4. Creed
Chapter four
Creed
“Y ou were amazing,” my best friend was telling the tiny spitfire. “You’d be an asset to our future rescues.”
I heard a muffled laugh as Davin let her go. She’d barely come up to the middle of his chest, and I was a couple of inches taller than him.
I bent down to kiss her cheek. “Coffee would be great. Tomorrow?”
It was a calculated risk. I’d heard the tremble in her voice when she’d suggested it. She was as unsure of this as we were, and somehow that gave me confidence.
She nodded. “I’m off tomorrow as I didn’t know how long the bachelorette party would go.”
“So, how about lunch then?” Davin named a diner we liked near to the Rescue Group Inc. offices. In case Kailee was really interested in that we could introduce her there. It was never bad to have more EMTs in our network.
“Sure. Noon?”
“It’s a date.” I said, holding her gaze.
Her grin told me she was interested in this, too, with both of us.
***
“We need to file another complaint against the tour company. It wasn’t Andre’s fault, but there were too many people on that tour.”
Davin was wired with energy when we returned to our cabin. I’d enjoyed the peace of the cabin after the busy corporate career and then our friend’s death. But tonight it seemed kind of quiet.
Davin shrugged. “Maybe some of the group should sign up for one tour and really check it out.”
“That’s a good idea. Maybe Kailee could go with us.”
Davin stopped his pacing and looked at me. “You really like her.”
“Don’t you?”
He nodded, slowly. “But it usually takes you a long while to warm up to people.”
“You make me sound like some sort of grizzly monster.”
“Your beard needs a trim.”
I rolled my eyes and went to my room. I hadn’t looked at my phone since we’d started our rescue that night. I had a text from Ellen, Tim’s younger sister. She was still struggling a lot with his death.
“Went to a grief group. Not terrible. Maybe you two could come with me.”
I was happy she was going. Two years later and we still didn’t know for sure if his death was an accident. We knew he’d been on drugs, something none of us had realized was happening.
He’d told us once that he’d been in rehab, and work had gotten really stressful and crazy. We didn’t know that he’d lapsed to deal with the stress.
I didn’t want to think about that tonight. “Glad you went. We’ll see.” I always answered Ellen when she reached out. Davin and I saw her as a younger sister. But now I wanted to think about Kailee.
***
As I drifted off to sleep later that night, I replayed the feel of her as I lifted her out of the truck. I wondered how she’d feel in my arms as I carried her to bed before Davin and I wrung several orgasms out of her.
***
“We seriously don’t need to be this early, dude.”
“Dude,” I said, letting the sarcasm come through my voice. “It’s noon. You’re acting like it’s 5 am.”
Davin was never a morning person, but he’d really been slow that morning.
“You still want this, right?” I asked him as we pulled up to the diner.
“Of course. I couldn’t sleep thinking about it, honestly. We can rearrange your room like we’d talked about.”
“Hey guys,” Pam and Bascomb were walking into the diner as well. “Want to join us?”
“No.” I said without thinking.
“Sorry, we have a date,” Davin said.
“Hi guys,” Kailee was behind us. Maybe I should have waited to see if she wanted to join the others. I wasn’t good at this part of dating.
She gave Pam a quick hug. “Good to see you again.”
“You’re on a date with these two?” Pam laughed, as Bascomb raised his eyebrows at me. “Girl. You impress me more all the time.”
“Hey!” Bascomb protested.
“Come on, handsome,” she said to her fiancé. “If she can’t have you, these two are a pretty good second choice.”
I’d envied their relationship when I saw them together.
“It would take two of them to make up for what I can bring.”
“Okay, hotshot,” Pam laughed, pulling him down for a kiss. Her ring glinted in the light of the busy restaurant.
Yes, I did envy them. I’d never been able to do easy banter. I’d had some relationships, but I found it hard to talk about myself.
“They’re cute,” Kailee said.
I sighed quietly. Would I really be able to pull off flirty, fun on a date?
***
No. The answer was, I couldn’t.
“But if you use a backboard, you can move faster.” Davin and Kailee were discussing rescue techniques, and I was adding my two cents.
“These curly fries are amazing. How did I not know about this place?” Kailee asked.
She didn’t seem put off by my intense discussion of rescues. Or else I’d spent too much time on the mountain with Davin recently.
“Curly fries should be a food group,” Davin agreed.
“So you two live in a cabin? Who cooks?”
“I do.” I loved to cook. It was something my Dad and I did when my lawyer mom worked late and my sisters were at activities. With his MS it was harder for him by the time I was in college, but when I was home from breaks, he would hang out with me in the kitchen.
“I love it. What do you like to cook?”
“Healthy. He really eats mostly healthy food.”
“Dude.” I motioned to my burger. “Not all the time. I didn’t eat healthy when we worked at the firm.” I did order in some salads, but mostly ate whatever everyone else wanted to order in.
“We used to work for a financial firm in the city.”
“Really?”
I nodded. “We did, right out of college, with our friend. He left us the cabin in his will when he died in a car accident.”
It was awkward to blurt it out like that, I knew, but it got all that out of the way.
“I’m sorry.” She looked at me, then Davin, and I knew she meant it.
I tracked her as she put a fry in ketchup and then bit into it, humming in pleasure. I felt my body tighten. Creed, man, get it together. It’s a lunch date.
Then we heard a scream.
“Call 9-1-1! My sister is having a baby!” A woman in a business suit and heels was outside of a booth, looking at a woman gripping the table from her seat.
The waitress went over, her phone at the ready.
Kailee stood up. “I’ve helped with some, but call your group if they are so close. Unless you’ve done this?”
We’d helped rescue a pregnant woman who was dehydrated on a hike, but we hadn’t delivered a baby.
Davin was already calling, and I followed Kailee.
She was kneeling next to the booth, calmly asking the woman some questions.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” The sister was still shouting.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Creed. Help is on the way, and Kailee is an EMT. Why don’t we sit over there?” I motioned to a nearby table.
Kailee was looking at her watch. “Her contractions are pretty close,” she said to me.
I could see she was nervous.
“Do you have a staff room?” I asked the waitress, who was still on the phone with the paramedics.
“More like a table and chairs. But we can go back there.”
At least it would be private.
Pam and Bascomb came back into the restaurant with blankets and a kit. “We heard the call.”
“We’re going into the back room with -?” I looked at Kailee.
“This is Jessica, and it’s her first baby. Her husband is in the service.”
Ah, so she was on her own. I didn’t count the sister who looked like she was going to join us.
“And your name?” I smiled at the sister, and she smiled back, her eyebrow raised.
“Jenelle.”
“Jenelle, could you please direct the paramedics to the back when they get here?”
“Of course. I’ll send them right back.”
***
When Kailee and Pam got Jessica settled on blankets on the floor of the small break area, I watched as Kailee helped her get undressed from the waist down and get comfortable. The blankets covered her, and I could see Kailee was thinking the baby might actually be born here.
“I didn’t think it was real labor,” Jessica said, before she grabbed Pam’s hand and let out a cry.
“It’s going to be okay,” Kailee said. Davin peeked into the room. “How is it going?”
I wasn’t sure, but nodded at him.
Kailee felt Jessica’s abdomen, and her eyebrows furrowed. She looked right at me. “How long until the paramedics get here, do you think? We’re doing well, but just to be sure.”
I found the waitress, who was keeping people distracted in front.
“They said twenty minutes, but they were dealing with a car accident on Route 10,” she said.
I knew Bascomb had some medical training in the service, but I suspected neither he nor Kailee delivered a baby.
Jessica screamed again, and her sister went to the front door. “I’ll keep watching for help,” she said.
I went back to the room.
Kailee was between Jessica’s legs, and Pam was behind Jessica’s head, helping her have some water.
Bascomb was checking her pulse.
“Kailee, we may get to deliver a baby,” he was saying in the voice I’d heard him use to calm victims more than once. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to calm Jessica or us.
“What if we got the hospital on the phone?” I asked.
Davin started dialing and soon had the ER on a video call with Jessica and Kailee.
“It looks like the head is crowning,” the nurse said. “Maybe get ready to push.”
Jessica pushed, with Pam’s help, and we all encouraged her.
“I can’t do this,” Jessica said, closing her eyes.
“Take my hand.” I squeezed alongside them. Pam shot me a grateful look. “You’ve got this. Your beautiful child is ready to meet you.”
“Do you know what it is?” Bascomb asked as Davin talked with the nurse.
Kailee patted Jessica’s legs, trying to sooth her.
“It’s a girl.”
“One more big push,” the nurse said over the phone.
We all encouraged the young mother as she gave birth to a squalling, bloody baby.
Kailee wrapped the bundle and handed it off to Bascomb while she pressed a towel to Jessica.
“The paramedics are here,” Davin said.
***
Soon we were all outside the diner, watching as Jessica and baby Gabi were loaded on to the ambulance.
“I’ll get Mom and Dad and meet you at the hospital,” her sister said. “Can I have your number so I can thank you later?” She asked me.
I pointed to the rescue group’s offices across the street. “Call there to thank us any time. Let us know how they are doing.”
Kailee smiled at me, tears running down her face. Her hands were bloody from helping Jessica, and Davin handed her some napkins as we went back in.
“Great job,” I said. “You were amazing.”
“I did not know what I was doing.”
“Neither did B,” Davin said, referring to our friend. “No babies in army medicine, I don’t think.”
The waitress handed us Kailee’s purse and a big to go bag. “From us,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Where should we eat it?” Kailee asked as we walked outside. “And do you mind if we go somewhere near my apartment? I’d love to get changed.”
I could see she was shaking. “I’ll ride with you and Davin can follow us.”
***
Her apartment was part of a new complex in town, near to the fire station where she worked.
“My classes are only about 20 minutes from here, at the hospital. I have a few at the community college, too, but that’s not too far, either.”
College felt like a long time ago. I’d met Davin there, and we’d clicked immediately as two national guardsmen finishing our finance degrees. Then we’d met Tim when we joined the firm, and life moved forward quickly.
When we moved out here, kind of lost after Tim’s death, we’d been eating at that diner and wondering what Rescue Group Inc. was from the sign on the storefront. Something told me we should go inside, and we did. In between working with the few clients we’d kept online with the firm, we enjoyed the missions with the group.“I’ll be right back,” she said.
“I’ll let Davin in.” I let my friend in, and we sat on the couch waiting for Kailee. Her place had pictures of her smiling with different people.
“I still can’t believe that happened,” she said when she came back out of her room, in a pink hoodie and jeans. “A baby! Wait until I tell everyone at the station.”
She looked adorable. I wanted to pull her onto the couch with us and kiss her senseless before handing her off to Davin.
She grabbed her coat. “There’s a park nearby.”