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