ATOP Chapter Seventy-One

Author's Note: I'm so sorry, I really wanted to finish this last summer, and... really, it's just been a terribly stressful year. I hope I haven't lost readers with my ridiculously slow posting! And I apologize that this chapter is less than what it should be... I've actually written a lot of what comes after this, like a long time ago, but bridging the transition from the last chapter to this one was really difficult... More chapters to come very soon though, I can actually promise that.

oOo

And oh, how time just seemed to fly!

Jim and Myra took the first train they could catch to Lanesboro, Minnesota, to spend a week with Mac and Katie and the new baby. That started a whole round of visits, for no sooner had they returned than Josh and Emma went out to visit. They were there for two weeks, although that hadn't been planned, for Emma simply refused to leave her sister after only one week. And Katie was definitely grateful for the help. Ronnie and Rachel weren't able to get away until more than a month after Jamie's birth. 

After the rather chaotic Minnesota migration had ended, life settled into its usual, comfortable routine for the long winter ahead. Rebekah, wonder of wonders, was learning how to read English. And even more miraculous than that fact, was the fact that Mickey was the one teaching her how to do it. No one would ever have believed him capable of teaching, but here he was doing an excellent job of it. Rebekah's grades turned swiftly and she rose to the top of her class before the end of the first semester. 

They started Shonie off with a speech teacher by the beginning of the second semester, hoping they could somehow get her to start talking. But her silence was a mystery, even to the experts, both teachers and doctors. Ronnie took her up to Cleveland several times over the winter, hoping to get some answers, but no one could discover anything wrong with her. She was perfectly physically capable of speaking. It was a mind problem, the doctors said, and shook their heads over her. 

Poor Shonie tried. She tried so hard. More often than not, they would find her sitting in the corner, clutching Wiggly in her arms while tears rolled down her cheeks. Her lips would move, and sometimes sounds would come out, but never words. Rachel tried her hardest to encourage her, but it was Ronnie that she clung to. Something inside both of them seemed to connect to each other. Sometimes all they needed was to sit together in silence. 

Emma spent the winter sewing, hoarding fabric greedily and filling drawers up with neat stacks of tiny little baby garments. She had more than enough by the time she was only half finished, but although Josh protested, at last even his sock drawer had to be emptied for the cause. 

"After all, I don't know if it's going to be a boy or a girl," Emma insisted as she made room in their already overflowing dresser for a little pile of dresses, carefully embroidered and decked with ribbons. "I have to be prepared, don't I?"

She turned to making little stuffed animals after that, filling up a basket in the baby's room with tiny kittens, puppies, an elephant, a tiger, a lion, and a bear. One special little dog was made exactly in the shape and size of Emmie, but in a soft baby blue. Josh himself proudly tied a red ribbon around the dog's neck and set it in the crib, after christening it Emmie II. 

The baby was due to come in the spring, and it was the end of winter that Emma started having trouble. She found herself  more completely exhausted than she could ever remember being in her entire life... "more worn out than I was on D-Day," she told Josh one morning while she was trying to make breakfast. He promptly sent her back to bed and called a doctor. 

After days of exhaustion rolled by with no change, Emma began having faint stomach pains... nothing to worry about, the doctor had assured her cheerfully, although the concern in his eyes could hardly be denied. Since she was coming close to her due date, they might be simply pre-labor pains. The baby was still kicking, even though the movements weren't strong. And Emma was overworking herself, as usual, so she was put on a schedule of strict bed rest, with only light exercise daily. Myra and Donna took over the cooking and Ronnie the farm work so that Josh was left mostly free to spend these last few weeks before the baby's arrival with Emma. 

Mornings they took walks down the lane and across the meadows, and in the afternoons, when Emma was too tired to be up and yet too restless to sleep, Josh would read to her. It wasn't particularly his choice of activity... Emma had to beg him to do it... alas, he would have preferred simply making up his own wild stories. He resigned himself to reading with a ridiculous amount of animation and a different voice for each character, each voice being a silly one. He even acted out the stories, throwing in gestures and pulling off stunts that would have shocked poor Jane Austen. Mr. Darcy was certainly never intended to have a high-pitched squeaky voice, and where Josh got that impression, it was a mystery. Elizabeth Bennet, on the other hand, had a deep booming voice that got her the nickname "Thunderbolts", which Josh insisted on calling her thereafter. Emma spent half the time being indignant and the other half laughing herself to tears, which she declared was the best medicine of all. 

It was in the middle of a stormy April night that Emma woke Josh to tell him it was time. Within minutes they were on their way to the hospital, with Josh praying under his breath every passing second. He had never seen Emma looking so pale and afraid, and something in her eyes half terrified him.

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