Chapter 3
THREE
CROIS
He knew the moment that things went bad.
There was a subtle shift in Harmony's temperament.
She was steeling herself.
"It's a boy."
He heard the quiet in her tone, but he didn't see her expression.
Vega did.
He was facing Harmony and Crois could see his expression.
"Harmony, I'll take over with Mom."
She nodded and turned her back on Allie.
Crois' eyes narrowed at the movement.
Allie relaxed back on the gurney relieved. She hadn't noticed what Crois had.
The baby was limp in Harmony's hands.
Crois, who had seen a number of his own siblings born at home, knew that this wasn't good.
The babies his mom had given birth to in their family home were all pink and covered in... stuff.
But even as gross as he'd considered them, they were moving, eyes open and squeezing shut. Alive with a kind of stilted energy.
The same couldn't be said for Allie's baby.
Pilar stepped closer to Allie, still holding her hand while Vega moved down to Allie's feet to continue treatment.
Reaching into the basket that she'd set down sometime during the chaos, Harmony took out a suction device.
He'd seen something like it in the baby aisle of stores when he'd gone to pick up supplies for his family when he'd been a teen.
He watched, with bated breath as Harmony cleared the baby's airway.
He saw her eyes move back over the basket and light on a stack of towels.
Crois reached in and picked up the towel from the top and reached out to hand it to her.
"Can you help me try the baby's skin?"
He nodded, and reached out, pausing just a heartbeat away from the first swipe. "Should I get some wipes to clean the baby first?"
Harmony continued to suction the baby's airway. "Right now, we need to stimulate the baby, rubbing the blanket against his skin might rouse him."
She should be panicking.
He was.
But her quiet determination affected him.
Moving closer, he used both hands covered in the towel to rub the baby's skin. From the top of his head to this arms and legs. Everywhere Harmony wasn't actively working, he was rubbing.
Come on, baby... Come on.... breathe.
He felt a kind of pressure in his ears as if he was in an airplane, climbing up to thirty thousand feet, that bubble growing and growing until... POP.
A thin cry reached his ears and Crois felt like he could breathe, clearly.
"There we go, little boy."
Harmony's voice was soft, but full of joy and relief.
"That's okay. I know..."
"Harmony?"
Crois heard Vega's tone and turned his head as well.
"We've got bleeding."
Crois could see Harmony out of the corner of his eye. She didn't cringe and she didn't crumble.
No, Harmony Morgan was too strong for that.
Too capable.
She straightened her spine and made a lightning-fast decision.
She turned to look at Crois, and he turned his head to meet her gaze. "Take off your shirt."
Okay.
He laid the towel over his forearm and reached for the buttons down the front of his uniform shirt.
Pilar took the towel off of his arm and wrapped it around the baby, taking it from Harmony's hands. "You know what she wants you to do?"
Crois nodded. "Skin to skin?"
Pilar smiled. "It helps that you're not wearing a bra."
He grinned back. "It's not a Tuesday."
"Vega, I've got her. Get ready to drive."
"Got it."
Crois had his shirt off and pulled off his tank top, putting that over his arm. Pilar lifted her chin toward the back of the ambulance. "Get in. I'll hand the baby to you."
Crois climbed up into the ambo and turned, reaching out his hands.
The baby that Pilar handed over was small in his hands, but most things were. He had some recollection of what his younger sibs had looked like as babies, but that was some kind of warm, hazy memory colored by time and distance.
He sat down in the seat at the back of the ambulance and lad the baby against his chest. The wail of sound stopped moments later as he wrapped his arms around the baby, drawing his uniform shirt over his chest, making sure to give the baby air, but keeping him as warm as possible otherwise.
"Crois? You okay?"
"We're good."
"See you at the hospital, partner."
He looked past Harmony to see Pilar at the doors. She had one closed and as he watched, she closed the other door.
He heard her hit the door with the flat of her palm.
"Okay."
He heard Vega's voice from the cab, and the ambulance started to move.
For the next few minutes as they drove to the hospital, he heard Harmony call in the status of mother and son while she continued to work on Allie.
Crois had a front row seat... more like an ONLY seat view of Harmony at work.
She seemed to have endless amounts of determination and every time she spoke to Allie, Crois felt like she wasn't just treating her physically, but emotionally as well.
Every word out of her mouth was encouraging. "You have such a beautiful son, Allie. Just wait until we've got you both settled and you'll be able to hold him and felt how beautiful and perfect he is."
Crois felt the baby move against his chest and he looked down to see the boy's lips pucker.
When nothing came, he tried again and Crois smiled at him.
"Soon enough, young man. You just need to wait a few moments, okay?"
There was a moment of silence in the back of the ambulance and Crois turned his head to see what was happening.
He saw Harmony looking at him, her expression less concern and more... appreciation?
Hell, he didn't know.
But she was looking at him.
And she wasn't glaring, so that was good.
"When we get to the hospital," she explained to him, "they'll take the baby to examine him. When you hand him off, you can go back to your shift."
He nodded, but he wasn't all that thrilled about it.
He wanted to have a few more moments with her.
Crazy?
Absolutely.
He'd talked to her before.
Spent some time on scene with her at accidents and medical calls and such, but not like this.
He opened his mouth to say something, but the baby boy against his chest cried out, reminding him that this wasn't just a quiet moment with Harmony. It was all about him.
Harmony's expression softened even more. "You okay?"
He smiled and rubbed at the baby's back. The baby in turn, turned his head and rubbed his face against Crois' chest. "Yeah," he answered Harmony, "I don't think he knows that I'm not going to be able to feed him. He's going to be disappointed."
Harmony shook her head. "Not for long." She leaned over and started to look out the windows, but the ambulance started to climb and she smiled. "We're almost there at the ER. Just another minute or so."
Crois knew that her words weren't for him alone. Allie was still on the gurney, her soft breaths ending in a groan off and on, the hand she had on Harmony's tightening to the point of white knuckles off and on.
"Thank you," Allie murmured to them both. "Thank you all. I... I don't know what I would have done."
"You did all the hard work," Harmony assured her. "We're just glad to help."
HARMONY
It was always hard for her to separate the pieces of a call like this.
A man had lost his life.
His wife didn’t know that he was… gone.
And now, they had a baby.
A baby who would never know what it felt like to he held by his father.
Still, Allie would pull through.
Harmony had to believe that. She just couldn’t imagine that the universe would take both parents like this.
“I can’t wait for Keith to see him.”
The wistful sound of Allie’s voice nearly cut her in two.
“We’ve been waiting for what feels like forever.”
Allie’s sigh was full of hope and dreams for the future.
Harmony felt like a coward, but it wasn’t the time to tell her that her husband had died on the scene.
Harmony had barely got her bleeding to stop. Stirring up her emotions would be cruel and only cause her to suffer.
The doctors would take care of the notifications when the time was right.
It just felt… wrong to let her wax poetic when she would soon have to deal with the pain of the truth.
The ambulance had barely come to a stop when the back doors were pulled open and Harmony’s training kicked in again.
She helped bring the gurney down to the ground, giving the attending personnel the breakdown of the birth on scene.
She caught sight of Doctor Kay Hata and a few nurses she knew as they got the gurney on the move.
Another group approached wheeling a mobile cradle to take the baby into their care.
A quick look at the ambulance showed her that Crois took great care to step down carefully, his large hands supporting the baby, holding him against his chest.
She’d know that Crois was a good officer, but to be honest, she knew more about his partner, Pilar Bravo.
The cool air rushing out of the double doors leading into the ER, brought her right back to the present moment. She went with the gurney into the ER and helped transfer Allie before pulling the gurney back and out of the way.
Allie tracked her movement with her eyes. “The baby?”
“He’s got a whole team checking him out,” Harmony wanted to reassure her. “Concentrate on you for the moment. They’ll come and give you updates.”
Relaxing a little, Allie let out a sigh. “Thank you… Thanks so much for everything you did.”
Harmony was still aching for Allie’s loss.
Things like this tended to stay with her.
They moved her quickly into one of the bays and transferred her over to the waiting bed.
Harmony moved the gurney out of the way and as the ER curtain fell back into place, she let out a breath hoping that everything was going to be fine for Allie and her family.
Harmony didn’t like feeling like a coward, but in this case she did.
She knew that Allie would be gutted when she found out that her husband was gone. It wasn’t a conversation that Harmony wanted to be in on.
When she’d started working in Center City, a police detective had sneered at her, saying that EMTs were like burglars doing a smash and grab.
He said that all they did was rush in, toss people on the gurney, and drop them off on the doorstop of the hospital like black market organ harvesters.