Just Once More (21 page)

He didn’t even look up. Some of the adrenaline was leaving his body now, and he realized that his hands were covered with blood, and Hannah was bloody too. She was shaking. She was cold, and the baby was cold. They shouldn’t be cold.

He pulled his T-shirt off with unsteady hands. “Give me your shirt,” he told Koti, who got the message immediately, yanked his own shirt over his head, handed it to him.

People were getting off the bus behind the car, and Koti was turning to them, explaining, talking, forming a screen for the little tableau, but Drew barely noticed. He laid his shirt over his son’s little body, saw the tiny pursed mouth nuzzling at Hannah’s skin, searching for the comfort of her familiar body, and felt a rush of tenderness so strong, it nearly sent him to his knees.

He murmured something, some nonsense that would embarrass him later to recall, covered her as best he could with Koti’s shirt, knowing it would matter to her if she registered that the bus passengers—and the driver now, too—were looking, and for when the ambos came.

He covered her, then laid his hand over her own through the fabric, still warm and damp from his own sweating body, that blanketed their baby.

“It’s all good, sweetheart,” he told her, the siren closer now, thank God. He heard the tremble in his voice, and didn’t care. “They’re coming to help you. It’s all good.”

She opened her eyes and looked into his, and smiled with so much fatigue, and so much sweetness. She
smiled
.

“It was the tunnel,” she said, her voice thin, shaky, so tired. “We were in the tunnel. But you got to us. You were there, Drew.”

“Yeh,” he said, and if there were some tears now, he didn’t care about that either. “I was there. I’ll always be there. Because the dream was wrong. I’ll always be there.”

Hannah found, afterwards, that the minutes and hours that followed the birth of her third child were hazy in her memory, the scenes seeming to fade in and out.

The uniformed paramedic, his voice soothing, kind, bent over inside the car, shoving Drew out of the way, and she wanted Drew.

Two of them transferring her, baby and all, from the back seat of the car to the gurney, both her hands clutching the little body for dear life, a paramedic’s hand on the other side of hers just in case.

The little semicircle of onlookers she hadn’t been aware of until then, some of them with their phones held in the air. Not really interested in her, she dimly knew. Photographing Drew and Koti with their shirts off, and a dramatic moment.

It would be on the news, and it should have bothered her, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. Drew would handle it. He could handle the police, too, because a couple of them had materialized from somewhere, were standing in front of the little crowd. She didn’t have to worry about that.

The men were lifting her into the ambulance then, Drew beside her again, holding her hand, and the doors were closing, and it was quiet again, and that was better.

She barely noticed when they cut the baby’s cord, when they asked her to push, when they delivered the placenta. She only knew that her shaking was slowly subsiding under the blanket, that she had the baby at her breast now, that he was sucking, that he was warming up too, and that he was strong. That he was all right.

The siren sounded, loud and piercing, and she wished it would stop. Then the vehicle turned, slowed, and stopped. The doors were opening again, she and the baby were being passed out the back, and Drew was jumping down with her, walking beside her as she was wheeled into the building, down tiled corridors that could never have been anything but a hospital, and into a room.

The baby was being taken from her by capable hands, starting to cry again, but that was all right too, because he was being looked after, and he was still here, still in the
room with her, which meant that they weren’t worried, and the relief of it melted the last of her tension away. A woman was doing some stitching down below, a doctor or a midwife, Hannah didn’t know. She had torn, but that didn’t matter. She barely felt it. She was so tired, though. So tired.

“Drew,” she said.

He looked down at her. He still had her hand in his, and she realized for the first time that both their hands were dark red with drying blood.

“What is it, sweetheart?” he asked.

She turned her head so she could see him better. His face, that could look so fierce, so frightening, held only gentleness and concern now. His face made her choke up.

“That was scary,” she said. It wasn’t nearly enough to say, but she was too tired.

He laughed a little. “Yeh. That was. We had a baby in a car.”

“Oh,” she realized with distress. “Oh, no. Koti’s beautiful car.”

“What?” Confusion in the gray eyes now.

“What a…what a mess. It must have been. It must
be
.”

He laughed again. “Sweetheart. He doesn’t care.”

She closed her eyes and sighed. “Tell him you’ll pay to have it cleaned.”

“Hannah…”

“Please,” she murmured, because she was too tired to talk much more. They had the baby in his little cart now, so she didn’t have to worry, because he was all right. A nurse was cleaning her up, wiping away the blood that covered half her body, handing Drew more wipes to clean his hands and her own. But she had to say this first. “Tell him. Promise.”

“All right,” he said, and shifted around, because they were about to wheel her into her room. “We’ll get his car cleaned. I promise.”

“And, Drew…”

He sighed.
“And
the cinema. I promise.”

She reached for his hand once more, smiled a little, though it was wobbly. “Thanks. But it wasn’t that. It was…I love you. And…thank you. For being there. For being…mine.”

His face worked for a minute, his eyes shining with unshed tears, and his voice, when the words finally came, was husky. “I…me too. I’m so proud of you. You…” He stopped, got himself together with a visible effort. “You did awesome. And I love you.”

He stopped again, then laughed, though it came out a little choked. “I’m rubbish at speeches, eh.” He bent down, gave her a soft kiss on the mouth, smoothed her hair back with a gentle hand, and she sighed and closed her eyes again and let them wheel her away.

He didn’t have to say it. He didn’t have to say anything. She knew.

The day when Hugh Latimer married Josie Pae Ata turned out to be just about perfect.

A few white clouds traced wispy patterns in an azure sky, their delicate outlines mirrored in the placid waters of Katikati Harbour below. From where she sat in a wooden pew next to a window of the little white church, Reka had a view over green lawns to the teardrop-shaped harbour, and all the way across it to the Pacific stretching beyond.

So peaceful, and so much like her own wedding day. Another tranquil December afternoon with the cicadas buzzing forth their summer song, in a little church at the edge of a quiet town on the sea. The familiar hymns and prayers of the Church of England, a congregation made up of white and brown faces. And the big men in their black suits, turning up as always to support their teammate on this latest adventure.

The organ was playing, and she was tearing up a bit. She put a hand through Hemi’s powerful arm in its sober black sleeve, and he turned to her.

“Look at Hugh,” she said quietly. “He’s over the moon.”

Hemi cast an eye over the tall, broad, bearded figure at the front of the church, standing rock-solid beside the shifting form of his little brother, his eyes steady on the back of the church. Watching for Josie.

“He is,” Hemi said. “And he’s terrified.”

She let out a shocked little puff of laughter, and he smiled, brought his hand up to squeeze hers. “As he should be,” he assured her. “He wants to do it right. Wants to be the man she needs. If he weren’t terrified, he wouldn’t care enough.”

“We don’t need you to be perfect,” she said. “We just need you to be there for us, to hold us and love us, and let us love you.”

“Yeh,” he said, his smile all for her now. “I know. But he’s just learning.”

The music swelled, and Hugh’s sister was walking towards him, her face intent, and Reka’s own heart turned over to see Hugh smile at her, make the effort to encourage her.

“He’s a good man,” she said under her breath.

A squeeze from Hemi’s hand was her reply, and the congregation was standing, because here came Josie.

She choked up a little more, because Hugh’s face…he looked like everything he needed in this world was walking towards him. And when Josie reached him, and he lifted her veil over her head and smiled down into her eyes, and she smiled back up at him…it was a very good moment.

The congregation took their seats again, and the service began. Just like Reka and Hemi’s own, of course, because every Church of England wedding service
was
exactly the same.

There was a reason you went to weddings, though. All that new young hope, that pledging of faith—it reminded you why you’d done it, and that you’d do it again. If you were one of the lucky ones, and she was. She could feel it in the press of Hemi’s arm against her hand, the suspicious sheen in his eye, and was filled with an uprush of gratitude for her good life, and her good man.

There were funny moments, too, which was good, or she’d have spent the entire brief service crying. When the priest asked Hugh the questions, and he answered, “I will,” and his voice rang out through the little building like he was on the rugby pitch. More than one person jumped, and a ripple of laughter swept through the congregation. Hugh laughed a little too, Josie smiled back at him, and Reka guessed that that had meant something, and was glad for them that it did.

And when it was time for Hugh to put the ring on Josie’s finger, and Charlie was meant to produce it—that was a moment and a half. Hugh turned to his brother with a nod, the boy pulled the band from the breast pocket to which his hand had strayed throughout the ceremony—and dropped it.

It rolled. Of course it rolled. The faint sound echoed through the church, then came to a stop when the ring did. Where, Reka couldn’t see.

“Sorry.” That was Charlie, his voice anguished. “I’m sorry.” He was on his knees, searching frantically.

“No worries,” Hugh said. He’d already crouched down beside his brother, was hunting at the edge of the altar, running a big hand along the floorboards.

He pounced, and in the next moment, was standing up, facing the congregation with a white grin splitting his darkly bearded face, holding the circle of gold aloft.

Some clapping and cheering broke out, and Hugh dropped a hand to Charlie’s head, tousled his brown hair, and then he was turning back to Josie, taking her left hand in his.

When he spoke, nobody was laughing anymore.

“Josie,” he told her, his voice ringing out once more, strong and sure, “I give you this ring as a sign of our marriage. With my body I honor you, all that I am I give to you, and all that I have I share with you.”

Reka didn’t think there was a dry eye in the house. Not Hemi’s, and certainly not hers.

“Great wedding,” Kate said a couple hours later, sitting back from the table and taking a final bite of cake. “Too bad Hannah’s missing it. She’s a sucker for this stuff.”