Chapter Forty-Three Drea
When I opened my eyes, I found myself in my bedroom in New York. Frowning, I rose up in bed. Wait, what was I doing here? I was supposed to be in the hospital.
I brought my hand to my shoulder. There was no wound. What the hell was going on?
At the sound of the shower running, I threw back the covers. Padding across the floor, I headed into the bathroom. When I saw Leo in the shower, I gasped.
“What are you doing here?”
He peered at me through the glass door. “What does it look like I’m doing?”
“I mean, what are you doing here at the house?”
Leo paused in scrubbing his chest. “Drea, do you feel all right?”
I blinked at him in confusion. “Don’t you remember? We had a fight. And then I was shot, and I was in the operating room.”
Frowning, Leo turned off the shower. He stepped out and came over to me. “You must’ve had some hell of a dream.”
I shook my head. “No, it was real.”
“Babe, we didn’t have a fight. And you sure as hell weren’t in the operating room.” He reached over and grabbed a towel. “You haven’t been in the hospital for weeks.”
“I was?”
“Yeah, when you had Luca.”
My heart shuddered to a stop. “I had the baby?”
Leo paused in toweling off. “Maybe we should call the doctor.”
“No, I don't need one.” I brought my hand to my forehead. “I’m just a little confused.”
“Which is exactly why I should call. I read about this in that book you gave me. Confusion can be a part of postpartum eclampsia.”
Walking away from him, I headed for the nursery. Desperation filled me to get to Luca. When I entered the doorway, I practically sprinted over to the crib.
I gasped at the sight of his sleeping form. Leaning forward, I gripped the rails of the crib to see him better. He had a head full of jet black hair. As I searched his face for features of his father’s, I didn’t see any.
To my shock, he looked just like Leo. “How can that be?” I whispered.
And then I was sucked out of the nursery and back into my bed. A doctor stood over me. He pulled back my eyelid and flashed a light in my eyes.
What are you doing? Can’t you see I’m awake?
“No change,” he reported.
“What about the other doctors? What could they have done?” Leo asked.
“So far they haven’t been able to offer any clinical advice,” the doctor replied regretfully.
“Bullshit. There has to be something you can do. This is the modern age. Women don’t die in childbirth.”
“I’m afraid they do.” The doctor placed a hand on Leo’s shoulder. “If there's no change in the next twelve hours, we're going to have to start talking about some tough decisions.”
Decisions about what?
But they didn’t seem to hear me. Leo? Leo, answer me, dammit?
Ignoring me, he walked the doctor to the door. But it wasn’t my bedroom door anymore. It was the sliding kind you saw in an ICU bay.
Fear crashed over me. I was in the ICU. I was…dying.
No, no, no! I couldn’t let this happen. I couldn’t leave Leo, and Luca needed me.
I had to fight. I had to fight with everything I had within me not to leave my loves.