A Very Special Delivery

her the baby was breathing. If she had to sit this way all night long, she would. But oh, how she prayed that Ethan Hunter would soon return and take this responsibility off her shoulders.
    * * *
    Nearing midnight, eyes burning from staring into the frozen night, Ethan started back down the mountain. He hadn’t reached the Stubbs’s remote cabin until nearly nine o’clock, and the grateful couple had fortified him with coffee and brownies while the gamma infused into Chester’s blood system.
    During those hours with his patient the storm outside had worsened. The world around him was white and crystallized, a fairy tale turned into a nightmare. Chester and Mamie Stubbs had invited him to spend the night, but he’d refused. Laney was waiting. And from Molly’s reaction to his child, she was waiting, too—waiting for him to return and take the baby off her hands.
    A mighty gust whipped across an open pasture and the van rocked precariously.
    Ethan couldn’t remember ever driving—or flying—in an ice storm of this caliber. Since leaving the Stubbs’s farm he’d stopped over and over again to break ice off his windshield wipers. The delivery van wasn’t made to handle these conditions, and even chains on the tires wouldn’t have helped on what was now a solid sheet of ice.
    Shoulders hunched over the wheel, he stared hard into the night. His headlights reached only a few feet out into the blinding shower of white pellets. He could hardly tell where the road ended and the ditch began. Visibility was next to nothing. During his years as a paramedic helicopter pilot for a medical service he’d grown accustomed to flying by instruments when necessary. Too bad ground transport didn’t offer the same technology.
    Inch by inch, the van ground slowly forward. Like a shower of tiny rocks, ice tapped relentlessly against the outside. At this rate, he’d be hours getting back to Molly’s place. In the past he would have thrown caution to the wind and taken the necessary risks, but no more. Speeding up was a deadly game, and he had a baby waiting for him.
    Since the moment Twila had told him she was pregnant, Laney had become his sole focus in life. Though he’d felt safe in doing so, he disliked leaving her with Molly McCreight, a woman who obviously didn’t embrace the idea of caring for an infant. His jaw tensed, remembering Laney’s mother. What was the matter with women these days? Weren’t females naturally supposed to enjoy babies?
    He sighed heavily and squinted into the darkness. Maybe not. Maybe his was an old-fashioned dream. Just because his mother was a nurturer whose life had revolved around her kids, didn’t mean modern women felt the same. Mom was from a different era when home and family mattered.
    He’d had no choice but to leave Laney at the warm, safe farm. Even though she didn’t want Laney there, Ethan knew in his heart Molly McCreight would take good care of her. He didn’t know how he knew, but he knew. His baby was in good hands.
    Ice-coated wipers scraped across the windshield, doing little good, even with the defrosters blasting constant heat. Time to stop again and clear them off. The window, too, was coated in ever-thickening sleet. Easing to a crunching halt, he put the truck in Park, and took the can of de-icer and the ice scraper from the seat beside him. As he leaped from the truck the ice pellets hit him with the force of a sandblaster, driving into his cheeks and neck. He shuddered once, hunched his shoulders against the cold before setting to work.
    The world around him was a foreign place. Fence lines had disappeared and electric poles leaned threateningly. Before long there would be few landmarks to guide him. He’d have to be very careful.
    “Just me and You, Lord,” he said, and the wind slammed ice against his teeth.
    In the few short months since he’d become a Christian he’d said those words plenty of times. And now, as every time, he’d felt that calm assurance that he was not alone. No matter what happened, God would be here with him.
    Windshield cleared for the moment, he slammed back into the warm truck and dropped the gear into Low. The wheels spun but the van didn’t move. Accelerating slightly, Ethan felt the tires start to slide sideways. He fought against the skid, used every bit of his considerable expertise to bring the vehicle under control, but the ice was too much. In seconds, one side of the van tilted sideways into a ditch he hadn’t even