Chapter Nineteen

Awkward, trying to set up a crib when sitting in a wheelchair, but Teddy managed with help from Jessie and Ella. The changing table went easier. The women stretched the soft cotton sheets covered with pink and blue bunnies over the mattress, washed and dried the little onesies in mild detergent, and put them in a drawer. Being nurses, the twins had gifted Ella with practical items: king-sized sacks of disposable diapers, packages of wet wipes, and a warmer to make them more acceptable to a baby’s behind. Teddy had no idea such things existed. A baby carrier sat in one corner of the now-cramped bedroom, and out in the living room, a carriage the size of a small yacht lay folded in on itself awaiting the arrival. A large but stylish diaper bag sat next to it. Bottles and nipples awaiting sterilization cluttered the kitchen counter. Who knew babies required so much equipment? Women, he guessed.

Ella mounted a mobile of colorful butterflies on one end of the crib and folded a hand-crocheted blanket of multicolored yarn over the side. “Ain’t it pretty? Xochi’s friend, Miss Rosemarie, give it to me. Her granny made it long ago, but it’s just like new. Maybe this furniture is used stuff to the Billodeauxs, but it’s better’n anything I could afford to buy.”

Teddy and Jessie exchanged glances. He shrugged, remembering the blanket the old seer made for him long before he arrived at the ranch. Multicolored—who knew what that meant? Teddy eyed Ella’s belly. Not twins, he hoped, but she certainly seemed big enough.

“Have you picked out any names for the baby?” Jessie asked.

“Wyatt Wilkes Smalls for a boy. I want something classy for a girl, so I thought Elizabeth Jane after those two ladies in the movie we watched.”

“I like them both.” Each noticed the touch of wistfulness in Jessie’s voice.

“I shouldn’t have asked you to help me set up on account of maybe you can’t have babies. I’m real sorry about that,” Ella said with more sensitivity than anyone would have credited to her.

Jessie’s bright smile broke through. “But I can, or so the doctor told me. I wasn’t paying much attention at the time.”

Ella stared at the wheelchair. “How you gonna manage that?”

“The same way you are. Taking care of a baby might be more of a challenge for me, but thanks to Teddy, I know I can do it.”

“Teddy knocked you up?”

At his appalled expression, both women burst into laughter. “No, not yet,” Jessie said, giving a hint to their recent relationship.

“I hope if he does, he treats you better’n my boyfriend did me.” Ella’s mirth evaporated like fog in a mountain pass.

“I know I could count on Teddy. I’d like to help you take care of yours to get some practice.”

“Oh, I’d love that. I really don’t know what I’m doing, even with all those classes my brother dragged me to.”

“Between the three of us, we’ll manage. You aren’t alone.”

“No, no, I’m not.” As an afterthought, Ella added, “I appreciate that.”

“If we’re done here, Jessie and I should get in some gym time.”

“All this setting up wasn’t enough exercise?” Jessie questioned.

“Slacker. Get your things. We’ll only be gone a couple of hours, but I’m leaving my phone in case you need me, Ella. No long-distance calls, okay? The number for the gym is in the contacts list.”

“Sure. I’ll behave. Gonna lie down for a while. Have a good workout, you two.” Ella studied the top of her belly, not looking her brother in the eye, a bad sign, Teddy believed.

“I mean it, Ella. I’m having trouble paying these big bills you ran up.”

“Said I’d be good.”

“Right. Let’s go, Jessie.”

They put in two hours of sweat time and went to relax in the juice bar before heading back to the apartment. One of the women from the front desk found them there splitting a banana pineapple smoothie. “Phone call for you, Teddy. She says it’s an emergency.”

The word hello had barely left his lips when Ella sobbed out her situation. “I got up to pee and now it’s coming down my legs. I can’t stop it.”

“That’s not pee. Didn’t you pay any attention in the Signs of Labor class? Your water broke. Just go sit on the pot until we get there. We have to take you to the hospital asap!”

“What if the baby falls out in the toilet water?”

“Doubt that will happen, but if it does, just fish it out really quick. We’re on our way.” Teddy sent a desperate glance to Jessie. “It’s show time.”

“So I gathered. I’d like to go with you. Birth can take hours. I could spell you with Ella.”

“That would be great.”

They found a tearful Ella in her nightie squatting on the commode. “Now there’s pains too.”

“We’re only minutes from the hospital. Don’t panic,” Teddy said, though he directed the last words at himself. “Where’s your hospital bag?”

“In my bedroom by the crib.”

Not taking the time to transfer to his wheelchair, he swung his crutches in that direction. Ella’s bedding lay tossed on the floor. He trod in a wet spot as he moved toward the crib. Teddy crinkled his nose, that stench of smoke again, its source coming from the bottom of a Burger King coffee cup on the night table where a cigarette butt swam in the dregs. The odor thinly disguised another scent he had no time to analyze. Couldn’t chew her out now. He grabbed the bag and called to Jessie. “I got it. Put a towel between her legs and a light blanket over her shoulders, and let’s go.”

With the multicolored afghan from the crib thrown over her thin shoulders, Ella walked like a bow-legged cowboy to the van. Jessie followed with more towels in her lap and laid them out on the front seat to make a thick wad for the leaking girl. Ella seated herself and buckled up before Teddy told her to do it for a change. Instead, he faced another quandary.

“Jess, I really want you to come, but just don’t have time to fool with the ramp. You stay here and get cleaned up. As soon as I get my sister settled, I’ll come back for a shower and pick you up.”

He waited for anger or disappointment, but got a nod of understanding tinged with a little sadness that jumping into a van to go anywhere quickly was no longer a part of her life. Jessie shut the door and rolled back to give the van room. She watched them out of sight. He made the left onto Johnston Street, passed the Agricultural Center and the old Colosseum, right onto Bertrand, and straight to the emergency entrance of University Medical Center, cursing the snarl of traffic and the impediment of red lights all the way. Ella unsnapped her seatbelt and yanked at the door handle.

“No, stay here. I’ll get a wheelchair.” One thing Teddy felt sure of—a frantic man on armband crutches always got attention. People waiting with feverish children or blood-soaked rags wrapped around minor injuries sure to require stitches stared. He swung toward the reception desk, not bothering with the careful placement of his feet as he usually did, and almost stumbled into the face of the woman shuffling paperwork. “I have a woman in labor in my van, the red one. Her water broke.”

Though she looked up, the woman with gray eyes who’d seen a thousand emergencies merely nodded. “Are you the father?”

“No, her brother, her birth-buddy. She’s my sister.”

“Yes, I understand that. Are you preregistered?”

“Yes, we are. Ella Sue Smalls is the patient. I’m Teddy Billodeaux, responsible for the bills. She’s in the van. She needs a wheelchair.”

“Do you also require a wheelchair?”

“No, I have my own.”

She tapped at a keyboard with practiced efficiency. “Here you are.” A printer spit out wrist tags and other necessary papers. In some magical way, she’d also summoned an orderly. “Woman in the red van needs a ride to the maternity ward. Mr. Billodeaux, go along and please move your vehicle to a parking space.”

“Sure, right.” He followed the wheelchair pusher to the van. Sweat dripped off of him from the exertion and anxiety. His clothes remained damp from the gym. His hair, lank and stringy, hung in his eyes. Ella Sue, golden hair recently washed and bed-tossed, makeup applied even if her pink lipstick had smeared a little, nails polished the way Jessie showed her but with one broken off, looked considerably better than he did if the image in the side view mirror didn’t lie. Only their wide, frantic blue eyes matched. The attendant eased his sister into the wheelchair and jogged away with her.

By the time Teddy parked the van and returned, an aide already worked at mopping up the trail of dribbled birth fluids that led to the closed box of the steel elevator. He pressed the Up button three or four times. “Mr. Billodeaux, your paperwork,” the registrar called. She kindly reminded him of the floor of the maternity ward as well. Exiting the lift, he humped to the nurses’ station. “Ella Sue Smalls?”

They issued the number of the labor room and sent him on his way. Teddy absorbed the sounds of various television programs as he passed, and startled at the scream of a woman loud and anguished enough to raise the hairs on his arms, all overlaying the pings of medical monitors. At first, he’d tried to convince Ella to try a birthing room, so nicely decorated in soothing colors, complete with a rocking chair, and less costly because a natural birth did not require anesthetic or a delivery room. Midwives charged less too. Now, he rejoiced that he hadn’t gone cheap.

“There he is,” a nurse remarked cheerfully as he burst in the door. “We’ll need those papers and especially the wristband. See, Ella, one for you and a matching one for your baby. No mix-ups.” She applied the band to Ella’s arm.

Already garbed in a hospital gown and modestly covered, his sister sat swinging her pale legs like a restive child on the gurney. “About time you got here. I’m in pain, and they won’t give me nothing.”

“She’s only three centimeters. We can’t do the epidural until she reaches five.” He could tell the nurse had said this many times before.

“Yeah, I know. I told her the breathing exercises were necessary. Ella, deep cleansing breath, then hee-hee-hoo, hee-hee-hoo. Remember?”

“Well, now the pain went away.”

“Get ready for next time.”

A gentle inquiry and a mild reassurance issued forth. “Are you the daddy? Ella admitted trying to bring on labor, but no harm done. Nothing to worry about. The baby is quite ripe and ready to come into the world.”

“No, I’m her brother. Did she try to harm herself?” He knew his sister hated being pregnant, but surely she wouldn’t try to break her own water?

The nurse and the LPN in the room exchanged an amused glance. “Perhaps the father had to leave for work earlier this morning. As I said, not unnatural this late in the game.”

“There is no father. I’m her birthing partner.”

The nurse administered a deft change of subject. “Then you know what comes next. We need to shave her and administer the enema. You should step outside until we finish. Here.” The nurse offered a large plastic bag. “Why don’t you take her personal items to the car?”

“That’s my best nightgown, Teddy. Needs handwashing, and you take care of the afghan, too, because it belongs to the baby,” Ella Sue ordered.

His mind still held an image of his sister on the toilet with a thin cotton nightie hiked up around her hips. So sheer he could see her pregnancy-darkened nipples, the neckline possessed a merry circle of brightly embroidered flowers—another gift from Xochi, no doubt. “Sure, I’ll take care of it. I might go home and clean up. I’ll bring Jessie back with me. We won’t be long.”

“Good. I’d like to have another woman around since Mama can’t be here.”

“Yeah, I wish she could be here too. Sorry I didn’t have a chance to see her again.” And tell her he understood his abandonment now and thank her for the good life she’d given him. He’d see this baby had a great beginning and an existence full of opportunities to repay her sacrifice. As he headed down the corridor toting the plastic sack, the woman enduring natural birth screamed again. He moved a little faster to the parking lot.

Back at the apartment, Jessie didn’t hear him enter over the blast of a hairdryer. He stood in the bathroom entry watching her honey-brown hair float around her head on the waves of warm air. Low of him to want to spend some time in bed with her when his sister labored in the hospital. Jessie wore fresh clothes and new makeup. He wanted nothing more than to sneak in and kiss the nape of her neck, but she glimpsed him in the mirror. Teddy hoped his naked desire didn’t show in his face.

“How’s Ella doing?”

“We got her checked in. Right now, she’s in a labor room jonesing for the epidural. I need to get a quick shower and do the rest of my routine in case it’s a long haul.”

“I’ll get out of your way. I can finish drying my hair in the bedroom.” She swung around, and he homed in for a kiss on her lush lips so perfectly painted like Ella’s. He left a smear behind and wiped at it with his thumb.

“Sorry.”

“Worth the redo.” Her cheeks flushed slightly, and he credited himself with causing the blush. But no. “I think Ella might have been doing the same with a man while we were gone. I striped her bed and used the soiled sheets to mop up the puddle and the dribble to the bathroom. They reeked of sex, Teddy.”

He shared in her embarrassment. “I think that’s what the nurse tried to imply about her, an attempt to get labor started.”

“It’s possible. I have married friends who’ve told me they tried the same at the end of their pregnancy to bring on labor—the fun way, they said. Sometimes it works.”

“But who would do that for her? One of the food delivery guys? She’s gotten to know them really well and tips high with my money.”

Jessie tossed her half-dry tresses. “I think someone who smokes and drinks Burger King coffee like the guy I caught her with when she got ahead of me. I don’t know how, but I believe she hooked up with him.”

Teddy shook his head in disbelief. “That would be dangerous for her and the baby. What if he carries some disease?”

“I don’t think consequences rank high on her list. They’d fall to the bottom buried under the lives of the rich and famous and the latest hairstyles. She wants what she wants immediately, no waiting. I hate to say this about your sister, but she’s fairly shallow in the gene pool.”

“Oh, I think she’s sharp enough, just ignorant. It’s pretty obvious she didn’t make her boyfriend use a condom, but a total stranger? I didn’t see a used one laying around.”

“No sign of it, unless the guy flushed it, but the sheets had that semen smell.”

“This explains why she prettied up only to take a nap and put on a nice nightgown—which she wants hand-washed by the way, along with the baby’s afghan.”

Jessie gave him an eye roll worthy of a disgusted teen. “I’ll take care of that for you. All the baby things should be washed in a mild detergent.”

“You seem to know a lot about this.”

“Tons of babysitting and a dozen baby showers, though I haven’t been to any lately. I wish people wouldn’t assume I can’t reproduce simply because I can’t walk.”

Teddy wanted to wipe that sudden sadness off her face. “Hey, lots of people think I must be impotent, which is way worse. I had to prove them wrong.”

Her lips formed a slight crescent of a smile. “Want me to write you a testimonial?”

“Actually, that would be great. I could frame it and hang it over the bed.”

He loomed close enough to her to receive a light blow to his bicep. “For other women to read, no way!”

“We need to get ready for the hospital. Jess, I’m glad you’re here.” He settled for a light kiss and a slight shove of her wheelchair toward the door. “I won’t take long.”

By the time, he finished, Jessie had the nightgown soaking in a basin and the sullied sheets washing in the stacked washer and dryer unit stowed in one of the small closets. “My cleaning lady usually does the sheets, but thanks.”

“I doubt they’ll keep Ella more than overnight once the baby arrives. We’ll have to make up her bed again before she comes home if these are your only sheets.”

“Oh, I have plenty of clean sheets thanks to my mom and Corazon. When I left for college they made sure I came fully equipped.”

“Shouldn’t we call them?”

“No, the whole family will come running. This is my responsibility, but I appreciate your being here. So you ready to help bring a baby into the world?”

“Nothing I’d like to do more.”