Chapter Sixteen
C HRISTOS WAS AWAKENED from sleep by the sound of Sylvie being sick in the bathroom.
He stood up and crossed the room, pushing the door open.
She was down on her knees in front of the toilet.
“Oh, don’t,” she said. “It’s awful. I have indigestion.”
“You’re unwell?”
“Yes,” she said, standing and flushing the toilet, then grabbing her stomach. “I feel awful.”
“It’s not labor, is it?”
“No. I’m not due for three more weeks. And it’s very common for women having their first baby to—” She stopped and doubled over. She was breathing hard. “I’m so dizzy. My vision is all blurry.”
“We need to go to the doctor.”
“No, we don’t. I just have a bug or something.”
“We need to get to a hospital,” he said. He walked over to her and tilted her face up. “You look…”
Panic tore through him. He had seen people close to death before. He could see it in her eyes right now. “It is an emergency. We are leaving now.”
She was in a nightgown, but they would only put her in a hospital gown when they arrived at the hospital. He pulled on a pair of pants, put on a shirt, only to avoid being arrested for indecency, and he took her hand and began to lead her out into the elevator.
“Christos…”
“Listen to me,” he said. “I don’t know what’s wrong, but I know when something is serious. We have to go to the hospital.”
Panic tore through him. He had to stay present for her.
He had to.
Sylvie…
The past few months had been ideal. He felt like he was…happy.
He had never been happy. Not in his memory. She took care of him and she… She was perfect and lovely. She was so much more than he deserved. If he lost her…
He couldn’t even think about it. He walked her into the front seat of his car, and they drove off into the night. Only belatedly did he think that he should have perhaps called an ambulance. He wove through traffic, grateful that it was the middle of the night so that it was somewhat diminished.
They pulled up to the hospital, and he left his car running as he went around to the passenger side. She was looking more pale, more fragile.
He unbuckled her and lifted her out of the car, carrying her in through the front. “My wife,” he said as soon as he walked into the reception area. “She’s pregnant, she… Something is wrong.”
“Come in here,” a woman in scrubs said, bringing them into a small room. “We’ll take her vitals.” She listened to Sylvie’s heart and frowned, and then she got out a blood pressure cuff. “How many weeks?”
“I… Thirty-seven,” he said.
Sylvie smiled. “You knew.”
“Of course I know,” he said. Of course he did. Nothing else mattered. Nothing but this. Nothing but her. Nothing but that future that had left him so terrified that he couldn’t breathe only four months earlier.
And now he was…
The nurse finished taking Sylvie’s blood pressure, and suddenly her movements became urgent.
“Her blood pressure is too high,” she said. “I suspect preeclampsia. We’re going to send her back right away.”
“What?”
“If it is preeclampsia, then we need to deliver. Tonight.”
“What is that?”
Everything began to move far too quickly into slowly all at once.
There were so many people everywhere, the organized chaos making his head spin.
He had been right. She was dying.
“The only cure for preeclampsia,” the doctor said to him only ten minutes later, “is delivery. We’re going to prep her for a C-section. If you want to be present—”
“I’m not leaving her,” he said.
“Then, we’ll help you prepare too.”
“Christos,” Sylvie said, her eyes filling with tears. “Just make sure that the baby—”
“I care about you,” he said.
“And thank you,” she said. “The baby has to be safe. Our son…”
He had a flash then, of something he had forgotten. His mother in a hospital bed.
Just take care of Christos…
No. He didn’t want to remember that. It hurt too bad. It was too much.
He didn’t want to remember how much his mother had loved him. How much she had begged his father to care for him in a way that he hadn’t.
He had let him down.
He had let them both down.
He pushed the past away. He didn’t have time to think about it now. “Sylvie,” he said, moving forward, putting his hand on her face, “I’m not leaving you.”
They gave him scrubs to wear. And he looked around the room and saw that he looked like everyone else in it. All the money, all the hardness in all the world hadn’t protected him from this.
He had no status in here. He had nothing. Nothing but hope in a fate he didn’t believe in. Nothing but prayers sent out to a divine force he had confidently stated wasn’t there, wasn’t listening.
There were heart monitors. On Sylvie. On the baby. And he could see them. His own heart moving in time with the lines on the machine.
Their three hearts beating together.
He moved to stand next to Sylvie’s head. Getting down on his knees and cradling her face. He pressed his cheek to hers, and he listened. He breathed with her. His heart beat with hers.
He had survived all this time. All these years.
This was what he had always wanted to avoid.
Because he suddenly realized his survival meant nothing without her. If she wasn’t here, then he didn’t want to be here.
He would trade places with her.
He, who had protected his own life at all costs…
He squeezed his eyes shut and felt a tear slide down his cheek. He had not wept since he was a boy.
“I would trade places with you,” he said. “I wish I could take this from you.”
She didn’t speak. And terror froze him.
Everything went quickly.
He could hear metal instruments. Was only half listening to the instructions the doctor was giving. And then, he heard it. A baby crying.
He stood slowly and looked as his son was brought into the world.
“I want to see him,” Sylvie whispered.
“Let her see him,” Christos said.
They brought the baby around, swaddled tightly in a blanket. And suddenly, he was being handed this small, delicate creature who was screaming and crying for a mother that was in danger.
And he was his father.
And all of a sudden he saw himself clearly.
He had always thought of himself as a gladiator.
The important thing to know about a gladiator was that a gladiator was a prisoner. Forced to fight for the entertainment of others.
He had freed himself, but he still thought of himself as a captive. He was still fighting.
He had not been living.
He had been engaging in bloody, pointless battles all these years because it was all he knew.
But standing there holding his tiny infant son, looking down at his wife, he understood something.
He had to walk out of the arena.
He would lay down his life for theirs. He would fight for them. But he would not fight just to prove he could survive. Not anymore.
His father had been a man fighting for his own survival. It made you small and mean and selfish. But Christos… Christos loved Sylvie more than he loved his own life.
He loved this child more than his own life.
He would never abandon them. He would live for them.
He would not live just to survive.
He knelt down and placed the baby next to Sylvie’s face. “There he is, my love,” he said. “ Agape , there is our son.”
Sylvie looked up at him, her eyes filling with tears. “He’s beautiful.”
“Of course he is,” he said. “You’re his mother.”
After that, Sylvie was stitched up and brought into a recovery room. Her vitals were being monitored closely, but everything seemed to be returning to normal. The delivery really had done its job.
She was sleeping peacefully, and he was pleased that there were machines ensuring that she was all right. He sat in a rocking chair near the bed holding their son, rocking him back and forth. And then he remembered.
His mother.
She had protected him. She had loved him.
And it was like a wall of ice inside of him began to melt as he looked down at his son. It was like looking at a child of his own had suddenly brought it all back. This was how his mother had felt about him. Because even if she was dying, she had thought only of him.
Just like Sylvie had done. Like she had begged for them to take care of the baby, not her.
He looked down at his son, and he understood that love.
He had never wanted to remember it because he hadn’t wanted to miss it. But even now, as grief overwhelmed him, as a tear slid down his face, he was filled with a great hopeful joy.
Because suddenly he could feel everything. And yes, there was pain. Yes, there was sadness. But there was so much hope.
He placed their son in his basinet, and he moved to Sylvie’s bedside. He knelt there, holding her hand. “I love you,” he said. “And I think it was fate that brought us together. Something bigger than the both of us. I think, Sylvie Jones, you might have been why I survived.”
Her eyes fluttered open. “You’re flattering me,” she said.
“No. I remembered something,” he said.
“What?”
“My mother. She begged my father to take care of me. But he didn’t. Sylvie, I believe my mother sent you to me. Because I survived all of those years, but until you, I hadn’t lived. And you have taken care of me… You have no idea how much.”
“Christos,” she whispered. “My love. I love you so much. I have… I didn’t want to chase you away by saying it.”
That broke his heart. Because it would have. It would’ve chased him away. He had been too afraid. But…
“I would’ve come back. I would have. For the same reason I answered the text that first time. I didn’t just need a hand to hold, Sylvie. I needed yours.” He squeezed her hand.
“And I needed yours.”
The baby whimpered in his bed. And Christos moved to pick him up.
And for some reason, he moved his finger toward his son’s tiny hand, and the boy curled his perfect fingers around it.
Christos stopped, and he found himself weeping again, because apparently after thirty years of denying himself, he did nothing but weep now.
“I needed your hand,” he said. “And I will be his. And I will be yours. I promise it. We didn’t make vows when we got married. But I will make them to you now. Until now I lived for myself. And now I live for you.”
“What should we name him?” she asked, looking up at him.
“Apollo,” he said. “In the Greek pantheon, he was considered the god of healing. And I can think of nothing more fitting.”
Sylvie smiled. “Apollo Onassis. He has your name. Because you started something new with it. And now we’re continuing it. Together.”
He kissed her on the forehead. And after a while, he could no longer keep his eyes open. He dozed in the chair for a time. And then his phone buzzed.
He picked it up and saw that he had a text.
Kid: I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.
He smiled. And then he turned to her. “I love you too.”