A dire urgency sweeps over me, the likes of which I have never felt before.
“Where is she?”
“I’ve already sent an ambulance,” Lorna says. “But I’m afraid that they won’t reach her fast enough. You know what they say about twins, that birth can come much faster than a regular birth, and I think she’s about an hour out on the highway. It’s hard to tell exactly, since she wasn’t really sure where she pulled off onto the side of the road, but I think that I pieced together where she is.”
“Lorna!” I say, interrupting her nervous rant because there isn’t a moment to waste. “I’m going after her. Send me the GPS coordinates for where you think she is.”
Lorna looks at me with a blank stare as if she has no idea how to use a smartphone, just as Tom walks into the shop to let her know that the ambulance is coming but they had to deliver an elderly resident to the local hospital first.
“Goddamn it, this town needs more than one ambulance for fuck’s sake,” I curse. “Tom, help Lorna send me the GPS coordinates. I’m going to find Seraphine!”
I race to the car and take off, heading toward the highway and getting the GPS info Tom sends right before I merge onto the ramp. The ambulance won’t reach her in time, butI will.
This sportscar has a speedometer that reaches two hundred miles per hour, and I will drive as fast as I can go until I either melt the tires, get pulled over, or reach her. I’ve never tested this car, but for the amount I paid for it, it had better hold up and get me there faster than the speed of light.
It takes all of about twenty minutes before there are flashing red and blue lights behind me and the blaring sound of a siren.
Fuck.
I don’t have time for this.
As soon as the officer pulls me over, I don’t even wait for him to come to my car. I hop out, nearly causing him to pull his gun on me, and start to call out.
“Please, my—” I stop because I have no idea what to refer to Seraphine as. She’s not my wife, or even my girlfriend. “The mother of my children is going into labor stuck on the side of the road. She’s carrying twins—my twins, and she is all alone.”
“Sir, I understand that you are upset and dealing with an emergency, but the proper way to handle this would be to call an ambulance to the scene. I can do that for you if you’d like.”
“You don’t understand,” I say in a frenzy. I’m not trying to wind up in jail or getting handcuffed or shot at, but Ineedhim to let me go. “The ambulance was already called but they aren’t going to make it to her in time. She coulddie. My babies coulddie.And I simply cannot go through the pain of losing someone again.”
“Sir—”
“Look at my car officer.I can make it to her. Not even your car can go as fast as mine, and certainly not an ambulance. You’re going to have to arrest me if you want to stop me from trying. But please, if this was your wife and your children, what would you do?”
For a painfully long second, he stands there considering my plea.
“All right,” he says finally as he shakes his head. “I shouldn’t be doing this, and if you wind up losing control of your car and killing yourself, you’d better not take another damn soul with you, or I will hunt you down in the afterlife to bring you in. Do you understand me? Drive safely.”
“Thank you!” I shout as I jump back into my car and take off.
I immediately get back up to speed, scanning the side of the highway the rest of the way so that I can see as soon as I catch sight of the van. When my phone rings through the car, it startles me, and I nearly let go of the wheel.
“Lilly, is everything okay?” I ask through the car’s speaker.
“Dad? What is going on? Tori came to pick me up at school and she said that you are on your way to get Seraphine. Is that true? Is she coming home?”
Suddenly, I remember that Lilly still has no idea about the situation. She hasn’t seen her since before her pregnancy was obvious. She has no idea that Seraphine is pregnant, nonetheless with twins that aremine.
As I race down the highway, hoping to come up upon Seraphine’s van any moment now, I also try to explain to my daughter over the phone that not only is she about to be a big sister totwoyounger siblings, but that Seraphine is in labor on the highway.
“Lilly, there’s something else that I need to tell you too,” I say, hoping that she takes this well since I truly can’t deal with any more stress right now. “Seraphine ispregnant, and you’re about to be a big sister.”
There is dead silence on the phone.
This was a lot to drop on a young girl at the spur of the moment like that. What was I thinking? I should have waited until I was there with Lilly in person and could explain how all of this happened and why she wasn’t told until just now. I’m not thinking clearly at the moment, there is just too much going on and too much at stake.
When I start to hear the quiet sound of muffled crying, I worry that I have just compounded all of the things that could go wrong right now. But then, my Lillybean surprises me again. She is just like her mother was, with the biggest heart in the whole world.
“Dad, I am sohappy!” she says through tears. “I am so excited! When do I get to see the baby? Does that mean that Seraphine is coming back home?”