“Are you out of your mind? How can you say a thing like that? You just saved my child.” And it had almost cost her her own life. He moved nearer to her again, and touched her bruised face with gentle fingers. “I love you, Adrian. This may not be the time or place to say it,” he said softly, “but I love you. More than that, I'm in love with you. I have been for two months, maybe even three.” He kissed her hand then and her fingers. He was afraid to hurt her if he really kissed her.

“You're not mad about the baby?” There were tears in her eyes as she asked him.

“How could I be mad about the baby? I think you're wonderful to do what you're doing. You're very courageous, and unbelievably strong, and a good, decent woman. And I think it's very special that you're having a baby.” It was the first kind word anyone had said about her pregnancy, except Zelda, but she had taken so much abuse from Steven that in the face of Bill's kind words, she started to cry. And he gently wiped her eyes as she sobbed and tried to explain it all to him. She was feeling very emotional and terribly upset and suddenly the dam had broken after three months of having to apologize to her husband, and trying to cope with the pregnancy on her own.

“Just relax.” She was getting too upset, and he was afraid of what it might do to her. She had already had a terrible shock to her system. “Everything's going to be fine. Okay?” He smoothed her hair off her face, and gently tucked her in. She looked like a battered child, and she was hiccuping like a little girl who'd been crying. “You're going to have your baby and it'll be beautiful.” He leaned his face down to hers and carefully, carefully kissed her lips, and there were tears in his eyes too. “I love you, Adrian … I love you so much …you and the baby.” And the beauty of it was that he meant it.

“How can you say that?” Steven had deserted her over this child, and now Bill, who barely knew her, was telling her he loved her. “It's not even your baby.”

“I wish it were,” he said honestly as he looked down at her. And then, he dared say to her exactly what he was feeling. “Maybe one day, if I'm very lucky, it will be.” Fresh tears rolled down her cheeks then, and she didn't say a word, she just held his hand tightly in her own, and closed her eyes as she nodded. She dozed for a little while then, holding his hand, and he watched the monitors while she slept. The nurse came in a couple of times, and reassured him that everything was normal. He left for a little while eventually, to check on the boys. He found Tommy sleeping too. He was taking a nap, but he looked fine. They had put in a glucose IV, and they were checking his temperature regularly, but they said he could go home by the end of the afternoon. And Adam was watching old reruns of Mork and Mindy.

“How're you doing, sport?” Bill sat down next to him in the television room, and across the way he could see where Tommy was sleeping.

“How's Adrian?” he asked worriedly, but Bill looked so relieved, he knew she had to be okay. And a nurse had told him long before that his “mother” was much better. He hadn't corrected her, he was old enough to have figured out that it was simpler not to.

“She's sleeping, but she's better.” He had been thinking all afternoon about what they ought to do. He didn't think she should travel right away, particularly in view of her pregnancy, but he also didn't think that she should be camping. What they needed was a week's holiday in a terrific hotel, some sun, and a lot of room service. “What do you say we stay in a hotel, instead of going back to camping?” He didn't want to disappoint the boys, but he had a responsibility to her now, too, particularly after what she had done for Tommy. The day could have ended in tragedy for all of them, and Bill was certain that if she hadn't been so quick to react, and relentless in her efforts to save the child, Tommy would no longer be with them. It was a debt he would owe her forever. But he had to think of Adam now, too, and he looked a little shaken. “Would you be very disappointed if this vacation wasn't too rugged?”

But Adam was quick to shake his head vehemently. “I'm just glad they're both okay. You should have seen her, Dad. She ran like a blue streak once the current started taking him away. I guess she was trying to get downstream before he did, so she could stop him, but I couldn't figure it out then. And it worked. But it was so awful.” He choked on the words as he said it. “They kept going under, and at first no one helped them. She just kept pushing him up, and the current right where they were, kept shoving her down again. And then she'd push him up again, and she'd go under. It was awful….” He buried his face in Bill's chest, and he held his son for a long time.

“Tommy should never have left her in the first place. What in hell was he doing?”

“I think he must have been looking at the rafts or something. And he fell in while he was watching.”

“We're going to have to talk about that when he wakes up.” Eventually, he went over to check on the sleeping child, but his color looked good and his breathing and temperature were normal. He looked fine and there was hardly a scratch on him. It was hard to believe that this was the same child who had been blue only a few hours before. Bill knew that as long as he lived, he would never forget it.

He made some phone calls after that, and got a large suite in a deluxe hotel, and he went back to check on Adrian and talk to her doctor. She was still asleep, and they wanted her to stay that way for a while. She still had some repairing to do, and they thought she might be able to leave the hospital the next day if there were no further problems. They wanted to be sure she didn't develop pneumonia, or have complications with the baby. But so far, things seemed to be improving.

He told them he'd be back in a little while, and he went to tell Adam that, too, and then he got a ride back to their campsite, and he stood trembling as he looked around, thinking that only that morning, life had seemed so carefree and so simple. And now suddenly two of the people he loved had almost lost their lives …three, if he counted the baby. He had a sense of reverence and gratitude, and he was relieved when everything was packed and he drove to the hotel. They had set aside a beautiful two-bedroom suite, and he had already decided to sleep on the couch. He wanted to keep an eye on her at night, and be sure that he heard her if she called him. He would have preferred sleeping in the same room, but he was afraid it might upset the children.

And as soon as he dropped off their things, he went back to the hospital, and was startled to discover that it was six o'clock and the boys were eating dinner.

“Where've you been?” Tommy asked. They had taken out the IV, and he looked like his old self, as Adam told him to stop eating his mashed potatoes with his fingers. The children's ward was almost empty. There was a broken leg, a broken arm, a minor car accident that had required some stitches and observation for a concussion, and Tommy, having survived his dousing in the river. And most of the other children were older, and they were talking among themselves during dinner.

“I went to get a hotel room for all of us,” Bill explained. “I checked on you all afternoon, but you were asleep all the time.” He leaned over and kissed him and as he did he realized he was hungry. He hadn't eaten anything since the breakfast Adrian had fixed early that morning.

“Is Adrian okay?” Tommy's face clouded up with worry, but Bill nodded quickly.

“She's going to be fine. She was worried about you. She took kind of a beating trying to rescue you. Which reminds me, young man, what were you doing out of the swimming hole without the others?” The boy's eyes got huge in his face and brimmed over with tears. He knew exactly what part he had played in it, and he was old enough to know that it was his fault that he and Adrian had almost drowned, and he felt deeply remorseful.

“I'm sorry, Daddy …honest …”

“I know you are, son.”

“Can I see her yet?”

“Maybe tomorrow. She's pooped. Hopefully they'll let her out and we can take her back to the hotel with us.”

“Can I go tonight?”

“We'll see.” He would have liked to spend the night with Adrian, but he didn't want to leave the boys alone in the hotel, and even in the hospital, Tommy would have expected his father to sleep with him. And they had already said that Adam couldn't spend the night since he wasn't a patient. So Bill had no choice but to take them to the hotel, and come back for Adrian in the morning.

But she didn't seem to mind when he went back to see her. She was so exhausted from the perils of the day that she had barely woken up to talk to him before she was asleep again, and the nurse suggested that he leave her.

“She won't even know that you've gone, and I'll explain it to her when she wakes up,” the nurse promised, “and if she wants to, she can always call you.” He left the number of the hotel, and the hotel room, and he went back to get the boys, and an hour later they were jumping on the beds, and watching TV, and Tommy wanted to order chocolate ice cream from room service. It was difficult to believe that he had almost not survived the morning.

Bill gave him a bath and put them both to bed, and then he stretched out in the room that was to be hers, feeling completely exhausted. He couldn't remember a day in his entire life that had been as traumatic. And all he could think of was the hideous vision of their two bodies with the rangers and the paramedics struggling over them …the sirens …the sounds …the looks on their faces. He knew he would have nightmares about it for years, and as he thought of her, he found himself missing Adrian, and wanting to hold her close. There was so much he wanted to say to her now, so much for them to find out, to do together, to discover …and then there was the baby. He didn't even know exactly how pregnant she was. All he knew was what the doctor had guessed, but he had no idea when it was to be born. It was remarkable how suddenly a whole new being had come into his life … a whole new prospect of happiness for the future. He had loved her before, but now he knew that he loved her doubly. And as he thought about it, lying on her bed, the phone rang.