Sleeping With Her Enemy(35)

“Dax!” Amy hissed, startling him out of his fear-induced haze. “Call 911 now.” He pulled out his phone. She made a shooing motion with her fingers. “Don’t let Kat hear you panic. So if you can’t be calm about it, go around back to make the call. Then ask Gary to meet the paramedics.”

He pulled out his phone and, with shaking hands, performed the necessary steps to answer the dispatcher’s questions and summon and instruct Gary.

Calm. Kat needed him to be calm. Kat’s baby needed him to be calm. It was just that he loved his goddamned sister so fucking much, that…

“Okay, sweetie,” he could hear Amy cooing to Kat as he came back around to the porch. “Everything is going to be fine.” She was talking to Kat, but her voice was like an anchor to him, too, giving him something to focus on. “You’re not having a heart attack. You’re having a baby. People do it all the time. Let’s get you inside where you’ll be more comfortable.”

Cue the wail. The wails were coming really close together. Admittedly, everything he knew about childbirth, he knew from TV, but didn’t that mean that the contractions were coming close together?

“Okay,” Amy said again, the word becoming her soothing mantra. “After this wave, we’re walking inside.”

“I can’t walk,” Kat sobbed. “I can’t move!”

“Well, you’re just going to have to, to keep the baby safe,” Amy said sharply, raising her voice. The tone was in such contrast to her previous reassuring demeanor that it caused Dax to rear back a little as he mounted the steps to the porch.

It must have had the same effect on Kat, because she eased her death grip on the railing. Amy glared at him and jerked her head toward Kat. Responding to the unspoken order, he ran around and took Kat’s arm, mimicking the hold Amy had on the other one.

She nodded. “Good. Now we move, quick, before the next contraction.”

They had to stop in the entryway to allow another one to pass, but they made it into his bedroom before the next one hit. Dax, still on the phone with the dispatcher, ran ahead and smoothed the rumpled sheets even though his rational mind knew that childbirth probably didn’t require a tidy bed.

“I have to push,” Kat panted as Amy positioned her back on the bed. “I have to push.” Kat seemed markedly calmer than she had outside. “They said this would happen—all of a sudden I’d have the urge to push.”

Amy grabbed the phone from Dax. “Hi. I’m in charge here. The mother says she needs to push. What do I do?” He watched her nod and murmur a few “uh-huhs.” Then she handed the phone back.

“Okay,” Amy said again, laying a hand on Kat’s forehead, which was covered with sweat. “Next time you feel the urge, you’re going to take a deep breath and bear down like…um, like you’re going to the bathroom.”

“I’m scared,” Kat said quietly, grabbing Amy’s other hand.

“Nah,” Amy said. “People do this all the time. You’ve got billions of years of evolution on your side here.”

Kat took a shaky breath. “Okay then, let’s do this.”

Amy moved down to the foot of the bed. “You let me know when you feel like you need to push, okay?”

Kat nodded even as tears began to slip out of the corner of her eyes.

He wanted to ask if he should so something. Boil water? That’s what they did on TV, right? Tear sheets into bandages? But the two women were in a world of their own. Some kind of metaphysical thing had passed between them, and he had a feeling anything he would say right now would just tip them out of the zone.

Kat had been wearing a maternity sundress. He would have called it a muumuu, but she would have slapped him. Amy lifted the dress up even as she made eye contact with him. Apparently he wasn’t forgotten after all. “Your sister is about to have a baby. It’s probably better for everyone if you go stand up by her head and try to make yourself useful. Keep the dispatcher informed.”

He jumped as if she’d lit a fire under his ass and moved to the top of the bed, taking Kat’s proffered hand just as another contraction hit.

“I have to push!”

“Okay, go!” Amy yelled.

His sister she squeezed his hand so hard he thought she would break it as she yelled, “Motherfucker!”

“I can see the head—it’s not through yet, but your baby has black hair!” Amy said, grinning. “You’re doing great!”

Kat just panted and heaved a great breath in. The wail became a war cry as she bore down. Holy crap, he’d had no idea. TV didn’t do justice to any of this. This was both terrifying and amazing at the same time.