Kathleen Creighton - One Christmas Knight

“J.J. was my second baby,” he said. “My first was a little girl. Patti-my wife-was pretty heavy into drugs and alcohol then. She’d promised me she’d quit, you know, but she lied about it, and I was gone so much, what with tryin’ to get my business goin’-my daddy had just passed away not long before, and I was out there on my own for the first time… Ah, hell.” He stopped, shaking his head. He’d made the same excuses for himself so many times. “The fact is,” he said, exhaling in a rush of guilt, “I didn’t keep as close a watch on her as I should have. She had the baby early…way too early.” He heard Mirabella’s soft sound of distress-he’d been waiting for it-and pushed past it before she could say anything.

“My little girl was born so tiny and sick, I reckon she never had a chance. I was out on the road. When I got there, they had her on life support-just this tiny little scrap of life, all hooked up to tubes and wires. Patti, she didn’t want to have anything to do with her, wouldn’t touch her, wouldn’t even come to see her. I guess I couldn’t blame her, really. They told me my little girl couldn’t live without those machines, wasn’t ever going to have a chance for a normal life. And they asked me if I wanted to hold her. So they unhooked her and wrapped her in a little pink blanket and put her in my hands. It seemed like she hardly weighed anything at all. They had this rocking chair…and I sat there and rocked her and sang to her until she left me…”

His words became whispers, then nothing. It hurt too much. His chest, his throat, his whole body, like an old wound torn open again, raw and fresh as if it had happened yesterday. But how could he tell her about that when she was in so much pain herself? He had no right!

His face was wet. He knew some of the moisture and warmth he felt was his own tears, but there was something else there, too. Something miraculous. Somehow there was the soft flow of breath, her breath, issuing from her lips as they gently brushed his cheeks, his eyelids, his brows. And her fingers, stroking through his hair.

“I’m sorry…” It was a whisper of sound-no more-breathed against his temple. “Another contraction… Please hold me.”

Nothing had ever seemed more natural to him than to do as she asked. He pushed his fingers through her hair and cradled her head in his palm and drew it gently down, tucking it into the hollow beneath his chin. And it felt to him as if he’d been keeping that place for her for all of his life; a special nest, just for her head. Her arms came around his neck, not frantically clutching, but holding fast with complete and unquestioning trust. His hands stroked down her sides and around to her back to find the place where the pain was sharpest and the tension lurked, and as he began a kneading, circling pressure, he felt the breath gush through her in a sigh of sheer relief.

They rode it out that way, facing each other across the space between the seats, arms wrapped around each other, legs comfortably sandwiched, breathing almost as one being… Entwined like lovers.

How natural it seemed. How sweet and easy.

“I’m gonna start noddin’ off, here, pretty soon. Talk to me…talk to me.”

I-40-Texas

“What was her name?” Mirabella asked, her voice muffled and dreamy.

Still dazed, Jimmy Joe mumbled, “Pardon?” and she lifted her head from his chest and gazed at him with an earnest-but-unfocused smile.

“Your baby girl. Did you name her?”

“Oh.” He coughed and cleared his throat as he straightened. At the same time she took her arms from around his neck and let them slide through his hands, until that was the only part of them still touching. “Amy,” he said, without taking his eyes from their clasped hands. “We named her Amy.”

“Amy… That’s pretty.” She said it absently, then rose abruptly, breaking even that small physical contact.

He watched as she moved away from him, rubbing at her back, distracted and restless again, and was conscious of a sense of loss and regret. He had an idea it was the way she would be from now on, becoming more and more introspective and closed off from him as her time grew nearer and she concentrated all her energy, mind and body, on the job ahead of her. She would be focused on that, wrapped up in it, consumed by it, deaf and blind to everything else, including him.

Which was normal, he told himself. Just as it should be. And which made what had just happened between them-her compassion and concern for his pain-seem so miraculous to him.

He hadn’t meant to get in her way. The way he saw it, his job was just to be there for her even when she didn’t know he was, to lead and guide her like a blind person through a swamp, to keep her safe from harm, to keep her from feeling lost or scared. Thinking about the responsibility of it all made him feel awed and humble. He just hoped he was up to it.

“You got a name picked out for your baby?” he asked.

“Hmm?” She turned like a sleepwalker, frowning. Already it was becoming harder to distract her. “Oh-yeah.” A smile flickered across her face, sure and confident, for an instant a touch of the old Mirabella. “Eric. His name is Eric. It means, ‘all-powerful.’”

He nodded. “Nice. How ’bout if it’s a girl?”

She shook her head emphatically. “It won’t be. It’s a boy.”

It had been so long since he’d seen that little lift of her chin, he couldn’t help but smile. “You know that for a fact? I mean, did they do the tests and all?”

“I’ve seen the ultrasound. The doctor says he’s sure it’s a boy. Anyway, I hope…it is.” She hiccuped, and distress flitted briefly across her face.

Automatically, he reached behind him, found one of the cans of soda he’d brought back from the vending machines and popped it open. “Why’s that?” he asked as he handed it to her.

“Why do I want a boy?” She lashed him with a dark and furious look, snatched the soda from him and gulped heedlessly. “How can you even ask?” She waved the can like someone who’s maybe getting tipsy. “Because it’s still a man’s world, dammit. And I don’t want my child…to have to struggle…like I did. Ow…dammit.”

He rescued the soda can and found a safe place for it on the floor in front of the driver’s seat, then turned his attention back to Mirabella. But when he reached for her, she squirmed away from him with a furiously hissed, “Don’t touch me!”

And then, before he could even decide whether it was okay to ignore that or not, she cut loose with a belly-deep wail, a growl, almost, that seemed to come from the depths of her soul.

“Noook!” Shaking her head. Fighting it. Denying it. “No. Not now. It’s too soon. I’m not ready. I want to rest. I can’t…do this!”

Somehow he got his arms around her. Somehow he managed to still her thrashing and get her leaning against him, get her to breathe with him, slow and steady, the way she was supposed to. And all the time he was crooning to her, telling her yes, she could do it. Telling her how strong and brave and beautiful she was. Meaning every word.

By the time it was done she was sobbing, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” over and over, and he was stroking her temple with his chin and growling, “It’s okay, it’s okay… Nothing to be sorry about…”

He felt lost… helpless.

He wanted to tell her it was happening too fast for him, too. That he wasn’t ready, either. He wanted to tell her he wished he’d had more time with her, time to get to know her better. A lifetime of time. Time to get to know her ways, her body’s tender secrets-where she hurt and how she liked to be touched, and the mysterious feminine noises she uttered when she made love. There was so much about her he wanted to know. So many things he wished he’d asked her when he’d had the chance.

Mostly, he wanted to know why. Why, on Christmas Eve, was she here with him, a stranger, having her precious baby in a snowbound truck when she should have been in a warm, comfortable place with people to take care of her, and a husband to hold her and stroke her and tell her how much he loved her-the baby’s father, sharing it all, the whole wonderful miracle of it, with her? Why? He thought it had to be a tragedy of some sort-he couldn’t imagine any other explanation. He really wanted to know.

But she’d moved beyond him now. She was out of his reach, and he thought it was too late to ask her.

She’d pulled herself together and moved back a little, lifting her eyes to his, eyes that were filled with questions of their own. “Jimmy Joe?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” he murmured, pretending he knew the answers.

She drew a bright and hopeful breath. “I really do need to go to the bathroom. I know I’d feel better if I could just-”

But he stopped her there, firmly shaking his head, wishing he didn’t have to see the entreaty in her face. “I can’t let you go out,” he said as gently as he could. “It’s not just cold, it’s icy and dangerous. What if you hurt yourself-or your baby?”

He brushed her cheek with the backs of his fingers, wiping away a tear she probably didn’t even know about. “Tell you what, though. I’m gonna find you something, so you can go…” Now she was shaking her head-wildly, frantically. He saw the fear in her eyes and somehow knew that what she was most in dread of at that moment was the thought of losing her privacy-her dignity.

Mindful of that, he caught her chin and held it still, and leaning close, whispered his instructions in her ear as if they were in a room full of strangers and it was the most intimate of confidences he was sharing with her. So softly she had to catch her breath, still her breathing in order to hear him. When he was finished, she shivered like a child with a secret and whispered an airless and mollified, “Okay.”