I nodded at him.
"She's fine."
My brows rose.
He held up his hand.
"Despite the bruises, we believe that nothing is broken. She has some broken skin on her hands that were likely defensive wounds. The baby is all right, though we're monitoring that closely just in case … "
His words were lost on me as the words 'the baby' replayed over and over through my head.
Tommy Tom, realizing I'd zoned out, smiled a knowing smile, and held his hand up for Mishvele to stop.
"How do you know about the baby so Sean here can get his head wrapped around it? By the look on his face, it's likely he didn't know about the baby."
Mishvele's eyebrows lifted. "Blood tests confirm. Based on the hormone levels in her blood, I'm assuming she's at least eight weeks, if not more, along."
My mouth dropped open.
That would mean that it had to be the very first time we had sex that she conceived.
At least that time we'd worn condoms.
Jesus.
"Okay."
I was so fucking dumbfounded.
Had Naomi known?
I immediately shook that thought off. No, she hadn't known. If she had, I would've known.
"Other than the outward appearance, she was a very lucky woman."
Lucky … yeah, if you wanted to call getting beaten black and blue lucky.
"Thank you, Dr. Mishvele. Are they going to be moving her out of the ER soon?"
He nodded, then rattled off a room number in a unit two floors up.
Woodenly, I walked back into the room and dropped down on the side of Naomi's bed as carefully as I could so I wouldn't disturb her sleep.
Then I stared at her for a few long minutes, my mind going a hundred miles an hour.
It was about twenty minutes later that I was kicked out so she could be moved, and since she was going to a floor that didn't allow visitors except during visiting hours, I wasn't allowed to go with her until they got her settled into her room.
Meaning I had time to fume.
Chapter 22
I don't like who I become when left alone with a bag of Butterfinger minis.
-Sean's secret thoughts
Sean
I looked down at my woman.
She looked so broken. Bruised and hurt.
She was so still. I hadn't heard her voice since she'd been moved, and I wanted to so badly I could taste it.
I wanted to scream.
I wanted to cry out, yell about the injustice of it all.
I didn't, though.
Instead, I calmly bent down and placed a kiss on the one area of Naomi's cheek that wasn't covered in ugly purple bruises before I turned and walked out.
My hands were fisted at my sides, and with each step that I took, my adrenaline started pumping.
I made it into the hallway and looked down the hall at the waiting room.
Ellen was crying softly with her arms wrapped around her upraised knees, but I couldn't find it in me to apologize for the awful words that I'd said to her when she came up to me and tried to apologize.
Jessie was sitting on Ellen's right, jaw clenched and just as pissed off now as he had been when I arrived at the hospital and started spewing my mouth at the woman we all knew he loved but wasn't acting on it.
The moment he saw me emerge, he got up, patted Ellen awkwardly on the head, and headed toward us.
Ellen shot daggers at his back, her eyes shooting invisible death rays at his retreating form as he made his way toward us.
"Blood trail leads down the street," Jessie recounted, breaking into the silence. "I followed it. Leads to an empty house, a house that it looks like it's been squatted in for a while. He cleaned himself up in the bathroom with an emergency first aid kit that was still out on the counter. We got DNA. Sent it to the lab."
"They expedite it for me like I asked?" Dad asked.
Jessie nodded. "Yeah. I also have a grainy photo that some woman took while she was walking her dog. It's not much, but it's something."
Jessie showed me the photo, and I cursed. We couldn't do anything with that.
"Hold on," I said. "Can you forward that to an email?"
Jessie nodded.
I rattled off the email and then placed a call.
Though it was late at night, Jack answered, and he didn't even sound pissed.
"Yo," he sounded like he was awake.
"Jack, I sent you an email of a picture. I know you're not as good with the photos, but I was hoping you could talk your wife into taking a look at it," I swallowed. "My woman was attacked by this man tonight, and I need to know who it is so I can look for him."
Jack said something that wasn't to me, and suddenly I heard his wife say, "I got it. Give me five."
Jack relayed the message, even though I heard what she said.