Page 130 of Tulips and Lost Time

“Push,” Alex coaches. He reaches down and takes her hand in his. “Your baby is already crowning, Kar. Which means they probably can’t breathe right now. You gotta get it out.”

Kari’s eyes snap open in panic. “What?”

“You don’t tell the fucking patient their baby is dying!” I slip my fingers in beside the head, twisting and adjusting her angle to help her move easier with the contraction. “Your job is to keep her calm, dickhead. You don’t freak her out.”

“Is she okay?” Kari shoves, dizzily, to her elbows and turns green from the movement. “Luc?”

“Just push, Bear. Lay down and push. Let Alex help you.”

Alex’s radio crackles to life. Ambulances are on the way. A minute out. Blah blah blah. All things I’ve heard countless times. But a minute is too long. Kari’s body is pushing, forcing the baby out, first her head, then down to her shoulders. “Oh god. Oh god. Oh god.”

“Get them out,” Kari cries. She yelps from pain when we get to the shoulders and her tear grows wider. Ah!” She screams. “Luc!”

“Nearly there, Bear. Hold on.” I slide my hand in and adjust Billy’s shoulders, inching one out, then the other, while a block away, ambulances scream around the corner, their tires skidding on the tar. “One more, okay?” I grit my teeth and hiss when I pop Billy’s shoulder free. “One more push, then the ambos are gonna be here with the good drugs. They’re gonna help us, Bear.”

“Hey. Whoa!” Alex catches Kari when she droops into his arms and her eyes slam closed. “Kari?” He taps her face and leans over to be all she could see—if only her eyes were open. “Kari!”

“What happened?” I guide Billy out. It’s easy after the shoulders, so I catch her in one hand and snag a towel with the other. But my heart pounds in my ears, drowning out the thump of my aching brain. “X! What happened?”

“She’s unconscious. I don’t…” He taps her face and presses his fingers to her neck. “Luc, I don’t know.”

“Is she breathing?” Panic lances through my blood, my words coming out louder. Frenzied. “Alex! Is she breathing?”

I look down at Billy, almost hurling, because her skin glows dark purple and her first, sweet screams are yet to come. “Oh Jesus.” I cry out and place the baby on the ground, then I open her towel and start resuscitation. “Breathe for her, X!” I carefully place my mouth over Billy’s lips and nostrils, exhaling a deep breath and watching her lungs fill.

“We’re here!” Other paramedics, the kind I don’t work a shift with, slam their doors open and go to work yanking a stretcher out. One grabs a kit, while the other sprints our way. “What’s happened?”

“MV accident.” Dizziness washes through my brain and turns my vision spotty. “Direct hit on her door. She’s thirty-four weeks. Reasonably healthy pregnancy. Twins. Twin A just arrived.” I lean in and repeat my actions, closing my lips around Billy’s and filling her lungs. “Twin B was breech at last scan. Twin B is failure to thrive in the womb, so already medically fragile.”

“Mother isn’t breathing,” Alex announces, shuffling out of the way when the second paramedic darts closer to help. “She dropped about twenty seconds ago.”

“Infant isn’t breathing,” I shout. “It’s been about forty-five seconds since delivery.”

“We have a thready pulse,” one of the paramedics announces of Kari. “It’s weak.”

“Significant blood loss inside and out of the car.” I snarl when the second paramedic steals Billy away and slaps a mask over her face. Already, her coloring is coming back. But still… I don’t hear her cries. I don’t see her little fists clenching. “Suspected placental abruption, but I’m not sure. I can’t…” I shake my head. “I dunno.”

“Let’s get them up and in the bus.” The duo help themselves to Kari, no concern for her body or possible spinal injuries. They load her up and pop the stretcher back to its full height, then they lay Billy, whose cord is still attached to her mother, in the gap between Kari’s hip and the bed rail.

Then they go.

Whisking my family away.

“Another ambo is on the way,” they shout back. It takes me a moment to realize they’re talking to Alex. The chief. “We’ll call a third and get everyone seen to. Mother and babies are priority right now.”

“I don’t…” I look down at my hands, smeared in blood. My knees, torn from the road. I spy the towels laid on the tar, smattered in dirt and crimson. Then I look at Alex, my body overtaken by violent tremors. “X…”

“It’s okay.” He pushes up to stand and yanks me up beside him, then he claps his hand to the back of my head and pulls me in until I break. Until I burst out with grief and attempt to turn, searching for my family when the EMTs slam the doors closed. “I’ll get you to the hospital,” he soothes, murmuring as the sirens come to life. “I’ll get you to them, I promise.”

43

LUC

RECKONING

“It’s time to go.” Marcus steps back into my kitchen, his arms overflowing with a pretty baby-pink gown that drapes across Billy’s small body and hides her legs completely. Her head is dwarfed by an oversized bow, and her eyes shine bright, searching for me in one of the rare moments she’s awake.

A large lump forms in my throat, cutting off my air and damn near dropping me to my knees. Because Kane’s face is pale. He already knows what happened in the middle of that intersection in town. He caught the reports. But he wasn’t there, breathing for a baby. He wasn’t there, holding his dying wife and hoping, praying for a miracle.

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