20. Ryan
Ican find things. People. Money. Accounts. Properties. Companies that technically don’t exist, owned by other companies that technically don’t exist. Give me a name and enough time, and I’ll find every secret attached to it.
I found men who’d spent decades making sure nobody could. I found girls they thought everyone had forgotten. I found payments buried under shell companies and favors disguised as gifts. I found enough pieces to help Arthur build something federal agents could finally touch.
I know how to dig. I know how to plan. I know how to take a problem apart until I understand every piece of it.
I don’t know how to make an ultrasound tech tell me whether our baby is alive.
“Do you see them?” The tech doesn’t answer. Her eyes stay on the screen. The wand moves slowly over Ally’s stomach. Click. Pause. Move. Click. I hate every second of it. “Is there a heartbeat?”
“Ryan.” Ally’s voice is barely a whisper.
I look at her. She’s staring at the ceiling. Not the monitor. She hasn’t looked at the monitor once.
The hospital gown makes her look smaller somehow.
Her face is pale beneath the bruising the girls covered with makeup this morning — most of it came off when they cleaned her up, leaving the ugly color underneath.
Her split lip is swollen again. There are fingerprints on both arms. Victor’s over Roman’s.
New bruises over old ones. I can’t look at them. I can’t stop looking at them.
Her legs are clean now. The blood is gone.
Hers. Jane’s. Both. I don’t know. They took her uniform.
Bagged it. Evidence. Her mother’s blood and her own soaked into the same skirt, and somebody put it in a plastic bag and wrote a number on it.
My jeans weren’t important enough to take, so I’m still wearing them.
There’s dried blood across my knees. I don’t know whose that is either.
Mom sits on the other side of the bed, holding Ally’s hand between both of hers. Darla stands near the foot of it. Nobody’s made her sit down. I don’t think anyone could.
The tech moves the wand again. Click. Measure. Nothing. “Can you please tell us if there’s a heartbeat?”
Her expression barely changes. “I need to complete the ultrasound.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Ryan,” Ally whispers.
I don’t look away from the tech. “Is our baby alive?”
“I need to finish the scan.”
“She watched her mother die less than two hours ago.”
“Ryan.” Mom this time.
“She was slammed into a wall. She was bleeding on the ground. We’ve answered the same questions six times. We’ve waited. We’ve signed everything you put in front of us. And I am asking you one question.”
“Ryan.” Darla.
I turn on her. “I need to know.”
Her eyes are red. She’s been crying since we got here. Stopped for a while. Now they’re wet again. “I know.”
“I can’t just sit here. I need to do something.”
Her face crumples for half a second before she gets it back under control. Then she nods toward the bed. “Hold Ally’s hand.”
I look down. I’m already holding it. Both of mine wrapped around hers. I didn’t even realize. Darla looks at them too. “Then keep doing that.”
My jaw clenches. “That’s not enough.”
“No.” Her voice breaks. “It doesn’t feel like it is.”
I look at Ally. Her eyes are closed now. A tear slides down the side of her face and disappears into her hair.
Mom wipes it away. “You don’t have to look, sweetheart.”
“I can’t.”
“Then don’t.”
“What if—“ Ally stops. Mom’s face folds. “What if there’s nothing?” Nobody answers. Ally opens her eyes. Not toward the screen. Toward me. “What if our baby died too?”
I lean in close, both hands still around hers, and press my mouth to her knuckles before I answer. “Look at me.” She does. “I’m right here. Whatever that screen says, I’m not going anywhere. Okay?”
Her mouth trembles. “My mom died.”
“I know, baby.”
“I watched her die.”
“I know.”
“And now they won’t tell us anything.”
“I know.” My voice drops. “I can’t hear you say the other part. Not because you’re wrong to be scared — because I’m so scared I can’t breathe, and if you say it out loud I’m going to come apart, and you need me in one piece right now.”
Her fingers tighten around mine. “You don’t know they’re alive.”
“No.” I bring her hand back to my mouth. “I don’t. There’s nothing I can hack or steal or threaten to make myself know faster, and it’s killing me.” My lips shake against her skin. “But I love you. Both of you. And I’m not letting go of this hand until they tell us.”
A sob catches in her throat. “I love you.” She barely gets it out. “I’m so scared, Ryan.”
“Me too.” She looks at me — maybe because I said it. Maybe because I finally stopped pretending there’s anything left in me that isn’t terrified. “I am so fucking scared, Ally.” I kiss her hand again. “But I’ve got you. No matter what.”
Her eyes close. “I want my mom.” Mom makes a sound. Small. Broken. She turns her face away for a second.
“I know, baby,” Mom whispers.
“She’d know what to say.” Mom’s chin shakes. “She was always scared. Even when she pretended she wasn’t.” Ally cries harder.
Mom presses Ally’s hand against her cheek. Nobody tells her Jane is watching. Nobody tells her Jane is in a better place. Nobody tells her Jane would want her to be strong.
Thank God. Because I think Ally would scream.
The room goes quiet again. Except the machine. The clicking. My breathing. Ally crying.
I stare at the screen. Black. Gray. White. Nothing makes sense. Then the tech stops. My whole body locks. She adjusts the wand. Clicks. Moves slightly. Stops again.
“What?” No answer. “What is it?”
“Ryan,” Darla murmurs.
“Something changed.” The tech presses a button. Measures something. My heart pounds so hard I can hear it. “Is that the baby?”
Ally’s hand nearly crushes mine. The tech changes something on the machine.
And then — sound. Fast. Rhythmic. Filling the entire room.
I stop breathing. Nobody moves.
Ally’s eyes fly open. “What is that?”
The tech looks at her. “That’s your baby’s heartbeat.”
My knees stop working. I hit the chair harder than I mean to. Ally turns her head. Finally.
She looks at the monitor. “That’s—“ Her voice disappears.
The tech points to a tiny flicker on the screen. “Right there.”
“That’s our baby?”
“Yes.”
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
A sound comes out of Ally, and I fold. My forehead hits her hand. A sob tears out of me. Then another. I can’t stop them. I don’t try. Alive. Our baby is alive.
Ally’s fingers slide into my hair. “Ryan.” I nod against her hand. “Ryan, our baby is alive.”
“I know.” It barely comes out. I lift my head and find her face, wet and shaking and finally, finally looking.
“I love you. God, I love you both so much.” She’s crying too hard to answer.
I kiss her hand. Her wrist. The inside of her palm.
“You did it. You kept them safe. You’re so strong, baby, you have no idea. ”
The heartbeat keeps filling the room. Fast. Strong.
Alive. Mom covers her mouth. The first sob escapes anyway.
Darla turns away, both hands over her face, her shoulders shaking.
Nobody says anything. There’s nothing to say.
For a few seconds there’s nothing in the room but four people crying and our baby’s heartbeat.
Then Ally’s expression changes. Slowly. I know before she says it.
“Mom never heard this.”
Mom’s sob catches. Darla lowers her hands.
“Ally.”
“She saw the pictures. I showed them to her. She touched them. She kept staring at them.” A tear runs into Ally’s hair. “She said they were beautiful, even though you can’t even tell what you’re looking at.” My throat closes. “But she never heard this.” Ally looks at me. “She would’ve loved this.”
“Yeah.” My voice cracks. “She would’ve loved it.”
“She would’ve cried.”
Mom loses it completely, lowering her forehead to Ally’s arm. Darla wipes at her face.
“She would’ve been a mess,” Darla says, wrecked.
Ally’s face crumples. “She never gets to hear it. She’ll never hold them.” Mom gets out of her chair, bends carefully over Ally, and wraps both arms around her. Ally breaks. Completely. “I need her. I need my mom. I don’t know how to do this without her.”
“You don’t have to know today,” Mom sobs.
“I wanted her there. When I have the baby. I wanted her to hold our baby.”
Mom cries into Ally’s hair. Darla turns away again.
I can’t look at any of them. I look at the screen. At that tiny flicker. Alive. Jane is dead. Our baby is alive. There is no version of those two facts that fits together.
When the doctor comes in twenty minutes later, I’m ready. I’ve already opened a note on my phone.
Darla notices. Of course she does. “Ryan.”
“What?”
“Of course you have a list.” Her eyes are soft.
“I’m making one.”
“I know.”
The doctor pulls a stool toward the bed. I sit forward. “The ultrasound is reassuring. The pregnancy is viable. Baby is measuring appropriately, and cardiac activity is present.”
I type. Viable. Measuring right. Heartbeat.
“But she was bleeding.”
“Yes. There’s a subchorionic hematoma — a collection of blood between the chorion and the uterine wall.”
I stop. “Is it dangerous?”
“It can raise the risk of complications depending on its size and how it progresses. But many resolve, and many pregnancies continue normally.”
“Will hers?”
“I can’t promise you that.”
My fingers stop over the screen. Ally goes still. Mom’s hand closes around hers.
“What can we do?”
“Ryan,” Darla says quietly. I look at her. She gives me the smallest shake of her head. One thing at a time.
I look back at the doctor. “What can we do?”
“Right now, we monitor. Follow-up with her OB. Repeat imaging. Watch her symptoms.” I type it. “Increased bleeding, worsening pain or cramping, dizziness, fainting, fever — any of those, come back to the emergency department.”
I type every one. She gives me the thresholds she wants us using before I have to ask twice, and I write those down too. “Anything else?”