Chapter 45
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
ELLIE
I wake up to the rhythmic beep beep beep of monitors and the familiar hum of the air circulator I only associate with hospitals. Did I fall asleep at work?
My eyelids feel heavy, almost like they’re stuck together.
I flex my fingers and gently scratch the fabric under them.
Definitely not my sheets. And something is stuck to my wrist—an IV?
There’s a gentle, warm pressure around my ankle and it’s the only comforting thing I can focus on. Ugh, why is my brain so foggy?
I finally peel my eyes open a sliver and try to blink away the blur. I survey the room the best I can. I’m definitely in the hospital and I’m definitely a patient. What happened? I don’t remember coming here. I try to dig through my brain for my most recent memory.
Hockey. Right. I was in pain at the game. Did I get a ride to the hospital after all? Shit, I bet it was my appendix if I’m here.
I hear a monitor reflect my newly elevated heart rate and turn to look at it. My gaze catches on a large, slumped figure next to me. I blink a few more times to dispel the fuzziness and some of my anxiety melts away at the sight.
Matt’s head is resting next to my thigh, facing away from me. His hand is under the blanket near my feet. Ah, the gentle pressure on my ankle makes sense now. I stretch my fingers until they graze his soft hair, lightly touching the back of his scalp.
His head leaves its position so suddenly my fingers are frozen in midair.
Matt’s face is full of relief and something else. He leans forward and gently cups my face, planting soft kisses on my lips, eyes, cheeks, chin, hair. He’s saying something, but I can’t quite hear it. I strain my ears as he goes to kiss my temple and I finally make out his words.
“You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re okay,” he continues to mumble.
Involuntary tears collect at the corner of my eyes with Matt’s feather-like touches. I squeeze them tight. He pulls away and I feel his thumbs swipe under my eyes. I peel them back open to look at him.
“Hi, baby,” he breathes. “You scared the shit out of me. Please don’t do it again.” Matt sniffs and I notice the watery rim of his eyes.
“Sorry,” I croak-whisper. I sound awful, jeez. My mouth feels like sandpaper.
“I forgive you.” Matt gently offers me a sip of water from a cup I didn’t notice before returning it to the bedside table. He gives me a wobbly smile and brings one of my hands to his face. He holds it with both of his in front of his mouth.
I try to swallow, but it still feels like sand is lodged there.
“What happened?” I ask him. He opens his mouth, but then the door opens softly and a doctor walks in.
I don’t fully recognize her, but she looks familiar.
I think her name starts with an S? Maggie is behind her, and the sight brings me relief.
“Hi, Ellie,” the doctor says. “I don’t think we’ve worked together yet. I’m Dr. Farah Sultana from the OB-GYN department. How are you feeling?”
Everyone hears it as my heart rate picks up. OB-GYN?
I glance to Matt, eyes wide with panic, but he’s still looking at me with that same expression as before. I turn back to the doctor. “Fuzzy,” I finally come up with.
She gives me a warm smile. “That’s normal. And hopefully I can help clear everything up for you.”
As I listen to Dr. Sultana relay the last four hours of my life, all I can do is stare at her. I feel Matt’s eyes on me, but I can’t bring myself to look at him. I was pregnant?
And now…now I’m not. And I’m down a fallopian tube. Okay. I want to process all of this, but one feeling is stronger than all the rest.
I want my mom.
It’s a knee-jerk reaction I haven’t quite been able to knock.
When the nice doctor asks if I have any questions, I can only shake my head.
My eyes sting and I do my best to blink through it as she and Maggie leave the room with promises to check back in shortly.
My hand is still in Matt’s, against his lips.
I look up at the ceiling and close my eyes.
It’ll pass. It’ll pass. It’ll pass.
A few tears leak out the corner of my eyes and I squeeze them tighter. Matt makes a strangled noise next to me. “I’m okay,” I try to reassure him, but it sounds hoarse and shaky. “Just…over…whelmed.” My breath hitches in between syllables. Dammit.
When I turn my head to Matt and open my eyes I’m met with a blurry, pained expression on his face. I use the hand not in Matt’s to swipe at my eyes, careful of the IV port in my arm.
“This is a lot to process,” I whisper. “I didn’t even know I was—” An edge of panic creeps in. I remember Matt’s history.
“I know, baby,” he rushes to say. He nods and then kisses my hand again, keeping it tight against him.
He looks calm. Too calm. “Aren’t you…freaked out?”
Matt’s still looking at me. I don’t think he’s taken his eyes off me since I touched his hair. “I was plenty freaked out before you woke up,” he answers.
“What about the…the…” I can’t seem to say it. It doesn’t feel real.
“The pregnancy?”
I nod. Matt searches my face for a moment and then drops his forehead to the hand he’s holding in his.
I hear him exhale before he picks his head up to look at me. “You know that I’m in love with you, right?”
If it wasn’t for the monitor next to me, I’d think my heart stopped for a moment. I guess I was pretty sure he was, but there’s nothing like hearing it come out of his mouth. Matt is in love with me. All I’m capable of is a small dip of my head in stunned acknowledgment.
“Then you should know the only thing I was freaked out by was not knowing if you were okay. That’s all that mattered to me, all right? We can figure everything else out.”
My heart thumps heavily in my chest. “I…I’m in love with you too.”
Matt’s answering smile takes my breath away. “I know you are.”
He releases my hand and braces himself on the bed to lean forward and kiss me. It’s a soft touch of his lips to mine.
He pulls back just enough to look at me. “I’m sorry if this overwhelms you more. I had been trying to wait for a good time, but I needed you to know.” He swipes a finger along my cheek and then sits back down on the chair next to the bed.
“How long have you been waiting?”
He shrugs noncommittally. “A while.”
I smile at that as I try to adjust myself in the bed to sit up a little straighter. The tug of pain low in my abdomen makes me wince and I freeze. Matt immediately stands up, but I wave him off. “I’m fine, just going to use the remote to sit the bed up more instead.”
He hesitates and then sits back down. “Maybe we should call the nurse?”
“Matt, I am a nurse.”
“You’re a patient right now though,” he argues gently.
“I’ll ask for more pain meds next time they check on me, okay?”
He doesn’t seem satisfied with that answer, but eventually he nods then clears his throat and rests his hand on my leg. “Do you want to talk about—”
“Not yet,” I interrupt. He squeezes my leg and nods. “Where are your parents and Nate? Do they, um, know what happened?”
“I sent them back to the house. Nate’s dropping them off.
They all wanted to check in on you, but it’s late so they’ll come tomorrow during visiting hours.
” Matt rubs his thumb back and forth where his hand still rests.
“I gave them the overview, yeah. I hope that’s okay. They were really worried about you.”
“Yeah, it’s okay. A little awkward, but…” I finish with a shrug.
Matt scratches the back of his neck. “There’s, ah, someone else who’s going to be visiting you tomorrow too.” He looks nervous. “I probably should’ve checked with you first, but I was freaking out, and I didn’t want him to be in the dark and—”
“My dad’s coming?”
He nods. “His flight gets in tomorrow morning pretty early.”
“You called my dad for me? And he’s coming?”
“I didn’t want him to find out some other way and I thought you might want him here.
Sorry, baby, I just made a panicked judgment call.
” That thumb makes another swipe. “My mom was the one who brought it up,” he adds.
“I wasn’t thinking all that clearly.” His shoulder lifts.
“I reached out to Zoey to get his number, so she’ll be calling you to check in, I’m sure. I asked her to wait until tomorrow.”
It’s pretty common for patients to be emotional after surgery.
Sometimes it’s linked to medications, and other times we don’t really know specifically why it’s happening, just that it appears to be normal.
I think I’ll blame this persistent desire to cry on that and not the fact that my boyfriend is a walking green flag.
Who loves me. And now I get to see my dad for the first time in over six months.
“That was really thoughtful of you. Thank you,” I choke out. My eyes catch on the clock on the wall as I try to keep the tears at bay with some strategic room scanning. “You’re welcome to stay at my place tonight, since it’s so close. You’ve got to be tired.”
As if the universe heard me, the door opens and Maggie strolls in carrying some sheets, a blanket, and extra pillows.
“Hey, honey,” she says to me. She drops the bedding on the couch against the wall and turns back to us. “The bedding you asked for.” She nods at Matt. “You might find it lacking,” Maggie jokes with a wink, then shifts her focus to me. “You ready for some pain meds, Ellie?”
“She’s my favorite nurse,” Matt declares to me. “Other than you, of course.”
I roll my eyes and watch Maggie administer the medication in my IV, trying not to get emotional again thinking about Matt sleeping on that teeny, tiny couch.
Walking green flag, indeed.