The Northwoods Chronicles Read Online Free Page B

That’s where they get the baby out of your
tummy without it hurting.”
    “Then we’ll bring it home?”
    “Yes.” He moved to hug her, but she dodged
him.
    “No. The baby belongs in here.” She opened the
door to the tinfoiled room, where every possible surface, including
the crib mattress, had been covered with foil.
    “Why?”
    A puzzled look came across her face, and Pearce
was happy that whatever had happened to her brain had progressed to
the point where she forgot all about the UFO stuff. “C’mon, Regina,
let’s go get that baby out of your tummy, and then we’ll bring him
home.”
    “Okay,” she said, but then a pain gripped her
and like a little wild animal, she started to scream, then slammed
out the front door and ran through the snow, screaming, toward
town.
    Pearce chased her, and caught her a block away,
her tinfoil hat askew and caught in her hair. She was out of breath
and pain and fear showed feral in her eyes. “Honey? Honey, settle
down, now listen to me. I can make the pain stop, but we’ve got to
get into the car to do it.”
    “No!” she started to yell and beat her fists
against him.
    He held her tighter, trying to control her, but
her legs buckled the same time as she bit his arm, and he let
go.
    Pearce looked at her on the ground, in the snow,
her little yellow cotton dress up over her skinny knees, tears
running down the sides of her face as she looked up at him, and he
didn’t know what to do.
    Then Jimbo’s truck pulled over, and he jumped
out with his cell phone to his ear. He said, “Are you all right,
Pastor?”
    It was all Pearce could do to keep from crying.
“She’s in labor.”
    “Can you come over here, honey?” Jimbo said into
the phone, then he folded it and put it in his pocket. He squatted
down next to Regina, who shrank from him and turned to hug her
husband’s legs. “Hi, Mrs. Porter,” Jimbo said. “So you’re about to
have that baby, are you? Bet you’re excited.”
    Regina sat up and started to bawl.
    “Margie’s on her way over. You know she’s had
two sons, and she’ll help you, because she knows what to do.”
    A contraction gripped Regina, and her face went
red. When it was over, she just said, “Get it out of me. Get it
away from me!”
    “We need to go to the hospital, honey,” Pearce
said, and gave Jimbo a look he hoped would translate into taking
his side.
    “That’s right, Mrs. Porter,” Jimbo said. “Babies
come out in hospitals.”
    Margie came running across the street, shrugging
into her parka, and gasped when she saw Regina in her little cotton
dress on the ground in the freezing snow. “What’s going on?”
    “Mrs. Porter’s going to have her baby,” Jimbo
said, “and she’s not quite up to it.”
    “Give her your coat,” Margie demanded, then sat
down on the ground with Regina while Jimbo put his sheepskin Levi’s
jacket around her shoulders.
    “Time for the hospital?” she asked.
    “Don’t want to go,” Regina whined.
    “They’ll stop it from hurting,” Margie said, and
Pearce was amazed at how easily everyone fell into communicating at
Regina’s level. Apparently he wasn’t as secretive with her
condition as he thought he’d been.
    “Okay,” Regina said, then began to stand up.
Margie put one arm around her, and Pearce got on the other side of
her, and Regina began to shiver with the cold as they walked slowly
back to the house, toward the car. Pearce was just about to ask
Margie to go along for the ride, when Regina stopped, dead in her
tracks.
    “Oh, no,” she said softly, and liquid trickled
out from between her legs into the snow.
    “It’s okay,” Margie said, but Regina wasn’t
hearing her.
    “Something’s happening,” she said, and, for a
moment, Pearce looked into her eyes and saw the woman he had
married.
    “Let’s hurry,” he said to her, and she nodded.
They picked up the pace, and while Margie got Regina settled in the
front seat, Pearce grabbed the keys and his