27. Anika
— ? —
Anika
The hospital smell made me nauseous.
We’d been there for four hours. Blood tests. Ultrasound. A physical examination that felt invasive and endless. Questions from nurses and doctors and technicians, all of them speaking rapid Italian that Neil somehow understood and I couldn’t follow.
He translated everything. Stayed calm. Handled the paperwork and the insurance and the logistics with the same efficiency he brought to everything else.
But his hands were shaking.
I noticed it during the ultrasound. The technician had the wand on my stomach, the screen showing nothing but gray static that I couldn’t interpret, and Neil was standing beside me holding my hand. His grip was steady, but his fingers trembled against my palm.
“There,” the technician said, pointing at the screen. “You see? The heartbeat.”
I looked. Saw a tiny flutter in the gray. A pulse of life, barely visible, impossibly fragile.
Neil made a sound of relief.
“Healthy,” the technician said. “Everything looks good.”
Everything looked good. The baby was fine. I was fine. Just some bruises from the seatbelt, nothing that wouldn’t heal.
We’d been lucky. Impossibly, miraculously lucky.
The doctor who gave us the final results was a woman with kind eyes and silver hair. She spoke English with a musical accent and treated us with the gentle efficiency of someone who’d delivered news like this a thousand times.
“You should rest for the next few days,” she told me. “No strenuous activity. And perhaps…” She glanced at Neil. “Perhaps have someone else do the driving for a while.”
Neil flinched like she’d slapped him.
“Thank you,” I said. “We will.”
We left the hospital in a car Neil had arranged. A driver this time, a silent Italian man who navigated the coastal roads with the casual confidence of someone who’d been doing it his whole life.
Neil sat in the back with me. He hadn’t let go of my hand since the ultrasound. His fingers were still trembling.
“You can let go,” I said quietly. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“But I can’t.” He didn’t let go.
The hotel room was exactly as we’d left it. Breakfast dishes still on the table. My bag open on the bed. The pregnancy test wrapper still in the bathroom trash, evidence of a morning that felt like a lifetime ago.
“I’ll run you a bath,” Neil said. “You should rest.”
“I’m fine, Neil.”
“You were in a car accident. You should rest.”
“The doctor said I was fine.”
“And to rest. That’s what she said. So you’re going to rest.”
He was using his CEO voice. The one that made people jump. The one that closed deals and ended arguments and got things done.
I should have been annoyed. Instead, I just felt tired.
“Fine,” I said. “A bath sounds nice.”
He went to the bathroom. I heard water running, the squeak of faucet handles, the splash of bath salts being poured. He was in there for a long time, longer than it should have taken to fill a tub.
When he came back, his eyes were red.
“Ready,” he said.
He helped me undress like I was fragile, like I might break. Normally I would have protested, insisted I could do it myself, but tonight I let him. There was something he needed to do, some way he needed to take care of me, and I could give him that.
The water was perfect. Hot but not too hot. Lavender-scented, probably from the hotel’s complimentary bath products. I sank into it and felt my muscles loosen, felt the tension of the day start to drain away.
Neil sat on the edge of the tub.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said.
“I looked at my phone. Again. When it mattered most.”
“The truck was in the wrong lane.”
“And I wasn’t paying attention.” He stared at the water, not at me. “That’s the whole point, isn’t it? That’s what I do. I look away at the wrong moment. I get distracted by things that don’t matter while the things that do pass me by.”
“You can stop.”
“Can I?” Now he looked at me. His eyes were red-rimmed, exhausted, haunted by something I couldn’t reach. “Can I really? Because I thought I had. I thought two weeks of pulling weeds and sitting still meant I’d changed. And then the first moment I let my guard down…”
“You did for two weeks,” I said. “You did it. That means you can do it again.”
“What if I forget?”
“I’ll remind you.”
“And if I don’t listen?”
“Then I’ll remind you louder. That’s what partnership is. That’s what this is.”
He was quiet for a long moment. The water lapped gently against the sides of the tub.
“I don’t deserve you,” he said.
“Probably not. But you’ve got me anyway.”
He cried then.
I’d seen Neil emotional before. I’d seen him angry and frustrated and even sad. But I’d never seen him like this. Completely vulnerable. Tears streaming down his face, his shoulders shaking, his whole body surrendering to something he’d been holding back for hours.
I reached for his hand and held it while he fell apart.
Some things couldn’t be fixed. Some things just had to be felt. And this was one of them. The terror of what had almost happened. The guilt of having caused it. The overwhelming relief of survival mixed with the crushing weight of responsibility.
He cried until he couldn’t anymore. Until the tears stopped and his breathing steadied and he was just sitting there, empty and exhausted, still holding my hand.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
Eventually, the water went cold. He helped me out of the tub and wrapped me in a towel. Led me to the bed.
“Sleep,” he said. “I’ll be right here.”
I lay down. The sheets were soft, the pillows perfect. My body was exhausted, still processing the adrenaline of almost dying, the relief of survival, the weight of everything that had happened since I’d slid a pregnancy test across a breakfast table.
I slept on the far side of the bed.
Not to punish him. I just needed space to process. Needed time to sit with what had happened, what had almost happened, what it meant for our future.
Neil lay down on his side of the bed.
I could feel him not sleeping. Could feel the tension radiating off him, the guilt, the fear. Could hear his breathing, too shallow, too fast, the sound of a man who would spend all night staring at the ceiling and replaying every second of that half-second glance.
He didn’t sleep at all.