Felix #2
“Don’t push!” Aubree swings across and seizes my arm, yanking me in and pressing my hands to Christabelle’s back. Massage, motherfucker ! Then she comes around to Christabelle’s left. “Under no circumstances should you push until you’re inside the hospital.”
“I’m gonna check you, okay?” Scrunching her face, Minka slips her hand into the front of Christabelle’s sleep shorts. It’s like all my filthiest, nastiest fantasies wrapped up in one luxury bus, but this isn’t hot. None of this is what I wanted. “You ready? I’m about to touch.”
“Okay.” Christabelle drops her head and whimpers. “It’s not supposed to be this painful so soon, right? First babies are always slow to arrive, which means labor is slow.”
“Took me dayyyyys,” Jess announces. “Felt like an eternity moving from three centimeters to four. And then they cut me open anyway.”
“You’ve skipped a lot of the waiting.” Minka shakes her head, dragging her hand free and accepting the towel Aubree offers. “That’s about seven or eight centimeters already.”
“What?” Bells ring in my ears, the dong-dong-dong that competes with my pulse. My toes tingle. My fucking legs tingle. “Eight is too many. It’s too much!”
“Time for you to sit.” Archer claps a hand to the back of my head and shoves me down. “Big bad Felix Malone isn’t coping.”
“Cope!” Christabelle snarls. “You better cope, Felix, or I will hurt you!”
“Two minutes out,” Jay announces. “Hold on. I’m gonna see if this bitch drifts.”
“No drifting!” Spence runs straight through our mid-aisle crowd, knocking Archer forward and skipping the puddle at Christabelle’s feet. “You’ll flip us, fucker.”
“Someone’s gotta call a doctor,” Soph adds. “This town is smaller than my payroll list. They’re not gonna have a bunch of OBGYNs just waiting for this one chick to turn up.”
“Shit!” Aubree sprints back to her cubby, shoving Tim out of the way and tossing blankets and sheets aside. She throws their pillows and flings a pair of flip-flops into the air. Then she finds her phone and spins back. “Raquel’s brother is the doctor here, isn’t he?”
“ You’re a doctor.” I slap Archer’s hand away and rise to my feet, swaying and bracing myself against the wall as I blink through the darkness. I swallow the ball of nausea piling in my throat, then I blink once more and look to Aubree. To Minka. “You’re doctors.”
“Teccccchnically,” Jen saunters forward with a smug grin. “I’m a doctor, too. So lemme know if you need me to step in.”
“Having a doctorate is not the same as being a practicing doctor.” Minka leans around and searches Christabelle’s eyes. “Same as a practicing OBGYN is far more equipped to deliver a baby than me or Aubree. Just hold on a little longer and?—”
“I’ve gotta push.” Crying out, she fists the sheets and grits her teeth. “Godddddd, the baby’s making me push.”
“No pushing!” Aubree and Minka shout together. Then Minka snatches Christabelle’s hand and squeezes. “No! You can’t push that baby out until we’re inside the hospital.”
“It’s happening too quickly.” I shove my fingers through my hair and pace. Because Minka is on Christabelle’s right. Aubree on the left. And dammit, Jen and Archer take her back. “This is too fast, and there’s no room for me. It’s too fast,” I repeat, frenzied and sick. “I don’t know how to help.”
“One minute!” Jay tears the bus around a dark corner, bouncing on the curb and bracing with his foot on the dash. “Sorry! That was my bad.”
“Raquel!” Aubree shouts into her phone, clutching at the wall and leaning against Tim’s chest so she remains standing. “We’ve got a baby coming. Is there a doctor already at the hospital?”
“What kinda stupid hospital doesn’t have a doctor on duty?” Minka holds Christabelle’s hips and steadies her as we come around another corner. “How do these people live?”
“I’ve gotta poop.” Horrified, Christabelle swings her head up and around. “Oh no. I’ve gotta poop.”
“It’s a trap!” Soph calls out. Entirely fucking relaxed, she tosses candy between her lips and chews with her mouth open. “The poop is not poop. Ask me how I know.”
“No pooping!” Minka snaps. “You’re not allowed to poop.”
“Is it my cousin?” Cato pulls his hair, the dark locks standing on end. “Is it my niece or nephew? Which is more important?” He grabs Micah by the shirt and yanks him forward. “Which is more important, dammit?!”
“We’re a minute away,” Aubree barks into the phone. “But she already wants to push, so get your brother to the hospital before this shit goes sideways.”
“No sideways!” I whip a shirt from our bed, wet patch and all, and drag it on. “There will be no sideways today! Darling?” I muscle between her and Aubree. “Everything’s gonna be fine.”
“It hurts so much.” She whimpers through a contraction. “Felix…”
“I know, Darling. I know?—”
“Hold on!” Jay tears the bus off the road and up the gutter, barreling across the sidewalk and into the hospital parking lot, which is smaller than my own, personal fucking driveway. “Hold on to something.”
I clutch the wall with one hand and wrap my other arm around Christabelle’s back, and when he slams his foot to the brakes and brings the bus to a skidding stop, I start moving again. “Alright, Darling. It’s time to get off now.”
“We don’t have our bags.” Panting, she breathes noisily and clings to me, even as I come around in front and move backwards. One step—one fucking step—feels like a lifetime. “We were supposed to pack a hospital bag. It was supposed to have the baby’s first outfit and stuff.”
“Sometimes these things don’t go according to plan.” Minka grips Christabelle’s arm and takes a single step forward. “We’re here now, Debbie. So if you could walk just a little faster, that would be great.”
“We need a doctor!” Jay swings the bus door open and bounds off, arms waving and voice echoing throughout the dark. “We’re having a baby in here!”
“See?” Quietly encouraging, Minka smiles and takes another step forward. “Doctors are gonna be prepped for you. We’ll even get you a wheelchair. You just gotta walk to it.”
“ Uncle Cato sounds the best.” Cato walks behind the girls, shuffling them along just a fraction faster. “ Uncle comes with a ring of authority that cousin doesn’t. Plus, my brothers get to be uncle. So I should be uncle too, right?”
“Stop making this about you, Cato!” Jen escalates the noise inside the bus tenfold. She waves her arms and shouts, and yet, her smile is entirely too fucking happy. “I have stitches in my legs, and I’m not making it about me.”
“Swear to God,” Minka snarls. “I’m going to murder every single person on this bus.” She takes Christabelle’s weight and helps her forward another step. “I’ve officially had my quota of people for this entire year. And probably next year, too.”
“Faster now.” Cato holds Christabelle’s hips and waddles her forward. “You’re leaking on the floor.”
“Get your hands off me!” Christabelle swings around and slaps him away. “Stop touching.”
“Found your strength again,” Minka smirks, helping her forward another step. “You’re super close, and then you can have a different doctor. The proper kind.”
“I’m a doctor!” Jen hollers. “And my sister is a vet. Ya know how she’d assist in this birth?” She shoots her fist straight ahead. “Up to the elbow, baby. It’s juicy and gnarly and totally not something one should discuss at the dinner table.”
“He moved to Copeland to escape her.” Shaking her head, Minka studies the ground and inches forward.
It’s been seventy-three hours, I swear, and we’re just halfway along the bus.
“Lawrence. He claims it was a career thing, but I call bullshit. He needed to get away from her , so he became mayor in a city known for mayor killings.”
“One time,” Aubree snickers, slipping her phone into her pocket and taking Christabelle’s left arm. “One mayor, one time. And now Lawrence likes you like he likes his daughters.”
“Keep your enemies close,” Jen cackles. “He probably doesn’t like her at all. God knows, she’s not very nice.”
“His house is next door to the one we have in the hills.” Shaking her head, Minka peers up at Archer. “I can’t live next door to that man. It would kill me.”
“Can we focus on my troubles first?” Aubree counters. “I have half-packed boxes in my kitchen, a big, dumb house to move in to in a few weeks. And then a wedding. A wedding!”
“Your problems?” Tim questions. “That’s a problem for you?”
“Ugh,” Minka groans. “Dress fittings. I already hate it.”
“Um, excuse me? Can we focus on me for a minute?” Christabelle cries out and grits her teeth, halting in the aisle as another contraction pulls her up short.
Veins bulge in her forehead and neck. Tendons stretch in her jaw.
She crushes my hands with a vice-like viciousness, but her eyes, vulnerable and pained, come to mine.
“This is going to get so much worse before it gets better. It hurts.”
“You’ve never looked so fucking beautiful.” I stop moving backwards and instead step forward. Pressing my lips to hers, I swallow her heavy exhale. “So beautiful, Darling.”
“You might think you’re being sweet,” Jess quips. “But we know we look like trash during labor. We know we’re sweating and leaking and screaming and splotchy and weird. So for you to say we’ve never been more beautiful…”
“You should shush now.” Kane grabs his wife and marches her toward the door. “You’re stressing ‘em out, Blondie.”
“Start walking again now.” Minka takes a step forward. “We have to get off this bus.”
“Is the doctor here?” Frantically, I search Aubree’s bright eyes. “The baby doctor. The one who’ll deliver her?”
“Raquel said she was waking him.”
“So he’s not even here yet?” Christabelle hoo-hoo-hoo’s her way through the breathing techniques we learned in our baby classes. “I have to poop now ! Not in an hour.”
“It’ll take him less time to drive here than it’s taking us to walk the length of this bus.” Minka comes forward another step. “Can we speed this up a little?”