She put her hand on Jake’s shoulder and gently shook him. “Sweetie,” she said. “Wake up.”
He groaned and grunted a few times and then came awake, shaking the sleep off fairly quickly. He glanced at the clock for a moment and then turned to her. “What’s up?” he asked. “Are you having contractions?”
“I’m pretty sure I am,” she said. “I’ve had five of them over the past forty-five minutes or so. They’re coming about eleven or twelve minutes apart.”
Jake sat fully up in bed now. He was shirtless and wearing only his underwear. “Okay,” he said slowly, just a hint of nervousness in his voice. “Should we start getting ready to move?”
“Let me see if another one comes,” she said. “If it’s labor, the next one should happen in another ten minutes or so, around 2:31 or 2:32. It I get that one, I think we should go.”
“Okay,” he said. “Sounds good.”
They stayed cuddled together, both of them watching the clock in silence as the minutes ticked off agonizingly slow. Finally, it clicked over to 2:31. Sure enough, within ten seconds of the turnover, another pain rippled through her from back to front, making her wince a little, making her breathing hitch.
“You’re having one?” Jake asked, noting the tensing of her body, the change of breathing.
“Yeah,” she said through gritted teeth. “A pretty good one too.”
They stayed in position until it released. And then Jake sprung to his feet and turned on the light. “All right,” he said. “Let’s do this thing. I want to be in the air in under an hour.” He picked up a pair of jeans that had been folded on the chair next to the bed and began putting them on.
Laura, watching him, suddenly had a wave of fear wash over her. Their plan to fly all the way to San Luis Obispo at the onset of labor had seemed reasonable when they had first come up with it, had seemed reasonable only an hour before when she had been lying awake and turning it over in her restless mind, but now that she was actually feeling contractions, now that she was actually facing the prospect of squishing little Cadence out of her body soon, it seemed the most asinine thing she had ever heard of.
“Sweetie,” she said hesitantly, “is this really a good idea?”
He stopped in the middle of buttoning his pants and looked at her. “Flying home?” he asked.
She nodded, chewing on her lip a little. “Now that this is actually happening ... well ... it seems like maybe it might be safer just to stay here and deliver at North Bend Medical Center.”
Jake took a slow breath. “We could do that,” he said softly. “They have a labor and delivery department there. We don’t know the doctors here, but I’m sure they know what they’re doing.”
“It’s something we should think about,” she said hesitantly. “I’m getting scared about this flight, sweetie.”
Jake nodded. “It’s your call to make,” he said. “Just remember, they have no NICU services at North Bend, so if anything is wrong with Cadence they’ll have to put her on a helicopter over the mountains to Eugene.”
She chewed her lip a little more. She did know this little fact as she and Jake had looked into the capabilities of virtually every hospital between Coos Bay and San Luis Obispo over the past six weeks. Not every hospital had a NICU, or neonatal intensive care unit, which was designed, staffed, trained, and equipped to take care of sick newborns. North Bend Medical Center was one of the hospitals that did not have such a unit. They could deliver routine babies and care for routine newborns, but could not do much for sick ones except transfer them out by air. “That is a good thing to consider,” she allowed.
“I think Cadence will be just fine no matter where we deliver,” he said, “but I think it would be better if we at least got her into range of a place with a NICU if we can, just in case. How about we follow the plan for now? We get up in the air. If labor is progressing too fast, it’s only a fifteen-minute flight to Eugene and we can divert there. If it’s not progressing, we go for home. If anything happens anywhere along the way, I have that chart I put in the plane with every diversion airfield and its proximity to every hospital and that hospital’s capabilities.”
She knew Jake had done all the research and she had even helped with a fair portion of it—mostly the hospital parts while Jake had concentrated on the airport parts. She knew that what he was saying made perfect sense, and now that she heard it all told to her again, she actually started to feel a little better. She was still scared as hell, still thought that maybe they had not thought this through as much as they should have, but knew that getting up in the air was probably the best option.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go with the plan.”
“Right,” he said. “Get yourself dressed in your traveling clothes. They’re right there next to the bed.”
She nodded. Her traveling clothes and her maternity bag she would need at the hospital had both been sitting there waiting for two weeks now. “Okay,” she said.
“I’ll get Celia up and then start loading up the car.”
“All right,” she said, pulling her pajama top off and tossing it in the general direction of the hamper. She had no bra on underneath—sleeping in a bra was something she never did, pregnant or not—but there was a stretchy sports bra as part of her traveling clothes. She rolled over and got her feet on the floor so she could shuck her bottoms. Jake, meanwhile, had put on his shirt and was tying his shoes. Once he was done with this, he did not head out of the room toward Celia, but went the other way. “Where are you going?” she demanded.
“I gotta pee before we go,” he said.
“Well hurry up!” she barked.
Jake took her harsh tone in stride. He was used to her irrational outbursts by this point. “Will do,” he said simply.
Jake was a master of preplanning and the egress from the house to the airport went smoothly. He, Laura, and Celia were all dressed and ready to travel in less than ten minutes. All of them had travel bags full of clothes, phone chargers, insurance cards, and even travel snacks pre-packed and waiting. All of them had travel clothes waiting next to their beds. They left the house in Jake’s BMW at 2:45 AM and were at the airport by 3:00 AM. During that time period, Laura had three more contractions. Celia used her watch to time them and had a sheet of paper to record them. They were staying consistently at eleven to twelve minutes apart and about twenty to thirty seconds in duration.
“Your water hasn’t broke yet?” asked Celia as Jake pulled the Avanti out of the hangar using the electric tug.
“Not yet,” she said. “Dr. Niven says that in more than half of cases it doesn’t break until well into labor.”
Jake loaded their baggage into the cargo compartment and then sealed it up. He then used a flashlight to complete his exterior preflight inspection. He had deliberately left the plane more than half full of fuel so they would not have to worry about having to gas up before making the flight. He opened up the plane and turned on the batteries to power up the lights inside. While Celia and Laura settled into the seats behind the cockpit—Celia would remain at Laura’s side for this flight—Jake drove the BMW back to the general aviation terminal, parked it, and then went inside to file the flight plan he had already come up with weeks before. He made a last check of the weather on their route—he had routinely been doing that twice a day for two weeks just in case—and saw that it was partly cloudy with moderate winds through southern Oregon and northern California (the result of a low-pressure system sitting just off the coast of southern Washington), but became clear and reasonably calm once they got to the northern fringes of the Sacramento Valley. What this meant was that there were no dangerous conditions along their way, but it would undoubtedly be bumpy for the first third of the flight.