A hiss escaped her, slow and long, as Hunter drew her into his side. “No!”
I straightened. “Is it the baby, Aurora?”
Wet eyes collided with mine. “I-I’m not ready, Kitty, andIdecide when?—”
I kept my smile gentle as Aurora hissed out in pain again. “No one’s ever ready. Do you?—”
“Holy fuck! Did your water just break?”
“—have a bag prepared for the hospital?” I finished.
“Jesus Christ. The baby’s coming!” Hunter yelped.
“No, not yet,” she pleaded with me. “There’s another month to go.”
“Are you… Your age… Are you high risk?”
“No,” Hunter answered. “It’s been a relatively easy pregnancy?—”
“That’s because you haven’t been in my body,” Rory snapped.
“We need to get you to the hospital. Or did you have alternative plans made?”
Rory grabbed my hand and clutched at it. “I wanted a home birth.”
“Do you have a midwife or a doula?”
“We only traveled today because of the rubies.” Hunter pinched the bridge of his nose. “The birth was supposed to take place in Las Vegas. We came with a doctor and a doula.”
“I don’t like that doctor,” Rory snarled. “I told you not to hire him!”
“Moonlight, he’s a specialist?—”
“I refuse for the first thing my child smells to be his garlic breath.”
Though I snorted, Jen murmured, “It’ll be fine, Rory. Honestly?—”
“It won’t! Fuck. I don’t want him anywhere near me!”
“Bellevue never turns us away,” Lauren inserted. “We could go there?—”
“No! It’s not safe. Not after the Summit.” Rory’s face crumpled with pain. “It has to be here. Fuck, we should have stayed in Vegas. What the hell was I thinking? About curses! That’s what. Fucking curses and fucking Sicily and fucking shit I shouldn’t be stressing about when I’m on the brink of giving birth!”
“If you’re comfortable with me helping you,” I offered, voice gentle, realizing the added stress of her position and situation would only make the experience more traumatic. “I can coordinate with your doula?” I turned to Stan. “That doctor I saw, Victor? Maybe call him in if she doesn’t like the one from Vegas?”
“On it.”
I turned away from the mother-to-be and tugged on his hand. “You should have a medevac at the ready in case things… deteriorate.”
His eyes widened but he nodded in understanding.
I left him to coordinate with the doctor they had on call while the rest of the family surged into a flurry of action, each of us heading in different directions.
That I’d helped plan their medical center around Currau’s needs worked to my benefit. No, we weren’t set up for labor and delivery, and my emergency training was far less than an OBGYN’s and definitely inadequate, so, yeah, not ideal, but at least I was a medical professional Aurora didn’t appear to loathe.
She grabbed my hand again once we got her settled into the emergency trauma room that, thankfully, we hadn’t had to use yet. “Don’t let the baby die.”
My eyes flared as I stared at her strained features, realizing she’d waited until we were alone in here. “You’re not going to?—”
