Chapter 3
Molly
For one sleep-stupid second I think I've spilled water, knocked over the glass on my nightstand, an accident I can fix. Then I move and feel the warmth spreading beneath me, and my hand goes to my stomach before my brain catches up.
"Taz," I whisper.
His name comes out wrong, this strangled half-whisper, and I'm already throwing back the covers. The streetlight through the curtains catches the stain spreading across our white sheets, and it's dark, darker than I want it to be, and my whole body goes cold.
"Taz!" This time it comes out a scream.
He's awake before I finish saying it the second time. I don't know how he moves that fast: one second he's dead asleep and the next he's on his feet, no shirt, no boots, crossing to my side of the bed in two strides.
"I'm bleeding," I say, and my voice sounds like it belongs to someone else. "I'm bleeding, there's blood, I think—"
"I've got you." He doesn't look at the sheets. He looks at me. "Put your arms around my neck."
"My shoes," I gasp, twisting toward the floor. "I need—"
"You don't need anything." He scoops me up like I weigh nothing, one arm under my knees and the other behind my back, and he's already moving toward the door. "I've got you. I've got you. Keep breathing."
I want to tell him I am breathing, that's not the problem, the problem is the blood, but he's taking the stairs two at a time and I'm clinging to his neck with my fingernails digging into his bare shoulder.
The garage door seems to take forever to open.
He sets me in the passenger seat of his truck so gently it makes my chest ache, and waits until I've buckled in before he gets behind the wheel and backs out.
"It might be nothing," I say, but I don't believe it. My hand is on my stomach and I'm trying to feel a flutter, a kick, any proof that there's still a heartbeat in there. "The books say spotting is normal. First trimester spotting is really common, that's what the book said."
"That's right." He runs the first red light without slowing down. "That's exactly right. Common. Normal."
"But this is more than spotting," I say, and my voice cracks down the middle.
He doesn't answer. His jaw is set so tight I can see the muscle jumping beneath his stubble, and his right hand finds mine in the dark and squeezes hard enough to hurt. I don't pull away. It needs to hurt. I need his grip to feel besides the terror climbing up my throat.
"Please," he says, and I don't know if he's talking to me or to God or to the baby. "Please, please, please."
The second red light, the third. I've never seen him drive like this, reckless and desperate, and some distant part of my brain notes that he hasn't been inside a church since his father's funeral but here he is praying out loud, badly, stumbling over words that sound like they're being dragged out of him by force.
"Our Father, who art—no, that's not—God, please. Please let this baby be okay. Don't take this from her. From us. I'll do anything. I'll be better. I'll—" His voice cracks. "Please."
I'm crying. I don't know when I started, but my face is wet and my nose is running and I can't wipe it because I won't let go of his hand, I won't let go of my stomach, I'm holding onto both of them like I can physically keep everything together if I just grip hard enough.
"I want this baby," I hear myself say. "I know I was scared, I know I wasn't sure if we were ready, but I want it. I want it so much."
"Me too." He blows through another intersection. "God, Molly. Me too."
The hospital parking lot is almost empty at this hour.
He pulls up directly to the emergency entrance, in a spot that definitely isn't a spot, and he's out of the truck and around to my door before I can move.
He carries me through the automatic doors and up to the intake desk, and his voice when he speaks to the nurse is steady and clear despite the fact that he's barefoot and shirtless and wild-eyed with fear.
"My wife is pregnant," he tells the nurse at the desk, and his voice doesn't shake at all. "Seven weeks along, and she's bleeding a lot."
They move fast after that. A wheelchair, a curtain, a paper gown.
Someone takes my blood pressure while someone else asks me questions I can barely understand: when did the bleeding start, how much blood, any cramping, any pain.
I answer as best I can while Taz refuses the chair they offer him.
He kneels beside my gurney instead, one knee on the cold tile floor, his forehead pressed against my knuckles where they're wrapped around the bed rail.
"I'm not going anywhere," he says against my skin. "Hold on to me."
I think about the last two weeks. The missed dinners, the unanswered calls, the way I've felt like a guest in my own house. Kendall has been in our kitchen, at our breakfast table, touching his arm. I've wanted him to look at me like this for weeks. It shouldn't have taken blood.
It shouldn't take an emergency to get my husband back.
But he's here. He's here, and his hand is shaking where it grips mine, and I can see a tear tracking down his cheek that he doesn't bother to wipe away.
"Don't leave me," I whisper.
"Never." He kisses my knuckles. "I swear to God, Molly. Never."
The ultrasound tech is young, younger than me, with a nose ring and kind eyes. She explains what she's going to do while she warms the gel between her palms, and I appreciate the consideration even though I can barely hear her over the roaring in my ears.
"This might be a little cold anyway," she says. "Sorry."
The gel hits my stomach and I flinch, and Taz's hand tightens around mine. The tech moves the wand across my skin, pressing and adjusting, her eyes fixed on the monitor. I can't see the screen from this angle and I'm grateful. I don't want to look until she tells me what I'm looking at.
The silence stretches. I watch her face, trying to find an answer before she speaks.
"There we go." Her voice is so calm it takes a second to register. "See that little flicker?"
She turns the monitor toward us, and there it is. A tiny blob on the screen, barely recognizable as anything, but in the center of it there's a flutter. A pulse. A rhythm that doesn't match mine.
"That's the heartbeat," the tech says. "Strong and steady. One-sixty beats per minute, right in the normal range."
Taz makes a sound I've never heard from him before.
It's somewhere between a laugh and a sob, this broken exhale that seems to come from somewhere deep in his chest. He drops his head to the edge of the gurney and his shoulders shake, and he's crying properly now, really crying, the way he cried at his father's funeral.
"The baby's okay?" I need to hear her say it again. I need her to be certain.
"We can see the heartbeat." She adjusts the wand slightly. "Let me finish the images so the doctor can explain what they show."
I stare at the screen, at that tiny flickering heartbeat, and I start crying too. Relief knocks the air out of my lungs. Our baby is alive. Our baby is okay.
"The doctor will talk you through the bleeding and the follow-up," the tech continues. "I know waiting is hard. I'll get these images to her."
Taz lifts his head. His face is a mess, tear-streaked and blotchy. "We can wait. Just tell us what we need to do next."
By four-thirty they've moved us to a recovery room, and a doctor with reading glasses pushed up into her gray curls pulls a chair close.
"The scan shows a subchorionic hematoma," she says.
"A collection of blood beside the pregnancy.
It's common, and it usually resolves on its own.
Avoid strenuous activity and sex until your follow-up.
You can move around gently; you don't need to stay in bed.
" She turns to Taz. "And keep her stress as low as you possibly can.
We'll arrange a follow-up scan and talk through what to watch for before you go home. "
"Did I cause it?" I ask.
"Nothing you've told me suggests that. I don't want you leaving here blaming yourself." She brings her chair closer. "Tell me what worries you most."
"Going home and not knowing whether I should come back," I tell her.
She opens the discharge sheet between us. "Then let's start with that."
She takes me through it line by line, then looks between me and Taz. "At home, help her rest. You don't have to manage every worry alone."
Taz nods as if she's handing him marching orders. Like he's memorizing every word and planning to tattoo them somewhere he'll never forget.
"Low stress," he says. "Got it."
"I know that's easier said than done." The doctor smiles at me. "But try. Lean on your support system. Let people take care of you."
After she leaves, Taz picks up the pamphlet. His thumb leaves a damp crescent on the paper.
"Would you like the hospital version or the auction version?" he asks, holding it up like a program at a sale barn.
"Whichever one doesn't charge us for parking," I say.
He clears his throat. "Ladies and gentlemen, we have a fine specimen of a terrifying word here today. Subchorionic. Rolls right off the tongue if you swallow a rake first."
"I don't think that's how they teach pronunciation in medical school," I tell him.
"I'm bringing in the livestock department. Lower tuition. Better hats." He lowers his voice to a rapid auctioneer's chant. "Do I hear follow-up? Got a follow-up, looking for rest, do I hear somebody taking the laundry upstairs so the pregnant lady doesn't have to?"
"Sold to the idiot who left his boots at home," I say, and point at his bare feet.
He bangs an invisible gavel on the bed rail. "He has excellent references. Strong back. Can lift a wife without dropping the pamphlet."
I laugh, and it catches painfully in my throat. He immediately stops.
"Keep going," I say. "If you look frightened again, I'm going to start."