The Grass Widow (37 page)
Authors: Nanci Little
Tags: #Western Stories, #Kansas, #Fiction, #Romance, #Lesbians, #General, #Lesbian, #Lesbian Romance, #Women
Go!”Goblin danced and rolled his eyes and went, glad enough to be away from her.
“Noooo—! Not to town, you Goddamned moron! Home,
Goblin! Home! Oh, you ignorant sack o’ soap—you turn a hoof in this yard again in your life an’ I’ll render you into lard an’
get a dog just to feed your fucking bones to, you useless bag o’
shit—”
Her heels hit the wet kitchen floor and she went down for the fourth time. “Oh, God,” she moaned. “She’s got to live through it. I ain’t goin’ to.”
She felt as if she were back in that ethereal, odd-lit slant of space and time she had lived in for the week after her accident; she sought the picture of Jesus as Aidan panted and sweated and stifled her screams; that picture was all that had let her know the difference between nightmares and reality then, and as long as she could find it now, she knew this nightmare was reality. Doc arrived, grinning over where he had found James’s horse until he realized how far progressed his patient was into her business, and how precarious a business it was going to be.
He only had to look at Joss for her to understand. She shook her head, a silent plea: don’t say it aloud. Don’t let her hear the word. Just let her do the work without fearing it.
It felt like quivering near-panic; it felt like helplessness and desperation and prayer, the kind of prayer sent with promises attached: God, please if you do this for me I swear I’ll never, or I’ll always—”
“Save the baby,” Aidan panted. “Doc, save the baby. Let me go—”
He looked at Joss.
“She’s all I’ve got,” she whispered, Aidan between her legs, cradled against her belly; her hands felt broken and swollen. She could see tiny legs and the belly and cord, but the baby’s head and arms were stubbornly unborn. “Jesus God, Doc, she’s all I’ve got.”“Close your eyes,” he said tightly. “I’ve got to help her, and you don’t want to see it.”
“Aidan.”
Dimly, Joss heard him.
“Joss—”
She dragged her head up from Aidan’s sweat-cold hair.
“She didn’t cry, but she’s breathing—she’s fine,” he said gently.
“She’s fine, Joss. All her fingers and toes and bald as an egg. She’ll be as blonde and beautiful as her mama.”
She shuddered against the limpness in her arms; Aidan hadn’t moved since the afterbirth had come. “What price?” Her voice was thick in her throat. “At what price, Doc?”
He smiled. “Josie, she’s but asleep. Lord, child, she’s worked harder in the last twenty hours than you work in a month. She’s all right, Joss. It’s just your turn to take care of her. She’ll need a long lying-in.” He laid the tiny flannel-wrapped bundle on Aidan’s belly. “Aidan, you have a daughter,” he said softly. Aidan’s hand sought the baby, tracing over flannel until her fingers found the wrinkled little face. “A girl?” Her voice was barely a breath.
“A bit more than seven pounds of her, I’d say, almost twenty inches long, and perfect in every respect.”
“Naomi,” she whispered. “Naomi Ruth.”
On the wall, Jesus and Ethan Bodett, flannel-shirted, sheepskin-vested, arms slung companionably around each other in a golden slice of late September sun, grinned out at them, beaming their approval.
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents