Chapter 55 Ransome
RANSOME
“Where is she?”
I march up to the emergency desk and demand the attention of everyone there.
“Who are you referring to, sir?” the woman asks, but I am not in the mood to be nice.
“Amara Parker. She was brought in here less than an hour ago. She’s in labor.”
“Then she is on the sixth floor, sir. L&D,” she says flatly.
I don’t like her tone, but before I can say anything else, Maverick shuffles me away.
It’s no different when we get to the desk on the 6th floor, except that I ask a lot more questions.
“How far along is she?” I ask. Labor, not pregnancy.
“Her water was broken when she was brought in,” the nurse who is leading me down the hall says over her shoulder.
“How much time do we have?”
“Sir—”
“I want the best fucking OB you have in that room, do you understand me?” I bark out.
“Sir, I need you to lower your voice. There are other patients—”
“I don’t give a fuck about other patients,” I snarl. “I want to know how my wife and child are doing. Which room is she in?”
“She was taken to the OR, sir,” she explains, and I stop.
“Why?”
“Because she was bleeding.”
I swallow hard. “More than usual?”
She nods. “She was unconscious when they brought her in. We had to do an emergency C-section.”
It hits me harder than any bullet ever could.
After I regain my breath, I manage to ask, “Where is she now?”
Amara looks lifeless in the bed. The nurses and the machines both attempt to reassure me she is stable, but the white of her face and the blue in her lips tell me otherwise. She is hooked up tubes and her hands are at her sides.
I stand over her, staring down. Carefully, I brush her hair behind her ear and while her skin is still warm, she still doesn’t feel like her. She feels… empty.
“Where is the baby?” I ask without looking away from her.
“NICU,” the nurse answers.
And after a moment that rips my heart in two—a moment that feels like a betrayal of Amara, of every promise between us—I turn to the nurse. “Can I see him?”
She nods and leads me out.
I take one more look at Amara as I stand in the doorway. I don’t want to walk away. I’ve already walked away too many times.
But she would tell me to go. So I do.
The nurse leads me to the clear box holding my son.
My son.
“That’s him,” she points, though there really wasn’t any need. I’d recognize the baby I made with Amara anywhere. He has her button nose, her upturned eyes. The chin is mine, but the rest is all her.
He’s so small, though. Smaller than almost all the babies in the nursery.
“Is he healthy?” I manage to ask.
“He’s a few weeks early,” she explains. “But the labor was trauma-induced. The other woman who came in with your wife is getting checked out too. For assault, from my understanding. She said that she and Amara were in a car accident.” Her gaze turns back to the baby. “He’s struggling, but hanging on.”
I nod one time, doing my best to process the information. “How long can I stay in here?”
Usually, I’d demand to stay. I’d dare anyone to get between me and my son. But tonight has drained me, and there must be other babies on this floor—babies who need to be safeguarded as much as mine. No doubt, it’s past visiting hours. And hospitals are very prudent about protocol.
The NICU nurse looks around. There’s no one else in the room. Only my son and me. “As long as you’d like, for now,” she tells me.
And so I stay. I stand over him like a statue, my eyes locked on his tiny body. He’s thin, not chubby like you picture babies. His skin is also a little paler than it should be. I don’t even know that his fingers would wrap around my thumb.
Eventually, the nurse pulls up a chair for me while she works.
The room is in the middle of the hospital, so there are no windows, making it impossible to know what time it is.
My eyes burn from exhaustion. From the emotion I refuse to show.
My son is fighting for his life. The love of my life is in a coma. I’m not about to be the one in tears.
“Ransome.” The soft voice comes through the door of the NICU unit, and it’s almost enough to make a liar out of me.
“Mom.”
I turn and see her walking in. “Don’t get up,” she says, and I listen.
She comes right up to my side. Looks over the baby with a small, sad smile.
“Isn’t he beautiful?” She shakes her head. “My first grandchild, and he’s just beautiful.”
“He’s weak,” I say shakily, and my mother nearly assaults me with her eyes.
“He is a Rozanov,” she says. “He is sick. He is small. But he is not weak. Do you understand me?”
I nod.
The nurse pulls over another chair with a small smile. My mother takes a seat next to me. For a long moment, we’re both quiet while we look at the baby.
When Mom speaks again, her voice is level and strong, as it always has been. “Do you have any idea how hard it is being a parent?” she asks.
“I think I’m getting an idea,” I answer.
“And it’s even harder in the Bratva.”
“What isn’t?” I mutter.
“I carried so much pain,” she goes on. “It’s like we live in another world.
A world nobody knows about and no one could imagine if they tried.
And it’s odd, isn’t it? On one hand, we live in luxury.
Never in want of anything. And on the other, we sleep with one eye open.
Never knowing who is lurking, but knowing someone is there.
Never knowing when we will lose someone we love, but knowing that it’s a when, not an if. There’s no way around that.”
I know she is talking about Nik. It’s enough to bring tears to the backs of my eyes. But I hold them there. If my mother can survive the death of her son and can see her grandson like this, I can hold back tears.
“You will be a good father,” she tells me. I swallow again.
“I feel like I already fucked up,” I say.
“You hear that?” she asks. “That’s his heart. It’s strong. He’s alive. You are already a good father. Is Amara alive?”
“Barely,” I say. “But yes.”
“Then you are a good husband too.”
I almost smile. “We aren’t married yet.”
“Emphasis on the last word,” she says with a smirk.
“You know, I don’t think Dad agrees with what you’re saying,” I tell her. “His knuckles were white when he handed his power over to me.”
“Your father never saw you as pakhan because you were all heart. And that heart is what’s going to get you through all this. It’s what’s going to help you lead our family the way we should be led.”
“I worry that that part of me might already be dead,” I say. “That it died with Nik.”
But my mom shakes her head. “It got stronger when he died, son. Whether you feel it or not, you got stronger when he died.”
I don’t like that one bit. And yet, it’s true. Losing Nik hardened me. It gave me edges in places I never knew I could grow them. Turned me sharp in ways I would have dreaded when I was younger.
But I’m not a kid anymore. I’m a man now. And while nothing will ever fill the gaping hole that opened up in my heart the day my brother died, I owe it all to him. Everything I am today is because of him.
And someone else.
I stand up. “Would you—”
“I’ll stay with the baby,” Mom says, as if reading my thoughts. “You go see Amara.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
I plant a kiss on the top of her head and walk out.
Amara looks exactly as she did before when I arrived. Even though there’s a couch against the wall that I’m sure many an expecting father have slept on, I pull up a chair next to the bed. Then I take her limp hand in my own hands, careful not to jostle the IV.
“You can’t leave me,” I whisper after a long moment.
“I used to think I’d never get rid of you.
But now…” My voice softens a little, and I realize I can’t hide behind sarcasm.
Not now. “You have to hold on, dorogoya. I can’t do this without you.
You are a Rozanov now. Even without a ring or papers or anything else.
You are Rozanov and you are mine. I…” I swallow hard.
“I need you. He needs you. So you have to hang on.”
I stay next to her for a while, but eventually, my eyes burn, not just with tears but with the need for sleep.
“The couch in the corner is supposedly comfier than it looks,” the nurse says, because somehow they can always read minds.
As much as curling up on a hard, factory-produced sofa is not in my persona, I am too tired to care. So I take her up on it.
Within moments of laying down, my eyes close.
And what feels like moments later, but is probably hours, my eyes flutter open again.
I hear the cooing of a baby.
Soft noises and an even softer voice.
I shove myself up, wincing at the crook in my neck, and squint my eyes into focus.
It feels like a dream, but it’s not.
Amara is awake. Not only that, but she is sitting upright. And she’s nursing a baby.
Our baby.