Page 127 of Promises to Keep

“No, not… I’m just your hired gun, not your doula. I don’t know, sounds like you’re having a baby today.”

“It’s three and a half weeks early. They said it was good she came in…”

I clapped him on the shoulder. “See, you did good, you followed your instincts—”

“What if something happens? What if something is wrong with the baby? What if jumping made it go…”

I said, “All I can think of to say is ‘wheesht’.” I hugged him. “From what I hear, now that you’re having a kid, you’re going to be asking, ‘what if…’ for the rest of your life. I hear it doesn’t get easier. If you had listened to me you would’ve never done it, but you ignored my sage advice and now your wife is about to give birth.”

He wiped down the front of his clothes.

He was wearing modern street clothes that had been in a bag since we had jumped to the eighteenth century, months ago.

“I gotta go in.”

“Yep, you go become a daddy, I’ll be out here—”

“Guarding the door. No twittering or whatever you call it.”

“Of course not, no way, I have learned my lesson.”

He stalked into the delivery room to be with Beaty.

I was called in, hours later to meet the baby, a wee boy. He was very small. Quentin was beaming. He looked like he could breathe for the first time in months. He couldn’t take his eyes off Beaty, holding his son, and he was mopping his brow and laughing.

“Och, I thought we were… phew, hey, Hayley, I have a boy, do you see, a son!”

I said, “He’s awesome, look at him, so small, but Beaty, not sure what’s going on, you assured me it was going to be a girl!”

“I always kent it would be a boy, I dinna want tae take the surprise away from Quennie.”

He chuckled. “I am very surprised. This morning I was in the eighteenth century thinking the world was ending and now I’m in a North Carolina hospital with a son. Holy shit. Phew.”

I went for food for us in the cafeteria and then went back to my place in front of the doors, because Beaty would be staying in the hospital with the baby for watchful reasons, and the baby couldn’t leave until it could eat, put on weight, do some other thriving things.

I called and got Quentin and me a hotel room, so we could trade off sleeping there, visiting Beaty, and guarding the door of the hospital. Quentin was still a bit of a wreck but now it wasn’t the coming babe. Now it was keeping Beaty and the baby safe, while maintaining a normal facade so that the hospital didn’t freak out about us. So I stood in front of the hospital, a little like a guard, near their regular hospital security guard, and then I sat in the lobby facing the door, while Quentin sat with Beaty and the baby, trying to get the baby to sleep and eat like a regular human. Then I went back to the front door when I got bored.

And I was very bored. The hospital’s security guard was standing beside the planter on the left side of the door, I was leaning against the planter on the right.

There was a weird man walking through the parking lot. He looked homeless and a little like he was staggering. He beelined to the front door, swayed, looked up at the hospital sign, bleary eyed, and said to me, “You got some booze?”

“Nope, and you might want to rethink it, dawg, it’ll kill ya.”

“Fuck that, don’t care, got money?”

The security guard said, “Hit the road unless you’ve got business in the hospital.”

He swayed and turned away, then staggered toward me and fell against my front, but then stood, “Sorry, dude,” as he staggered away.

I looked down — on my lap was an envelope.

Written on the front were the words, Colonel Quentin, in what I recognized as Magnus’s looping hand.

Magnus!

Kaitlyn was going to be thrilled — he was alive!

I stood straight and looked around for anyone who might have given the envelope to pass to me. No one, just the staggering guy, I yelled, “Hey! Where did you get this letter?”

---