Chapter 24 #2
“Scorpio moon,” I corrected. “But…no. I don’t remember any of that.”
What was going on? I hadn’t lost consciousness because I had been talking, but what about the blood?
“Beau,” I asked timidly, pointedly darting my eyes toward my hips, “am I…?”
Beau took the hint and glanced down. His eyes widened.
“What’s wrong?” I said as my heart started to race. “How bad is it? Oh God, this is white leather…”
“Forget about the leather,” he said quickly, his eyes straining at the corners. “Hey, remember how you used to annoy everyone with your little fun facts?”
I frowned. “My facts weren’t annoying.”
He grabbed my hand and held it between both of his. “Start talking. Tell me all your little facts about the Art Deco era. Or serial killers. Or lawyer stuff. Anything—just don’t stop.”
I took in a breath, but another big contraction stole the air from me.
I gritted my teeth as I toughed out the pain, trying to search my brain for any information to play along with his little game.
I could have lectured for hours on the progression of Art Nouveau into Art Deco, or rattled off my favorite stories from cases I had worked, or even done a deep dive on some of the most depraved murders from my books and true crime documentaries, but I didn’t have the energy to talk like I wanted.
So, I stuck with simple animal facts that I had learned when I was a kid.
I took in a short breath once the contraction waned. “Did…did you know the opossum is the only marsupial in North America?”
“I did know that, actually.” Beau squeezed my hand. “Tell me more.”
“Did you know elephants are pregnant for eighteen months?”
“See? It could be worse.”
“Beau.”
“Sorry. You’re doing great, sugar. Keep going.”
I moaned low in my throat as another contraction ramped up. Fuck me sideways with a rake, were the contractions ever going to stop? Beau’s thumb ran over my knuckles as I rode through the next few minutes of torture.
“Sh-sharks don’t have bones!” I nearly shouted as I fought through the lingering pain in my abdomen. “Female praying mantises bite the male’s heads off while mating!”
“Fascinating,” Beau said. “You nearly bit my head off while mating too.”
Sweat beaded on my temples. “Di-did you know an echidna’s penis has five heads?”
“Shit, really?” Chuck said from the cockpit.
Beau looked past the back of my seat into the cockpit. “How much longer until we land at the hospital?”
“Ten minutes, max,” Chuck answered.
Beau’s throat dipped and his eyes glanced to my hips again.
His mental calculator whirred behind his glassy eyes, betraying his calm face.
His grip on my hands tightened—whatever math he had done using my bleeding and the time we had left until I could get medical care did not yield an assuring result.
The man who wanted nothing more than to keep me might actually lose me.
Dying in childbirth was not something I ever considered, but I couldn’t ignore the gravity of the situation. If the worst were to happen, I couldn’t be a selfish coward again.
If he couldn’t have me, he could at least have my truth.
“Beau, I’m sorry,” I rasped. “You-you’re a much better man than I ever thought you could be. I’m sorry I can’t be the woman you need. I’m weak, and terrified of commitment, and I love the shoes your mother hates—”
“The fuck are you doing?” Beau demanded. “We have less than ten minutes. Don’t you start acting like you’re—”
“Listen, I’m trying to—”
“Fun facts,” he ordered. “Don’t you dare exhaust yourself when we’re almost at the finish line. You broke up with me, I get it. Or we never broke up because we were never together, whatever. None of that matters now. I just need you to stay awake.”
“But—”
“God damn it, Olivia!” he said through gritted teeth. “The next words out of your mouth better be ‘Did you know?’ or I swear I will never speak to you again!”
I clamped my teeth down and glared at him. Another contraction was coming, but I wasn’t going to just let him win. I let out a quiet, shaking breath and looked into his pretty blue eyes.
“Did you know that I love you?” I whispered.
His face softened. His lips parted to say something, but then the helicopter door slid open.
“Come on, mama!” Chuck called from outside the door. “Let’s see those babies!”
Beau’s arms quickly slid under me and picked me up.
I huffed out a breath as he pushed me into his chest. “We landed already?”
“I told you it would be a smooth flight,” Beau said as he stepped out of the helicopter.
I blinked in the bright lights—we had landed on top of the hospital. Four nurses and a gurney waited for us just outside the helipad. Beau gently set me down on top of the rolling bed and then all I could see was a blur of bodies and hands.
The bed rolled into the brightly-lit hospital. I confirmed my date of birth with a nurse before she stuck a hospital bracelet around my wrist. A little plastic clamp on my fingertip measured my oxygen. Fuzzy pink and blue bands encircled my belly and tracked two heartbeats.
“How far along are you?” a nurse asked.
“Um…thirty-five weeks and a day,” I responded, rolling my head against my pillow as I looked around the triage room. “Or…two days. Is it after midnight? Beau, what time is it? Beau?”
I looked down, trying to find him, and got a glimpse of my body. All I could see were wires and monitors and tubes. My fist gripped the black leather straps of my purse that was wedged between my hip and the side of the bed. I hadn’t even remembered grabbing it.
Beau’s blonde head popped up amongst the crowd of nurses. “I’m here, sugar. It’s a little after 2 a.m.” His head turned toward the screen of one of the monitors. “The twins have good heart rates, and it looks like you’re about to have another contraction—”
I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth, trying my damn best to breathe through the contraction like Tyson had told me. When I opened my eyes, I found Dr. Ornelas at the foot of my bed, examining me. She said something inaudible to a nurse before she quickly left the room.
Two nurses held my arms as they stuck IV ports in the back of my left hand and the crook of my right elbow.
“What’s happening?” I shakily whispered.
“We’re going to the OR,” a nurse replied without taking her eyes off my arm. “Ready to meet your babies?”
My heart seized. I had a feeling this would happen, but I wasn’t ready. Not at all.
The bed rolled out of the room. I gripped the bedrail and tried to swivel my head around. “Wait, Beau has to come with me. He’s the father!”
“No time,” the nurse at my right responded. “You have to go under general anesthesia. He’ll be waiting for you when you wake up.”
“No!” I cried. My hands started to shake. The bed was rolling much too fast. “He’s been with me this whole time, I can’t finish this without him. I need him to—”
“Olivia, I’m here,” Beau said.
I turned to my left. My star quarterback had caught up with us and was keeping pace at my bedside.
I strained to lift my purse a couple of inches. If Beau couldn’t go into the operating room with me, they wouldn’t let Mom in either.
“Here—take Mom,” I said.
Without question, Beau took the purse from me and held it with both hands.
“Anything else?” he asked.
Tears lined my eyes that I couldn’t blink away. My chest shook with every breath. “T-tell me I can do hard things.”
“You can do hard things,” Beau said with a smile. “You’re a badass. You’ve toughed it out through worse. All you have to do now is take a little rest and then we get to snuggle our babies, OK?”
It sounded simple enough, but I couldn’t do it. I shook my head over and over.
Beau grabbed my hand. “You beat Herringbone and you can beat this surgery.” His eyes shone like glass marbles and he swallowed. “You win—that’s just what you do. I love you, Olivia Adams.”
The end of the bed pushed open the doors to the operating room and my hand slipped out of Beau’s hold. I rolled my head back onto my pillow, tracking his face as long as I could before the white doors swung shut.
I looked up and found a massive lamp of blue and yellow hexagonal lights like a honeycomb directly above me. My heart threatened to pound right out of my chest. A woman in a surgical mask appeared at the edge of my vision.
She put a clear mask over my nose and mouth. “OK, take a breath and count backward from one hundred.”
“No,” I shakily responded, my breath fogging up the mask. “I want Beau here.”
A masked smile reached the woman’s brown eyes. “You’re a stubborn one, aren’t you?”
“That’s what Beau says…” I said breathlessly.
Then my eyes fluttered closed and darkness swallowed me.