Chapter 23 #2
I get out first and turn back for her, but Maksim is already on her side saying, “Careful. Don’t let her stand if you can help it.”
Too late.
Sienna tries anyway. The second her feet touch the ground, she nearly buckles, and I catch her under the arms and lift her again before anyone else can get there.
She clings to me, one arm around my neck, the towel still pressed low with the other hand, and I carry her through the hospital doors while people move around us speaking too fast.
“How far along?”
“Bleeding how much?”
“When did labor begin?”
“Any complications?”
“Whose patient is she?”
Maksim answers what he can. I answer nothing. My world has narrowed to the woman in my arms and the fact that the floor is too bright and the air smells like antiseptic and fear.
They stop us in triage and tell me to put her down.
I don’t want to.
Maksim says my name once. That’s enough.
I lower her onto the bed. The nurse reaches for the towel, and when she pulls it away, everyone in the room goes very still.
No one says anything for a second.
The nurse’s face changes first. Then the younger doctor beside her. Then Maksim, though he gets hold of his expression faster than the others do.
Too much blood. I know it before anyone explains it.
Sienna knows it too. I can see it in the way her hand gropes for mine again, blind and urgent, her eyes already glossy with fear. “What?” she asks. “What is it?”
The nurse looks at Maksim.
He steps closer to the bed and says, very evenly, “It’s more bleeding than I like. That’s all you need to know right now.”
“That’s not all,” Sienna says at once.
No. It isn’t. But it’s enough to keep her from breaking apart while they work.
The younger doctor says, “We need fetal monitoring now.”
Another nurse is already moving. One reaches under the blanket. Another adjusts the bed. Someone asks about her blood type. Someone else asks how long since the water broke. The room fills with purposeful voices and the sound of machines being woken up.
I stay at her side until a nurse puts a hand on my arm and says, “Sir, I need space.”
I look at her.
She holds the look longer than most people would. Good for her.
Then Maksim says, “Viktor.”
That’s the only reason I move.
One step back. No farther.
Sienna’s eyes find mine immediately, panicked now, and I hate that I can’t touch her while they do this. “Don’t leave,” she says.
“I’m here.”
It sounds small next to the room, but she hears it. Her breathing eases by half a degree.
A nurse straps the monitor across her belly. The machine crackles to life.
Everyone goes quiet.
The doctor leans closer. Another nurse adjusts the sensor, pressing harder, moving it lower, then higher. The room feels suspended. One stretched second, then another.
Sienna looks from the doctor to Maksim to me. “Say something.”
No one does.
Then, faintly, the heartbeat comes through the speaker.
Fast.
Thin.
The whole room exhales at once.
Sienna makes a sound that is half sob, half laugh, and closes her eyes.
I don’t realize I’ve stopped breathing until that moment.
Maksim rests one hand on the rail of the bed and says quietly, “Good.”
The doctor doesn’t look relieved for long. She checks the monitor again, looks at the bleeding, then says, “We need ultrasound now.”
Sienna opens her eyes again. “What’s wrong?”
The doctor answers this time. “We need to check the placenta and see what’s causing the bleeding.”
Plain. Careful. Worse than comfort.
Sienna turns her head and looks at me. She doesn’t ask the question aloud because she doesn’t have to.
Is the baby alive?
Yes.
Are we safe?
Nobody has said that.
A porter appears with a machine. The nurse starts shifting the bed.
The doctor says, “We’re taking her through.”
I step forward automatically. “Can I go?”
The doctor looks at Maksim. Maksim looks at Sienna.
Sienna says, “Yes.”
That seems to settle it.
The nurse nods. “Only one person.”
Maksim says, “Go.” I look at him. He adds, lower, “I’ll handle everything else.”
Which means bloodwork, paperwork, getting answers before anyone else in this building decides to start keeping them from me.
I nod once.
They start moving her bed down the corridor. I walk beside it, close enough that she can still hold my hand. The hospital lights are unforgiving. The wheels rattle over small joins in the floor. Everyone we pass looks busy and detached.
Sienna stares at the ceiling for a few seconds, then says, “This wasn’t supposed to happen today.”
I almost say nothing was supposed to happen today.
Instead, I say, “I know.”
She turns her head toward me, eyes wet, face pale against the pillow. “You were right there.”
The words hit me strangely. As accusation? Gratitude? Pure shock that the world broke open and I was in it when it did?
“Yes,” I say.
“If you hadn’t been—”
“I was there.”
I need her to stop at that sentence. I don’t need the rest.
She seems to understand. Her fingers tighten around mine.
They wheel her into imaging. The technician is already there, gloved, focused, all business. She tells Sienna what she’s doing while spreading gel over her stomach with quick, practiced hands.
The screen lights up.
I don’t understand what I’m looking at. I only understand faces, and I see the doctor’s face change as she looks.
Not panic. Not relief.
Something clinical and urgent.
“What?” Sienna asks again. “Please stop doing that with your faces. Somebody tell me.”
The doctor looks at her, then at me, then back to the screen. “There’s partial placental abruption,” she says. “Not complete. But enough to explain the bleeding.”
Sienna stares.
I know the words individually. Together, they land like a blow.
The doctor goes on. “The baby still has a heartbeat. That’s good. But I don’t want to wait.”
“Wait for what?” Sienna asks.
The doctor meets her eyes. “You’re in labor, and with this amount of bleeding I don’t think it’s safe to try to hold it off.”
Silence.
Then Sienna says, very quietly, “I’m having the baby now?”
The doctor nods once. “Most likely, yes.”
Sienna turns her head toward me so slowly it hurts to watch.
I don’t know what my face looks like to her. I only know that my chest feels carved open and filled with ice.
“This is too early,” she whispers.
The doctor says, “It’s early, but not impossible. Right now the priority is getting both of you through it safely.”
The technician wipes away the gel and steps back.
For a second, no one moves. The monitor is still on. The room still feels crowded with machines and breath and too much fear.
Then the doctor turns to Sienna and says, in the same calm voice she has used for everything so far, “We need to move quickly.”
Sienna blinks at her. “Move where?”
“To labor and delivery,” the doctor says. “And possibly surgery if this worsens.”
A nurse is already reaching for a clipboard. Another is adjusting the bed. The whole room has shifted again, becoming more practical, more urgent.
The doctor looks down at the form and asks, “Where is your husband?”
Sienna’s face tightens. “I don’t have one,” she says.
The doctor nods once, not interested in embarrassment, only information. “All right. Who is the father?”
Sienna turns her head slightly, as if to answer.
I speak before she can.
“I am.”
The words come out flat and certain.
The room goes quiet for half a second. Sienna looks at me, her mouth falling open slightly. The doctor glances between us once, then accepts it immediately because she has no time for emotional complications and even less interest in them.
“Good,” she says. “Then I need your consent if we lose time and she can’t give it clearly herself.”
I nod. “You have it.”
The nurse steps closer with the clipboard. “Sir, I still need signatures.”
I take the pen. My hand is steady enough to sign. That’s the only steady thing in me.
Sienna is still watching me.
I hand the clipboard back and move to her side again.
The doctor is speaking now, explaining the next steps in plain terms, what they’ll do, what they’re watching, what could change.
Sienna hears most of it. I can tell some of it is slipping past her anyway.
She’s too frightened and in too much pain to hold all of it.
So I say the only part that matters in a way she can use. “I’m here.”
Her eyes fill again, and she gives one small nod.
The bed starts moving. Nurses on both sides now. The doctor walking at the foot of it. Me beside her, one hand on the rail, the other reaching for hers when she lifts it.
She takes my hand at once.
As they wheel her into the corridor, her fingers tighten around mine and she says very quietly, almost like she’s ashamed of needing to ask, “You meant that?”
I look at her. “What I said in there?”
Yes.
That I am.
That I am here.
All of it.
“I meant every word,” I say.
She closes her eyes for a second, and when she opens them again she looks less alone than she did a moment ago.
That’s all I can give her.
For now, it has to be enough.