Page 74 of Hell In A Handbasket
“We don’t have our bags.” Panting, she breathes noisily and clings to me, even as I come around in front and move backwards. One step—one fucking step—feels like a lifetime. “We were supposed to pack a hospital bag. It was supposed to have the baby’s first outfit and stuff.”
“Sometimes these things don’t go according to plan.” Minka grips Christabelle’s arm and takes a single step forward. “We’re here now, Debbie. So if you could walk just a little faster, that would be great.”
“We need a doctor!” Jay swings the bus door open and bounds off, arms waving and voice echoing throughout the dark. “We’re having a baby in here!”
“See?” Quietly encouraging, Minka smiles and takes another step forward. “Doctors are gonna be prepped for you. We’ll even get you a wheelchair. You just gotta walk to it.”
“UncleCato sounds the best.” Cato walks behind the girls, shuffling them along just a fraction faster. “Unclecomes with a ring of authority that cousin doesn’t. Plus, my brothers get to be uncle. So I should be uncle too, right?”
“Stop making this about you, Cato!” Jen escalates the noise inside the bus tenfold. She waves her arms and shouts, and yet, her smile is entirely too fucking happy. “I have stitches in my legs, and I’m not making it about me.”
“Swear to God,” Minka snarls. “I’m going to murder every single person on this bus.” She takes Christabelle’s weight and helps her forward another step. “I’ve officially had my quota of people for this entire year. And probably next year, too.”
“Faster now.” Cato holds Christabelle’s hips and waddles her forward. “You’re leaking on the floor.”
“Get your hands off me!” Christabelle swings around and slaps him away. “Stop touching.”
“Found your strength again,” Minka smirks, helping her forward another step. “You’re super close, and then you can have a different doctor. The proper kind.”
“I’m a doctor!” Jen hollers. “And my sister is a vet. Ya know how she’d assist in this birth?” She shoots her fist straight ahead. “Up to the elbow, baby. It’s juicy and gnarly and totally not something one should discuss at the dinner table.”
“He moved to Copeland to escape her.” Shaking her head, Minka studies the ground and inches forward. It’s been seventy-three hours, I swear, and we’re just halfway along the bus. “Lawrence. He claims it was a career thing, but I call bullshit. He needed to get away fromher, so he became mayor in a city known for mayor killings.”
“One time,” Aubree snickers, slipping her phone into her pocket and taking Christabelle’s left arm. “One mayor, one time. And now Lawrence likes you like he likes his daughters.”
“Keep your enemies close,” Jen cackles. “He probably doesn’t like her at all. God knows, she’s not very nice.”
“His house is next door to the one we have in the hills.” Shaking her head, Minka peers up at Archer. “I can’t live next door to that man. It would kill me.”
“Can we focus onmytroubles first?” Aubree counters. “I have half-packed boxes in my kitchen, a big, dumb house to move in to in a few weeks. And then a wedding. A wedding!”
“Your problems?” Tim questions. “That’s aproblemfor you?”
“Ugh,” Minka groans. “Dress fittings. I already hate it.”
“Um, excuse me? Can we focus onmefor a minute?” Christabelle cries out and grits her teeth, halting in the aisle as another contraction pulls her up short. Veins bulge in her forehead and neck. Tendons stretch in her jaw. She crushes my hands with a vice-like viciousness, but her eyes, vulnerable and pained, come to mine. “This is going to get so much worse before it gets better. It hurts.”
“You’ve never looked so fucking beautiful.” I stop moving backwards and instead step forward. Pressing my lips to hers, I swallow her heavy exhale. “So beautiful, Darling.”
“You might think you’re being sweet,” Jess quips. “But we know we look like trash during labor. We know we’re sweating and leaking and screaming and splotchy and weird. So for you to say we’ve never been more beautiful…”
“You should shush now.” Kane grabs his wife and marches her toward the door. “You’re stressing ‘em out, Blondie.”
“Start walking again now.” Minka takes a step forward. “We have to get off this bus.”
“Is the doctor here?” Frantically, I search Aubree’s bright eyes. “The baby doctor. The one who’ll deliver her?”
“Raquel said she was waking him.”
“So he’s not even here yet?” Christabelle hoo-hoo-hoo’s her way through the breathing techniques we learned in our baby classes. “I have to poopnow! Not in an hour.”
“It’ll take him less time to drive here than it’s taking us to walk the length of this bus.” Minka comes forward another step. “Can we speed this up a little?”
“You’re not being very sensitive to our needs right now, Mayet.” I burn her with my fiery glare. “Bedside manner, please?”
“I don’t have a bedside manner! I work with dead people.” She wraps her arm across Christabelle’s back and shuffles us toward the door. “I chose not to need a bedside manner, and I’veneverhad a patient complain in the past.”
“Because they’re already dead!”
