Page 132 of Bailey

FORTY-EIGHT

ONE YEAR LATER:

Bailey’s eyes opened as the uncomfortable tightening pulled across her stomach, radiating up toward her collarbone and yanking through her lower back.

“Reeves,” she gasped out. Her voice felt dry and came out raspy, but her husband still swiveled in his office chair, where he’d been editing the footage of his solo trek through a riverbed, where he’d caught a couple of moose among the willows, earlier this week.

She tried to push herself up, but she needed his help to get out of bed these days. So getting up off the couch? Bailey failed, and she fell back to the pillow, where she’d been resting, her mind almost giving in and letting her nap.

“Hey, hey, what’s going on?”

She panted as the sensation in her body reached its peak, then started to ebb away, leaving behind an echoing ache. “I just had a contraction.”

Reeves arrived in front of her, both hands outstretched. “Let’s get you up and see.”

She’d been having random contractions in the past thirty-six hours, and she just wanted this baby to come. With her first pregnancy, she’d woken up in the middle of the night with intense cramping that wrapped around her back to the front of her belly, and when she’d gotten out of bed, her water had broken.

This felt like being in some sort of low labor torture, with the promise of no relief.

She let Reeves help her stand, and she shivered as the air conditioning touched her clammy skin. Reeves didn’t let go of her for a moment, though he’d walked around with her a few times now. The “contractions” had subsided then, and that was how Bailey had known she hadn’t truly gone into labor.

Tears filled her eyes. “I just want him to come.” She hated how nasally her voice sounded, but Reeves simply edged her toward the wide doorway leading out of his office.

“Let’s go outside,” he said. “It’s been sunny all day today, and we can walk over to the duck pond and back.” He wore such hope on his face, as he just wanted to make her happy.

So Bailey nodded and sniffled, loving the strength and calmness in which Reeves had handled her pregnancy. They’d celebrated their one-year anniversary a week and a half ago by escaping to Wolf Creek Lodge in Jackson Hole, and Bailey had been nesting around the house since.

The nursery sat ready for the baby boy she desperately wanted to bring home. Her veterinary practice was set to run without her for the next three months, as she’d hired a new vet to join the clinic. Her mother had been putting up meals for her and Reeves, and their freezer couldn’t fit another casserole dish.

She went down the front steps of the house where she and Reeves had made their home. They’d talked about selling her farm, but in the end, they’d decided not to. Reeves paid the mortgage easily with his channel income, and while they didn’t need the house, Bailey had planted a huge garden last year.

She enjoyed walking next door, or loading up all three dogs on an ATV and taking them with her to do the gardening. She’d brought home three horses in the past year, and they housed them in her stables and let them graze in her pastures. And of course, Reeves used the property for filming farm clean-up videos, camping, and anything else he wanted.

As for the house, Reeves and Bailey had started working with an organization in Coral Canyon who placed people in delicate situations in temporary housing.

They had the house, after all, and Bailey wanted to provide a safe place for anyone who might need it, be that for a day, a week, a month, or a year.

Reeves had readily agreed, because he claimed he’d often needed someplace safe, warm, and dry to recoup, recover, and figure out his next step.

Right now, her good husband guided her along the sidewalk, and the moment her foot touched the gravel in their driveway, her breath got whisked out of her body as the intense tightening began to wrap itself around her once more.

She immediately came to a stop and tried to fill her lungs as the pain worsened and spread down her legs this time. She hunched forward, not quite sure how to protect herself from the pain.

Bailey moaned, and then the most glorious thing happened—her water broke. Relief flooded her, because they could go to the hospital now, and they wouldn’t be sent home.

“The baby’s coming,” she gasped out, immediately trying to get a proper breath. That had been impossible for the past six weeks, but her body wanted the oxygen anyway. She looked up at Reeves, tears gathering in her eyes and flowing down her face.

“My water just broke.”

The clock had just struck midnight when the doctor said, “He’s here, Bailey,” with the angry, mewling cry of a newborn following her statement.

She fell back against the bed, glad Reeves had removed the pillows when she’d asked him to. She panted and nodded at him. “Go see him.”

He looked like he’d seen a ghost, but he moved away from her side and went with the nurses as they placed the still-wailing baby on a cart. They wheeled him a few feet away to do whatever they needed to do, and Bailey switched her gaze from her son to the doctor.

Dr. Rotimi nodded at her, her expression bright and seemingly not a stitch of exhaustion anywhere, though she’d been here as long as Bailey. “One more push, and you’ll be done.”

Bailey nodded, did what she needed to, and sank back again. She immediately started shaking again, something that hadn’t happened sixteen years ago. Someone noticed, and a nurse brought her a heated, weighted blanket that felt like God’s embrace as she laid it across Bailey’s midsection.