Chapter Thirty Gavin
Chapter Thirty
Gavin
“Emily . . .” I reached for her hands the moment she turned silent, a couch cushion separating us, a distance she insisted on after Jordan and Maya carried Ben out of my condo and took him to theirs.
That was the first word I’d spoken since she told me her backstory with Sarah.
A story that began when Sarah was admitted to Emily’s wing and ended when Emily no longer had the heart to return to the hospital.
A story that caused her to break down and cry multiple times. “I need a second . . . this is a lot.”
“This is more than a lot. There isn’t a word to even describe what this is.”
My mind was bouncing all over the place, absorbing the details she’d just given me, filling in the small holes I’d been carrying for the last seven years with her firsthand account.
When my breath finally returned, when I could somewhat put my thoughts together, I said softly, “I can’t believe you were her nurse. That it was you who wrote that note. That . . . you were even there.”
Her knees were bent, and she held them to her chest. “Does that change everything?”
Every tear she’d shed tonight wrecked me a little more.
I couldn’t just see her pain—I could feel it.
“Change what, baby?” She looked as small as the pillow beside me. “Us? No. What happened at that hospital does not affect us.”
“But how can you say that? Sarah was under my care. She came in presenting symptoms. She . . .”
While she recounted the past, her tone, her emotion, her choice of words all told me she was blaming herself, her last statement no exception.
“Symptoms a first-time mother would have when she was going into labor. Emily”—it was my turn to be vulnerable, so I twisted my body toward her and rested my bent leg on the couch—“I arrived at that hospital after getting the worst call of my entire life, and once I held my son, I broke the fuck down. I wept like no man should ever have to weep. But once those tears dried, I sought out answers. I needed to know why this happened to Sarah. I needed to know exactly what happened to her. I spoke to the charge nurse who had been working that shift, the OB who performed the surgery, I even spoke with the head of the goddamn hospital.” I stretched my arm over the back of the couch, my fingers close to her shoulder.
“Everyone who had a role in treating Sarah did what they were supposed to. I don’t blame anyone, I especially don’t blame you. ”
“I promised her, Gavin.” Her voice quivered. “I told her she was going to be okay and that her baby was going to be okay.” She held her forehead. “Do you know how much it hurts . . . that I didn’t keep that promise?”
“It was a promise you couldn’t make. No one, including me, faults you for not being able to uphold it.”
Her fingers clenched into a fist. “But I gave her my word.”
“Stop blaming yourself, Emily—”
“That’s all I did. Blame myself. Hate myself.
” She pulled at her T-shirt, yanking the collar down.
“I couldn’t even stand the feel of myself.
” She rested her forehead against her knees, and when she finally pulled her face out, she added, “I used up all my vacation time that I’d accumulated at the hospital—three or four weeks’ worth, something in that range.
And soon after that ran out, Maya wouldn’t let me stay in bed anymore.
She basically had an intervention. She said I needed to get out of my head and forgive myself.
That’s when she got me the job at the rehab center. ”
“Why would you treat yourself that way when you knew there was nothing you could have done?”
Her knees lowered, and she crossed her legs in front of her. “Maybe. Just maybe if I had . . .”
“No.” I moved closer, sitting on the cushion that was between us, and I put my hands on her thighs.
“There is no maybe. I know more about amniotic fluid embolisms than anyone should. I know the survival rate is beyond slim. I know what happens inside a woman’s body for one to occur, and I know what happened inside Sarah’s.
By the time she came up to the labor and delivery floor, she was already too far advanced.
There wasn’t a medication or surgery that would have worked, neither would more chest compressions or defibrillation.
” I shook her knees. “There is absolutely no reason for you to ever blame yourself.”
She went silent, but I knew what was happening in her brain was far from quiet.
“Is it weird if I say a part of me wants you to yell at me for this? Scream at me. Tell me I fucked everything up and I’m the reason Ben doesn’t have a mother. I don’t know . . .”
“Would it make you feel better?”
“No.”
“Here’s what I’ll tell you instead.” I held her cheek.
“I’m relieved you were the one scheduled to work that day.
I’m relieved your face was the last one Sarah saw.
And I’m relieved that you were her nurse, because I know how she was treated and looked after, and I can’t say I would know that if any other nurse had been with her.
” My thumb brushed her skin. “I’ve seen the way you care, Emily.
How you work on patients. The love and attention you give them.
” My throat was getting tight. “In Sarah’s last moments, she was lucky to have you. ”
My thumb caught the new set of tears that were falling from her eyes.
“When I saw the note in Ben’s room, I lost it, Gavin.
I left Ben up there and ran downstairs. It wasn’t pretty.
” She leaned into my hand, her voice cracking, her chin tremoring.
“Maya had to put Ben to bed. I couldn’t handle it.
I couldn’t handle anything. My brain was spiraling, questioning if you would think I knew Sarah was your girlfriend or that I had purposely put myself in your life to somehow heal.
I promise, neither of those are true. I didn’t know until I saw the note. ”
“I believe you—and I never thought either of those things.” I pulled her legs onto my lap, moving in as close as I could get to her.
“Emily, we’re two people who have experienced a debilitating tragedy.
We were just on opposite sides of it.” I hugged her legs against me.
“In some strange way, we’re connected because of it. ”
“That’s a positive way to look at it.”
“That’s the only way to look at it.”
She slowly nodded and found my fingers and squeezed them. “Can I ask you something about that day?”
“Of course.”
“Why were you in Massachusetts? Didn’t you live in Florida and play for Tampa at that time? And why were you in Maine?”
I huffed out a mouthful of air. Out of all the questions, she’d picked the easiest ones.
“Sarah was hot. I mean, she was literally sweating all the time during her pregnancy, and Florida’s weather was making her miserable.
It was an abnormally warm spring on the Gulf Coast. Sarah was from Alabama.
We met in college, and since their summers were as intolerable as Florida, Boston made the most sense, even more so since I owned a home here—a different one, not this one.
I didn’t have to report to training camp until late July, so our plan was to spend my entire offseason here.
We transferred doctors, switched up her birth plan, and we made this our home.
” I looked away from her, toward the windows that showed a view of every angle of Boston.
“At thirty-six weeks, we thought there was plenty of time. Maine was a last-minute trip with a few friends from high school to do some fishing off the coast of Bar Harbor. Only a four-hour drive, a distance that seemed like nothing at the time. But”—my head dropped—“I couldn’t take that long to get back and had my jet come get me, and that forty-or-so-minute flight to the city was the worst forty or so minutes of my whole fucking life. ”
“I can’t even imagine.” Her voice was so soft, I barely heard her. “I can’t . . .”
“She was already gone when I got the call. The OB was performing the emergency C-section. I didn’t even know at that time if Ben would make it.
When I arrived at the hospital, he was in the NICU.
Even though he was born late preterm and weighed six pounds, they kept him in there for a week as a precaution.
” I paused, releasing a loud exhale. “I would have taken him home immediately, but honestly, I was in no shape to take him anywhere. My mom stepped in during those first couple of months while I got my shit together.”
“Never in a million years did you think you’d be doing it all alone.” Her hand slid through my hair. “That you’d have a newborn and be mourning the woman you loved and the mother of your child. I can’t wrap my head around what those months looked like and the grief that consumed you.”
“It wasn’t easy.”
“It had to be impossible.” Her fingers tightened in my hair.
“I just focused on Ben. He’s all that mattered to me, along with football.
My mom came to Florida, helped us get adjusted, and I hired Jenny, who deserves the world and then some.
” I rested my elbow on the back of the couch, setting my chin on my palm.
“Ben and football—that’s what my life looked like for a long time.
I had no interest in love. Even the thought of it was too much.
And then you came into my life and changed everything.
” I smiled. “You made me want more. You made me want to let love back in. And you made me feel love.” I leaned forward to kiss her.
“And I’m so incredibly in love with you, Emily. ”
Her eyes gradually opened after my lips left her again. “I love you more.”
I brought her hand up to my mouth, holding her knuckles close to my lips. “I want you to remember that we survived what happened, we came out the other side, and that’s something that will always hold us together.”
She bent her knees, leaning them onto my chest. “I hope so.”
“One day, when Ben’s old enough to understand, we’re going to tell him how you tried to save his mother and you were the one who wrote that note.” I kissed the back of her hand. “He’s going to look at you like a hero, the same way I’m looking at you right now.”
“I’m no hero.”
“You are to me.”
She pulled back, half smiling, half shaking her head in disbelief. “No—”
“You want me to stop? Because I can keep going. I have lots more to say about you.”
She put her hands on her face and stared into my eyes, “No, don’t ever stop.”