20. Ryan #2
“Rest. Given the bleeding and the trauma today, I want her taking it very easy until her OB sees her. Nothing strenuous. No heavy lifting. Short walks around the house if she’s steady. Someone nearby when she showers, in case she’s dizzy. Pelvic rest until her OB clears her.”
Ally closes her eyes. I don’t care. I make the doctor define pelvic rest, because I am not guessing, and I write down exactly what she says.
“School?”
“Not right away. Reassess with her OB, especially given the trauma.” I type it.
“What else?”
The doctor pauses. Then her expression softens.
“That’s the important part. But if you’re asking what people forget—“ She looks at Ally.
“Emotional support.” I stop typing. “She lost her mother today. She was assaulted. She may have reactions over the next hours and days that neither of you expect. Fear. Anger. Panic. Numbness. She needs support for that too.”
I type it. Trauma support.
Darla moves beside me. “I’m handling that.”
“I’ll help. Tell me what to do.”
“Ryan.” Her face softens.
“Tell me the things I can do.”
Darla looks at me for a long second. Then crouches beside my chair. “Stay. Listen when she tells you what she needs. Don’t decide what she’s supposed to feel. Don’t make her talk when she doesn’t want to. Don’t panic if she cries. Don’t panic if she doesn’t.”
I type it. Darla sees me doing it, and her face breaks. “Jesus, Ryan. You don’t have to write that part down.”
“Yes, I do.” My voice cracks. “Because I don’t know how to do this.” Nobody says anything. I stare at the screen. The words blur. “I don’t know how to help somebody whose mom just died. I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.” Mom starts crying again. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Darla puts her hand over mine. “Neither do we.” I look at her. She’s crying too. “There’s no right way to do this.”
“I need one. I need something.”
“I know.” She squeezes my hand. “So start with staying.”
I look at Ally. She’s crying silently. Watching me. “Okay.”
I type one more word. Stay. Then lock my phone.
The doctor goes through discharge again.
I make her repeat two things. Darla catches something I miss.
Mom asks about follow-up. I write down every number — the OB office, the ER, the doctor’s name, the medication and dosage and the time they gave it, the heartbeat.
I already wrote the heartbeat down. I check anyway.
Still there. Then I screenshot the whole note and send it to myself, to Mom, to Darla.
Because phones die and things get deleted and people forget. I’m not forgetting a fucking thing.
Eventually the doctor leaves. The room gets quiet. Ally has the new ultrasound pictures in her lap, her thumb tracing the edge of one. I watch her for a while.
Then she whispers, “Where’s Tobias?”
There it is. “At home.”
“Our house?”
“Yeah.”
“Who’s with him?”
“Everybody. Dad hasn’t left him.”
“My Walter.” Her voice cracks on it.
“Yeah. Danny hasn’t left either, not since he carried him over. Becca’s there. Katya too.”
Her body loosens by maybe half an inch with each name. “Katya’s good with him. She doesn’t make him talk. She just sits with you.”
Something passes across Darla’s face. “No,” Darla says softly. “She won’t.”
Ally looks down at the ultrasound pictures. “Does he know?” Nobody moves. Her eyes lift. “Ryan.”
“No.”
Her lips part. “He doesn’t know Mom died?”
“No. Dad wouldn’t let anybody tell him.” She stares at me. “He said that’s your decision. Whether you tell Tobias. Whether you want Dad there. Or Darla. Mom. Me. Everybody. Nobody.” I bring her hand to my mouth. “And if you can’t do it, you say that, and one of us does it for you.”
Her breathing changes. “He thinks she’s coming home.”
I can’t lie to her. “Yeah.” Her face crumples. Mom gets out of her chair. “He’s waiting for her. I promised him.” Her voice breaks. “I promised all three.”
“You promised you’d come back,” Mom says gently. “And you did.”
Ally starts crying, and Mom pulls her carefully close, and it all comes out of her small and broken — he’s going to be so sad, he’s going to want her, I can’t give her back to him, I should’ve gotten her out sooner.
Mom pulls back and cups her face. “No. You do not put this on yourself. Your mother made a choice today. She chose you. She chose Tobias. She chose that baby. And Roman took her life for it. That belongs to him. Not you.”
Ally breaks against her. Darla reaches for them both.
I sit there holding Ally’s hand while all three of them cry, and I look at the ultrasound picture on the blanket.
Tiny. Grainy. Alive. Jane saw pictures like this.
She knew exactly what Ally was trying to save — exactly what she was risking everything for.
And when the moment came, she shoved Tobias toward safety.
Put herself between Victor and Ally. Between Roman and both of her children.
She got all three of them out. She just didn’t make it out with them.
I look at the list on my phone. Symptoms. Medication. Appointments. Numbers. Heartbeat. Stay.
I can’t fix what happened today. I can’t bring Jane back.
I can’t make Tobias understand why his mother isn’t coming home.
I can’t promise Ally our baby will be okay.
But I can memorize every instruction. I can watch every symptom.
I can get her to every appointment. I can make sure she rests. I can stay.
So that’s what I’m going to do.
The house is quiet when we get home. Most of the cars are gone.
A few still sit in the driveway, but nothing like earlier — no people spilling through the front door, no phones ringing, no Arthur talking over three other people while Dad tries to talk over him.
Just the porch light. The kitchen light.
The lamp Mom always leaves on beside the stairs.
Dad is at the kitchen table, his phone in front of him, a cup of coffee beside it gone untouched. He looks up when the door opens. Mom comes in first. Then Ally and me.
Dad’s chair nearly hits the floor. “Ally.”
He crosses the room before I get the door shut behind us.
Ally makes a tiny, broken sound. “Walter.”
He catches her carefully — one arm around her back, one hand cradling the back of her head. Ally doesn’t give a damn about careful. She wraps both arms around him and clings. Then she starts crying again.
“I’ve got you,” Dad says.
“I tried. I tried to help her. She wouldn’t wake up. I kept telling her to.” Dad’s eyes squeeze shut. “I couldn’t—“
“No.” He pulls her tighter. “Don’t do that.”
Ally buries her face against his chest. “I couldn’t save her.”
Dad’s voice breaks. “That wasn’t yours to do.” He just holds her, his hand moving slow over her hair, again and again, until her sobs finally quiet. Then he pulls back, brings his hands up to her face, and his eyes move over her bruises. Her split lip. Then lower. “Baby?”
“The baby’s okay.”
His eyes snap to mine. “Heartbeat?”
“Strong. One-sixty-one when they measured it — right where they want it.” Some of the tension leaves his shoulders.
“Measuring right?”
“Yeah. Right on track.”
“The bleeding?”
“Slowed. Not stopped.” His face tightens.
“They found a subchorionic hematoma — a pocket of blood along the uterine wall. Small. Low, away from the placenta, which is what you want. They can’t say for sure the wall caused it, and they can’t promise it won’t get worse.
So we watch her.” I pull out my phone before he can ask.
“Heavy bleeding, large clots, worsening pain, dizziness, weakness, fever — any of it, we go straight back. Pelvic rest, no lifting, no stairs she doesn’t need.
OB follow-up and a repeat scan. I wrote down the medication, the dosage, and the time they gave it.
It’s already in your phone — I sent it.”
Dad looks at me for a long second. Then, quiet: “You sent it.”
“To you, Mom, and Darla. Phones die.”
Something in his face eases, and it isn’t about the list. It’s that I did the thing he’d have done. He nods once.
“Good.” Then he starts to open his mouth again—
“Walter.” Mom steps closer. “The baby is good. Ally is good. Ryan made the doctor go through half of it twice. Breathe.”
Dad looks at her. Then at Ally. And everything in his face changes. His eyes fill. “I was scared.” Ally’s face crumples. “When Cassandra called and said you were bleeding—“ He can’t finish. Ally reaches for him and he pulls her back into his arms. “I wanted to come.”
“No.” She shakes her head against him. “Tobias needed you.”
“He wouldn’t let go of me. I couldn’t leave him.”
“Good. You stayed with him.”
“Every second.”
“Thank you.”
“Never thank me for that.” Dad kisses the top of her head. “Never.”
She stays there another second. “Tobias?”
“Upstairs. Asleep. Finally. He ate — sandwich, strawberries, a little of whatever Katya got into him. He cried a lot. He asked for you all night.”
Ally closes her eyes. “And Mom?” Dad’s face breaks. He nods. “What did you tell him?”
“That you were both with the doctors.”
She looks down. Nobody fills the silence. Then Ally looks toward the stairs. “I need to see him.”
Dad takes her hand. “Come on.”
We go upstairs once. That’s all she’s doing tonight. Dad on one side of her, me on the other, Mom and Darla behind us.
Halfway up, I look at her. “Dizzy?”
“No.”
“Cramping?”
She turns her head, tired — so tired. “No dizziness. Cramps aren’t worse. Nothing feels different. I’ll tell you. I promise.”
I press my mouth to her temple. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” Her fingers squeeze mine. “Stop looking at me like I’m going to break.”
“Can’t.” That gets the ghost of something on her face. Not a smile. Close.
We reach the second floor. Dad leads us down the hall, past my room, then stops two doors before it. I frown. The door’s cracked open, warm light spilling into the hallway. Dad pushes it wider.
And I stop.