A Very Special Delivery

daughter.
    “I know this is unusual, ma’am.”
    “Molly,” the woman whispered through white lips, her gaze never leaving Laney’s blankets.
    “Molly,” he tried again. “I’m sorry to intrude on you this way, but I have a delivery that must be made tonight.”
    Her eyes widened in panic. “Here?”
    “No, ma’am. To Mr. Chester Stubbs.”
    She looked up, interested, concerned, though her blanched face never regained its former peaches-and-cream color. “I know Chester. He lives about as far back into the mountains as you can get and still be on this planet.”
    “Exactly. And the roads up in there are little more than winding trails.” Every inch of the way from town, over slick and ice-packed roads, he’d prayed, believing with all his might that he was meant to deliver this gamma. For the last half hour he’d prayed to find some safe place to leave Laney. When he’d seen the glow of this farmhouse, the only place for miles, he’d been certain this was the Lord’s answer. But now, given Molly McCreight’s reluctance, he wasn’t so sure.
    “Can’t the delivery wait until this ice storm thaws?”
    “No, ma’am. It’s gamma, and gamma can’t wait.”
    Her startled eyes flicked from Laney to him. “What in the world is gamma?”
    “A high-powered cancer treatment. Once a patient begins treatment, his infusion must be delivered on time. Gamma’s shelf life is only eight hours. More than two hours has already passed since I picked up the gamma from the lab. In six hours Mr. Stubbs will die unless I can get up that mountain.”
    His declaration sounded overly dramatic to Molly, but she knew Chester was battling cancer. Chester and Mamie Stubbs were one of the nicest couples around, and if Chester needed that treatment, she wanted him to have it. The older couple had been kind to her, showing her what real Christian love and compassion was all about when her own family had turned its back.
    “Then you have no choice. Go.”
    Ethan’s shoulders relaxed as he began to unwrap the bundle in his arms.
    Fear and a sudden premonition shot up Molly’s spine. “What are you doing?”
    “Your house is warm. Laney won’t need all this cover in here. I’ll just lay her in that big chair over there and she’ll sleep most of the time I’m gone.”
    Panic raised the level of her voice. “You’re not leaving her here?”
    Baffled blue eyes blinked at her. “I thought we just agreed to that.”
    Molly rasped her tongue over lips that had suddenly gone as dry as baby powder. “I never agreed to any such thing.”
    “But I can’t take her with me. What if I don’t make it? What if the truck runs into a ditch?”
    Knees trembling, Molly retreated to the other side of the room, placing a fat old easy chair between herself and the baby. She gripped the back, digging her fingers into the thick upholstery—holding on for dear life.
    “Why did you bring her out in this weather in the first place?”
    “I’m afraid I didn’t have a choice in the matter. The daycare closed early because of the storm, and I had no place else to take her.”
    “Where’s your wife?”
    The man’s face froze as surely as if he’d stayed out on her porch all night. Blue eyes frosted over. He pulled the sleeping bundle a little closer to his chest. “I don’t have a wife.”
    He had a baby but not a wife. Now there was an interesting story she was certain, but not one she cared to explore. Men, especially a man with a motherless baby, were at the bottom of her social calendar.
    Molly had only been hysterical once in her entire life—the last time she’d held a baby—and she didn’t care to repeat the experience.
    “I’m sorry, Mr…Ethan, babies and I don’t get along very well. Someone else will have to deliver that medicine to Mr. Stubbs.”
    Impatience flickered across his face. The rugged-looking scar blanched. “There is no one else.”
    Molly knew he was telling the truth and that she was being unreasonable. He’d traveled this far in that truck, but the chances of him getting up that mountain were slim. The chances of anyone else making it this far were practically zero.
    “Wait a minute.” A sudden thought struck her. “If this gamma stuff is some sort of chemotherapy, who’s going to do the infusion? Don’t you need a nurse or a doctor for that?”
    “Normally, but the home health nurse can’t get there.”
    “What good will the medication be without someone to administer it?”
    “I can