Chapter 30
thirty
L indsay Whettstein opened the front door and reached up to take down the fall wreath she’d hung there last month.
She wasn’t a domestic goddess by any stretch of the imagination, but she’d signed up for an online kit to be delivered to the house—one that provided all the materials and instructions to make one home décor item each month.
Specifically, a wreath.
The company staged the kits so she could make the wreath for October in September, and today, just a couple of days into the month, she was finally getting it up.
She took down the one filled with autumn leaves and scarecrows and balanced it on the back of the couch near the door.
The wind slithered through the doorway, reminding Lindsay that fall had fully arrived in Colorado.
She was due with her first baby next week, in only eight days.
And while she’d insisted she could keep working at the horse boarding facility that her uncle owned—and her husband, Keith, ran as the agricultural manager—they’d both insisted she take it easy. So today, she’d finished her October wreath and was finally hanging it only a couple of days late.
This one bore jack-o’-lanterns, ghosts, and a bubbling cauldron of green goo. She’d painted the jack-o’-lantern faces and tied fabric around the foam circle to fill in between the die-cut wooden pieces that had come with the kit.
She’d then painted all three letters that spelled out Boo at the bottom, waited for them to dry, and attached them. The whole thing had taken her a couple of hours this morning, and she’d enjoyed the process.
Lindsay could admit she got tired faster than usual, and she was glad she wasn’t still living on her hobby farm—that had been too much for her as a single woman.
She and Keith had moved closer to Blackhorse Bay, where they both worked.
They had ten acres now, enough for a few of their own horses and all of Lindsay’s beloved chickens.
She needed to get out to the barn today and make sure everything was ready for winter.
She used a mobile chicken coop in the colder months, so the hens could be wheeled outside in good weather and kept warm and safe when it snowed.
October was a temperamental month, and Lindsay wanted to have the generators full and tested before the baby came.
She stepped out onto the front porch, pulled her door closed, then went down the steps, being careful to hold the handrail. She put one hand on her very pregnant belly and turned back to the door to admire the new wreath.
“Very festive,” she said with a smile, and then she went around the house to the backyard.
They had a couple of barns and a big stable back here, as well as her outdoor chicken coop, a back lawn that had served them well through picnics and parties with both her family and Keith’s.
A pasture occupied the rest of the space, and Lindsay headed over to say hello to her horses before moving into the barn to deal with the generator and mobile chicken coop.
She loved being a hobby farmer, and she once again wondered if she should tell her uncle that she wouldn’t be returning to Blackhorse Bay after the baby was born. Keith could support them on his salary, and Lindsay knew she could ask Uncle Jack for a favor any time she needed it.
She didn’t move nearly as fast as she once had, and since she couldn’t eat very much either, her stomach growled as she finished with the latch on the last nesting box. She took an extra moment to make sure it was right, and then she checked all of them again.
This six-by-six contraption would hold all of her hens, and give her enough room to leave a few boxes down on one end for sick bays.
She unlocked the wheels and leaned her weight into the wire chicken coop. She needed to take it outside so she could scrub it down, rinse it clean with the hose, and then place wooden slats on the bottom and fill the boxes with straw.
But the mobile coop didn’t budge.
It felt like she still had the brakes on, but she’d just released them. She stepped around the back wheel to check, and sure enough, the red pedal was lifted up into the unlocked position. She only had to glance down ten feet to see the other one, and it was also unlocked.
So why wouldn’t the coop move?
Lindsay walked around the whole thing, didn’t see a problem, and tried again. It moved a little bit and then stalled completely all over again.
“What in the world is going on?” she grumbled.
She moved behind it again and pushed it forward.
It moved in that direction, and Lindsay wondered if the wheels needed to be greased. She only used this coop in the winter, so it had endured several months of sitting against the back wall of the barn, neglected.
She moved it forward as much as she could, and then she definitely needed to push it sideways.
“Move,” she told Hamlet, her blue heeler. Since she’d been pregnant, he had not gotten too far from her, and this trip out to the barn was no exception.
Hamlet moved, and she walked around to the end again, braced her palms against the upper half of the coop, and once again gave it a mighty shove.
This time, it moved .
In fact, it slid right out from under her, and Lindsay toppled forward, the weight of her baby belly dragging her down.
She cried out, knowing she was going to fall.
She didn’t want to break a wrist or an arm, and she tried to roll—and ended up landing on the outer ridge of her belly.
She quickly rolled onto her hip and braced her head for impact.
Thankfully, that never came, and she settled onto her back, which was the most uncomfortable position for her at nine months pregnant.
She sucked in a lungful of air as the baby kicked and kicked.
Then a white-hot pain slashed through her lower abdomen.
She cried out again, the sound turning into a groan as she clutched the bottom of her baby belly. She rested her head on the cement, trying to take stock of all the different parts that had been hit, and unable to do so as she realized?—
Her water had just broken.
She gasped, her mind flying through where she had put her phone.
She suddenly felt it pressing into her backside, and she managed to slide one hand around her hip to get it out.
She groaned as a dull, aching pain moved from her back along the bottom of her baby belly and up over the top, settling almost right between her breasts, and causing her to gasp over and over as she struggled to breathe.
She needed to call Keith. She needed to get to the hospital.
She lifted her phone and found the screen cracked.
“No,” she whimpered, praying with everything she had that she hadn’t broken her phone.
If she had, she would have to walk to the neighbor’s house to get in touch with her husband, and right now, Lindsay couldn’t even imagine getting up off the barn floor.
She pressed the button on the side, and praise all the stars in heaven and God above, the phone lit up.
She noted the time—eleven twenty-three—even as her first contraction abated. She and Keith had taken a birthing class, and she knew she needed to keep track of how far apart the contractions were, and when they had started.
Tears trickled out of her eyes as she continued to fight for breath and send a text at the same time. She wasn’t sure where Keith would be at this very moment, and he worked about fifteen minutes away from the farm.
“You can make it that long,” she told herself right out loud.
She watched as her text got delivered. When it didn’t immediately change to Read , Lindsay tapped to call Keith.
The call connected in the middle of the second ring. “Hey, sweetheart,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“Keith, I f-f-fell,” she said, stuttering over the words. Everything inside her shook, and Lindsay felt like she was going into shock.
“You fell? I’m leaving right now.”
A sob wrenched its way out of her throat. “I’m in the barn,” she said, sucking in a new breath. “I finished with the mobile chicken coop, and then I couldn’t get it to move. Something was stuck, but I don’t know what, and I pushed on it so hard. When it rolled away, I toppled after it.”
“I’m on the way,” Keith said.
“My water broke.” Lindsay sniffled, hating that she was crying over this. She and Keith had been waiting for this baby for a while now, and she wanted this to be the happiest day of her life, not one where she turned into a blubbering mess on the barn floor.
“I had a contraction,” she said.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes. Stay on the line with me.” He somehow knew that she couldn’t talk, and he filled the space between them with words.
She continued to weep quietly, and she groaned when she had a contraction. By the time Keith’s footsteps ran toward her in the barn, she’d had two more contractions and managed to get herself to a seated position.
“Let’s go, sweetheart,” he said.
He helped her up, but Lindsay paused and said, “Just give me a second. My head is swimming.”
He gave her the time she needed and then helped her to the truck. He dashed back inside and emerged with the baby bag she’d packed earlier this week. Keith gripped the wheel hard as he drove them toward the hospital. He’d already mapped the route and driven it a couple of times.
As another contraction struck, she reached over and gripped his hand. He’d been her strength, her anchor through so much.
“Hold on, baby. We’re almost there.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it as the contraction calmed.
“We have to decide,” he said. “What do you want to name him?”
They’d thrown names back and forth for months now, especially once they’d learned she would be having a boy.
“I think Nash,” she said. “It’s a good, strong cowboy name. Nash Lewis Whettstein.”
“It’s perfect,” Keith said.
Lindsay prayed that her baby would be perfect as well. “What if I hurt him?” she asked.
“He’s coming right now,” Keith said. “One fall isn’t going to hurt him that much. He’s been in there for nine months, and he’s fine.”
“He’s early,” Lindsay said next, feeling completely wild and irrational.
“We just get to love him on this side for longer,” Keith said.
“Thank you for letting me use my maiden name,” she said, as she had no brothers and no other way for her branch of the Lewis family to continue.
“Thank you for making me a daddy,” Keith said. Only sixty seconds later, he pulled up to the emergency bay doors. “Stay here,” he said, and jumped out.
He returned only a few seconds later with a wheelchair, and he’d just gotten her settled when a nurse came outside with a clipboard and started asking him questions.
Lindsay relaxed then, because she wouldn’t have to give birth on the barn floor. And now, all she had to focus on was praying that she hadn’t hurt their son too badly when she’d fallen.