Chapter 14 #2
Gio hadn’t let me go, keeping me firmly seated on his lap.
His fingers dug into my thighs, the point of contact grounding me when I was on the verge of spiraling out of control.
Even still, tears spilled down my cheeks, soaking into the fabric of his shirt where I’d buried my face against his chest.
“It’s going to be fine. You’re both going to be fine,” he murmured against the top of my head on repeat, but I could hear it in his voice; he didn’t quite believe his own words.
The car came to a screeching halt, and I whimpered, jolting in Gio’s arms. Then I was in the cold again as I was lifted out of the vehicle and carried through the sliding glass doors of the emergency room.
We stopped at the registration desk, where Gio only paused long enough to demand that the triage doors be opened so I could be seen immediately.
When they didn’t open on command, he spun back around. “Did I fucking stutter?”
I lifted my head to peek at the admin responsible for patient intake. She had a no-nonsense look about her, and mentally I braced for the imminent altercation she was about to have with my strong-willed husband.
The woman with a severe gray bun cocked her head to the side.
“Young man, you’re not the first or the last person to burst in here yelling that you have an emergency.
In case you haven’t noticed, you walked into the Emergency Room.
So why don’t you slow down, take a breath, and tell me what brings you in today, so we can get your female companion the proper care? ”
“Slow down?” Gio huffed, his face a mix of rage and disbelief. “Slow down?” he repeated, this time his voice rising in volume. “Oh, I don’t think so. Do you have any idea who I am?”
She dropped her head back, face tilted toward the ceiling. “I swear to God, if you say the name Bellini . . .”
My eyes widened. It sounded like we weren’t the first Bellini couple to show up in this hospital demanding special treatment.
“As a matter of fact—” Gio began, but the woman held up a hand, cutting him off.
“Save it.” Spinning around in her wheeled chair, she called out, “Allie! We’ve got one of yours out here again. Can you come explain that the buckets of money these people donate doesn’t entitle them to line-skipping privileges?”
A feminine voice replied from around the walled partition.
“Wait, who’s here?” Then a nurse in pale blue scrubs appeared.
Recognition lit up in her green eyes before they dropped to where I cradled my belly, and Enzo’s wife went pale as a sheet.
Lifting a trembling hand to her mouth, she breathed, “Oh, God.”
“Allie.” Gio’s voice was gentle yet firm. “She’s twenty-three weeks and cramping. We don’t have time for this bureaucratic bullshit.”
Her throat bobbed on a thick swallow, and she nodded. “Right. It’s probably better if I take you straight up to OB triage. They’re better equipped to handle situations such as these than we are in the ER.”
“This goes against protocol,” the admin grumbled, glaring daggers at Gio.
Allie rolled her eyes. “Go ahead and write me up. I don’t care.” She disappeared behind the partition before emerging from the double doors that Gio had previously demanded we be let through. Waving a hand, she called over. “This way. Follow me.”
Gio wasted no time, hustling after his cousin’s wife through the open pit of the emergency room, not stopping until we reached a bank of elevators. While we waited for one to arrive, he spoke gruffly to the woman beside us. “Thank you.”
I stared up at him unblinkingly, half in shock that he even knew that phrase because I’d never heard him utter it aloud before. Well, except when he was pretending to be John, but that wasn’t the real Gio; it was a mask he wore.
Allie kept her eyes trained straight ahead. “Yeah, uh-huh.”
The sliding doors opened, and we stepped inside the lift. When we reached the fourth floor, Allie relayed the situation to the person manning the triage desk, then left without another word.
“That was strange,” I mused, watching her retreat.
“Forgive me if I don’t have the mental capacity to be worried about Enzo’s wife right now,” Gio grumbled in response.
“Mr. and Mrs. Bellini, if you could please follow me.” A nurse in pink scrubs this time led us to a gurney and pulled the privacy curtain shut as Gio gently eased me onto the thin mattress.
With practiced movements, she looped two stretchy bands around my bare stomach, explaining that one of the affixed plastic components was to track fetal heart rate, the other to monitor contractions.
A quick peek at the screen behind my head showed the line rising whenever I felt my belly harden, and lowering when the muscles relaxed, confirming what I’d feared all along.
When I turned to Gio, his eyes were fixed on the same thing, his lips pulled down at the corners.
“Okay.” The nurse drew our attention to her. “Why don’t you tell me when you started to feel the cramping?”
“You mean the contractions,” I corrected, panting as another hit me hard enough to steal my breath away. “Because that’s what they are, aren’t they?”
Her reassuring smile never slipped. “Let’s try not to get ahead of ourselves here. Lots of moms who experience second-trimester contractions go on to carry their pregnancies to full term. We will do everything we can to slow things down, but I need some information first. Okay?”
Nodding, I pulled in a deep breath. “Okay.” Racking my brain, I tried to recall her question. Oh, right, how long. “An hour? Maybe more? They started off mild, but got stronger, more consistent as time went on.”
“You did the right thing by coming in. It’s always better to be on the safe side. Have you been experiencing any other symptoms like bleeding?”
Gio stiffened beside me, almost like he was afraid to hear my answer to that question.
“No.” I shook my head. “But I do have a stomach bug and got an IV at home to help with dehydration.”
The nurse’s eyebrows rose. “You had someone administer an IV at your residence?”
“We have a family physician on call,” Gio explained.
“Huh, interesting.” She tapped away on her tablet.
“Dehydration has been known to cause preterm labor, so it’s entirely possible you simply need more fluids.
We can get those hooked up while we continue to monitor you and baby, and hopefully”—she lifted a hand to cross her fingers—“that’ll do the trick.
But we’ll do a full workup, just in case. ”
She left to get the supplies to administer my second IV in as many hours, and all I could do was stare down at my bump. Trailing my fingertips over the firm edge of the swell, I silently spoke to the baby inside my belly.
As much as I can’t wait to meet you, sweet boy, Mama needs you to stay inside for just a little while longer.