12. Heath #2
I watched her finish a conversation with the event coordinator and finally step away from the chaos, moving toward a quiet corner of the ballroom where the chairs for the string quartet were set up. She sat down heavily, her clipboard falling to the floor, her eyes closing.
I was at her side in seconds.
“Del.” I knelt down in front of her, close enough to see the fine lines of exhaustion around her eyes. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” She didn’t open her eyes. “Go away.”
“You don’t look fine. You look like you’re about to pass out.”
“I said I’m fine. I’m fi-”
She didn’t finish the sentence. Her eyes rolled back, her body went limp, and she slumped forward off the chair.
I caught her before she hit the ground, pulling her against my chest, her head lolling against my shoulder. She was so light in my arms. When had she lost so much weight?
“Help!” The word tore out of me, raw and desperate. “Someone call an ambulance! Now!”
The ballroom erupted into chaos. People were running, shouting, someone was on the phone with emergency services. I didn’t care about any of it. I just held my wife, stroking her hair, whispering her name over and over.
“Del. Delphine. Come on, sweetheart, wake up. Please wake up. Please.”
She didn’t respond. Her breathing was shallow, her face waxen. I pressed my fingers to her throat and felt her pulse, too fast and too weak, fluttering under my touch.
The next few minutes were a blur. Paramedics arriving. Delphine being lifted onto a stretcher. Someone trying to tell me I couldn’t ride in the ambulance, and me telling them very clearly that I was her husband and I was not leaving her side.
They let me ride.
I held her hand the entire way to the hospital, my thumb tracing circles on her palm, my eyes fixed on her face.
The paramedics were doing things around me, checking vitals, starting an IV, speaking in medical jargon I couldn’t follow.
I just kept holding her hand, kept talking to her, kept willing her to open her eyes.
“I’m here,” I told her. “I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere. Just hold on, Del. Please hold on.”
At the hospital, they wheeled her through double doors that I wasn’t allowed to follow through. A nurse stopped me with a gentle hand on my arm, telling me to wait in the family room, telling me the doctor would come find me as soon as they knew more.
I sat in that waiting room for what felt like hours. My leg bounced. My hands shook. I stared at the door, willing it to open, willing someone to come tell me my wife was okay.
When a nurse finally appeared and told me I could see her, I nearly knocked over a chair in my rush to follow.
Delphine was awake when I walked into the room. She was propped up in a hospital bed, an IV in her arm, her face still pale but her eyes open and focused. When she saw me, her expression flickered with a feeling I couldn’t identify. Surprise, maybe. Or resignation.
“Heath.” Her voice was hoarse. “You didn’t have to come.”
“Of course I had to come.” I moved to the chair beside her bed and sat down, resisting the urge to reach for her hand. “You collapsed in my arms, Del. Did you really think I was going to wait in the parking lot?”
She didn’t answer. Her eyes moved to the door, where a doctor was entering with a clipboard and a practiced smile.
“Mrs. Fairchild.” The doctor, a brisk woman with reading glasses pushed up into her hair, nodded at both of us. “Mr. Fairchild. I have good news. Your wife is going to be fine.”
The breath went out of me in a rush. “What happened? Why did she collapse?”
“Exhaustion, primarily. Dehydration. Low blood sugar.” The doctor glanced at Delphine with a gently reproachful look. “Have you been eating regularly, Mrs. Fairchild?”
Delphine’s cheeks flushed. “I’ve been busy.”
“Busy isn’t an excuse, especially in your condition. You need to be taking better care of yourself.”
I frowned. “What condition?”
The doctor looked at me, then at Delphine, then back at me. Her brow furrowed slightly.
“The pregnancy,” she said, clearly assuming this was information I already had. “I’m going to prescribe some supplements, and I want you to schedule a follow up with your OB as soon as possible. The baby is fine, but you need to be more careful about your nutrition and stress levels.”
The floor went out from under me. The pregnancy. She had said the pregnancy the way you say a thing everyone in the room already knows, and I was the only person in it who had not known, and I felt the last three months rearrange themselves around that one word.
I turned to look at Delphine. She was staring at the wall, her jaw tight, her hands clenched in the hospital blanket.
“Baby?” I whispered. My voice came out cracked and strange, barely recognizable as my own. “What baby?”
The doctor looked between us, realization dawning on her face. “I... I apologize. I assumed you knew.”
My mouth had stopped working. So had my mind. I just sat there, staring at my wife, the word echoing in my head.
Baby. Baby. Baby.
Delphine finally turned to look at me, and I saw the tears she was fighting to hold back.
“Surprise,” she said quietly.