right. You’re doing great.”
If a hole in the floor could have swallowed her, Charity would have welcomed its suction. Instead, she fussed with the thick band that held her hair away from her face. Watching the loving way Andrew ministered to Serena only reminded Charity of what she didn’t have. But she couldn’t think about that now. Nor would she acknowledge the sharp edge of envy that pressed against her insides.
“He’s right, Mrs. Westin. You’re doing a great job, and your contraction has ended.” Charity surprised herself by sounding in control, though her mind raced in a dozen directions. To maintain that illusion, she returned to her memorized list of questions. “About your water…”
“Nine o’clock,” Serena answered, sounding strained.
That voice, more than her patient’s response, focused Charity’s thoughts immediately. It hinted that the baby might come soon. She bent to check the paper strip spilling from the fetal monitor. At least she saw no signs of early or late heart rate deceleration that might have indicated fetal distress.
“When is your due date?”
“September 8,” she choked out.
Jotting down the gestation and other information the couple provided about Serena’s last OB visit, Charity continued, “When is the last time you ate or drank anything?”
“Dinner…at six.” Serena closed her eyes, another contraction coming on the heels of the former.
A knock came on the door just as Charity glanced at the monitor again, and a petite woman in blue scrubs stepped into the room.
“Hello, I’m Dr. Kristen Walker, the staff OB.”
“Doctor, I’d like you to meet Andrew and Serena Westin.”
Charity stepped next to the doctor, who was pulling on a pair of latex gloves. “Mrs. Westin is at thirty-nine weeks three days gestation. When she saw her OB two days ago, she was closed, thick and long. She ruptured at twenty-one hundred and could be precipitous. Her tones look good and her vitals are fine.”
With Dr. Walker’s nod, Charity moved to the wall telephone to contact Serena’s regular obstetrician while the staff physician checked the degree of dilation and effacement.
Just as Charity hung up, Dr. Walker straightened and dropped her gloves into the garbage. “Mrs. Westin, you’re already to eight centimeters and one hundred percent effaced. Your doctor is on her way. Keep up your Lamaze breathing because you’ll be ready to push soon.”
Charity moved into action, opening the cherry-finished cabinetry of the homey LDRP room, to reveal the necessary equipment for the delivery. In the infant care center, she turned on the warmer light, prepared the parent-newborn bracelets and readied the oxygen and suction equipment.
“Is she too far along for an epidural?” Andrew asked the doctor.
“I’m afraid so,” Dr. Walker responded. “Everything will progress quickly now.”
Their voices seemed so far away as Charity focused on her role in preparing for the big arrival. The baby hadn’t even crowned and already she felt that same rush of excitement she experienced every day on the job. No matter how many newborns she cradled in her arms, the miraculous birthing process still amazed her.
But it wasn’t time to be amazed yet. So much could still go wrong.
As soon as Dr. Walker left the room, Charity moved quickly to start Serena’s IV. “We’ll have to answer some of the standard questions after you deliver, but I already know the one about religion,” she said as she secured the tube with medical tape.
Fifteen minutes later, Serena’s regular obstetrician whipped through the door, yanking on his gloves. While the physician examined the mother and announced her ready to push, Charity checked to ensure they were prepared for the best…and the worst. Then she held her breath and braced one of her patient’s legs while awaiting the miracle of life.
Charity wondered if she’d ever had a longer twelve-hour shift as she pulled her champagne-colored coupe out of West Oakland Regional Hospital’s parking lot, practically letting her car drive itself back from Commerce Township to the Village of Milford. Her adrenaline boost had disappeared, leaving only her normal void.
A sad smile pulled at her lips when she thought of sweet Seth, who had announced his arrival with a howl that said, “Here I am.” The Westin baby had chubby cheeks and blue eyes that were already threatening to turn brown. But like all the other newborns sleeping in the nursery or rooming with their mothers, he was someone else’s child.
“Get over it, Charity,” she said aloud, shaking her head at the empty road she traveled. Helping with Serena Westin’s delivery had taken a heavier toll than she’d expected.
She hoped it was only her pulse—instead of her biological clock—that pounded in her ears. Whatever it was, it refused to let her favorite contemporary Christian music in the cassette player drown it out. December and her thirtieth birthday loomed before her, and she didn’t have a marriage prospect in sight.
Figuring she wouldn’t get any sleep this morning anyway, she continued up General Motors Road instead of turning on South Milford Road and heading straight home. Mother wouldn’t mind. She wouldn’t be up for breakfast for another hour anyway.
At Hickory Ridge Road, Charity turned right. A few miles up on the left, Hickory Ridge Community Church’s well-tended flower beds—her work, of course—promised the gardening therapy and solace she needed. Focusing her thoughts on the gardening gloves, trowel and pruning shears she always kept in the trunk, she flicked back a seed of misgiving. Church hadn’t offered her much peace lately, often unsettling her nerves. Even at her weekly prayer meetings, she’d felt empty. That wouldn’t happen this time, when she could soak up the silence in the late summer sunshine—alone.
But as soon as she turned into the church drive, she realized how wrong she was. The whir of power saws and the bam-bam-bam of hydraulic nail guns reverberated off the windshield and filtered in the open window, setting her teeth on edge. Can nothing go right today?
R and J Construction had been working several weeks on the new Family Life Center building project, but she wished they’d taken this particular Saturday off. She drove farther until she reached the new asphalt parking lot past the parsonage. As soon as she shut off the engine, blaring rock music from the building site assailed her ears and had her grinding her molars.
Ignore it. She retrieved her gardening equipment and headed over to the farthest point away from that skeleton of a building—the landscaped bed on the side of the church facing the road. But tuning out those worldly sounds proved impossible, even as she dug below the roots of a grass clump that had dared invade the mulch-covered area.
“That’s enough,” she announced, just as a second song started beating its way into her mind.
Righteous indignation straightened her posture as she marched toward the construction site and a man dressed in faded jeans and a white T-shirt. As he straightened from bending over two sawhorses, she recognized him. He’d been at the center’s groundbreaking ceremony.
“Excuse me,” she said in her loudest speaking voice, suddenly uncomfortable to still be wearing her blue hospital scrubs out in public.
He jerked his head up. “May I help you?” he called out, shoving light brown hair out of his eyes.
“If you don’t mind…” She crossed her arms and let her words trail off, figuring them useless under the power saw’s drone and that incessant drumbeat.
The man pointed to his ears and shook his head. “Sorry. Can’t hear you.”
Charity didn’t like the way his cornflower-blue eyes twinkled or the way his mouth turned up slightly at the corners. This was not funny. Stepping closer, she yelled again. “You might be able to if we didn’t have to shout over that…noise.”
The man turned his head to