Chapter 34
The nurse took one look at me when I stepped toward her, her eyes widening as they quickly scanned me, as if assessing if the blood was mine. “Are you Mallory Monroe’s next of kin?” she asked, her tone conveying she was still trying to figure out if I needed to be checked out or not.
“Her husband,” I answered, then explained, “The blood isn’t mine.”
With a firm nod, she asked, “Would you like to clean up before—”
“No.”
One of her brows lifted in a look that said she dealt with difficult people all day and wouldn’t hesitate to call security. “I’ll rephrase, Mr. Monroe. You’re going to clean up before you go back to see your wife.”
I didn’t correct her on the name. It wasn’t important right then.
Besides, if Mallory—when. When Mallory pulled through this, I knew she’d never let me live it down that the hospital staff gave me her last name.
“Where?” was all I asked as I started toward the nurse, barely taking the time to glance over my shoulder and nod when Thatch slapped the back of my shoulder and called out, “Tell our girl to fight.”
Following the nurse’s quick, sure steps down halls that were too bright, too clean, and too loud, I forced myself to focus on the pained beats of my heart instead.
The way each one felt like a wrenching limp—an incapacitating crawl.
Mocking me for having a pulse at all, as unstable as it currently was.
A pulse that was faltering because every part of me was worried about what I was about to walk into.
And like my heart was already shredding in dreaded anticipation.
As I scrubbed my arms and hands clean, I didn’t let myself think about whose blood was being washed down the drain.
I couldn’t. I wasn’t sure I’d ever make it away from the washing station if I did, and I needed to so I could make it to Mallory’s recovery room.
So, I focused on other things, like the fact that the knuckles of my right hand were split and throbbing, but I couldn’t remember punching anyone or anything.
Or how I’d just learned Mallory softly inhaled every time I trailed my fingers along her palm, and I hadn’t had enough time reveling in that sound.
Once my arms and hands were clean of the red stains, and I’d dragged my blood-soaked shirt off and switched it out with a stiff scrub shirt, the nurse led me down one last hall, talking as she slowed.
“She might not be awake yet, but that doesn’t mean anything,” she said, her voice soft, like she was afraid of waking Mallory from where we stood in the hall.
As if there weren’t so many sounds in this hall alone.
Beeps and cries of pain, conversations and the low murmurs from TV shows.
“She’s still sedated from the surgery, so that will take time to wear off anyway. ”
I nodded as anxiousness coursed through my body when she finally stopped in front of a door and reached for the handle.
I’d never wanted to go into a room so much in my life. I’d also never wanted to run from one.
Because the girl inside was the strongest person I knew, and I’d already held her while she’d died. I wasn’t sure I could handle seeing her lying still in a hospital bed, fighting for her life.
Maybe that made me a coward, but it was the truth. Still, whether I was terrified to see her that way or not, nothing would keep me from her.
No matter what happened in the end, nothing would keep me from being by her side.
I pushed into the room as soon as the nurse cracked the door open and felt my steps falter when I saw Mallory. Too still. Too peaceful.
Mallory didn’t sleep like that.
Even in sleep, Mallory was tense and on guard, unless she was in my arms. Again, something I’d only gotten to experience once. Well, twice . . . but I still had no memory of that.
I was at her side before I realized I’d finished crossing the small room.
But then I was gripping her hand in mine.
My eyes scanned her face and the bandages around her neck before trailing down the hospital gown she was in to the IV lines attached to her arm and the monitor wires snaking out from beneath the blanket tucked in around her.
“These are your wife’s vitals,” the nurse said, and I reluctantly dragged my attention to where she was pointing at one of the monitors, my stomach dropping like a weight when I saw the numbers there.
She didn’t bother saying anything about them, just gestured to the next monitor.
“This was your baby’s heart rate when we last took it. I’ll check it again in another hour.”
For how many babies I was always around between my sisters and cousins, I didn’t understand if the heart rate was a good or bad thing.
But I understood all of Mallory’s vitals.
They were dangerous.
Clenching my jaw when it shook, I dropped my stare back to her and forced myself not to acknowledge the words that were swirling around and around in my head.
Because I’d known I was going to lose her. I’d known it, but I refused to admit it.
The nurse walked around the room, pointing out things and telling me to call for her if we needed anything. But I didn’t respond to her or look away from my wife until the nurse stopped directly at my side and held something out in front of me.
Ultrasound photos.
“We were able to get these,” she explained as I shakily took the photos from her. “We thought you would want them.”
I didn’t say anything.
Once again, I couldn’t. Not when emotion gripped my throat, choking me, as I stared at the grainy image of a baby we hadn’t even known about until today.
“I’ll leave y’all alone for now. Press that button if you need me.”
I wasn’t sure how long I stared at the ultrasound before a deep sob ripped from my chest as I crumpled, struggling to remain upright as my forehead pressed to the bed and my other hand gripped Mallory’s.
“Fight,” I finally said, the word a gravelly plea. “I need you to fight.”
Pushing myself up, I eased myself onto the bed beside her, careful not to jostle her as I repeatedly pleaded with her to fight. To wake up.
Not caring if anyone came in or if I was allowed to be there, beside her.
They’d have to tear me away from my wife at this point.
“I got to see our baby. You have to wake up so you can see our baby,” I said against her temple. “You—just wake up,” I choked out.
With one hand gripping hers, I carefully rested the other on top of her stomach as I forced back the tears that had been relentless ever since I’d seen her standing in her kitchen, looking like a beautiful nightmare.
“Wake up and take a swing at me,” I begged. “Wake up and paint more of those amazing scenes I didn’t know you could create. Wake up so I can buy you more of those disgusting grassy drinks. Wake up so I can love you the way I always should have.”
Keeping my eyes trained on her monitor when I heard it start another round, I felt every part of my soul shudder when her oxygen and blood pressure shifted lower, ever so slightly.
Pressing my mouth to the top of her head, I breathed, “Need you to fight now, Peach, because I’m not losing you.”
I’d fallen asleep just like that—lying on my side, clutching her hand like I could will her to pull through with the strength of my grip and gently cradling her flat stomach for the same reason.
But the sleep had been fitful.
Every time her blood pressure cuff had started taking another reading, my eyelids had snapped open and shot to the monitor, checking her slowly declining heart rate and oxygen, and waiting to see what the newest pressure reading would be.
Every time it’d dipped, I’d gripped Mallory’s hand tighter and reminded her she was a fighter, the words thick and warped with emotion.
At least the baby’s heart rate hadn’t changed whenever the nurse had come to check it.
At least it was still alive.
But as the nurse glared at me when I slid back into place next to Mallory once she finished getting the most recent fetal readings—her expression more resigned and less disapproving than the first time she’d walked in to find me on the thin hospital bed—she informed me, “The baby’s heart rate is stable, but still half of what it should be at sixteen weeks. ”
I wasn’t sure I could react to the news of the decreased pulse or that Mallory was already sixteen weeks along.
Not when my stomach had been left somewhere on the sterile floor, and my heart had been ripped from my chest long ago.
The nurse gave me a sympathetic look and murmured, “We’ll just continue monitoring and hoping for the best,” before turning to check Mallory’s IV fluids and monitor readings.
“She should’ve already woken,” I said on a rough mumble when the nurse stepped away from the monitors, the words a statement rather than a question. When the nurse paused, I added, “From the sedation.”
“Yes,” she said bluntly, “the sedation from the surgery would’ve already worn off. But we’re also keeping her on heavy pain medication, which will also make her drowsy. The positive here is that she’s breathing on her own.”
Because she hadn’t been.
The nurse didn’t say that, but the words sat heavy in the air.
“Thank you,” I muttered as my stare shifted back to Mallory’s pale face before reluctantly dragging back to the nurse when she spoke again.
“You’re welcome to say ‘no,’ but your family”—she said the word with an arched eyebrow, as if she knew good and well there was no blood relation to the people she was talking about—“has been asking to be let back here.” Holding up a hand before I could respond, she added, “Again, you’re more than welcome to say, ‘no,’ but if you’d like any of them to come back, I can let one person back at a time. ”
“I’m not leaving her,” I claimed, giving my answer right then, even though I knew I wasn’t the only one who was in agony over this. Even though I knew the rest of our team deserved to have their time with Mallory if—
I cut that thought off before it could fully finish forming, my jaw aching from how tightly I ground it.