Page 44 of Love Off Course

She shoots me a brief, terrified look and my heart clenches. Poor girl. I’d be terrified too if I had to deliver my baby in the middle of a hurricane with no medical attention and Camilo as the stand-in doctor.

“I’ll be right here,” I assure her. “If Camilo messes up, I’ll kill him for you. That’s a promise.”

She flashes me a quick smile before another contraction hits. I use the distraction to guide her down onto the cot. As we begin pulling off her pants, Damian peeks his head back into the room.

“Ew! I can’t watch! I don’t even like va-jay-jays on a good day!” He shrieks in horror. “And today is an awful day!”

“Henry!” Doris calls out. “Come sit with your mother so your father can see to his patient.”

I shoot Camilo a confused look and he frowns. When Dale starts over to us, Camilo shakes his head.

“I got this, man,” Camilo assures him. “You can’t pretend for her. Not for this.”

Dale grumbles. “I’m a retired obstetrician, boy. Move.”

Relief flashes over Camilo’s features as he stands up and backs away from the stool. Dale sits down and pats Araceli’s thigh.

“How you feeling, hon?” he asks.

She starts to cry. Araceli is fierce, not afraid. I can relate to this girl so hard. Seeing her break is gutting. “I’m scared my baby will die.”

The entire room grows silent with the same worry.

“Not on my watch. You’re going to do exactly as I say and we’ll deliver this baby within the hour,” Dale promises. He coaches her how to breathe and what to do on her next contraction.

She screams and turns purple before panting again. “He’s not due for another two weeks,” she whines. “Why is he coming early?”

“In my thirty plus years of delivering babies, I delivered more during hurricane season when we lived in Florida for a few years than I ever did in my entire career. The barometric pressure does strange things to the human body.”

Well, that certainly explains my lack of ability to stay away from Camilo.

He smirks. I stick my tongue out at him.

“Children,” Carson says under his breath. “Behave.”

I glance over at Damian to check on him and he’s practically sitting in Doris’s lap, gnawing on his fingernails. She’s cuddling him and telling him everything will be okay. Seeing them that way makes me tear up.

The hurricane is doing things to all of us.

I imagine all of them are good things. Things we don’t deserve but somehow are getting.

“That’s it, love,” Dale says. “Bear down. I can see his dark hair.”

She curses out a string of words in Spanish that makes Camilo’s jaw drop before another contraction hits. I stare in a mixture of awe and horror as the baby’s head is pushed out of her body. It would be horrific if it weren’t so beautiful.

Estefania grabs my hand, clutching it tight. We all hold our collective breath, only breathing when Araceli does. The seconds tick slowly by but then the baby is being pulled from her body and into Dale’s wrinkly arms. He smiles proudly down at thebaby. Rosita jumps into action with a towel and wraps the baby in it.

“We have a baby boy,” Rosita tells Araceli, and everyone cheers. “Are you naming him after Marco?”

“Fuck no,” Araceli snaps. “His name is Rodrigo Dale Ramirez.”

It’s official.

I’ve fallen in love with every single one of these obnoxiously endearing people.

And I don’t know what to do about it.

Chapter 14

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