Immortal Sea (35 page)
Hesitantly, she took his hand. “Zack . . .”
But he didn’t want to talk anymore. He didn’t want to think. He stalked beside her without speaking until they could see the picnic shelter, the lights and the fire and people bustling under the roof. Something was going on. He didn’t care. He waited until Stephanie had stumbled halfway down the slope before he took off, running, into the night.
Toward the sea.
19
THE DOCTOR IN ELIZABETH TOOK OVER, PUSHING all emotion, the regret and the pain, aside. She would deal with Morgan and her feelings for him later.
Now she had a patient in active labor and an imminent delivery on her hands.
“We need to transport,” she ordered, her voice brisk and professional. The doctor was confident even when the woman inside wanted to crawl away and lick her wounds.
“She won’t make it,” Caleb said.
“Not to the hospital,” Liz agreed.
Sixty minutes by lobster boat, twenty by LifeFlight. Margred’s contractions were less than three minutes apart and over a minute long. If Liz hadn’t been so focused on her own conversation with Morgan . . .
She shook her head. No time for second-guessing or guilt. “The clinic,” she said.
Margred took a few short, careful steps from the shelter toward the beach. “I am sitting now,” she announced.
Sitting was good. The risk of infection made an internal examination in the field impossible, but Liz still needed to check Margred’s progress. A change of position might even slow labor. But Margred was heading in the wrong direction.
“Not in the sand,” Liz said.
Caleb took his wife’s arm. “You can sit in the Jeep.”
“Here,” Margred said. Gripping his muscled forearm, she lowered herself heavily to the beach.
His other arm came around her immediately for support. He knelt beside her. “Sweetheart . . .” His deep voice shook with nerves and laughter. “This wasn’t in the birth plan.”
She shook back her hair, smiling up at him. “Not your plan.”
“Maggie . . .”
“Ah.” She bit her lip, her face contracting in pain.
Liz dropped beside them, put an encouraging hand on Margred’s knee. “All right, now you’re down, let’s see what that baby is up to.”
She looked around, evaluating the crowded shelter, the dark beach. Dear God.
“What do you need?” Dylan asked.
“Light. Drapes. Pads. Those tablecloths? Clean ones, if you’ve got them. And my bag. In my car.” She reached automatically for her keys, but the pretty blue dress lacked pockets. Half-rising, she craned her neck for her purse.
“Here.” Her black medical bag appeared as if by magic, held in a strong, long-fingered hand. She looked up and met Morgan’s eyes.
Her heart lurched. How did he . . .
He smiled thinly. “Your back window is broken.”
Her mouth jarred open.
Margred grunted.
Liz’s head snapped back around. She focused on her patient. “Don’t push.”
“I am having a baby,” Margred said with some irritation. “I must push sometime.”
“Not yet,” Liz said firmly.
Not until, please God, they got to the clinic, where she had IVs. Oxygen. Clean sheets.
She scrubbed her hands and arms liberally with hand sanitizer, prepared to do a quick check and transport. A cursory examination, however, revealed Margred and her baby had no intention of waiting for sterile surroundings. The child was already crowning, each contraction forcing its damp, dark head to the entrance of the birth canal.
Liz’s stomach rolled and then settled. She was trained for this. Not practiced, perhaps, but trained.
Margred panted, her hair sticking to her flushed face.
“The Jeep?” Caleb said.
Liz inhaled, her mind racing. This was an emergency, not a disaster. Margred was in good health. Excellent history. Normal fetal presentation. Women had babies away from the hospital all the time.
But Liz hadn’t delivered one since her OB rotation more than ten years ago.
And she’d never delivered a selkie baby.
She gave herself a mental shake. She’d seen the ultrasound images. Margred’s baby was human. As human as Zack.
She summoned a reassuring smile. “I think we’ll all be fine here.”
“Here,” Caleb said sharply.
“Mm.” Liz completed her examination, patted Margred’s foot. They had a few minutes to prepare. “Dylan, can you move people . . . Thanks.”
Under the swathing tablecloth, she adjusted Margred’s clothing.
“Mommy?” Emily’s voice was high and thin.
“Your mommy’s busy right now, kiddo,” Regina said. “Come wait with me and Nick over here. You’ve seen our baby, right? Grace, this is . . .”
Their voices faded away.
Thank God for Regina. Liz ran through the remembered birth protocol in her head while she sorted through her kit for the supplies she would need.
Gloves, alcohol, bulb syringe, scissors . . .
First pregnancy, she thought. No known problems, due date . . . Well, the date was irrelevant now.
Gloves, alcohol, bulb syringe, scissors . . .
First pregnancy, she thought. No known problems, due date . . . Well, the date was irrelevant now.
Time slowed. Her world narrowed to the laboring woman on the beach, Caleb supporting her back. Lanterns cast pools of light on hard gray sand, the checkered tablecloths. Margred arched, strained, panted, pushed, her hands gripping her knees, her body rippling as contractions rolled through her.
“Good job,” Liz murmured. Sweat rolled down her back and dampened her bra. Her skirt was smeared with blood and fluid. “Another push, now. Gently.”
The crown, the brow, small, dark, scrunched . . . No cord. Good. Liz slipped her hand to support the baby’s head, easing it to the side, remembering the pain of her own babies’ births, the pain and the joy.
Margred groaned, deep and guttural. Her war-hardened husband turned pale.
Stroking her hair from her sweaty face, he pressed a kiss to her forehead. “You’re doing great.”
But she wasn’t.
Tension seized Liz. The head was free, but the baby’s shoulders hadn’t cleared the birth canal. Margred’s face was ashen, her lips cracked. Her blood pressure could be dropping. She needed fluids. She needed . . .
“Can you push?” Liz asked, keeping her voice steady. “Margred, you have to push now.”
A great cry burst from her.
Liz winced. “Easy,” she soothed.
God damn it, she wanted her equipment. Monitors, fluids, an operating room . . .
Caleb held his wife. “
Maggie.
”
Maggie.
”
She writhed. A long shadow fell across her swollen belly. Morgan, striding from the sea, water dripping from his cupped hands.
“Get out of my light,” Liz snapped.
He ignored her, kneeling by Margred as she labored. Her dark eyes were wide, her mouth open in distress. He dipped into his palm, laid his finger on her tongue, murmuring as he did so.
She gasped. Her bowed body suddenly sagged as she gripped her husband’s hand. Her face flushed. And her child was delivered into Liz’s hands, perfect, slippery. Beautiful.
Wonder shuddered through her. But her reaction was unimportant. Nothing mattered but the infant in her care. She concentrated on her job,
support, wipe, suction.
support, wipe, suction.
Caleb met Morgan’s eyes. “What did you say?”
Morgan shrugged. “Nothing. A blessing.”
“ ‘Born of water, for the water,’ ” Dylan translated. “ ‘Drink deep and live.’ ”
“Congratulations, you have a son,” Liz announced. Blinking tears from her eyes, she leaned forward to lay the wet, dusky infant, still attached to his cord, on Margred’s tummy, skin to skin.
Holding her own breath, Liz listened for his first cry.
Waited, her heart racing. Her jaw tensed. Firmly, she stroked the infant’s back.
Margred struggled to sit up. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Liz stroked again, harder, willing him to breathe. “Come on, little guy.”
Caleb’s big hand cupped the small, damp skull. “Born of water . . .” His voice cracked.
Liz reached for the baby to straighten his airway, to force air into his tiny lungs.
Margred’s hand covered her husband’s. She touched the baby’s dark, pursed lips. “For the water,” she whispered. “Drink deep and live.”
Their son’s wavering cry rose to the stars and the sea.
Morgan’s arms flexed as he carried the washtub over his head from the beach to the catering van. Elizabeth was in the parking lot, leaning in the window of Caleb’s Jeep, speaking to Margred in the back seat.
Elizabeth. Admiration for her moved him, for her calm in a crisis, her steady hands, her clear head, her warm heart. She was a remarkable woman.
His woman.
He slammed the van’s doors.
“Nancy’s getting your exam room all ready.” Her voice carried across the gravel and under the trees. “I’ll meet you there.”
A murmur from Margred.
“As soon as we get you both checked out, you can go home,” Elizabeth said, brisk and reassuring. “You drive carefully.”
“I didn’t think we’d be using the infant seat this soon,” Caleb said. “Thanks, Liz.”
“My pleasure. What are you going to name him?”
“Calder.” Margred’s voice came clearly from the backseat.
From the wild water, Morgan translated silently.
“Nice,” Elizabeth said. She stepped back with a wave as they drove away. Turning toward her own car, she saw Morgan.
She still wore her professional face, he saw, but behind her cool composure emotion flickered. He took a step closer for the simple pleasure of hearing her breath hitch, of seeing her eyes darken before she wrested her mask back into place.
“Nice job, Doctor.”
Some of the wariness left her shoulders. She smiled, the lines digging deeper at the corners of her eyes. “Margred did the work.”
“The bulk of it,” he acknowledged. “But you helped.”
“So did you.”
He moved in, stalking her. “We were good together.”
“Yes.” She cleared her throat, edging toward her vehicle.
“Thanks. You’ll have to tell me sometime how that trick with the water works. But right now, I have to—”
He fingered a strand of her hair, cutting off her voice. He heard the quick intake of her breath. He knew her adrenaline was still high, her pulse still racing. She was ripe with sweat and salt and birth, earth and sea commingled.
He wanted her, craved her, the way he had never craved anything but the sea.
He had not seen their son born, his and Elizabeth’s. He had not thought about it before, what it must have been like for her, what he had missed.
All he was missing.
He thought of Caleb tenderly supporting Margred’s wracked body, of Dylan and Regina working instinctively as a team.
Elizabeth’s words teased him.
“Is that what you want?”
“Is that what you want?”
“Was he there with you when our son was born?” he asked. “Your husband.”
“I, um . . .” It pleased him that it took her a moment to focus, to find her place in the conversation. “No. Ben and I weren’t . . . We were just friends then. We got married about a year later.”
She had told him once she was estranged from her parents. Did that mean . . .
“You were alone,” he said.
Elizabeth’s brows twitched together. She raised her chin, on the defensive. “The nurses were there for me. The doctor on call. I was a student there. I knew people.”
His jaw set until it cracked. She would not admit to being vulnerable. She would not admit to needing him.
Her strength was laudable. Her pride was understandable. He had the same strength, the same pride. He must persuade her to lean on him, to trust in him.
He raised his arms, caging her against the side of her SUV. She stiffened. “I will be there for you,” he murmured. He pressed his lips to her cheek, her brow. “I will stay with you.” Remembering her words, he amended quickly. “I want to stay.” He nuzzled her throat, delighting in the wild leap of her pulse, her involuntary tremble. “You need me.”
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