Chapter 36 Grayson #2
“Are there any more perps?” I ask, struggling not to race to her side. I can’t let my guard drop just yet. It’s not safe. I need to secure the premises, but I’d be a lying piece of shit if I said my feet weren’t itching to run to her side.
I’m left with no choice but to holster my gun and sprint for Macy when she staggers forward too fast for her woozy head to keep up with.
I reach her in just enough time. Instead of collapsing on the rigid ground, she falls into my arms, where her unsteady sways coat my dress shirt with bright, fresh blood.
It’s everywhere—her head, her arms, and her feet, and her breathing is shallow. Dangerously shallow.
After lowering her to the ground, careful not to brush her raw knuckles, bruised from when she must have fought back, I remove a strand of blood-matted hair from her already bruising eye.
My voice is as shaky as my hands when I pretend her attackers didn’t put her through the wringer. “You’re okay. I’ve got you. Just hold on. Help is on the way.”
Macy’s eyes flutter as she tries to focus on me, but I can see the pain settling behind them. She’s hurting—badly—and I can’t hear any fucking sirens.
“Hurry, Brandon!” I scream, hoping he can still hear me. We’re between skyscrapers, and everyone knows reception is shit between skyscrapers.
“Gray… Gray…” Macy coughs, splattering her chin with crimson droplets. “Cam… Cameron…” Her words trail off as her body shudders with shock. She’s barely holding on, and it surges my fear to its pinnacle. But she doesn’t give up. She doesn’t know the meaning of the word. “She… she…”
“It’s okay, freckles.” I cradle her face and stroke her non-bruised cheek with my thumb.
She needs to conserve her energy. “We’ll have plenty of time to discuss everything once we’ve made sure you’re okay.
That’s all that matters right now. You are my top priority.
I just need you to keep fighting, okay? You need to be brave for a little longer. ”
I’m terrified of hurting her more, but when her blood soaks my hand and shirt, I force myself to check her wounds. She could bleed out if I don’t find the source of the blood changing the color of her hair from molten black to auburn.
A nanosecond later, I discover the main culprit of her dazed state. The large gash on the back of her skull from being struck by the tire wrench is oozing blood—enough to be fatal.
She groans when I pull my shirt over my head and use its wadded-up ball to place pressure on her wound. “I’m sorry.” I can’t be gentle. Not now. The split is too large for a minimalist approach.
A sob rattles in my rib cage when the faint woo of sirens trickles in the distance.
Help is on the way.
Finally.
“They’re coming, Mace. They’re almost here.”
She tries to reply, but a groan escapes her before she can. Her eyes darken with terror as her back bends over the asphalt.
I worry that I missed a life-threatening wound until her bruised hand lowers to her stomach. “The… the baby. I think the baby is coming.”
Terror claws at me when I press my hand against her baby bump, and the tightening of a contraction strains across my palm. She’s fighting for her life and in labor.
This couldn’t be more dangerous.
“Needle… Sh-she jabbed me with a-a needle.”
As my eyes take in a fresh puncture wound on Macy’s neck, the favored insertion point for baby thieves when inducing victims, I strive to keep her focus where it needs to be. On her and her unborn son.
“You’re so brave,” I say to her, needing to keep her calm until the paramedics arrive. “And although it is a little earlier than you were planning, you’ve got this. I know you do.”
After placing her bloodied hand over mine, she faintly nods.
She’s so fucking brave, so fucking strong, I can’t stop singing her praises. I remind her that she is the toughest, boldest, and most beautiful woman I’ve ever met. That even if her son only takes on a handful of her genes, he’ll be as fit as an ox and the smartest member of our team.
I say “our” in a way she can’t misconstrue. It has the same level of partnership it had when I said “us” earlier tonight.
As the sirens in the distance grow louder, Macy’s fear shifts her motivations from business to personal. “Don’t… don’t leave me. I… I have to tell… tell you about Cameron—” A contraction steals her focus, and pain shreds the confidence from her eyes.
“You’ve got this,” I remind her again while breathing as the Lamaze instructor taught us.
Only once her breathing is steady do I attempt to restore a smidge of the confidence she lost with a promise I will fulfill no matter the obstacle. “I won’t leave you. I promise I won’t.”
Blood bubbles on her lips when she announces the cause of her vulnerability. “I’m-I’m scared. I don’t wa-want to do this by myself.”
“You have nothing to be afraid of. I’ll be at your side the entire time.”
A copper-tinged breath puffs from her mouth. “Th-that’s why I’m sc-scared. This isn’t how I wa-wanted you to see my vagina.”
I laugh. It is a highly inappropriate time, but it is either laugh or kiss her. Since she is grappling for every breath, I went for the one that wouldn’t cause her more pain.
“What if I promise to stay away from the tail end of things until you give me explicit consent to look? If that’s not until six months down the track, a year, or ten, I will respect your wishes. I won’t even take a peek.” I mark my chest. “Scout’s honor.”
Shock overtakes the fear in her eyes. She stares at me, clueless about her appeal. That’s my fault. I let guilt choose my path for seventeen years, and more times than not, that path led me away from what I really wanted. Or should I say, whom I wanted.
That ends now.
“Macy…” Before I can get out another word, a relieved sob garbles in my throat. Flashing lights paint the brickwork across from us a second before the familiar sound of a gurney being pulled out of the back of an ambulance trickles down the alleyway. “They’re here, Mace. They’re finally here.”
I shout for the paramedics. “Down here! We’re down here.”
My lungs are raw with emotions when they answer my silent prayers like the elderly lady is no longer cuffed to the industrial bin at the entrance of the alleyway. They arrive at our side in five heart-thrashing seconds and offer urgent medical care to Macy.
The entire time paramedics assess her, I hold Macy’s hand. I don’t even let it go when they place her on the stretcher and rush her to the closest hospital. As promised, I stay with her and encourage her to breathe through the contractions during our scary ride.
“Pant, pant, blow. Pant, pant, blow.”
She follows my instructions, her cries weakening as she mimics my breaths. I’m so fucking proud of how brave she is, and I don’t keep it from her. I tell her again and again, and I will continue telling her until she believes every word I speak.
When the ambulance screeches to a halt outside the ER faster than I can snap my fingers, doctors and nurses swarm Macy. I follow their weave through the ER, never once letting go of Macy’s hand.
“Patient is thirty-five weeks pregnant with blunt force trauma to the back of her skull and suspected internal bleeding,” one paramedic yells, rattling off her vitals. “BP is unstable, and we noticed deceleration of the fetal heart rate during transport.”
A team of doctors wheels Macy into a trauma bay. Only a flimsy curtain maintains her modesty when a nurse cuts off her clothes so they can adequately assess her injuries.
When the tattered remnants of her dress float to the floor, I catch a glimpse of the blood pooling beneath her bed. The sheets are already soaked because there’s so much blood.
“Get me two units of O-neg and page OBS. We need to prep for an emergency C-section,” a doctor shouts while a nurse slaps an oxygen mask over Macy’s face.
Panic riddles her eyes while she trembles all over.
“You’re okay, freckles,” I repeat, seeking faith in my motto as much as she does. “They’ll take care of you and your baby. It’s okay.”
Macy’s chin veers toward her chest half a second before her eyes roll into the back of her head. I crank my neck to the right when the monitor a nurse only just hooked her up to erupts in alarm. Macy’s heart rate is plummeting, and the line on the fetal monitor next to it is entirely flat.
“Let’s go!” a doctor shouts before she climbs onto Macy’s bed and begins chest compressions. “She’s crashing. We need to move now!”
They rip Macy’s hand from my grasp as they race her out of the trauma bay and steer her toward flapping plastic theater doors.
I try to stay with her, to restore our lost connection, but as they exit the doors locking in the sanitary smell of the operating theaters, the nurse in blood-covered scrubs holds me back.
“You need to stay here.”
My eyes don’t move off Macy as they push her through another set of doors halfway down the corridor. “I promised I’d stay. She’s my partner. I need to stay with her, to support her through this.”
“Sir, please,” the nurse begs, pushing me back with more strength than her tiny frame should hold. “She needs our help, but we can’t do that in an unsterile environment, so you need to remain here.”
Everything she says is accurate. I’ve issued them a dozen times myself while undercover, but this is different. This is Macy.
I want to fight, but the longer I keep the nurse here, the less time she has to help Macy.
“Save her. Please.” My voice is almost a sob, and my cheeks are seconds from being drenched.
Nodding, she squeezes my arm before she bolts through the flapping plastic doors. “We will do everything we can.”
A second later, she disappears through the double doors of an operating theater, leaving me alone with Macy’s blood on my hands and my soul shattered in a million pieces.