Keep(Romanian Mob Chronicles 1)(40)
“Not yet, Fawn,” I said on a raw whisper, voice wavering with the desperate fear that threatened to overtake me, only held back by the fact that as I held her hand, some warmth returned to it. “Just hold on. Both of you.”
Six minutes passed between the time I first saw her and the time I ran into the emergency room, but it was long enough for me to determine what would happen if I lost her. Whoever had done this, anyone who’d helped was dead. But if she didn’t make it, I would seek my vengeance and then join her in death. There could be no life for me without her.
“She needs help,” I bellowed, ignoring the shocked faces of patients and staff.
The once bustling room went silent, and then sprung to life, doctors and nurses swarming around me.
“Lay her here!” someone yelled.
I did, and then she was whisked away. I rushed to follow, but a tight grip on my arm stopped me.
“You can’t do anything in there.”
It was Priest, and I turned to look at him, noting he seemed to have recovered from his earlier urgency.
“Find them,” I said.
He nodded and was gone in an instant, leaving me alone, the fate of the only woman I’d ever loved, the baby I had just begun to accept, hanging in the balance.
Vasile
“Hey,” I said when she finally opened her eyes.
It’d been hours since they had let me back into the hospital room where they’d put her, and I hadn’t left her side.
She looked around the small room, cheery curtains on the windows and neutral paint on the walls only managing to make the place feel even more depressing. And then she laid a hand on her stomach and then pulled it away.
“The baby…”
“Is in the nursery. A girl just like you said,” I whispered as I smoothed her hair. I’d been convinced I was having a son, but that didn’t matter now. My heart gave a funny little thud. Fawn and I had a precious baby girl.
“Have you seen her?” Fawn asked, the skin around her eyes crinkling with a slight smile.
“I wanted to wait for you,” I replied, barely able to get out the words.
“I’m ready,” she said.
She wasn’t. I could see the pain on her face, the confusion. Also the determination.
“And so you shall,” I said.
I left the room and found a doctor.
“Take us to the nursery,” I ordered.
The man’s eyes widened, and then he nodded.
He looked down at the chart he held in his hand. “Pregnant woman with bleeding?” he asked, looking down at my bloody clothes.
“Yes. Take us to the nursery.”
“I will, but I was coming to see you. We should talk before you go. Is your wife awake?”
“Tell me,” I said, the dread I felt earlier almost minimal in the face of the anticipation of what the doctor planned to say.
His eyes clouded, and his face settled in a grim line.
“I’m sorry. Another week, ten days, then maybe she would be stronger… But her lungs just aren’t developed. We’re going to do everything we can to save her, but I’m going to be honest with you, this is a grave situation. You and your wife should prepare as best you can in case…”
I’d been waiting on those words, had expected the worst, but hearing them crushed me in a way I hadn’t thought possible. I hadn’t completely wrapped my head around the idea of a baby, and now she fought for her life. She had been mine to protect, and now there was nothing I could do for her but be there and wait. For the first time in as long as I could remember, probably since I was a very young boy, tears welled in my eyes. I bit them back, begging them not to fall, and when I finally had regained control of myself, I looked at the doctor.
“Take us to the nursery,” I said.
The doctor nodded.
Twenty-Five
Vasile
* * *
“I think she smiled,” Fawn said.
Her voice was watery with tears, but I could hear the joy underneath.
It was afternoon now, the first hours of my daughter’s life. But instead of celebration, we were together, huddled behind closed hospital blinds. The NICU was mercifully empty, and that was where we were staying, Fawn holding the tiny baby as much as she could. It had been torture of the most profound kind to watch Fawn hold our baby and then give her to doctors and nurses who poked and prodded, all in attempts to make sure my daughter lived. I wished I could take every jab of a needle, every tube that was threaded into her, take every little cry that she exhaled, her tiny chest near caving before it expanded again.
But I couldn’t, could do nothing but stand there, weak, impotent, as helpless as my child. And my failure didn’t stop there.
It was shameful, weak, but I’d barely been able to look at my daughter, couldn’t bring myself to touch her. I’d created her, and I’d almost destroyed her before she’d had a chance to live.