“I didn’t realize what was happening. I wasn’t . . .” The words caught in the old cowboy’s throat. Tracy was already being wheeled into the operating room. She was still screaming and delirious. She kept calling for someone named Jeff. “Will she be okay?”
The doctor looked him square in the eye. “I don’t know. She’s lost a huge amount of blood. There are some signs of eclampsia.”
Blake Carter’s eyes widened. “But, she’ll live, right? And the baby . . . ?”
“The baby should live,” said the doctor. “Excuse me.”
THE PAIN WAS THERE, and then it was gone.
Tracy wasn’t afraid. She was ready to die, ready to see her mother again. She felt suffused with an immense sense of peace.
She had heard the doctor. Her baby would live.
That was all that mattered in the end.
Amy.
Tracy’s last thought was of Jeff Stevens and how much she loved him. Would he find out about his daughter eventually? Would he come looking for her?
It’s out of my hands now.
Time to let go.
BLAKE CARTER COLLAPSED IN sobs in the young doctor’s arms.
“I shouldn’t have been so rough on you earlier,” the doctor said. “This wasn’t your fault.”
“It was my fault. I should have insisted. I should have driven her here right away.”
“Hindsight is twenty-twenty, Mr. Carter. The point is, you brought her here. You saved her life.”
Blake Carter turned to look at Tracy. Heavily sedated after her emergency cesarean—she’d needed a blood transfusion while they stitched her back together—she was only now starting to come around. Her baby had been taken to the ICU for tests, but the doctor had assured Blake that everything looked good.
“My baby . . . ,” Tracy called out weakly, her eyes still closed.
“Your baby’s just fine, Mrs. Schmidt,” said the doctor. “Try to rest a little longer.”
“Where is she?” Trac
y insisted. “I want to see my daughter.”
The doctor smiled at Blake Carter. “Will you tell her or should I?”
“Tell me what?” Tracy sat up, wide-awake now and panicked. “What’s happened? Is she okay? Where’s Amy?”
“You might want to rethink that name.” Blake Carter chuckled softly.
Just then a nurse walked in, holding the swaddled infant in her arms. Beaming, she handed the bundle to Tracy.
“Congratulations, Mrs. Schmidt. It’s a boy!”
PART TWO
CHAPTER 8
PARIS
NINE YEARS LATER . . .