Chapter 8
EIGHT
LUNA
Like most people, I hate hospitals, but I figured I’d have to get used to them once I found out that I was pregnant.
Although I didn’t expect to be here to get treatment for a knife wound.
Yet that’s what’s happening as I impatiently sit and wait for the nurse treating me to finish stitching up my arm injury.
The truth is, I don’t really care about my arm.
Sure, it hurts, and yes, I’m glad that the stitches should stop me from bleeding everywhere, but really, all I care about is finding out more about two people.
My child.
And Sadie.
‘Try to stay calm,’ the nurse tells me, seemingly sensing my anxiety about the impending scan that I will have as soon as the stitching is finished. ‘Everything is going to be okay.’
‘How do you know for sure?’ I ask in reply to that kind-hearted but baseless opinion.
‘If you work in hospitals for long enough, you get a sense for things,’ comes the rather strange reply, but I guess I have no choice but to take this nurse’s word for it.
Hopefully, her sixth sense about the state of my unborn baby is correct and everything will be okay.
If not and the scan brings bad news, I will make a point of finding her and telling her how useless her ‘senses’ were.
But for now, I’ll stay quiet and wait for her to finish her delicate work.
It doesn’t take long. Her hands move skilfully, stitching until my wound is sealed.
‘Just try not to move your arm too much and don’t raise it for a while,’ I am told, which sounds like common sense, though I won’t be thinking sensibly if my scan goes badly.
I just want to get it over with. I feel sick. But I need to know if Sadie has taken something important from me like I took something important from her.
‘How’s it going?’ comes the question from the man who has just poked his head around the curtain of my hospital bed. It’s Reid and he is smiling, doing his best to look positive in the circumstances, though I know he is as worried as I am.
‘We’re all done here,’ the nurse says with a satisfied smile. ‘The doctor will be here in a moment to make a quick check on you and then we’ll take you for your scan, okay?’
I nod my head. It sounds terrifying, but I can’t say no, I don’t want to go, can I?
The nurse leaves whilst Reid takes a seat beside me on the bed.
‘You’re doing really well,’ he tells me, taking one of my hands. ‘You just need to be brave for a little while longer and then we can take you home and you can get some rest.’
‘I don’t want to go home,’ I reply. ‘It’s not safe there.’
‘Sadie is here in the hospital, and the police are watching her. She’s not going to do anything now.’
‘Is there any update on her?’ I ask, hoping that she has passed away and Reid is trying to keep that shocking news from me. But he shakes his head.
‘We haven’t had any more updates,’ he replies. ‘She’s still being treated. That’s all we know.’
Still being treated means still alive.
Damn it.
‘How are the children?’ I ask, making sure not to forget about them in all of this, because I do care about Arthur and Ruby. But I still want that woman dead so that my secret dies with her.
‘Trying to be brave but it’s not easy for them,’ Reid admits. ‘Sadie’s parents are trying to keep their spirits up, but they are obviously struggling too. Hopefully, we’ll get some news soon.’
‘Do you want her to live?’ I ask Reid, the question falling out of my mouth before I can catch it.
‘What?’
I don’t say anything more, but I’m pretty sure he heard me, judging by the frown on his face.
‘I want her to live in as much as she is the mother of my children,’ Reid says then.
‘Obviously what she has done is wrong and she deserves to be punished for that. She will be too. I’ll make sure of it.
But Arthur and Ruby don’t deserve to go the rest of their lives without their mother in the world with them. Surely you can understand that?’
‘I do,’ I say, nodding because what else can I do? I can’t say no, I want her to die and I want Arthur and Ruby to be motherless. But there is something I can say.
‘I’d be there for them. I’d be their mother,’ I tell Reid, and he smiles.
‘I know you would,’ he says, leaning in and giving me a kiss. ‘But let’s focus on you being a mother to our little arrival, shall we?’
He gently places a hand on my stomach then and while I can sense his anxiety, he is covering it up as well as he can in the circumstances.
‘Okay, Luna, how are we doing?’ the kindly doctor who I first saw when I arrived here asks me as he approaches the bed and examines the nurse’s handiwork on my arm.
I don’t answer because I feel too nervous to form any words at this moment in time, but I think he understands that.
‘That looks good, so I’m happy for you to go for your scan now,’ the doc says. ‘Are you ready to go?’
I should be. I felt like I was. But no sooner have I set foot off the edge of the bed that I was sitting on than my legs go weak and wobbly and I almost fall.
Thankfully, the doctor’s strong hand catches me and keeps me upright, and he was so quick-thinking that he grabbed my good arm and not my bad one.
I think I’d have rather fallen to the floor than my stitches burst open and have to start that process all over again, but as it is, the doctor has prevented any further injuries. But he does look very concerned.
‘Do you need to lie down?’ he asks me, and that might be the best thing for me to do, but not the best thing for the speed of my scan, so I shake my head.
‘No, I’m fine, thank you,’ I reply, brushing over my brief moment of weakness and forcing myself to keep some strength in my legs so I can make it to the room where the scan will take place.
As I’m pushed in a wheelchair through one of the many long corridors in this place, it feels like I’m getting slower and slower, as if quicksand has been spread across all these polished floors and I’m being sucked down into them.
Reid and the doctor do their best to keep my spirits up, making light-hearted chit-chat about the weather, the late hour and some football gibberish I don’t really understand or care about.
Then we arrive.
The room where I will have my scan.
I see the machine. The nurse. The bed.
That’s when I actually do fall to the floor.
When I open my eyes, I see Reid staring at me, concern etched on his face.
Then I see the doctor, and the nurse who was here just before everything went black.
I realise I’m sitting on the bed that I never made it to, and the machine for the scan is next to us, but the screen is still dark and looking unused.
‘Where am I?’ I ask, unsure and wanting to know what happened.
‘You fainted but you’re okay,’ Reid says. ‘I managed to catch you before you hit the floor, and we got you onto the bed.’
I look from Reid to the doctor to the nurse and hate that I was unconscious while they were all doing so much for me.
‘How are you feeling?’ the doctor asks me then, looking pensive. ‘I suggest we leave the scan until the morning and focus on getting more fluids into you.’
‘No, I want to do it now!’ I cry. ‘I feel better. Seriously, I’m fine. Let’s do it.’
I lift my nightdress, exposing my bare belly so that the nurse will be able to apply the gel that will allow her camera to see inside me easier.
That shows that I am ready to do this, and after the nurse gets the nod from the doctor, she goes ahead and turns on the machine before applying the gel.
I grimace slightly at the coolness of it whilst Reid takes hold of my hand and gives it a squeeze, letting me know that we are in this together, whatever happens in the next couple of minutes.
Then the nurse uses the camera to look at my baby, leaving Reid and me to look at the screen and hope for the best.
There are a few tense seconds before we see our baby.
We see movement. We hear a heartbeat. Then the nurse confirms the good news.
‘Your baby looks absolutely fine,’ she tells us, her words causing Reid to let out a relieved laugh. As for me, I find myself weeping, unable to keep my tears in and sobbing uncontrollably. I don’t care. I’m so happy. Sadie might have harmed me, but she didn’t harm my baby.
Once the tears have subsided, I vow that if Sadie somehow survives tonight then I will go after her again.
I will hurt her and, next time, there will be nothing the paramedics can do to save her.