Chapter Four
Olivia opened her eyes. Harsh light stabbed her eyes like a hot scalpel, slicing into her pounding brain. Fluorescent bulbs overhead came into focus. Her palm slid across a scratchy blanket. An oxygen mask was on her face and an IV was in her arm. She was in bed and wore a hospital gown.
Her head was fuzzy, but she remembered the fire. The heat and the smoke. The suffocating darkness.
The sheer terror that she might die.
Her baby.
Olivia clutched her stomach, hoping the little one inside her was all right.
Eli. Did he make it out of the fire?
The door of the small room opened. A woman wearing scrubs and a white coat with a stethoscope around her neck walked in.
“You’re awake. Good.” She closed the door and came to the side of the bed. “I’m Dr. Kelly. How are you feeling?”
“A little out of it and tired. I have a massive headache.”
“All to be expected. You didn’t sustain any burns and when we examined you there didn’t appear to be any damage to your upper airways from the heat. Fortunately, your friend got you and Mr. Dempsey out of the hotel in time,” she said.
Eli found her. Saved her and Dempsey. Her personal superman. “Is he okay?” Olivia asked, thinking of Eli. “I mean both of them.”
“Mr. Dempsey is in the ICU, but I can’t say anything more about his condition. Your friend Mr. Easton demanded to wait here with you while you were unconscious, but that goes against our policy because he isn’t family. I convinced him getting examined was a better use of his time.”
Eli could be so stubborn. “Thank you. Sometimes he forgets to do what’s best for himself.” He always put the team first, willing to make any sacrifice, whether it was in the military or as a civilian.
The doctor checked a small device attached to Olivia’s finger.
“The carbon monoxide is clearing from your system, albeit slowly, and your blood oxygen level is getting back to normal, but it’s not quite what I’d like for it to be by now.
Mr. Easton told us you didn’t have any preexisting conditions that he was aware of, such as heart or lung disease. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“To be on the safe side, I was going to run a CT scan on you to check for inflammation or fluid in your lungs, but then we realized you’re pregnant.”
Olivia rubbed her stomach. “How did you know?” She wasn’t even showing yet.
“A routine test we run before exposing a patient to radiation if they’re unable to let us know whether or not there’s any chance that they might be pregnant.”
Of course, that made sense. Olivia still felt groggy and not quite herself. “Is the baby going to be okay?”
“How far along are you?”
“Eight weeks. My doctor had me scheduled for an early ultrasound because I’m of advanced maternal age.
” A term she despised, even though she was thirty-eight, with a birthday next month.
Her doctor had rattled off the increased risks: high blood pressure, preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, preterm birth.
It went on and on, getting more terrifying.
“I had to push it back because of a job assignment at the hotel.”
“I can do an ultrasound. Check for a heartbeat and look at the development of the fetus.”
Olivia rubbed her belly again. “Yes, please.”
At this point in her life, she didn’t think it was in the cards for her to be a mother. She thought she’d get married and build a rock-solid foundation before having kids. Like her parents.
Maybe if she’d found a way to end things with Eli and had moved on, she would’ve had that conventional structure. But whenever they were back in each other’s orbit they were drawn together, like gravity.
As she looked down at her stomach, only one thing mattered, the baby growing inside her. She needed this child to be healthy. Everything else was secondary.
“I’ll request a consult from OB-GYN,” Dr. Kelly said, “after I have a look on the ultrasound to be sure the pregnancy is viable.”
Viable.
Another cold medical term that made her uneasy.
Something the doctor said earlier registered. “When you spoke about discovering my pregnancy, you mentioned we realized. Does my friend Eli, Mr. Easton, know?”
“I was referring to some of the hospital staff. I’m not permitted to discuss the details of your condition with him, but I assured him I’d let him know once you woke up. Would you like me to get him for the ultrasound?”
Olivia wanted nothing more than to have him at her side, holding her hand, looking at an image of their baby for the first time. Together. But he made it clear when they first started seeing each other he didn’t want to ever get married again or have kids. “I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you think about it while I grab the machine.” The doctor offered another sympathetic smile before leaving.
Part of Olivia wanted to make sure the baby was okay before telling Eli. The other part of her was keenly aware that once he found out she was carrying his child, he would do the honorable thing.
Propose to her out of obligation.
Which was the last thing she wanted.
He was honest, reliable, loyal, a fantastic cook, and, most importantly, she’d never cared for anyone the way she did for him. Trusted him completely. Perfect husband material in her book, aside from the fact he didn’t want a wife or a kid or even a serious relationship.
In all the time they’d been together, he’d never spoken those three little words. I love you. Not once. So, neither had she. In fact, he always seemed prepared for her to end things instead of ready to take a step forward with her, toward something deeper and more permanent.
Dr. Kelly returned, wheeling the machine inside the room, and parked it next to the bed. “Have you decided?”
“There’s no need to get him. I’ll do it alone.” The same way she would raise this child. If he wanted to be involved in their lives, she’d welcome it, but she wasn’t going to force anything on him. Or accept a misguided proposal.
She needed to do the ultrasound, make sure the results were normal, and speak with a specialist—she was choosing to focus on a positive outcome. Afterward, she’d see him.
By then, Olivia hoped she would’ve figured out how to handle this situation with Eli.
Pacing in the examination room, Eli couldn’t sit still. He hauled the IV attached to his arm and the oxygen tank connected to the mask over his face from one end of the room to the other.
Until Liv woke up and Dr. Kelly gave her a clean bill of health, she wasn’t out of the woods yet. Far from it.
The list of bad things that could still happen churned in his mind. Respiratory issues. Organ damage. Heart attack. Stroke. Coma.
Olivia was the smartest, toughest, strongest person he knew, and she had almost died. Seeing that indomitable woman in danger, unconscious, looking so still, so…fragile, opened a floodgate of anxiety and fear inside him. Dredged up awful things from his past he wanted to forget.
Every person he ever loved had either been taken from him or had left him.
First, his father. Eli was only ten. On the night of a big storm, his parents had argued so loudly he heard them shouting over the thunder. His father complained about too many mouths to feed and too many bills to pay. The next day his dad was gone.
Then his mom got sick. Eli promised to be good, to be less trouble, to get a part-time job to pay for the medicine she needed.
If only she stayed with him. He got straight A’s, didn’t make too much noise when she was resting, cleaned and cooked for her, and eventually convinced one of the ranch owners to hire him, mending fences and raking out stalls to bring in extra money.
None of it worked. She didn’t live to see his sixteenth
birthday.
Eli stopped pacing in the ER room, not wanting to think back on those days, forced to watch his mother wither away.
Or how, after she was buried, he was dragged from Lubbock and carted off to live with his aunt and uncle in Corpus Christi.
His mother’s sister was happy to take him in.
Her husband on the other hand, who happened to be a cop, only saw him as a burden.
As a distraction from their own children.
Still, his aunt showered him with affection and kindness. Eli did his best to make himself useful around the house, not to take away too much attention from his cousins, who were around his age, and to bring in money by working on a nearby ranch to cover the extra expenses he incurred.
That didn’t stop his uncle from finding a reason to take a strap to him.
A beating Eli could take. Getting yelled at, punished, ignored. Then one day everything changed, yet again, and not for the better. He got home from school with his cousins and there were squad cars and an ambulance in front of the house.
Everyone told them it was an accident. A tragic accident. No one’s fault.
His uncle had been cleaning his hunting rifle in the kitchen and as his aunt walked into the room it went off.
Nobody cared to listen to Eli’s accounts of his uncle and aunt’s fights or the whispers of his uncle’s infidelity. No charges were filed. No arrest made. No justice served.
After the life insurance was paid, his uncle remarried the rumored mistress.
Once Eli turned seventeen, he dropped out of school, got his GED, and convinced his uncle to sign the consent form allowing him to enlist. He left and never went back.
At his first duty station, he met Jennifer. They were both so young, practically kids, and thought it was love. They got hitched. A quickie ceremony at the justice of the peace. Then he deployed, and she died while he was gone. A head-on collision with a drunken driver.
Whenever Eli got too close to someone, he lost them. It was like he was cursed.
If he truly cared about Liv, he would’ve stayed away from her.
Keeping her at arm’s length had worked for a while. For five years, he had rolled the dice, hoping it’d be fine, only seeing her every few weeks.
But their time was up.
A knock on the doorframe interrupted his train of thought.