The room fell silent for what seemed like a whole minute. I wanted to vomit, to scream, to bust my body through the wall to get to her, but I felt a hand on my knee and slowly looked up. “She’s stable. She isn’t out of the woods, but your wife is alive. She is a fighter.”
I stood up and started pacing. “I need to see her. She needs to know I’m here.”
He held up his finger. “We need to wait a while for that. She is going to be transferred to the intensive care unit, the ICU, where she will have a nurse at her side for the next twenty-four hours. Visitors will be limited to immediate family and no children are permitted.”
“Is she going to make it?” Say she is.
“Only time will tell, but we will do everything we can to see that she does.” The doctor seemed to be optimistic, which still didn’t sit right with me. I needed to touch her. I needed to see her for myself.
“Look Doc, I appreciate everything you are doing, but I need to see my wife. I won’t tell anyone, I won’t even touch her, but please let me see her. I just need five minutes. Please.” If you don’t let me see her, I am going to beat down every door until I find her myself.
He looked at the nurse and whispered in her ear, while I stood there waiting for his response. “Let us get her moved and monitor her for an hour. We can get you in to see her, but everyone else will have to wait until she gets out of the ICU.”
“Whatever it takes. I will do whatever I have to do.”
“Go back and be with your children. We will come get you as soon as we can get you in there.”
The doctor started to walk away. “Wait! Please promise me that the next time we talk it will be for me to see my wife and not for you to tell me she’s gone. I need to hear it.”
He reached out his hand for me to shake. “I will do everything in my power to make sure you see your wife as soon as possible.”
It was enough for me to be hopeful. It wasn’t a guarantee, but it was enough.
The next hour would be the longest of my life.
Chapter 22
Miranda
I remembered being brought in by ambulance and I even vaguely remember the nurses attending to me at first. Once the stabbing pain hit, it was hard to hold on. Nothing could have prepared me for that type of pain. One minute I was having a normal kind of contraction and the next I felt like I had fallen back first into a picket fence. I tried to hold on to consciousness, but it became too much to bear.
The last thing I thought of was Ty and how much I wished he was with me.
A bright light caused me to wake up and for a split second, I was sure that I’d died and was being forced into the light, but then faces came into my vision and soon I could hear their voices.
They were telling me to hold on; to fight. I needed to live; to see my children and love my husband. Suddenly, nothing mattered except for that. I needed to fight for them, because they needed me as much as I wanted them. I felt someone holding my hand and I just believed that he was there with me. I didn’t know how he got there, or how long it had been, I just knew he was holding my hand and saying my name.
In this brief part of my memory, I don’t remember feeling the pain and I am sure of that because when the pain did start to come back, it was even worse than before. The figure holding my hand wasn’t my husband, but a doctor in a white coat. He gave me a smile and a squeeze when he saw me looking at him.
“Keep holding on,” he whispered.
“Ty.” He was all I wanted to see.
I knew I was crying, not that it mattered. It was obvious I was having surgery. A bunch of nurses were surrounding me and suddenly I felt a tug and then saw a very bloody baby being pulled from my body. I could hear the people, but not one single cry. I instinctively tried to reach for my baby, but realized I was fastened to the table. “No please…why isn’t he crying? Someone help him!”
A nurse came up and steadied my head as I cried out for my baby. A second tug was felt and I watched my second son being pulled out of me, also covered in blood. “NO! NO! Why aren’t they crying? Why are they covered in blood? Someone help them.”
I tried to look behind me to see where they were taking my boys. This couldn’t be happening. They were just moving around and fine just hours ago. I couldn’t lose my boys, I just couldn’t.
The more I cried out for them, the less the medical staff would tell me. Finally, I heard the doors opening and closing and then nothing. No sounds of babies. Not one single sound.
I couldn’t lose them like this. They couldn’t be gone. As devastating as it was for me to think about, the next thing that came to mind was Ty. How was he going to handle losing his sons? This would kill him. It was killing me.