helped now.
She froze, hardly hearing what Rick was saying to her, her body enveloped in one huge contraction.
What was it that Lori’d told the class the last session? Relax, that was it. Relax.
Right, easy for Lori to say. Of the four of them, she was the one who had the longest to go. Lori didn’t know what it felt like to be a can of tuna with a jagged can opener circling her perimeter.
But she did.
Joanna let loose with a blood-curling scream as another contraction, the hardest one yet, ripped into her on the tail of the last one. There was no end in sight. She was going to keep on having these contractions until she died.
Rick jerked back, covering his ear. She had risen up and screamed right against it. He could still feel the sound reverberating in his head.
“Good thing I’ve got two ears. I’m not going to be using my left one for a while.”
He shouldn’t be the one here, helping her give birth to another man’s baby, he thought. This should have been their child fighting its way into the world.
A sadness gripped his heart. He looked at her. “This is all wrong.”
