"Help me," she begged breathlessly, "I can't take a taxi."

"I knew that one day you would let your guard down with me," Gerald said.

Myriam raised her face, clouded with tears and sweat.

"I'd rather give birth on the street," he growled through clenched teeth, "than... ask you for help." She completed the sentence and clung tightly to his arms, moaning in pain.

Gerald closed his eyelids because she had dug her nails into his skin, and it hurt; however, there was no time to complain now, and