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Chapter Twelve
"Ah!" Mrs. McFly screamed. Whether
it was from the labor or the fact that Jack took down a mailbox only she knew.
"Sorry!" Jack yelled.
"Arg!" This was an actual
contraction. Lorraine squeezed Rose’s hand so tight that she yelped with her.
Rose tried to scoot over to move away from where Mrs. McFly’s water had broken,
but she held to her spot. "Take a left!" she called to Jack.
Jack nearly hit another car as he went
through a red light. Lorraine was too far into labor to take too much notice,
except to yell at him everyone once in a while.
"Whoops! Sorry!"
The cars zipped and buzzed past. They could
be hit at any second. Jack was in intense concentration. He started to lose
grip on the wheel from his sweating hands. Yet, he had still worked himself
into a Zen-like state, trying to learn how to drive a ’65 mustang while on
major roads.
Rose’s thoughts were more to the woman slowly
breaking her hand. If we don’t get there in time…we’ll have to deliver this
baby ourselves.
"Jack, hurry!" she shouted.
"I’m going as fast as I can!" he
yelled. Then he wondered if he was. How fast could this puppy go? Was there
some sort of legal limit? He sped up.
Whoosh!
They narrowly missed being crushed between
two other cars as Jack tried to weave through them. Lorraine and Rose screamed
from the backseat.
"Sorry!"
Then they hit it. Traffic.
That’s when Jack decided screw this.
He began to weave in and out of traffic. There’s
a space right in between those two trucks…I can make it. He turned into the
next lane and tried to squeeze in between.
He drove in between and then—boom, boom!
Clanking metal. The car jostled to one side as the women in the back were
screaming.
"Sorry!" He groaned. "Come on,
people! Great-grandson-in-law, coming through!" He beeped the horn.
Mrs. McFly looked confused, but was in too
much pain to really care.
Rose leaned forward and pinched him hard in
the arm.
"Ow! What did you do that for?"
"Shut up!" she hissed, and gave
another, more intense, "Shut up!"
"Right! Right!" Mrs. McFly
screeched. At first he thought she was agreeing with Rose on him shutting up. Oh,
turn right!
Jack jerked the wheel, saw the hospital up
the road, and pushed his hand into the horn not taking it off. He swung the car
into the hospital entrance—the wrong way.
Another car stopped dead in front of them,
tires screeching, horn beeping.
"Baby!" Jack yelled at the other
car angrily. Jack tried to turn the car from the tight spot and lead the car
slightly up hill through the parking lot. It was giving him quite a bit of
grief.
"What gear are you in?" Mrs. McFly
called.
"Gear?"
Jack pulled up in front of the building
entrance and slammed awkwardly on the brake. Rose called for help as hospital
staff ran out to meet them.
They helped Mrs. McFly into a wheelchair; her
husband was there, too. Someone had relayed a message about his wife screaming
in Doc Brown’s car.
"Hi, honey. Are you okay?" She
punched him.
Grabbing his nose as he scrambled to his
feet, he followed the wheelchair inside.
Jack and Rose leaned against the car, wiping
the sweat off their brows. After a minute, Rose spoke, still catching her
breath.
"Sorry I pinched you."
"That’s all right. Things were pretty
intense…she’ll be fine now."
"But on Titanic, we never yelled at each
other like that. I’d deem that a much worse situation."
"There is something more intense than
sinking ships…childbirth." He cracked a weak smile. The future bearer of
his children smiled back. "But what I don’t understand is what she meant
by gear…like I ever drove before."
Four Hours Later
Jack and Rose decided to make themselves
useful and hang out in hospital café while the McFly child was being born. They
had done their job; it was time to relax.
George McFly came down to tell them about the
baby.
"I can’t thank you two enough for
bringing Lorraine over here. If you want, you can come up and see him in the
window."
He led the two teens up to look at his
newborn son. He pointed. The baby was right in front, sleeping peacefully.
"Hello, Marty." Rose smiled.