A VIOLENT RAIN PUMMELED down as the parish car shot away from the church. The spinning tires were skating on steam. They were screaming.
“Where are you taking me?” Bella cried from the back seat. The pain in her abdomen was excruciating. “Where are we going?” She made a play for the grab strap hanging from the car ceiling but missed as Father Michael swerved around a blind curve, two wheels up, two wheels down. “To the hospital!” he hollered as the wheels of the car bounced on the slick ground. He handled it like an amateur rodeo clown.
“To the hospital?!”
“Someone from your family is meeting us there!”
“My papa?”
Not my papa, please.
“Hail, Mary full of grace!” the young priest prayed.
The car fishtailed and Bella’s insides clenched. “Son of a bitch! I think I’m dying!”
“You’re not dying! You’re just having a baby!”
Another blind curve. Up went the right side of the car, up went Father Michael, up went Bella, up went the baby, but like a banana bird hunkered in its hurricane nest, the little thing hung on. It wanted to tell its mamma not to worry. It wanted to let her know how much it was looking forward to meeting her. It wanted to tell her everything was going to be okay.
“I’ll get you there!” Father Michael yelled. “Pray I get you there!”
A blast of thunder boomed and every cell in everyone’s body, including the baby’s, seized. The little thing took a nosedive. The spine-twisting pain kicked Bella’s legs apart.
“I think it’s coming out of me!”
“No! Please! Close your legs and squeeze!”
“I can’t! It hurts too much! I swear it’s killing me!”
The car suddenly careened from one side of the road to the other, brakes screeching, rubber tires shrieking, baby diving, Bella wailing.
“Hold on!” Father Michael yelled. “Hold on and pray!”
He grabbed the magnetized plastic Christ attached to the dash in front of him and tossed it back to Bella. She caught it and hurled it at his head.
The car swerved and the baby dove again.
“Son of a fucking bitch!”
Father Michael flattened the accelerator to the floorboard and the car sped into the eye of the storm, into a pocket of absolute silence as dark and as deep as eternity.
Father Michael’s and Bella’s spirits left their bodies. Temporarily. They spun together in a tongue-tied pocket of mute, hair-raising hysteria.
Santa Lucia! Santa Lucia!
When the car popped out the other side of the storm’s core, it skidded up to the entrance of Saint Joseph’s Hospital, to the figure of a tall man standing under an umbrella, spitting tobacco juice into the pouring rain.
Long Joe, lean Joe, fearless Joe tossed the umbrella and jumped back like a jackrabbit. “Hey, fella!” He pounded on the hood of the car with his fist. “Hey, you crazy fuck!” He ran over to Bella’s door, yanked it open, and stuck his head in. “Honey, are you okay?”
“No! I’m dying, Joe!”
“You’re not dying. You’re having a baby.”
“That’s what everyone keeps saying!”
He leaned in and scooped her out of the car, and she mooed like a stuck cow.
“Easy does it, sweetheart!”
“Where are we going? Where are you taking me?”
“Into the hospital to have your goddamned baby!”
“Okay!”
He carried her like Errol Flynn carried Olivia de Havilland in Captain Blood.
“Son of a bitch!”
“Fuck!”