Before She Dies (Slaughter Creek) (2 page)

Chapter Two

“I can’t have the babies yet,” Norma cried. “I need Ben.”

Patty, the nurse who’d helped admit Norma to the hospital, wiped her forehead with a damp cloth. “I know, honey, but babies have a way of coming when they want to come.”

Another pain seized Norma, and she closed her eyes, trying to envision some place safe and peaceful. A field in the spring with wildflowers blowing in the wind. A picnic by the lake.

Wading in the creek. Yes, she and Ben would take the girls wading one day in Slaughter Creek, and they’d splash and play and laugh and take a hundred pictures.

She breathed in and out the way Patty instructed her, blinking back tears. There was so much she wanted to do with her babies and Ben. So many Christmases to look forward to. Easter dresses to make. Halloween costumes and birthday parties and sports.

She’d never been good at softball or soccer or basketball, but maybe one of her girls would be athletic like Ben. Or maybe one of them would be artistic and like to paint like her.

They’d stand their canvases outside on the hill by the house overlooking Slaughter Creek, and each of them would paint to their hearts’ content. Mixing swirls of color to create the images in their fantasies.

The pain eased up, and she relaxed against the pillow. She was already exhausted from the drive, and she’d had to walk nearly a mile after she’d run off the road. But thankfully, a nice couple in a truck had come along and insisted they drive her to the hospital.

Her mama was right. The people in Slaughter Creek were friendly.

She and Ben and the girls would be happy here.

Another pain assaulted her, and Patty spoke softly to her, talking her through it. Her mama rushed in and took her hand, her eyes blurring with tears.

“This is so exciting, Norma, I can’t wait to hold these little girls.”

“Me, too,” Norma said as that contraction ended. But they were coming one on top of the other.

The babies would be here soon.

She rubbed her hand over her belly. Would Ben make it in time?

“Are you sure you don’t want any medication or an epidural?” Patty asked. “It would help ease the pain.”

“No,” Norma said. “I don’t want to take a chance on the drugs hurting my infants.” After all, back in Nashville natural childbirth was now the rage.

Another pain robbed her breath, then the doctor stepped in the room. Patty coaxed her mother into the hall to be with her father. She could hear him pacing the floor outside the door.

The doctor examined her, then looked up at her with a smile. “I believe it’s time you bring these little ones into the world.”

“No,” she cried, tears leaking down her cheeks. “Ben has to be here. I can’t do it without him.”

The nurse and doctor exchanged concerned but knowing looks.

She
would
have to do this without Ben, have to give birth while he was racing to get here. She had no choice.

They tucked the blanket around her, pushed the bed through the door. Her mother and father both kissed her, then the nurse wheeled her toward the delivery room.

An icy coldness engulfed her as they rolled her into the sterile room. Bright lights blinded her, the sterile odors sending bile to her throat. As the rubber gloves snapped against the doctor’s hands, Patty moved up beside her and the doctor instructed her to push.

Pain rocked through her so intensely she almost came off the bed. She felt like she was splitting in two and let out a scream.

A second later, a baby’s cry echoed through the room.

A sob escaped her, her body trembling as the next contraction ripped through her, followed by the splitting pain again, and another push.

The room erupted into chaos. Two or three more nurses and another doctor slipped into the room. Everything blurred as she struggled to see what they were doing.

“Is the baby all right?” she asked trying to see the first twin while she gave birth to the next.

“We have to examine the baby and clean her up,” one of the nurses said.

The doctor patted her leg. “Norma, focus, we still have another little girl to deliver. And this one’s sideways.”

Panic seized her. “What?”

“It’s okay,” he murmured. “I’m going to try to turn her.”

Norma braced herself, her body screaming in pain as he reached inside her and turned the baby. A few feet away, her first little girl wailed in the nurse’s arms.

“Now push again,” the doctor ordered.

Sweat beaded her face as she propped herself on her elbows and pushed as hard as she could. Patty kept coaxing her, and tears fell down her cheeks as she gave another push.

Finally she felt the baby slip out.

But there was no sound of a baby’s cry this time.

Her heart stuttered. Something was wrong.

“Hang in there,” Patty said as she eased Norma back onto the pillow.

But she shoved away the nurse’s hands. She had to see.

“What’s wrong? Is she breathing?”

A deafening silence stretched through the room, the tension thick as they carried the tiny infant to the second bassinet and began to work over her.

Ben barreled into the parking lot of the hospital, swerved to miss an ambulance heading out and practically ran up on the curb as he threw the truck into park.

He’d flown over the roads, gotten a damn ticket for speeding, and almost crashed into a jerk on a motorcycle who’d cut him off when he tried to pass on the winding mountain road. Not that he was supposed to pass there, but his wife was in labor, dammit, and he wanted to be there and see his babies born.

Sweating bullets, he jumped out, but a security guard yelled at him. “Sir, you can’t park in a handicap spot.”

He jerked his hand toward the emergency room. “But my wife’s in labor.”

The beefy man strode over to him, hands on hips. “I don’t care. That space is reserved for the handicapped.”

Ben threw up his hands in a gesture for the guy to calm down.

“Just let me go in and I’ll move it later – ”

The guard patted the handcuffs at his waist. “Either move it now or I’ll arrest you.”

Ben cursed, but jumped in the truck, fired the engine up and shifted into reverse. The guard vaulted out of the way as he spun to the right and parked a few feet away.

When he got out this time, he was mad as hell. He glared at the guard, then jogged into the hospital emergency room and raced over to the check-in desk. “My wife, Norma Nettleton, she’s in labor.”

The receptionist frowned up at him, but Walt’s voice boomed. “Ben, Norma had the twins.”

Something caught in Ben’s throat. What if …no, he couldn’t bring himself to ask.

He swallowed hard. “Where is she?”

“Come on, I’ll walk you to her room.”
Fear clawed at Ben. There was something his father-in-law wasn’t telling him.

“Norma did good,” Walt said. “Her mama’s with her now.”

“What about the girls?”

“They’re so little,” Walt said. “Not even five pounds.”

The long corridor seemed to stretch for miles. Panic made Ben want to turn and run. If his little girls were sick or had inherited that genetic disorder, what would they do?
Norma would hate him.

But no more than he’d hate himself.

Walt knocked on the room door, and Norma’s mother opened it. “Come on in, Ben, Norma’s been asking for you.”

He inhaled deeply, still shaking as he entered the room. Norma sat propped against a bank of pillows, her auburn hair spread across the white bedding. She looked radiant and so damn beautiful that for the hundredth time he wondered what in the hell she saw in him.

He scanned the room. Where were the twins?

Norma reached out her arms. “Ben, honey, I’m sorry, so sorry. “

Tears blurred his eyes as he rushed to her. He heard Walt murmur to Norma’s mama for them to leave the room, to let him have some time with Norma.

Did she have bad news to tell him?

Worry overcame him, and he buried his head against her and drew her into his arms.

Norma wrapped her arms around Ben and hugged him to her, hating that he’d missed the most important event in their lives.

But she hadn’t expected Ben to get so emotional. Finally he pulled back, and looked up at her. “What happened?” he asked in a choked voice.

“I went into labor when I was driving to the house. I ran off the road, and the car wouldn’t start, so I started walking back to town. Then this nice couple picked me up.”

“Norma…the – ”

“The car wasn’t damaged much,” she said.

“I’m not worried about the damn car,” he said. “What about the …girls?”

Norma stroked his cheek. “They’re so tiny, Ben.”

“Walt said that,” he murmured.

“One of them had the cord around her neck,” Norma said, the fear she’d experienced earlier hacking at her again. “She wasn’t breathing –“

He dropped his head forward. “Oh, God.”

“I know, I was so scared.” Norma squeezed his hand. “But they gave her oxygen, and then she cried, and it was the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard.”

A sigh rumbled from him. “And now?”

“They’re monitoring both of them and running some tests,” Norma said. “Do you want to walk down to the nursery and see your little girls?”

He nodded, his eyes dark with emotions. Norma shoved the covers off of her, and stood. She reached for the robe her mother had brought her, and Ben helped her into it.

“Are you okay?” Ben asked.

Norma nodded. “I just want to hold our daughters.”

He took her hand, and together they walked down the hall. When they reached the nursery, Norma pointed through the window to two bassinets side by side. Pink blankets had been wrapped around the infants, and they both wore small pink caps.

She’d never seen anything so precious in her life.

Patty, her labor nurse, stepped up to her. “If you want, you can go in and hold them for a moment. Baby two is still receiving oxygen, but she’s breathing better now. Since they were premature, we have to monitor them more closely.”

She led the two of them into the room to scrub, then into the corner of the nursery. Ben helped her into a rocking chair, and the nurse handed her the baby closest to her. The tiny infant wiggled her nose and pursed her little lips, squirming, then snuggling into her arms.

Then the nurse handed Ben baby number two. She scrunched up her nose, and let out a wail, her small fists and legs working as she gained steam.

Norma stroked the baby’s fine hair, hair the color of her own. “They’re beautiful, aren’t they? And look at all their hair.”

Ben nodded and tried to soothe the other twin by rocking her back and forth.

“Look, they have my little pug nose and your stubborn chin,” Norma whispered.

Ben squinted as if trying to see it, and she laughed.

“Let’s call this little angel Sadie after my grandmother,” she said gesturing to the infant in her arms. “And – ” she rubbed her hand over the other baby’s back. “Do you want to name her after your mother?”

Ben shook his head and jiggled the baby, but she continued to cry. “How about Amelia after my grandmother?”

“Sadie and Amelia,” Norma whispered. “That’s perfect.” She pressed a kiss to each baby’s cheek. “Just like our perfect little girls.”