Beyond Revenge (The Ransom Series) (20 page)

Her Willpower

∞

I’m right here,

but I can’t help
her.

She screams and
cries,

and I am helpless.

There is light to
be had,

happiness,

but always a
struggle first.

And she will win.

She will conquer
it.

Victorious and
strong.

Her will to
endure.

Her power to
survive.

That is the mark
of a mother.

∞

When I usher Jack and his enormous
medical bag into the bedroom, I’m relieved to see Morgan still sleeping soundly
on the bed.

“Are you sure this is perfectly
normal?  It’s not too early?” I ask quietly, unable to hide the panic in my
voice.

Jack stops dead in his tracks and turns
around, grasping me tightly on the shoulder with his free hand
and
leaning in to lower the volume of our conversation
.  “Leo,
everything’s fine.  The baby is fully developed.  It’s just going to miss putting
on a little extra weight.”

I nod my head in acknowledgement, but
I’m still not fully convinced.  The situation is scary enough as it is.  We
can’t take Morgan to a hospital unless it’s absolutely necessary.  We can’t
bring
in a midwife or anyone else to deliver the baby.  We’re about to
attempt a home birth with an aged general physician at the helm, and it scares
the shit out of me.

Jack sets down his medical bag on the
small table and takes a seat in the chair next to the bed.  I moved
some
furniture and supplies into the room between bouts of pacing
while Morgan slept and I waited for Jack’s arrival.  I was a nervous wreck
waiting alone in the conscious world in this house with the knowledge of what
has started but has yet to truly begin.  Jack’s arrival has only increased my
anxiety, because we’re actually going to have to face this now.  It’s happening
whether we like it or not.

“Good job getting her to sleep,” Jack
commends as he pulls out two sets of wired discs and stretchy bands.

“It wasn’t hard.  She hasn’t been
sleeping well at night.  She’s going to be exhausted through this.”

“I’ll be fine,” a raspy voice chimes
in.

Jack and I immediately look down at
Morgan, her eyes
peeking open
and her hair frazzled in
her conscious but sleepy state.

I take her hand in mine and lean over
to brush my lips across her forehead.  “Sorry for waking you.”

“It’s okay,” she replies, her voice
regaining some of its usual vigor.  She glances from me to Jack and the
supplies in his hands.  “What are you doing?”

“These will help us monitor you and the
baby,” Jack explains as he offers me the stretchy bands.  “Help me with this,
will you, Leo?  Try to slip these underneath her side from the back.”

I release Morgan’s hand to do as Jack
asks, compressing the mattress underneath Morgan to slip the bands underneath
her.  Jack grabs them from me on the other side of her waist and pulls some
slack through.

Morgan and I watch as Jack puts the
wired discs on Morgan’s belly, securing them in place with the stretchy bands. 
He hooks the wires up to a monitoring device and turns it on.  It doesn’t take
long for the information to start scrolling slowly across the screen.  There
are two separate charts, one on top of the other, each with
a
line
that varies slightly as it
draw
s
itself along the screen.

“The baby’s heart rate looks good,”
Jack declares after a minute of observation.  “We’ll keep an eye on this bottom
chart.  It’ll help us keep track of the contractions.”

I feel my throat go dry as Jack says
these things.  It’s becoming more real to me by the second.  We’re actually
having a baby, in this house, in mere hours.  My heart is beating so fiercely I
swear I can hear its rapid thuds reverberating throughout my entire body.

I snap out of my temporary stupor. 
Morgan and Jack are both looking at me expectantly as if I’m supposed to be
answering a question, but I find myself oblivious to whatever was asked.

Jack observes my blank expression and sighs
with a smile.  “Leo, take a breather.  Get some fresh air.  I’ll keep an eye on
her.”

My brain barely seems capable of
forming words as I look to Morgan.  “I can’t.”

She
takes in my worried face before
beaming the warmest smile.  “I’ll be fine, Leo.  I’m in good hands.”

I open my mouth to insist that I stay,
but when I steal a
nother
glance at the lines on the
monitoring device, panic surges through me again.  I need to pull my shit
together.  “Okay.  I’ll be outside if you need me.”

My hand cups Morgan’s cheek as I kiss
her briefly but with every ounce of love I can muster in my frantic state.  I
lock eyes with her just long enough to make sure she’ll be okay without me
before I leave her side and head out of the room.  I practically bolt to the
front door.

The moment I step outside, the
radiant sun on my skin starts to warm the chill of my nerves. 
The summer air is stifling in the desert, but the openness of it
all still makes me feel like I can breathe again.

I lean forward with my hands on my
knees and take repeated deep breaths.  In my mind I know I’m more afraid than
Morgan is about bringing a child into this world, but I also know that I need
to be strong for her.  After all we’ve been through together,
this is my
chance to be there for her without anything else standing in my way
, and I can’t let her down.  I’ve let her down too much already.  I
won’t let that part of my history continue to repeat itself with the people I
care about.

By the time I look up again, I hear a
car coming in the distance.  Robert’s black sedan slowly comes into view,
causing a new wave of anxiety to flow through me.  I’m grateful that
Morgan’s
parents
will be here to support their daughter, but I have a
bad feeling
that
their presence during this whole
process is going to make this awkward for me.

They’re happy about the baby, thrilled
to be grandparents, but I know they never expected this so soon and under such
extreme circumstances.  No parent would ever expect their daughter to choose
impregnation by her boyfriend to avoid the possibility of being impregnated by
a psychotic
criminal
.  That doesn’t happen to normal
people, and as I
watch
Robert and Cindy pull up to
this
secluded
house
in
the
desert for the home birth of their first grandchild to a
mother and
father
who are wanted criminals, I realize just
how abnormal
this whole situation is.

God help us.

“You look pale,” Robert says with a
teasing grin as he gets out of the car.

While he’s grabbing bags from the trunk,
Cindy walks up to me with the widest smile on her face and pulls me into a hug. 
She squeezes me tightly as I attempt to hug her back.

She pulls away and observes me from
head to toe.  “You look as much of a wreck as Robert was nineteen years ago
.
”

“I’m sure I do.” 
Though I’m slightly
embarrassed that my emotional state is showing so
openly
on my face, it’s comforting to know that I’m not the only person
to freak out a little at the knowledge of impending fatherhood.

Robert walks up to us and hands me a
bag before shaking my free hand.  “You’ll do fine, Leo.  The moment you have
that baby in your arms, you’ll realize everything’s going to be okay.”

A smile and a nod are all I can manage
as I lead them into the house.  We take only a moment to drop off the bags
before heading
to
the bedroom.

Morgan’s head tilts to the side from
where she’s lying down on the bed to see us as we come down the hallway.
 
Her eyes are alive as she grins
at me.  It takes only that
seemingly insignificant expression on her face to make me feel ten times
better.  Somehow she’s managing
to give me relief
when
I should be the one comforting her.

Jack has just finished bringing the
blanket back down over the lower half of her body when we walk in.  He turns
around and takes off his latex gloves as he nods in greeting to Robert and
Cindy.

“How’s our girl doing?” Cindy asks,
squeezing Jack’s shoulder briefly before leaning over the bed to
hug
her daughter.

“She’s doing great.  Some mild
contractions, but she’s not dilating yet.  We’ll give things some more time to
progress naturally, but if we don’t see dilation soon, I’ll use something to
speed things up a bit.”

I feel the anxiety spike within me
again, but no one else in the room seems concerned.  Morgan even looks happy as
her father leans in to give her a hug.

As if she can read my mind, or maybe
just the worried look on my face, Morgan motions me toward the bed.  In my moment
of hesitation, she tries to pull herself up to a sitting position against the
headboard, and I’m immediately by her side to help her.

“You know how to get my attention,” I
tease as I readjust the pillow behind her back.

“I sure do.”  Her lips connect with
mine briefly before her head comes to rest on my shoulder.

Jack looks at the two of us on the bed
and nods.  “We’ll be in the living room if you need us.  Robert, Cindy, shall
we?”  Jack motions them toward the door.

I get a few knowing looks from the
three of them as they leave and close the door behind them.  My face
immediately reddens.

“You’re having a hard time with this,
aren’t you?” Morgan asks,
stifling a laugh
.

I grasp her hand in mine and turn my
head to kiss her temple.  I trail the adoring tokens of my love for her down her
cheek and jawline until my lips find hers.

“I’m fine.  Everything’s going to go
beautifully,” I
whisper
softly only centimeters from
her lips before kissing her again, all while trying desperately to believe my
own words.  Her presence helps.  Knowing I’m here for her helps.

We sit together, hands and bodies
entwined together in different ways at different times, for hours with more of
the same.  We watch the occasional small peaks in the bottom line on the
monitor and watch the baby’s slight heart
rate changes when Morgan feels movement in her belly.  Jack checks
in on her occasionally, and by the time the entire afternoon has gone by and
it’s dark outside, he does another internal check.

His brow furrows, and I’m immediately
concerned.  “Hardly any more dilation.”  He looks at the watch on his wrist. 
“It’s been over twelve hours since your water broke.  I want to start hurrying
this along.  There’s not much fluid in there for the baby now, so I don’t want
you to go past twenty-four hours.  We can’t risk a
C
-section.”

Even the mention of a
C
-section sends my stomach into wild flips of fear.  I’ve never let
myself think on the idea for longer than necessary, because leaving our place
of hiding to take Morgan to a hospital could mean the end of us.  If we have to
do it to save her or the baby, we will, but it
’s
our
absolute last resort.

I go out into the living room to update
Robert and Cindy on what’s happening while Jack applies something internally to
Morgan.  By the time I’m back, he’s already done and preparing to leave the
room.

He catches me by the arm
as he’s
leaving
and speaks to me in whispers.  “Help her get some
sleep.  It’s likely going to get worse very quickly.”

My stomach sinks at Jack’s words, but I
try to keep a smile on my face when I return to Morgan’s side.  I take her hand
in mine and sit down next to her on the bed.

“I know what you’re going to say,” I
begin, “but please take me seriously when I say you need to rest.”

Morgan almost bursts out laughing at
me.  How can she be so damn calm right now?

“
You’ll never stop
telling me I need to rest,” she teases.

“I know.  I know.  Just do this for me,
please?”  I lean down and kiss her softly on the lips.  “Please rest for me. 
I’ll be here with you the entire time.  Just get some sleep.”

She considers my words for a moment
before I know she
ha
s given in.  “Okay.  Just for
you.  I’ll try.”

“Thank you.”  I kiss her again before
turning off the light on the nightstand so that only a sliver of light from the
hallway peeks into the room under the door.

I continue to
grasp
her hand as I sit here, closing my eyes and putting myself into a
completely restful and relaxed but conscious state as I hold her and comfort
her and never let go.

I don’t know how much time passes,
minutes or hours, I’m not sure, but the moment the sound reaches my ears it
doesn’t matter.