24. Tripp
Chapter 24
Tripp
My heart fucking stopped when I saw that blood.
I sat there frozen, paralyzed with fear, while Penny rushed into the bathroom. Her broken sob that sounded through the closed door was enough to break the trance, and I leapt into action.
Grabbing my phone, I called Tucker, my eyes never leaving that giant red spot on the bed. More than anything, I needed him to tell me this was normal. Because the alternative . . . Fuck, I couldn’t bear to even think about it.
His bedside manner was impeccable; he kept his voice level and calm as he urged me to drive her to a hospital in Topeka to be checked out by their emergency department. But when I protested that the hour drive was too far, that she needed medical attention sooner, his professional mask slipped, and he shot me straight.
Tucker laid out in the simplest terms that if the unimaginable was happening, there wasn’t anything anyone could do, but when it came to the aftermath, it was better if we found ourselves in a fully equipped hospital versus a country clinic .
With a white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel, I sped down the highway, breaking every speed limit posted and daring a cop to try and pull us over because I wasn’t stopping until I reached that emergency room door and got my wife—and our baby—the help she needed.
Penny’s near-silent gasp from earlier still echoed in my ears as I drove. That sound would likely haunt my nightmares for years to come.
Beside me, she sniffled softly. “What if I’m losing our baby?”
“You’re not,” I snapped, wincing when the words came out harsher than intended. But I just couldn’t allow my mind to go there. That was the only thing keeping me from breaking.
Weaving in and out of traffic, I kept one eye on the road, the other darting to the passenger seat. Tears streamed down my beautiful girl’s face as she stared straight ahead, her knees tucked tight to her chest.
I prayed to God for a miracle while, in the next breath, bargained with the Devil, offering up my own soul if it meant saving hers. Because I already knew there was no coming back from this.
She would never be the same again. We would never be the same again.
The state capital came into view on the horizon, and the vise around my chest loosened a fraction, knowing we were close. Putting my foot to the floor, I gunned it for the rest of the drive.
When we pulled up to the emergency room entrance, I jumped out and tossed my keys to the valet before opening the passenger-side door and gently easing Penny down from the seat.
She was trembling violently, and my first instinct was to scoop her into my arms to carry her inside. In my head, I could picture her typical response, my spitfire beating on my chest, demanding to be put down. But with despair written all over her pretty face, I knew she wouldn’t put up a fight. And that realization was almost more painful than allowing her to walk through the sliding glass doors with only my arm around her waist for support.
The too-bright entryway fed into a large waiting room, and I settled Penny into a chair.
With a kiss to her forehead, I murmured, “I’ll be right back,” before walking to the reception desk.
The woman on the other side of the partition looked up from her computer. “Can I help you?”
“My wife.” I cleared my throat when it came out hoarse. “She’s bleeding and needs to be seen.”
“Okay.” She nodded. “Has she cut herself?”
Scrubbing a hand over my face, I shook my head. “No, it’s not like that. She’s pregnant.”
“Oh.” Her eyes stared up at me with pity, and I wanted to scream that I didn’t want it, that I didn’t need it, but instead, I kept my jaw locked tight.
Reaching to the side, she grabbed a clipboard containing a stack full of blank paperwork and passed it over. “I’m going to need you to fill these out as well as get a copy of her driver’s license and insurance card.”
I stared down at the clipboard, letting out an annoyed huff. “We don’t have time for this. This is an emergency.”
The woman’s lips pressed together. “Do you see all these people waiting?” With one hand, she gestured to the room behind me. “They’ve all come here with emergencies. We’ll be with your wife as soon as we can, sir.”
Stunned, I stumbled back, falling into the chair beside Penny.
My wife was bleeding. She was bleeding , and we were made to wait here like anyone else with a minor illness or injury while our child’s life hung in the balance .
But I forced myself to bottle up my irritation, my all-consuming rage that she wasn’t seen as a priority, because I needed to stay calm for her. I’d be damned if I caused her an additional ounce of stress.
Filling in the forms as fast as I could, I snatched up Penny’s purse and pulled out her ID and insurance, striding back to the desk and handing it over.
Then we waited. And waited. And waited some more. The tension between us only grew as we watched others get called back by nurses with kind eyes and sympathetic smiles. The hope I clung to so tightly diminished with each passing minute.
“Penny Sullivan?”
At the sound of her name, I was on my feet in an instant. Penny stood slowly, rising on shaky legs beside me.
Guiding her toward the nurse in dark blue scrubs, I announced, “This is Penny.”
“Please follow me.” She pressed a button on the automatic doors behind her, and when they opened, she led us down a hallway. Stopping before a gurney, she pulled the curtain set into a track on the ceiling to give us privacy from the other patients.
Patting the thin mattress covered in a white sheet, she urged, “Penny, why don’t you take a seat up here.”
Once my wife was settled, the nurse introduced herself. “I’m Tara, and I’ll be the one helping to take care of you today. Why don’t you start by telling me what brings you in.”
Penny’s lower lips trembled, and when she opened her mouth to speak, only a strangled sob slipped out.
Rushing to her side, I grasped her hand, squeezing gently in a show of support before answering Tara’s question. “She’s a day shy of twelve weeks pregnant, and when we got up this morning, there was blood on the sheets.”
Tara nodded, typing notes on her tablet before turning her attention to Penny. “Is it like spotting, or heavy enough that you’re soaking through a pad?”
I watched a flush of pink creep up Penny’s neck as she kept her eyes cast down. “More than spotting. I didn’t have any pads, so I just kinda stuffed some toilet paper in my underwear.”
“Well, that won’t do.” Tara gave a sharp click of her tongue. “Let me show you to the bathroom. We have a basket of supplies in there.”
Penny’s head lifted, and those panicked green eyes landed on me.
“Need me to come with you?” There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do for this woman. Whatever she needed, I would give it to her.
Forehead wrinkling as she mulled over my offer, she eventually said, “N-no. I’ve got it.”
Not wanting her to be alone, I kept our fingers linked and walked by her side until we reached the threshold of the single-user restroom. “I’ll wait right out here, okay?”
Nodding, she ducked inside and latched the door behind her. The minute she was out of sight, I sagged against the wall, my eyes sliding closed as I let out a heavy breath.
This whole thing was too heavy, too fucking real.
The illusion of the fairy tale we thought we were living had shattered like a broken mirror, splintering into a thousand tiny shards. In truth, it had been fracturing for weeks.
Why couldn’t life cut us a break after how hard we’d had to fight to be together?
The lock on the door disengaged, and my breath caught in my throat as I turned to watch Penny emerge .
She must’ve seen the expectant look on my face because she shook her head sadly. “Hasn’t stopped.”
Swallowing hard, I pulled her into my side before guiding her back to the curtained-off bed she’d been assigned.
Tara stood there waiting for us. “Better?”
Penny lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug as she climbed back onto the gurney.
“I’m going to take your vitals, but I wanted to ask a few more questions first.”
“Okay.” Penny twisted her hands in her lap.
“Your husband said you’re almost twelve weeks. Have you experienced any spotting, bleeding, or cramping before?”
“No.”
Tara pressed on. “Have you had any falls?”
Penny began to shake her head, but I cut in before she could brush off that question. “She collapsed yesterday.”
“Fainting spell?” Tara questioned.
“Emotional break,” I explained.
Both eyebrows shot high on the nurse’s forehead. “So, we can add external stressors as a possible cause.” She paused, staring at her tablet like she was working her way down a checklist. “Any strenuous physical activity?”
Under her breath, Penny grumbled, “He won’t let me ride.”
I fought the urge to roll my eyes. Even scared out of her mind, she couldn’t let that one go.
Tara let out a knowing laugh. “I can see how that might be frustrating, but it sounds like he only has your best interests at heart.” She lifted her eyes from the tablet to offer me a wink.
“We, um—” My words trailed off when I realized how personal this was about to get .
“Yes?”
My face flamed, but I forced myself to spit it out. “We had sex last night.”
“I see.” She rolled her lips to keep from smiling at my obvious discomfort.
“Could—could that . . .” God, could this be any more embarrassing?
“It’s possible,” Tara admitted.
My gut twisted painfully, my fists clenching atop my jean-clad thighs. The idea that this could all be my fault had guilt crashing over me like a tidal wave, and I could scarcely lift my head to meet my wife’s eyes when she whispered my name.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Bleeding is scary, but it’s more common in the first trimester than most people realize. After I take a quick blood pressure reading and check your heart rate, I’ll relay all this information to the doctor assigned to your chart.”
By the time she left us, I was completely lost inside my head, beating myself up. Penny had been through emotional hell yesterday, and both the EMT and Tucker had advised tons of rest. So, what did I go and do? I fucked her after she woke up screaming from a nightmare. It didn’t matter that she’d begged me to. I should’ve known better.
“T-Tripp?”
At the sound of her voice, my head lifted from the edge of the bed, and I scooched to the edge of my chair. Clasping one of her hands between both of mine, I failed to keep the panic from my voice. “What is it? Are you hurting?”
Twin tears crested over her lashes, rolling down the tracks that had been carved onto her cheeks since we’d left the motel.
Bringing her knuckles to my mouth, I dusted a kiss over them. “Talk to me, Lucky. ”
Her face screwed up, and it sliced my heart wide open when she began to openly weep.
Without thinking, I climbed onto the gurney, pulling her against my chest.
Muffled against my shirt and broken by hiccups, she said, “I’m so ashamed.”
I eased back, tipping her chin up with a finger. “You didn’t do anything wrong. This isn’t your fault.”
She shook her head sadly, her eyes filling with fresh tears. “How can you even stand to look at me when there’s even the slightest chance the test could reveal Jake to be the father?”
My jaw dropped, and a disbelieving exhale rushed past my parted lips.
The past twenty-four hours had been the hardest of my life, and I’d be a fool to believe that in the decades that lay ahead, there wouldn’t be moments that rivaled this one.
Suddenly, my father’s voice sounded in my head.
“Don’t let the hard days win, son. Fight through them. Fight for each other.”
Whatever happened here today, or with that paternity test, nothing could ever change my feelings for Penny. And it was about damn time I made that crystal clear.
Filling my lungs with air, I answered her question. “It doesn’t matter who the father is because this baby is a part of you . And there isn’t a single piece of you I’m not fucking obsessed with.”
Big green eyes stared up at me before her eyelids dropped, and she shook her head, whispering, “You say that now, but—”
“No buts, no exceptions. I’ve been caught in your orbit since before I can even remember. You’ve always been at the center of my life. I don’t care about the details so long as I have you.”
Wet lashes lifted, her glassy gaze searching. “You really mean that?”
I huffed out a laugh. “The idea of losing you had me so twisted up inside that I stood up in the middle of your wedding and begged you to choose me instead. How can you think I could ever live without you? There is no me without you. Full stop. End of story.”
Penny’s lower lip trembled, and I dragged my thumb over it before dipping to capture it in a soft kiss. “My love for you is infinite. It goes on forever like the sky.”
“I’m gonna keep making messes.”
Chuckling, I pressed my forehead to hers. “You think I don’t know that? But lucky for you, it just so happens I’m an expert at cleaning them up. I’ve had a lifetime of practice.”
The sound of the curtain being pulled back had our heads turning. Tara was back, and this time, she was accompanied by a middle-aged man wearing a white lab coat who stepped forward to introduce himself.
“Hello, Penny. I’m Dr. Freedman. Tara has caught me up on your chart and mentioned you’re experiencing some first-trimester bleeding you’re concerned about?”
When Penny only managed to nod, I verbalized her response. “That’s right. Noticed it first thing this morning.”
Dr. Freedman’s lips curved into a sympathetic smile. “I’m sure Tara mentioned that it’s not uncommon during this stage of pregnancy, but it’s good that you came in to get checked out.” He handed Tara the tablet he held. “If it’s all right with you, I’d like to perform an ultrasound to see if we can determine what might be causing the bleeding.”
“Penny?” I looked down at my wife.
Sucking in a shaky breath, she gave a slight dip of her chin. “Okay.”
“Sir, if you could hop down for a minute?” the doctor politely requested .
I began to shift off the gurney, but fingers tightened in the fabric of my shirt, keeping me in place. Face buried in my chest, my wife mumbled a weak, “No.”
Tara jumped in to try and soothe Penny. “I know it’s super scary right now and you need your comfort person. Is it okay if he sits on the edge and holds your hand? We really need you to lie flat for the ultrasound.”
“That sounds like a good deal to me. What do you say, Lucky?” I dropped a reassuring kiss on her forehead.
Tremors wracked her body, but she loosened her hold, allowing me to scooch over. With one ass cheek perched on the edge of the thin mattress, I pulled her visibly shaking hand onto my lap, allowing her to grip me as tightly as she needed.
A cart with a computer set atop it was wheeled into the small space before the curtain was closed around the four of us.
Since Penny was in a dress, Tara helped to pull the sheet at the foot of the bed up my wife’s thighs, offering it as a cover for her underwear before asking that she lift the skirt to expose her bare stomach.
My heart squeezed when my gaze dipped to that hard ridge set below her navel. I’d spoken to it every night for weeks, making promises to a baby I couldn’t wait to meet.
This couldn’t be the end. What kind of God would allow this dream to be ripped away from my wife? Not one I wanted to believe in anymore if today was marked by tragedy.
“This might be a little cold,” the doctor warned before spreading gel on Penny’s skin.
She sucked in a sharp breath, her stomach going concave for a split second before she exhaled .
Dr. Freedman kept his attention focused on the screen, his movements practiced as he glided the wand through the gel. Squinting, I tried and failed to make sense of the black-and-white images myself.
After what felt like an hour of silence, he pointed a finger at a part of the screen. “You see this here?”
I tilted my head to the side. The white shape set against a sea of black almost looked like a gummy bear.
“That’s your baby.” His finger shifted to the center. “And that tiny flickering in the middle? That’s their heart, beating nice and strong.”
The breath I’d been holding rushed past my lips, and a relief like I’d never known crashed over me.
“It’s really okay?” Penny’s words were barely above a whisper.
Dr. Freedman offered her a warm smile. “Yes, ma’am. And I can’t see anything internally that might be the cause of your bleeding, which is an excellent sign.” He turned back to the screen. “Though the dates you gave don’t quite match up.”
“What’s that mean?” I frowned as he pressed pause on the image of the baby before drawing digital lines.
“Well, we usually determine the gestational age by measuring the height between the crown of a baby’s head and its rump. Your paperwork said you were closing in on twelve weeks, but according to my measurements, you’re closer to ten weeks. Has your regular obstetrician done a dating scan, or was your due date calculated based off your last period?”
I didn’t have the answer, so I looked to Penny, whose wide eyes were glued to the screen. “Last period.”
Nodding, the doctor hummed. “That’s probably why. Not all women ovulate at the same time during their cycle, so that method of calculation is a best guess and can sometimes be a bit off. If you give me a minute, I can input all this data and get you an adjusted due date. Then I’ll print off some pictures for you to take home.”
He began tapping away at the keyboard attached to the cart, but his motions halted when I asked, “Would you be able to tell us when conception likely occurred with the new dates?”
Head tipping from side to side, he shrugged. “A ballpark. Nothing exact.”
I tightened my fingers around Penny’s. “That’ll work.”
The rhythmic typing was somehow soothing, and for the first time in hours, my heart rate began to settle, the tension seeping from my muscles.
“All right.” I jolted at the sound of Dr. Freedman’s voice, and that’s when I realized I’d been halfway to falling asleep sitting straight up.
Fuck, I could sleep for a week after this ordeal. If I was this wrung out, I couldn’t begin to imagine how exhausted Penny must be.
“I’ve got you at ten weeks and two days, which would make your new estimated due date February 25 th , with conception likely to have occurred sometime during the first week of June. How’s that sound?”
Like a fucking miracle.
It might not be a guarantee, but the news that the odds had shifted in our favor had the weight lifting from my chest, and I prayed it was enough to ease some of the stress plaguing Penny.
“Now.” He looked to Penny. “If the bleeding gets heavier or you start passing clots, you come back in straight away, you hear?”
She nodded, her throat working on a thick swallow.
“Dad.” He turned to me. “You make sure she takes it easy for at least a week. Lots of rest, keep stress to a minimum. Got it?”
“Yes, sir, but is it safe to travel? We’re up to Nebraska on Monday, then need to get home to Oklahoma. It’s gonna be a lot of driving. ”
“Should be fine. Just make sure to keep on top of hydration and take lots of breaks. Get out and walk around. It’ll help reduce any risk of swelling.”
He printed off a strip of glossy black and white prints and handed them to Penny. “Congrats, you two.” Standing from his stool at Penny’s bedside, he added, “Tara will get you discharged. Have a safe trip home, and take care of yourself, Penny.” With that, he slipped out through the curtain.
The past two days had been harrowing, but as I looked down at the pictures of our baby clutched in my wife’s hands, it only cemented that my father was right. It was time to grow up and take care of my responsibilities, my family.
And that’s exactly what I planned to do.