Dance Away with Me - Susan Elizabeth Phillips Page 0,110
emitted the unmistakable guttural sound of a woman who needed to push.
“Don’t push! Pant.” Tess couldn’t let her tear. She acted automatically, massaging Savannah’s perineum to help it stretch naturally. Ian moved to the side to give her room. He held steady before all the muck of childbirth, and she’d never loved him more.
“Keep panting,” she told Savannah. “We’re taking it slow. That’s it. Good.”
The baby’s head began to move. “Slow now. Slow.” The top of the baby’s head emerged, and the contraction eased. “Good job. You’re doing great.”
Savannah dropped her own head on her folded arms to rest, her hips still high in the air. The beautiful indignity of giving birth.
“Keep panting,” Tess said. “You’re almost there.”
With a deep grunt, Savannah was back up on all fours.
“Easy! Don’t push. Pant.” More of the wet, wrinkled head appeared. Tess kept the baby’s head supported. In the background she heard Phish’s contribution. The baby would enter the world to the muted sounds of the Grateful Dead singing “Ripple.”
“That’s the way. You’re almost done.” Another contraction. A tiny shoulder. The baby slipped into Tess’s palms. “It’s a boy.”
Savannah collapsed onto her back. Tess wrapped the messy, blue-skinned baby in one of the dish towels Ian handed her. The infant gave a tiny mew followed by a lusty cry. Tess had no stethoscope but she went through the rest of the steps automatically: the cry, the flexation, chest moving. The baby was pinking up. All good.
She set the baby on Savannah’s chest and covered them both with the coat Ian handed her. She leaned back on her heels, heart racing, listening to “Ripple,” and waiting for the placenta. She delivered it into a plastic mixing bowl that she suspected Phish would never use again.
Savannah lay still, the baby to her chest. And now . . .
The screams . . . The gush of blood . . .
Tess swallowed hard.
But unlike Bianca, Savannah wasn’t dying. She was too busy admiring her baby. “He’s so much cuter than Mom’s.”
Tess had never heard more welcome words. She had a healthy mother. A healthy baby. She wanted to weep from gratitude.
Ian’s complexion, however, had a faint green tint. “Good job,” he said. “And I’m never having sex again.
* * *
At first Savannah, being Savannah, refused to go to the hospital with the firefighters. “Why should I? You said me and the baby are doing good, right?” She paused to gaze at her newborn, her features softened from an abundance of oxytocin and maternal love.
“Yes, but you both need to be checked.”
“You already checked us.”
“I’m not a doctor,” Tess protested.
“Half the time you act like one.”
The same old Savannah.
Savannah stunned her with a smile that transformed her sulky nineteen-year-old expression into the face of a Madonna. “Zoro.”
“Excuse me?”
“His name is Zoro. With one r. I don’t want him to have the same name as every other kid.”
“No worries. You and . . . Zoro . . . are going to the hospital whether you want to or not. Every newborn needs an immediate vitamin K shot.”
Fortunately, Savannah had heard about the importance of the shot and agreed, but not until Tess promised to personally drive her and baby Zoro back home from the hospital the next day—and not until she lambasted Tess for not having a supply of vitamin K on hand. “If you’re going to keep on delivering babies, you need to stay on top of this shit,” she said as the firefighters approached with the stretcher.
“I’m not going to keep delivering babies.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to.”
“That’s totally selfish.” Savannah kept talking as the firefighters transferred her and the baby to the stretcher. “Anybody can grind coffee, but not anybody can do what you did. Don’t tell me you’re seriously still hung up on what happened with Ian North’s wife?”
“She wasn’t his—”
“Jeez, Tess, what’s wrong with you? That wasn’t your fault. It could have happened to anybody.” She lifted her head as the firefighters wheeled her toward the door. “I know for sure if I ever have another baby, which I am seriously not ever going to do, but if I did, I wouldn’t let anybody deliver it but you. Get over yourself, okay? People need you.”
And she was gone.
Ian approached Tess from behind. “Out of the mouths of bitches.”
“Don’t you start on me, too.”
“No need. You already know what you have to do.”
* * *
Ian left the Broken Chimney to retrieve Wren from Heather’s while Tess drove home. She pulled in to the cabin instead