Mafia Queen

Chapter Twenty Seven

Luca (9 months ago)

As I climbed up into the ambulance next to Charlotte, I put my hand on her forehead and kissed it gently. I needed to keep myself composed, but I was going out of my mind. Seeing her in pain was excruciating.

"Charlotte, my name is Cole. I'm just going to do a quick exam, so your doctor knows what's going on when we get to the hospital, okay?" The paramedic smiled.

Charlotte nodded, in too much pain to respond.

"Are you feeling any pain right now?" He asked.

Yeah, you moron, isn't it obvious? I wanted to scream..

"Yes, a lot." Charlotte's voice was shaky.

Cole frowned. "Okay, I'm just going to press around a bit and you tell me when it hurts the most, okay?"

She nodded again. He started prodding at her stomach, and I watched his every move on pins and needles.

Charlotte cried out, wincing when he touched a spot right under her belly button.

"I take it that's a little tender?" He gave her a sympathetic smile, which she returned with an icy glare that was normally only reserved for me. "Or a lot tender." He chuckled.

"What does that mean?" I asked, my mind filling with possibilities.

"Well, I need to check one more thing..." He pressed a little higher at her ribs, and when she didn't react, he frowned. "Okay, so here's the deal. Your baby is breech, which is why you're feeling so much pain. All that means is that it's backwards of the way we want it to be. It's very common and if you weren't progressing so quickly, it'd be a very routine procedure to turn the baby when we get to the hospital."

I held my breath, waiting for the but in that sentence.

"Right now, we're about forty-five minutes away from the hospital and at the rate you're progressing, I don't think we'll make it that long."

Charlotte covered her face with her hands and I could feel myself wavering.

"No, don't break down on me now, Charlotte. We're going to get this baby out, and both of you are going to be just fine. But I need you to be strong. Are you with me?"

Charlotte nodded sheepishly.

"So what do we do?" I clenched my jaw, not wanting to show Charlotte how terrified I was.

"I'm going to try to manually turn the baby. All you'll feel is a bit of pressure and hopefully we can get the baby to turn on its own. Once it does, Dad, you're going to help me deliver." Cole spoke confidently, already moving around the back of the truck, gathering supplies.

"Me?" My throat went dry. No fucking way. I knew nothing about delivering babies. He'd be better off alone.

"I've delivered hundreds of babies just like this and I promise you everything is going to be fine, but I'm going to need some help." He said. "I'm going to walk you through everything, I promise. Your wife and your baby are going to be just fine, and you're going to help me make sure of that. Can you do that?"

I nodded, completely overwhelmed. This was an absolute disaster, worse than any of my wildest dreams.

"Beautiful." Cole smiled enthusiastically. He sure had a lot of confidence; I wished some of that would rub off on me. Right now, I was horrified out of my mind. The thought of losing Charlotte, or this baby, weighed heavily on my mind. It could go south so quickly.