Quarterback's Secret Baby(82)

And the tabloid angle? That I knew wouldn't have been her doing. I've never met a human being more diffident than Tasha Greeley. If someone was trying to sell a story to the tabloids, it wasn't her, that I knew with one-hundred percent certainty. She also didn't want money - not from me and not from the media. Little Falls was a small town and I was its most famous former resident - if what Barry said was true and Tasha had given birth to my baby, it wasn't too hard to believe that someone would have seen an angle there to be exploited.

I spent the next three days in torment, going back and forth on whether or not I believed that Tasha had really had my child and struggling with the thought that if she had, she hadn't seen fit to tell me. By the time I was sitting on the plane, looking down as the dusty flatlands of Texas turned into the greener pastures of the Midwest, I was almost relieved. Either way, I would know soon.





Chapter 30: Natasha


I gave birth to Kaden Barlow's son on the day of a full moon . I'd woken up a few times during the night, dazzled by the moonlight coming in the window and assuming the discomfort in my belly was period cramps. I wasn't awake enough to register that they couldn't be. By the time morning came the pain was worse. I ripped the covers off myself and looked down at my belly only to see it visibly tightening in front of my eyes, hard enough to push the breath out of my lungs when the pain hit.

"Ooooh..." I moaned, closing my eyes and leaning my head back on the pillow. There was an immediate knock at the door.

"Tash?"

It was Ray. "Everything OK? Can I come in?"

As soon as he saw my face, Ray disappeared back out the door. When he came back, Alisha was with him. She gently pulled the covers the rest of the way off me and all three of us looked down at the wet, pink spot on the bed.

Alisha smiled at me. "It's time, Tash. Is your bag still by the front door? How do you feel?"

I looked up at Ray and Alisha as a surge of adrenaline rushed through my veins. Was it happening? Finally? "I feel fine," I told her. "I mean, right now I feel fine, but the cramps are painful."

"Alright," she told me, taking immediate charge of the situation. "Ray, you go make sure the bag is by the front door and tell your mother it's happening. I'll call the hospital and see if we should go in yet."

A nurse at the hospital asked for Alisha to hold the phone near my mouth so she could hear me breathing, asked how much liquid there seemed to be on the bed and then told me it was probably time to come in. So me, my mother and Alisha - both of whom were to be my birthing partners - all managed to get ourselves into the car to drive to the hospital. The pains seemed to get worse after standing up and walking around, even if it was only briefly. By the time we pulled up outside they were bad enough to have me convinced something was seriously wrong.

"This is - Alisha, this is bad," I panted as two orderlies rushed out with two wheelchairs - one for me, one for my mother. "I feel like I can't breathe. I think something, oh God, I think something's wrong."

I was starting to panic. My mother reached out and took one of my hands as we were pushed into the reception area. "Nothing's wrong, Tash," she said. "It hurts like hell, but nothing's wrong. You're just having a baby."

Alisha bent down. "And we're here now, anyway. If something's wrong, people here are trained to deal with it."

It took me a long time to fill out all the forms at the front desk, what with having to pause and groan like a cow every few minutes, but we got it done and then were led to an examination room where I was subjected to an internal examination that had me grinding my teeth so hard I was surprised they didn't break.

"You're seven centimeters!" The nurse announced, pulling off her rubber gloves and smiling. "That's excellent! Most first time moms aren't even two when they come in - you're already more than halfway there."

Alisha and my mother arranged themselves so there was one of them sitting on each side of me, close to my head. They took turns feeding me ice chips and letting me squeeze their hands as hard as I could whenever a contraction hit. The pain was so all-encompassing that it felt, at times, like a kind of unconsciousness. I could hear their gentle, encouraging voices, though, even if they seemed to be coming from very far away.

Everything moved very quickly. By the time I was settled in and starting to beg for painkillers it was too late for an epidural.

"I can't do this," I wailed, looking at my mother and then at Alisha. "I can't do this. It's too much. I want to go home."

My mom smiled while Alisha ran a cool, damp cloth over my forehead. "We can go home, sweetie, but first, we have to get that baby out."