Anyway, that his train of thought was derailed by the second thing that happened, which was that Kat moaned.
Kat, who was standing on his porch, gripping the railing with all her might, doubled over in what looked—and sure as hell sounded—like pain.
He dropped both boards and covered the rest of the block at a sprint. “Kat! What’s the matter?”
Her head shot up, and she glared at him like when they were kids and she’d caught him going through her diary. “I’m having this fucking baby three weeks early, that’s what’s the matter. Three weeks early and on your porch.”
His worst fear had come to life. This was exactly what he’d been on her case about the last month or so when she’d insisted on coming to the island despite his objections. “Goddammit! I told you a thousand times to stay on the mainland this last month.”
“Yeah, well, I told this baby a thousand times to stay inside until she’s due because the nursery isn’t even remotely ready and— Ahhhh!”
That wail. It made its way inside him and sank barbed-wire claws into his soul. His sister was going to die on his porch. His vision started to get blurry. There were a bunch of things he needed to tell her, but he couldn’t make his mouth form the necessary words.
“Okay,” Amy said, jogging up the path. He was still standing in the yard, but she slipped past him and made her way up to the porch. “First labors usually take a long time, right? I’m pretty sure I read that somewhere.” She spoke soothingly and laid her hand on Kat’s forearm. “So I’m sure you have plenty of time.” She turned to him. “Call 911.” Her voice was still calm. He nodded.
“Plenty of time, my ass!” Kat shouted. “This baby is— Ahh!” Another ungodly wail.
“Dax!” Amy hissed, startling him out of his fear-induced haze. “Call 911 now.” He pulled out his phone. She made a shooing motion with her fingers. “Don’t let Kat hear you panic. So if you can’t be calm about it, go around back to make the call. Then ask Gary to meet the paramedics.”
He pulled out his phone and, with shaking hands, performed the necessary steps to answer the dispatcher’s questions and summon and instruct Gary.
Calm. Kat needed him to be calm. Kat’s baby needed him to be calm. It was just that he loved his goddamned sister so fucking much, that…
“Okay, sweetie,” he could hear Amy cooing to Kat as he came back around to the porch. “Everything is going to be fine.” She was talking to Kat, but her voice was like an anchor to him, too, giving him something to focus on. “You’re not having a heart attack. You’re having a baby. People do it all the time. Let’s get you inside where you’ll be more comfortable.”
Cue the wail. The wails were coming really close together. Admittedly, everything he knew about childbirth, he knew from TV, but didn’t that mean that the contractions were coming close together?
“Okay,” Amy said again, the word becoming her soothing mantra. “After this wave, we’re walking inside.”
“I can’t walk,” Kat sobbed. “I can’t move!”
“Well, you’re just going to have to, to keep the baby safe,” Amy said sharply, raising her voice. The tone was in such contrast to her previous reassuring demeanor that it caused Dax to rear back a little as he mounted the steps to the porch.
It must have had the same effect on Kat, because she eased her death grip on the railing. Amy glared at him and jerked her head toward Kat. Responding to the unspoken order, he ran around and took Kat’s arm, mimicking the hold Amy had on the other one.
She nodded. “Good. Now we move, quick, before the next contraction.”
They had to stop in the entryway to allow another one to pass, but they made it into his bedroom before the next one hit. Dax, still on the phone with the dispatcher, ran ahead and smoothed the rumpled sheets even though his rational mind knew that childbirth probably didn’t require a tidy bed.
“I have to push,” Kat panted as Amy positioned her back on the bed. “I have to push.” Kat seemed markedly calmer than she had outside. “They said this would happen—all of a sudden I’d have the urge to push.”