Beneath a Southern Sky (27 page)

Natalie noticed them putting their jackets on, preparing to leave. She slid down from her stool. “Me too! I wanna go to Wal-Mart too!”

“No, honey,” Vera coaxed. “You stay here and spend some time with your daddy.”

Natalie screwed up her face and put her hands on her hips. “My daddy’s not here, Dwama,” she said, as though Vera were the dumbest woman on the earth.

“Nattie! You don’t talk that way to your grandmother,” Daria chided.

“Well, he’s not!” Natalie huffed.

Vera knelt down beside her. “I meant your Daddy Nate, honey. Dwampa and I will bring you back something from Wal-Mart, okay?”

That seemed to appease Natalie, but when they’d gone, leaving Daria and Natalie alone with Nathan, Daria felt awkward. There was so much they needed to talk about. Nate seemed strong and in control now, but she didn’t want to upset him again as she had in the hospital. She pulled her shirt around her and folded her arms over her stomach. She carried her babies “inside,” as her mother always said, so it wasn’t hard to conceal her pregnancy. And yet she wondered why Nate hadn’t noticed the change. He was a doctor, after all.

She and Nate went back to the table in the breakfast room while Natalie sat on the carpet, leafing through the picture books Vera kept on a shelf especially for her. Twice she and Nate both started to speak at once and ended up laughing together over the absurdity of it.

Nate rubbed his arms briskly. “This cool weather is hard to get used to after Timoné. Was it like that for you, when you first came back?”

“Well, it was summer when I came back.”

“Oh. Of course.”

There was a long pause.

“Nate, I-I want to talk to you about what happened in Timoné. About why I left—”

He held up a hand. “Daria, Dad told me. I know you thought I was dead. We don’t have to go there. It sounds like the mission did everything they could. I don’t blame anyone for what happened.”

But she rushed on. “Quimico and Tados told me—they told everyone—that you’d died in the fire. Tados said no one survived. I don’t know why he would have lied to me. He brought me your gold watch, Nate. I was sure then that you were dead!”

“Tados was a good man, Daria. I don’t think he lied. I think he probably thought I
had
died in that fire. I still don’t know where he and Quimico were that day. They…”

A faraway look came to Nate’s eyes, and he narrated his memories in a voice that was scarcely a whisper. “I know they were starting to distrust Peetro—the leader of the Chicoro. They tried to talk me into leaving before things got out of hand, but I was making progress, Daria. There hadn’t been a new case of fever for several days. I was close to getting it under control, and I was determined to stay until I did.”

How many times had she heard that tone of ardent persuasion in his voice? It startled her to realize that it was exactly the tone Natalie used when someone tried to thwart her plans. She reached out and touched the sleeve of his shirt. “Your daughter has that same determined streak, Nate.” She said it proudly, with a smile, but he didn’t return it.

“My stubbornness nearly got me killed, Daria. It’s not something I want her to be proud of—her stubbornness.”

“I know,” she said, chastened.

“We have to direct that streak in a godly way, Dar. Maybe if we catch it while she’s little she won’t have to struggle with it like I have.”

“Nathan—”

He looked at her and started, as though he’d just realized the implication of his words. “I’m sorry. I’m…assuming things I have no right to assume.” His eyes held the pain of a wounded animal.

“Are you happy, Daria? Do you love him?” he asked suddenly.

“Of course I love him, Nathan. But, I-I love you, too.”

“But you can’t. You can’t love both of us.”

“Tell my heart that,” she said, her voice breaking.

“I want to watch my daughter grow up, Daria. Every single night I lay on that hard dirt floor and begged God to get me out of there. I begged him to bring me back to you so we could finish the work God called us to do, so we could raise children together. In a way I’m glad I didn’t know about Natalie then. It would have killed me to know she was growing up without me. I don’t understand why things happened the way they did, but I have to believe that God allowed me to live, allowed me to escape, and brought me back here for a reason. I have to believe Natalie is part of that reason.”

“Cole loves her too, Nate. H-He’s been good to Nattie, and he loves her like his own.” She regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth. Not just because of the fresh pain they brought to Nathan’s eyes, but because they reminded her of the secret she still kept from him, the secret that churned within her even as she spoke the words.

“Well, she’s
not
his own!” Nate barked.

“I didn’t mean—”

He scraped his chair back from the table and went to the window, looking out over the muddy garden.

“Nathan, I’m sorry. Of course Natalie is your child. But please don’t blame Cole. He had no idea—neither of us knew that you were alive!”

“I said I don’t blame you, Daria. That’s not the issue here.”

“What is the issue?”

“I think you know very well what it is.” He looked down at Natalie and continued softly, “Natalie is my child, and I want to be part of her life, Daria. I want us to be a family, the family God meant us to be.”

“Oh, Nate, I wish it was that simple.” She had to tell him the truth. They couldn’t have this discussion when she was withholding the fact of her pregnancy. Her stomach was in a knot and her head pounded, but she knew she
must
tell him.

She opened her mouth, not sure how to begin. “Nathan, there’s something I have to tell—”

At that moment, a sharp pain sliced through her back, and it was all she could do to keep from crying out. She excused herself and started down the hall to the bathroom. By the time she reached the door, the cramping was excruciating. She had thought she was feeling ill because of the emotional distress of this day, but now she knew something else was terribly wrong. The cramps felt too much like labor contractions. She locked the door behind her and was horrified to realize that she was bleeding. She began to tremble, terrified that she was losing the baby. “Dear God, help me, please,” she prayed.

What an awful way for Nathan to find out the truth
. She reached for the door and started back to the kitchen, leaning on the wall at intervals for support.

“Nathan,” she croaked, as another contraction swelled. “Nathan!”

He met her in three long strides, took one look at her face and put a supporting arm around her. “Daria, what is it?”

“Oh, Nate, something’s wrong. I’m bleeding! Something’s wrong with…the baby.”

Thirty

D
aria blurted the cruel words out on a sob. “I’m pregnant, Nate.”

“You’re…you’re pregnant?” The words hung stagnant in the air between them, and Nate’s mind spun out of control at the ramifications.

She was trembling and completely unaware, he was certain, of how her announcement had affected him. How it had taken away his hope in one moment.

He looked at her now and wondered how he had missed the fact that she was pregnant. The thick corduroy shirt, which she wore unbuttoned over a long-sleeved T-shirt, concealed the fullness of her figure, but still, it should have been obvious to a physician.

“It’s too early, Nate! I’m only seven months along,” she breathed. “Something’s wrong. Oh, dear God, I’m so scared. What should I do?”

A thousand thoughts went through his mind, but when they’d all sifted through his subconscious—long after his physician’s instincts should have kicked in—one thought remained principal. And it horrified him.

He held a terrible power in his hands. The child Daria was carrying was the one thing that tied her to Colson Hunter. This unborn child had the potential to keep him from Daria and from his own precious daughter—the daughter he already loved with a father’s heart, the daughter who stood wide-eyed now watching them.

He knew he should call an ambulance. Daria was continuing to have contractions and seemed on the verge of hysteria. If she didn’t get to the hospital quickly, she would almost certainly give birth prematurely. And if she was no further along than she said, the baby’s chances were not very good. But if they could stop the contractions, they might very well be able to stave off labor long enough that the infant would have a chance. Medically these things sometimes happened for a reason—because the developing fetus was malformed or blighted or because the womb could not adequately support the pregnancy. Couldn’t it be for the best to simply let nature take its course? Perhaps this was God’s solution.

He stood there, looking into Daria’s eyes, seeing the depths of fear in them, seeing in her gaze that she trusted him to help her. And he felt as though he existed in another dimension, as though all time waited while he made his choice. He was aware of standing on that mental precipice between prudence and justification. The rationalizations to do nothing were coming at him hard and fast, and he knew he was but a half-step from plummeting into an abyss where wisdom would not be found.

It took every ounce of will to back away from the desires of his basest self.
Help me do the right thing, God
, his spirit cried out. Then, as though a curtain had suddenly parted to reveal the truth, he
knew
what was right, and he allowed the panic in Daria’s eyes to compel him to compassion. Gratefully aware that she had no idea of the profound struggle that had taken place in his mind, he helped her to a chair and picked up the telephone. While they waited for the ambulance, he timed her contractions and tried to determine how heavily she was actually bleeding. Within minutes they heard sirens.

Now that he had made his decision, he embraced it fully. He ran to the door and directed the paramedics to the breakfast room where Daria was. With Nate’s help, they lifted Daria onto the stretcher and loaded her into the ambulance. In the corner of the breakfast room, Natalie stood, sucking her thumb, a bewildered look on her tiny face. Daria reached out to comfort the little girl, reassuring her with soft words as she passed. Watching them, an ancient love for Daria welled up in Nathan’s chest.

“You stay with Nate, honey. Mommy needs to go to the hospital for a checkup.” Her smile was pitiful.

“Do you want me to ride with you, Daria?” he asked. It was a struggle to keep his voice steady.

“What about Nattie?”

The driver of the ambulance tilted his head toward Natalie. “I’m sorry, but she can’t ride with us.”

“Stay with her, Nate, please.” Daria raised her head and looked at Natalie, as though memorizing her face. “Mommy will be okay,” she told her, but Nate wasn’t sure her weak smile hid her desperation, even from a two-year-old.

He reached down and scooped his daughter into his arms. “It’s all right, Natalie,” he reassured her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and clung tightly to him. “They’re just going to take your mommy to the doctor so they can check her over and make sure everything is okay. She’ll be back before you know it.”

The paramedics closed the door of the ambulance, and the driver went around to take the wheel. As the ambulance backed down the driveway and headed up the street, Natalie put a thumb in her mouth. Her gaze grew vacant, but she didn’t cry or even whimper. Again Nathan felt the overwhelming desire to enfold her tightly to himself. Even with Daria, he’d never known a love so fierce and protective, and he was astonished that it had blossomed so quickly inside him. She was
his
, and his heart grasped that truth.

But in spite of the love that remained for Daria, the awful knowledge of her pregnancy made her seem a stranger to him. Her pregnancy was a vivid reminder that she had another whole life that didn’t include him. He could scarcely fathom that Daria had a home and a family apart from him, that her life had gone on—and quite happily, it seemed. He shuddered involuntarily. He didn’t like the feelings and emotions that were welling up in him. He had never been a jealous man. Daria had never given him reason to be, even when they were in college and she’d had plenty of opportunities. But to know now that she carried another man’s child—and the intimate history that fact entailed—called up primitive emotions over which he seemed to have no control.

He stood in the driveway, staring down the street until the ambulance was out of sight. But his gaze was trained far beyond the place where the street dissolved into the horizon. His eyes were fixed on some great gulf in time. And he could not begin to see to the other side. Tightening his hold on Natalie, he went into his parents’ house to call ahead and give the hospital his trained appraisal of Daria’s condition.

Colson Hunter was en route to a meeting in Wichita when Carla Eldridge reached him on his cell phone. Cole knew from the quaver in her voice that the news wasn’t good.

“Cole, I think you’d better come back. A hospital in Kansas City just called to say that Daria’s been admitted there.”

“What? What’s going on, Carla?”

“They wouldn’t tell me. They said she was in stable condition, but they need you to call them right away.”

“Did you get the number?”

Carla repeated the number twice while he scribbled it on the palm of his hand, trying to stay in his lane on the interstate. He jabbed at the handset until he had a dial tone again, then tried twice before he could get the phone’s minuscule buttons to register the numbers his fingers punched in.

An eternity later, his call was transferred to a nurse who gave him the information he needed.

“Your wife is fine, Dr. Hunter, but she is having contractions and we need to get them stopped. The doctor has her on full bed rest, and we’re doing everything possible to save the baby, but I think you should know that it’s very tentative at this point.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“We’ve managed to get the bleeding stopped, but she’s still having contractions. Dr. Hammond has started her on a different medication, but we won’t know for a while if it’s going to do the trick.”

The nurse launched into a string of medical jargon, but he had all the information he needed. Daria was losing his baby, just as Bridgette had.

“I’m at least three hours from Kansas City now,” he told the woman, “but I’ll get there as quickly as I can. Please tell her I’m on my way.”

Cole got directions to the hospital, ended the call, and kicked the cruise control up several notches. He turned around at the first exchange on I-35. He was halfway to Topeka when he thought to wonder where Natalie was. With a sinking feeling, he realized that he already knew in his heart exactly where she was. She was with her father. He was ashamed of the petty jealousies and fear that rose up in him. Shaking off the self-centered feelings, he thought of how frightened and alone Natalie must feel, and his heart broke for her. He longed to see her, to comfort her and assure her that her mommy would be all right. He inched the cruise control up again and prayed that God would get him there safely.

It was almost dark when he pulled into the parking lot of the Medical Center—the same hospital where Nate had stayed.

Five minutes later he was standing in front of the door to Daria’s hospital room. He paused, wondering what he could say. Without knowing what had transpired between Nate and Daria, he didn’t know how he should act with her.

Finally he took a deep breath and pushed the door open. Daria was lying in the bed, her head barely elevated. If she heard him come in, she gave no indication. She stared blindly out the window at the darkening sky.

“Daria.”

She took in a short breath as though she’d been awakened suddenly. “Cole? Oh, Cole, the baby—” She started to cry.

He rushed to her side. “Did you lose… Is everything all…?” He couldn’t make his words come out right.

“No, no…the baby is fine, Cole. His heartbeat is strong. See?” She pointed to a monitor that sat ominously on a table beside her bed. He hadn’t noticed before that she was hooked up to the monitor and an IV.

“It’s just that it’s too early. They’re trying to get the contractions stopped. Oh, Cole. I’m so sorry! I know this was what you were afraid of all along, Cole. I’m so sorry it happened. But it doesn’t have to be like Carson. Even if they can’t stop my labor, the baby might still be okay. We’ve just got to keep praying.”

“I prayed all the way here, Daria.”

“I know.”

She sounded stronger, confident almost. He wasn’t sure he liked hearing this resolve in her voice. What did it signal? Something had changed since he spoke with her last. He was afraid to know what it was.

“Where’s Natalie?” he asked abruptly.

“She’s at Jack and Vera’s. She’s fine.”

“What can I do, Daria? I want to help, but I don’t know what you want me to do.”

She bowed her head for a moment. When she looked up, it was to gaze directly into his eyes. “Just keep praying, Cole. For the baby and…for everything…”

“Do you want me to stay with you, or do you want me to go?”

She didn’t have a chance to answer before the door to the hallway inched open and a tall, thin man with pale, close-cropped hair poked his head in. Thinking it was a nurse or an orderly, Cole stepped away from Daria’s bed and waited, expecting the man to ask him to leave while he took her blood pressure or something. But then the door was wrenched from the man’s hands and flung wide open as Natalie burst into the room crying excitedly, “Mommy! Mommy!”

The little girl stopped short when she saw Cole standing there. Instantly her cries turned to squeals of joy. “Daddy! It’s my Daddy!” she said, turning to the man in the doorway. She galloped across the room.

“Hi, punkin.” He knelt to embrace her, and she wrapped her arms around his neck and nuzzled his face with her own like a puppy beside itself with happiness. He stood with Natalie in his arms, and a sob rose in his throat, taking him completely by surprise. Over Natalie’s shoulder, he looked into Daria’s eyes. She was looking at the other man, her face veiled in anguish. He now noticed the scars on the man’s arms and hands and realized that this man he’d thought to be a stranger was indeed Natalie’s father. Cole squeezed her tightly to himself, amazed at how featherlight she was in his arms, how sweet her silky fine hair smelled.

Natalie let loose of his neck long enough to lean down and touch Daria’s toe through the sheet. The little girl smiled shyly at her mother and wrinkled her nose. “You look funny, Mommy.”

Daria’s lovely features had been transformed into a mask of utter misery. This couldn’t be good for the baby. What must this stress be doing to her?

“Daria,” he started.

Nate apparently saw the same thing in her face, for he strode to her bedside and bent to read the monitors. “Are you all right?” he asked. But it seemed to Cole to be the loving, possessive husband, not the physician, who was asking the question.

Daria nodded. Smiling wanly, she looked from one man to the other. “Nate,” she said softly, her voice quavering. “This is Cole. Cole, Nathan.”