Tent City (25 page)

“We’re not going anywhere. I’d better get back to her. You’re welcome to stay and help if you want.”

That’s not what I do. I run. I run faster than I’ve ever run before. I run like it’s my life on the line. I’m running so hard that I almost have to stop. I slow down to a pace that won’t kill me, but still has me clipping along. I’ve grown accustomed to the trail, so I actually make pretty good time.

By the time I reach Tent City, I’m soaked with sweat and out of breath. My heart is pumping so hard in my chest that I actually consider it might explode.

 
I run from cabin to cabin until I find him. He’s with Beth and she doesn’t look good. Her face is chalky white and her breathing is about as labored as mine.

“Jack, I need your help.”

“I can’t leave right now. We’re about at the end.” He looks beaten and it hurts me to make him leave, but all I can think about is Jessica and Avery. Dear God, Avery needs her mother.

“There’s no time to explain! You have to come with me now. We’ll take the four-wheeler.”

“Fine,” he says. He’s irritated, but he follows me anyway.

“Bag! Get your bag.”

We are probably going to need all those supplies and more. I don’t tell him much because I don’t want anyone in Tent City to know what I’m doing. I don’t even explain to him what we’re doing until we are just reaching the waterfall.

It takes longer on the wheeler than I expected it would because the terrain is narrow in some areas, but it’s still faster than if we had run.

Finally, as we jump off the wheeler, I explain to him a little about what’s going on. I take him into the cave and when Jonah looks up, he looks at me as if I have betrayed him.

“It’s okay Jonah. He’s a doctor, sort of. Well he’s the best we got anyway. How is she?”

He dismisses it for now, because clearly his main concern is his wife, who looks even worse now.

Avery is crying and I go to console her. I dig through my bag and find the walkman Bentley got me and put the earphones over her head. It’s on Billy Idol, but I figure it’s better than nothing. It has the desired effect and she starts fiddling with the buttons, already in a different world.

Then I see Jack. This is my favorite Jack. He is calm and steady. He opens his bag and starts pulling out items he wants. He pulls out a bottle of rubbing alcohol and instructs me to start cleaning his supplies.

“Hello, ma’am, my name is Jack. I’m here to help you. I will do what I can. How long have you been in labor?” Wow. I’m sort of melting.

“Since last night,” Jonah says, as he holds Jessica’s hand.

Jack is checking her pulse now and I’m pacing the small entrance to the cave. I can’t help but notice that there is a lot more blood on the cave floor.

He splashes some alcohol over his hands and tells Jessica is going to check her…down there. How does he know all this stuff?

“She’s fully dilated, but from what I can tell, the baby appears to be breech.”

“Is there anything you can do?” Jonah asks. The look in his eyes is unmistakable. Fear.

“Maybe if we were in a hospital, but  we need to do something pretty soon,” Jack says.

“Can you do a C-section?” I have heard of these before. This must be the solution. If the baby is breech, what else can we do?

“Jesus, Dani. No. I don’t have the equipment for that. This isn’t exactly a sterile environment and she’d bleed out for sure. I don’t even have the cautery to stop the bleeding. She would bleed out,” he repeats.

“Just take the baby!” Jessica suddenly screams. “Just save the baby.”

“I can’t do that,” Jack says. “I have one idea. It probably won’t work, but it would take every ounce of effort from you and it’s going to hurt.”

“It already hurts,” she whimpers, but I see her bracing to call up more determination. She’s drenched with sweat and her hair is sticking to her face, but she sits up a little straighter and looks at Jack expectantly.

“It’s going to hurt more…a lot more.”

She crumples a little at this, but then I see her whole demeanor change. It’s as if she has conjured up the thought of this little one and decided to go for it.

“Okay, do your worst doc.”

“I need you to take her outside,” he says to Jonah, motioning towards Avery. Jonah hesitates for a moment, but then concedes.

“You up for this?” he asks me. “It’s going to be hard to watch.”

“I’ll do whatever you want me to,” I say, and I mean it.

Jack takes the rag that was being used to wipe Jessica’s head and places it in her mouth. He tells her to bear down on it to help with the pain.

Watching what he is doing is astonishing. He checks her insides one more time and then changes to moving his hands across the outside of her belly.

What he does next leads her to screams I will probably never forget for the rest of my life. I can sense Jonah hovering outside the cave, but he’s letting Jack do what he does.

Jack seems to be manipulating the baby from the outside. He’s pushing on her so hard that I fear he is crushing the baby. She lets out another guttural scream. It echoes within the cave and is now on repeat in my head. He instructs her to bear down on the rag again.

I’ve got one of her hands and she is crushing my hand bones together. I bear it, as it can’t be anything near what she is going through. It seems as if it’s taking hours and Jack is sweating from the effort.

“I think the baby has moved. I would like you to start pushing now.”

“I can’t do it. I can’t do it.” She is in meltdown mode now. I move up so she can see my face and realize I don’t know what to say. Jack sees my hesitation.

“Just say something,” he says.

“Listen Jess, this is it. You can do it. One last effort. You want to meet that little baby of yours right? This is the last part. You can do this. You can do this for Avery.”

Even at the mention of her daughter’s name, she perks up a little, but she doesn’t look so great. I hope Jack can pull this off. I have never wanted anything so badly before in my life.

“Okay ma’am, give me a push. Nice and easy now,” Jack instructs.

Jessica does this like a champ. And she does it again. She does it eight times and then there’s a baby.

“You did it!” Jack shouts. “Bring her husband in.” He busies himself with cutting the cord and wiping the new baby off, clearing the mouth of all the gunk.

I run outside to find Jonah and Avery. She now has the headphones off and I ask her if she wants to meet her new baby brother.

“You mean it’s a boy?” she crinkles her nose.

We hear the high pitch of infant screams. Jonah’s body heaves a sigh of relief. We hold eye contact for a split second and his lip releases the slightest tremble before he rushes in. 

At this, I can’t help but let out a huge release of laughter. It’s laughter from joy. It’s laughter from relief. How did Jack just pull that off? He comes walking out and doesn’t say a word. He just picks me up and spins me around. If I could freeze this moment, I would.

“How did you do that?” I stare at him still stunned with disbelief.

“I’m not sure. The baby wasn’t completely breech, so that helped. I just had to do a little turning so the little guy could slip out.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?” He’s standing a little unsure of himself. He examines his bloody hands and wipes them off insecurely on his pants.

“Don’t act like what you just did wasn’t a miracle. You have a real gift, Jack. I mean it. I have never seen anything so amazing. Where did you learn all that?”

“My mother. She was a physician.” He leaves me with that and goes back in to check on mother and baby.

I don’t know how he did it, but Jack convinced Jonah and Jessica to come to Tent City.

I guess they figured with a new baby maybe they would need a little help. It can’t hurt that Jack just saved their lives. Jonah is quite taken with Jack. Jack has that affect on people.

I ride the wheeler back with Jessica, the baby, and Avery on the back. Jonah and Jack keep good pace behind us and within an hour and a half we are back at Tent City.

It’s quiet, thankfully, and we can deal with Bentley’s repercussions later. If he had a problem with Brody coming into Tent City, I can’t even imagine what he’s going to say about bringing in a baby. For now, he’s still on his raid.

I give Jonah and his family my cabin and take Brody to our old tent that Kit and I shared. She has pretty much cleared out my old spot so I take awhile to make it like home again. I can see most of her stuff is gone too. This Grant thing is getting pretty big.

After Jack checks on Beth, he helps me move my stuff from the cabin to the tent and it appears as if it’s time to stay good-night.

“How’s Beth?” I start.

“Actually, she is doing pretty well, which honestly I wasn’t expecting. Callie is with her now.”

“That’s great.”

Awkward silence.

“I don’t want this night to end,” he says.

“It was pretty amazing, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah…” He’s shuffling his feet a little kicking up puffs of dust.

“Why does it have to end? You can come in. I play a mean game of checkers.”

“Checkers?” Brody shouts from inside. “Can I play?”

“I got first game!” Jack shouts back as he lets himself into the tent.

Brody doesn’t last ten minutes before he’s out cold. Things have been pretty crazy around here today, but I can’t wait for him to meet Avery and finally have someone his own age to play with.

“King me,” Jack says, as he has just jumped another red to my line.

“King for your thoughts?” Jack persists when I haven’t moved the checkers or responded. This has my attention.

“All out of pennies?” I ask with a smirk.

“Do you need to go to bed? I can get out of here. Pick this up another time?”

“No. It’s not that I’m tired. I’ve just got a lot on my mind.”

“Want to talk about it?” He sits up a little straighter and now he matches me, sitting in what Brody calls, ‘Criss-cross applesauce.’

“I was just thinking about Bentley.”

“Oh,” he says as his eyes drop to the ground. Clearly, not the answer he was looking for.

“I mean, when he gets back, he’s probably going to freak about Jonah and his family being here. I’m just so afraid he’s going to kick them out. And then where would they go?”

Silence.

“Why’s he like that?” I ask Jack, hoping he can shed some light on his mercurial brother.

“I’m not following,” he says. He looks like he would probably rather be talking about anything besides Bentley.

Okay, here it goes. The big question.

“What happened to you guys?”

He can’t help but run his hands through his hair. It seems as if he is deciding whether or not to answer. I don’t prod.

Finally, he says something. “Well, what exactly do you want to know?”