“Chicken, beans, rice,” she says. “Make sure you eat.”
“Thank you,” Huck says. “I will.”
But there’s no time just then. He gets the boat to the house, unhitches the trailer, secures the boat, and hopes like hell it doesn’t go flying and end up through the roof of his house. It’s getting dark. He’s shuttering the house when his phone rings. Irene.
“I ate,” he says. “Helen fed me.” This is a lie—the plate is on the counter, untouched—but he assumes Irene is calling to check on him.
“Huck,” she says. Her voice is an urgent whisper.
“What is it?” He cannot go back to Lovango to pick up Cash. Cash is stuck over there, sorry, unless he wants to swim.
Irene says something in such a low voice, Huck can’t hear it. “I’m sorry, AC, what?” He realizes he sounds a little impatient. It’s all fine for her to be making her white chicken chili and Mississippi roast, whatever the hell that is, but Huck has serious tasks to complete and he’s racing against the clock.
There’s a pause, then a noise—a door closing—and she says, “Ayers is in labor.”
Well, she’s going to have to wait, he thinks. “What kind of labor are we talking about?”
“Her water broke,” Irene says. “The contractions are coming every three to four minutes. It’s pretty clear she’s not going to make it over to Schneider. We called up to Myrah Keating, which is in full-on hurricane mode and has only emergency doctors on staff for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours.”
“The emergency docs can deliver a baby,” Huck says. “Go now.” It’s almost seven thirty and there’s an island-wide curfew that starts at eight. “Wait, where’s Maia?”
“She’s still at the school,” Irene says. “I was about to go pick her up.”
“I’ll get Maia,” Huck says. Goddamn it, he doesn’t have time for this! He still has all the kitchen windows to shutter. “Why don’t you take Cash’s truck and get Maia, and Baker can take Ayers in his Jeep. Or Phil and Sunny can take her in their Jeep, it’s bigger. Are Phil and Sunny there?”
“Oh yes, they’re here,” Irene says. “That’s the issue. Sunny doesn’t think Ayers should go to the health center.”
“For crying out loud, why not?”
“I should rephrase that. Ayers claims she’s in too much pain to move, and Phil and Sunny have assured her she doesn’t have to go anywhere. They’re telling her she can just have the baby here in the house.”
“Is anyone there a doctor?” Huck says. “If the answer is no, then get that girl to the health center. Have Baker step in if you need to. That baby is his as well.”
“I’ve told them all that,” Irene says. “What if there are complications? But Ayers said she had a checkup at the beginning of the week, and the baby is in place, apparently. Sunny keeps saying that women all across the globe have babies at home and there’s no reason Ayers can’t as well. She says it might actually be safer.”
Huck can’t believe this. “I can’t believe this,” he says.
“Apparently it’s the low pressure that brings the babies,” Irene says. “I should go get Maia now. Everyone else is with Ayers. Can you please come home?”
And do what? Huck thinks. He’s not a doctor, and although he has sixty-plus years of wide and varied life experience, he has never delivered a baby. Then he gets an idea.
“I’m going to make a call,” he says. “Long shot, but it’s all we’ve got. You bring Maia home safely, please, and I’ll be there as soon as I can.” Huck hangs up and calls Rupert.
“This best be an emergency,” Rupert says when he answers. “Not sure if you heard, but there’s a storm coming.”
Rupert’s lady friend Sadie lives in Coral Bay on Upper Carolina. She’s waiting at the bottom of her steep driveway, thank God, wearing blue scrubs and a silk scarf over her hair and holding a small duffel. Sadie is a nurse practitioner up at Myrah Keating; her mother, Blythe, was a midwife, the best in the Virgin Islands. When Huck called and told her about Ayers, she said, “If you come get me, I’ll help out. I have my bag of tricks right here ready to go.”
As soon as Sadie climbs in, Huck swings the car around and heads back down the Centerline Road like a bat out of hell.
“It’s one thing asking you to deliver a baby at home and another thing asking you to deliver a baby at home with a category five hurricane on the way.”
“Low pressure brings the babies,” Sadie says. “I remember my mama delivering two or three babies during Marilyn in ’95.”
“I’m not sure how I’ll ever thank you,” Huck says.
“I’ll tell you how you can thank me,” Sadie says. “Convince your old friend Rupert to stop seeing Josephine.”
Oh, boy, Huck thinks.
“And Dora.”
It’s a small island, Rupert, Huck thinks. He takes the curve above the Reef Bay Trail at breakneck speed. The wind is picking up; trees aren’t swaying, they’re bending.
“And anyone else he’s got on a string,” Sadie says. She slaps Huck’s arm. “You hear me?”
“I hear you,” Huck says. Maia
That was sick,” Maia tells Irene as she climbs into Cash’s truck. She puts down the window. “Bye, Shane! Stay safe! Text me!”
“Buckle up, please,” Irene says. “And put up your window. It’s starting to blow.”
“We gave out six hundred and twenty-two emergency kits,” Maia says. “Each one with two jugs of water, flashlights with batteries, bug spray, energy bars, and matches. The volunteers got to take home
