Chapter 32
LORNA
“ J onah, please, ” I beg him, looking up and seeing that he has his eyes closed and is breathing like he’s the one in labor. “You don’t want to shoot me. I’m your friend.”
“And what do you think Gio will do to me if I don’t? All this started because I didn’t want Amanté to kill me. I’m tired of it all. I’ve tried so hard… You're right, I don’t want to kill you, Lorna, but I have to.” I feel my heart sink into my stomach when I realize I’ll never get to meet my baby. Tears blur the vision of him hovering over me, and heartache numbs the pain that's coursing through my body and not letting up. I hear the loud bang, and there's no more pain, just darkness…
“Lorna!” Nic’s voice is bellowing in my head, I feel tapping on the side of my face, and then…Pain. Unmeasurable, crushing pain that hits me like a freight train and makes my eyes bolt open.
“Lorna. Fuck! ” Nic’s the one hovering over me now. His eyes furious, as his hands grip my face.
“Am I alive?” I must be, surely if I was dead I wouldn’t be feeling this agony. I blink my eyes because I can’t move my head, his grip on it is too tight. What I can see is Vito laid out on the floor, on top of Jonah, and to my relief the gun he was holding is out of his hand and on the floor. Jonah struggles to get free from under him, and when Dario steps forward, he steps on Jonah’s hand and makes him scream.
“You good, Veet?” he checks his guard.
“Yes, boss, just a shoulder graze.” Vito flips Jonah on his back and grabs his arms, lifting him off the floor.
“Lorna. Lorna. Focus on me.” Nic is now shaking my shoulders.
“Lorna, you're safe now.” I feel a much softer touch on my hand and smile when I hear the words in my best friend's voice. Then it hits me, another deep, intense pain that crushes my bones and makes me feel like I'm on fire.
“Shit, Lorna. Are you hurt?” Nic is patting me all over like he’s checking for injury, but I have to wait for the pain to subside before I can explain.
“The baby’s coming,” I manage when it starts to fade out.
“ What, now? ” He sounds panicked and when I open my eyes, I see how scared he’s looking.
“Yes, now.” I look under my ass and check the couch and sure enough I’m sitting on the huge wet patch. I didn’t imagine it, my waters broke, this is really happening.
I’m in labour and one of my best friends just tried to kill me.
“My waters broke, and the contr aaa –” I clutch my stomach when another one hits.
“Nic, these contractions are really close together.” I hear the warning in Madalina’s voice. “We need to get her to a hospital.”
“Baby, how long have you been having these pains? When did your waters break?” Nic fires a ton of questions at me and I shake my head as I focus on breathing through the pain. I notice Vito in his blood-stained shirt dragging Jonah up from the floor and out the door.
“We’ll take care of this, you deal with her.” Dario pats Nic on the back before following his guard out the door.
“Don’t you dare fucking kill him, DeMarco. You leave him for me,” Nic calls out after him, then placing his hand on my shoulder, he starts to breathe with me.
“When this one finishes, we’re going to walk you to the car okay?” he tells me, and I shake my head.
“I don’t think I can move, the pain’s too bad.” I shake my head and start to cry.
“I know how that feels, Lorna, but you want to go to hospital, right?” Madalina speaks softly, though I can tell from the look on her face, and the way she keeps looking at the clock on the wall, that she’s worried.
“He was going to kill us…Gio, ordered it,” I manage to get my words out when I get a break.
“Fuck!” Nic suddenly looks raging. “Mad, run after Dario, tell him to have someone bring in Gio Ferrazza.” He sends her off and looks back at me. “Shall we try standing up?” His attempt to smile only proves that he’s panicking on the inside which makes me smile because, despite all that's happened tonight, he’s here now. Everything’s going to be okay.
“Let's give it a go.” I grip his strong biceps and start to drag myself up but before I can get my legs straight I feel another crippling pain and something weighs heavy between my legs. “ Oh fuck! ” I look down and my hair gathers round my cheeks and sticks to my face.
“Okay, we’ll just take it steady.” Nic abandons stroking the side of my tummy and pulls my hair back, making real fast work of braiding it out of my way.
“There, just breathe, keep breathing, we’re going to get you to hospital,” he promises.
“No, Nic, it’s coming now, I can feel it.” I steady myself back down on the couch
“Don’t do that baby, come on. Keep moving forward. We’re going to get you to the hospital, there's one ten minutes away, you can wait ten minutes for me, right?”
“Nic. I need to push.” Saying those words makes me feel sick. “I can’t push my baby out here, in Cass’s living room, with no doctors, nurses, or drugs. I had a birth plan. This was not it.” The pain keeps on coming, hardly seeming to fade.
“Mads…” Nic calls for his sister while staring at me and trying to get me to breathe right. “Just focus on breathing and not pushing,” he tells me firmly, and when Madalina rushes back inside he looks up at her helplessly.
“She says she needs to push.” He shakes his head.
“Okay, then she probably needs to push.” Madalina remains calm as she marches off down Cass’s hallway.
“Wait, where are you going? Mads, she can’t just push, here.” Nic’s eyes follow after her, and when they focus back on me I surprise us both when I start to laugh.
“I’m so glad you're here.” I let relief take over, as I build myself up for the next contraction, knowing that when it comes I’ll have no choice but to ignore his orders and push.
“Oh, Nic!” I grab his arm, when it takes over, squeezing him tight as I push against the pain.
“Lorna, I told you not to do that.” Nic scratches his head and looks out of his depth.
“She really hasn’t got a choice.” Madalina returns with a pile of towels, resting them on the floor between my legs. “You need to take her panties off and take a look.” She rests beside me on the couch and takes hold of my hand.
“An ambulance is on its way, they’ll be here real soon,” she promises.
“I’m so hot in the dress, it’s too tight.” I lean forward, and she unzips the back to loosen it up and as I rest back, she tells me to lift my hips so Nic can assess what's happening.
“I don’t know what I’m looking for.” He peels my panties down my legs.
“Maybe you should be down here, and I should be up there,” he suggests.
“Nic, you're this baby’s daddy and if the ambulance crew don’t get here on time, you're the perfect person to deliver it. You’ve got this.” She reaches down with her other hand to take his, and he nods before releasing her and placing both his hands on my thighs to spread them.
“Jesus. She’s right, it’s really coming.”
“How about you stop talking about me like I’m not here?” I grip my stomach and tuck my chin into my chest so I can push through the contraction I’m having.
“Madalina, what will Dario do to Jonah?” I ignore Nic, telling me to breathe and look toward her.
“Lorna, don’t worry about that now, focus on this. I can see the head, and there's hair!” He looks up at me. “Do you hear that? Our baby’s got hair , focus on that.” I watch his panic turn into a smile as he strokes his hand over his mouth.
“What color is it?” Seeing him look so happy makes me smile too, but not for long, another contraction follows almost straight away.
“Dark, like mine,” he tells me as I squeeze Madalina’s hand and push so hard, that I shake. “That’s good, he’s coming.” The excitement in Nic’s voice builds. “Lorna, his whole head’s out!” His eyes keep glancing up at mine and between my legs.
“You need to check the airways are clear, and support that head, take it in your hand, and next time she pushes, guide it out.” A voice comes from behind me and when I look over my shoulder and see Dario, I nod gratefully.
“Dario, you’ve delivered one baby, you're hardly an expert,” Madalina tells him.
“That's one more than anyone else in this room,” he points out.
“Well, are you in or out? Because you're letting all the cold in and there's going to be a newborn baby in this room, any minute,” Madalina reminds him.
“It looks like Nic’s doing a good enough job, I’ll wait out here for the ambulance…. Keep at it, Lorna.” He offers me some encouragement and I manage to hold my thumb up over my head as I continue to try and push a baby into the world.
“You're incredible, I don’t know how the hell you’re doing this.” Nic looks up at me, while his hand cradles our baby’s head. “This is the one, baby. Push hard like you did before,” he tells me when my body goes stiff. I do as he says, pushing with all my strength, and screaming at the same time.
“Good girl, that's his shoulders and his…” Nic goes silent as I feel all the pressure inside me release at once. He’s staring down at his hands in shock and when I hear the tiny squawk, I breathe and know it’s all over.
“Nic?” I start to panic because he’s looking down at our baby as if it’s got two heads. “Nic, is he okay?”
“He’s not a he.” His eyes lift up to meet with mine as he shakes his head and smiles. “We’ve got a girl.”
“A what?” I lean forward to take a look.
“It’s a girl. A beautiful, little girl.” He takes another look at her like he can’t believe she’s real.
“Well, pass her to her mamma, then,” Madalina prompts him and he quickly shakes himself out of his trance and lifts her up, placing her on my chest and grabbing one of the towels to cover her tiny, pink back.
“The paramedics will cut her cord when they get here. I’m going to tell Dario.” My best friend kisses my cheek and delicately slides a finger over her niece's head before she rushes out the door. Nic drags himself off the floor, taking her space beside me.
“Are you okay?” He places his huge hand over our little girl’s back, covering it almost completely, as his lips touch against my temple.
“I am now.” I don’t care that her head’s covered in yucky stuff. I kiss it, anyway, and hold my little girl tight.
“Lorna, all that shit Bianca said to you, it’s not why I asked you to marry me. I asked you to marry me because I’m in love with you. I think I might have been even before this happened.” He looks down at our daughter and smiles. “I don’t need a district to be happy. I know that, now. On the way here, when I thought–” I cut him off by pressing my finger against his lips.
“Let’s not think about that now. Now’s a happy time.” We both jump when we hear a crash come from the back of the house and Nic leans over us protectively when Wes bursts from the hall into the living room.
“Holy shit!” He drops the gun that was in his hands when he sees me sitting on the couch with whatever mess is going on between my legs.
“What the fuck happened here?” He stares at us both and when Dario stands up from the couch and immediately pins him to the wall, Wes holds his hands up in defense.
“What the fuck are you still doing with my gun?” Nic asks him.
“I came as backup. Cass called me from work, said there’d been some drama and she wanted to know that you weren’t here, upsetting Lorna.” Nic must believe what he says, because he drops him from his hold and picks up the gun, sliding something out the bottom of it and tucking it in the pocket of his tuxedo pants.
“It wasn’t me you needed to worry about.” He spins Wes around so his face is against the wall, sparing my decency. “And you arrived too late to play hero.” Nic drags him back down the hall to show him out the way he came and when he comes back into the living room, dusting off his hands, I smile at him.
“He was just being a good friend. He had no idea about Jonah,” I tell him, looking down and becoming mesmerized by the tiny, little girl in my arms, she’s so relaxed, and her eyes are wide open now.
“I know. But I enjoy fucking with him,” Nic admits as he heads back to us. “He said he’ll call you tomorrow.” He kisses the top of my head, just as the front door opens, and Madalina bursts through it with the paramedics.