It was the longest hour of my life. Maybe it wasn’t even an hour. Maybe it was fifteen minutes in reality, I had no idea. I’d lost the ability to even look at my watch or phone or any time piece. None of it mattered, not as Kara struggled and muttered. Her blood pressure remained high and the baby’s stayed low, but we kept the little peanut with us. We didn’t lose the heartbeat or movement, thank every deity that ever existed.
I’d tried calling Jameson again but got no response; it went right to voicemail, which was not a good sign. What if I’d sent him off to his death in a snowbank? I was the one who asked him to get the doctor, so I sent him across the city in a blizzard. Neither one of us knew how far the hospital was from the gym or from where Jameson had been. It could have been miles. What if it was miles and he got lost and walked in circles until he dropped dead?
I tried to stay positive but it wasn’t my nature. Imagining every possible disaster came much more easily to me, so I was in the middle of that when a roar shook the windows. Owen sat straight up, eyes flashing gold, and growled. “Bear.”
“Yeah yeah,” Kara said, barely wheezing. “Didn’t we send one out for help?”
“Jameson,” I whispered. I shoved to my feet and practically leapt down the stairs, since I was the last person with any sort of balance or strength left. Josie and Owen had vastly over-estimated the degree to which they’d recovered from the flu, and were barely hanging on just sitting with Kara.
My shoes slid in the melting snow that had been dragged into the gym. Half the decorations had fallen down from where we’d hung them only a few hours earlier, disturbed by bear shenanigans or the wind from the door that blew open. A massive polar bear flopped onto its belly on the floor, groaning, and a snowman rose from a sled.
“I’m Dr. Rossi,” the snowman said. She shed a few layers and a whole lot of snow. “I’m told there’s a patient in need of some assistance.”
“Yes,” I said. I would have kissed her if I’d had the extra brain cells. Instead, I went right into the facts, vitals, situation, and so on. I led the doctor up the stairs, though I glanced back to make sure Jameson as the polar bear was still breathing. He sure groaned and complained a lot for a bear who was supposed to love the snow. “The contractions started at least twelve hours ago, from what Owen said, and…”
And then I had too much to think about as the doctor assessed the situation and started issuing her own orders. We had one task ahead of us: save Kara and the baby. Nothing else mattered.