Garth nodded as he pulled keys from his pocket. “I’ll call and let them know once we’re at the hospital.”
“What are you talking about?” Jesse’s pace picked up when he took another look at my face . . . and I was trying to disguise how much pain I was in.
“I’m driving you guys. That’s what I’m talking about.” Garth’s sleek black truck roared to a start when he punched a button on the key, and unlike Old Bessie, it was right in front of us.
“No. It’s your engagement party. I can’t let you leave it to chauffeur us to the hospital.” Where Jesse’s words said he wouldn’t allow it, his body jogged toward Garth’s truck.
“Yeah, and it’s been fan-fucking-tastic, but one of my good friends looks like she’s being drawn and quartered, and my other good friend, in case he’s forgotten, has been drinking way too much for his pathetically low tolerance to get behind a wheel and drive.” When we broke to a stop in front of Garth’s truck, he threw open the passenger side door and waved Jesse toward it. When Jesse hesitated, Garth took a step toward us, looking like he was trying to work out how to throw us both in his truck if it came to it. “My truck’s right here. It’s newer, faster, safer, and only about a thousand times less likely to sputter out and die on the way there. I also happen to be a better driver.” Garth spun his keys around his fingers. “I was a race car driver in another life.”
Jesse took a tentative step toward the swung-open door, his gaze wandering from the barn, where the party was still vibrating from, to Garth’s steely look of determination, to me, who was just focusing on not crying out each time my body was rocked by that vise-like sensation that was attempting to flatten my insides into crepe-sized pieces.
“Your party . . .” Jesse bowed his head but kept moving toward Garth’s truck.
“This isn’t about me or the party or any of that right now.” Garth stepped aside when Jesse came around the passenger door. “This is about Rowen and your baby and getting them as safely and quickly to the hospital as we can.”
Jesse nodded as he lifted me into the cushy backseat that was, thank God, a big bench seat. I dragged myself to the end of it and curled my legs to my stomach to make room for Jesse, who had already leapt in the back with me and was crawling across the truck floor toward my head.
“Hang in there. We’re on our way. Garth will get us to the hospital in fifteen minutes flat with the way he drives.” Jesse’s anxious whispers kept beat to his hand running down the length of my hair.
He was trying to soothe me, to comfort me and tell me everything would be okay. I wanted to return the favor, but this was one of the few times I couldn’t pretend things would be okay. Nothing felt okay with the way my body was raging some kind of internal war.
Garth leapt into the driver’s seat and had just punched the gas when the truck rolled to a stop. I heard the whir of a window going down, filling the cab with cool, fresh air. That, combined with pressing my cheek into the cool leather seat, helped calm the inferno blazing through my body. I felt like something had found a dozen dusty old furnaces inside me and fired them up, notching the dial to its upper range.
“Thatta girl! Kick off those boots and run!” Garth shouted, revving the engine a couple of times.
From the end of his last rev to when I heard the passenger door groaning open before someone threw themselves inside, a mere half second had passed, if that.
“Colt and Lily told me they’d seen you three leaving the party like the devil was chasing you.” Josie was breathing hard, practically panting. “I wasn’t sure if it was because you’d changed your mind and were fleeing for Mexico, or if something else had happened . . .” After landing a soft smack into Garth’s arm, Josie’s head appeared above me. Her eyes went wide when she saw the scene in the backseat. “Fuck me,” she said in a long exhale. She threw another slug into Garth’s arm. “Drive. Fast.”
Climbing over the back of her seat, Josie landed on top of Jesse with a thud, but that didn’t slow her down. She managed to wedge herself into a small space beside my head. Worry lines stitched into Josie’s face as she ran her hand down my forehead. “What’s going on?”
The truck was hauling ass, and the one great thing about Garth’s fancy new truck was that the ride was smooth in comparison to Old Bessie. The gentle vibration of potholes as we sped down Garth and Josie’s driveway would have felt like being spin-cycled in Old Bessie.
“Come on, Rowen. Talk to me.” Josie got in my face and stroked my forehead. Beside her, I saw Jesse’s chest rising and falling hard.
“I feel like I’ve got a boa constrictor wrapping around me, doing its thing—that’s what’s the matter.” Getting that out took far too much effort. I was feeling light-headed too . . . which meant I wasn’t getting enough oxygen . . . which meant my heart was struggling . . . which meant . . .
“Faster, Garth. Please,” I squeaked, but I wasn’t sure if Josie heard, let alone Garth in the front seat barreling down the street.
Twisting around, Josie stuck her head next to Garth’s. “Baby, you know I love you, but I swear to god, if you don’t take the lead out and move this thing, I will have to insist on taking the wheel.”
The engine fired louder as the truck picked up speed. Jesse had to grab onto the back of the front seat to brace himself, but he still managed to get a seat belt fastened around me with one hand.
“Hey, Mama Bear. You hang in there, okay?” Garth glanced back like he was afraid he would find blood and guts splattered around the backseat.
“Eyes on the road, babe. Not going to be helpful if we wind up in a ditch and all clog up the emergency room tonight.” Josie spun his head back around before crouching beside me. She had to shoulder Jesse out of the way to fit.
“Hanging,” I answered Garth.
Jesse threw off his hat and shoved his hair back. His hands slowly moved toward me—one covered my heart, the other formed around my stomach. “It’s going to be okay. I’m here. You’ll be fine. The baby will be fine.” His voice was even, calm, spoken like he was reciting a mantra. His eyes gave him away though. They always did. “I won’t let anything happen. Nothing.”
Lifting my hand to his face felt like I was bench pressing an elephant, but I managed it. “I know, Jesse. I know.” I held his gaze for a moment, trying to impress my feigned confidence on him, then I had to close them. I felt like the elephant was now pushing down on my eyelids.
A few silent minutes passed after that. That sharp, tightening sensation increased in frequency to the point it felt like I’d only just managed to catch my breath before another one pressed down upon me.
Jesse’s hands stayed in their spots while Josie never stopped stroking my face. Her mouth lowered to just outside of my ear, and she whispered so softly, I barely made it out. “Is it the baby or your heart?”
I took a breath before answering, checking to make sure Jesse hadn’t picked up on Josie’s question. My response was just as quiet. “The baby.”
She swallowed then stared out the window. Tension filled the cab of the truck to the point I felt like I was about to suffocate. That was when the truck took a sharp turn.
“E.R. ahead,” Garth announced.
The breaths Josie and Jesse had been holding came out at the same time in a never-ending rush.
“Thank you, Garth,” Jesse whispered, his voice on the cusp of trembling. “I owe you.”
Garth rolled to a stop at what I guessed were the E.R. doors. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll add it to your owe-me tab. Just get her in there and demand an army of the best doctors check her out before I park and make my way in there.” Garth leapt out of the truck and opened the driver’s side door. He helped Josie hop out first. “Because if I come in there and find her like this in that waiting room, I’m going to start busting heads, and I won’t stop until someone lights a fire under their ass.”
Jesse gave a quick nod as he unbuckled my seat belt and tried to move me. I tried to help by leaning up on my elbow, but the strength had l
eft my body. Something had held a vacuum to just the right spot and sucked it all away. Where my strength had escaped, Jesse’s had multiplied. He wrapped his arms around me and curled me to his chest like he was cradling nothing more substantial than a lamb before climbing out of the truck. Garth and Josie were stationed on either side of us, I guess ready to catch us if we fell, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt Jesse so steady.
His boots had barely hit the pavement before he ran toward the E.R. doors. His hat was still missing, so his long tufts of hair bounced with every stride, falling into his eyes before lifting again. With the fluorescent lights shining above us and me looking up at him, Jesse looked more ethereal than human. Like he belonged to a different world, a better one.
“I need a doctor!” he shouted as he approached the admitting area. “My wife. She’s pregnant. Her heart. She needs help.” His voice wasn’t trembling anymore—it echoed through the vast area, filling the empty space with his words.
My vision went blurry, a lot like it had that day I’d been running around the track and decided to see how fast I could get around it. Right before I passed out.
I heard what sounded like a bunch of shuffling as a stretcher seemed to magically appear beside me. Someone told Jesse to stay in the waiting room, but he had a few choice words for them. His hand slipped into mine, and it stayed there the whole time I was wheeled into a room. It stayed there when a herd of doctors and nurses descended on me, poking, prodding, and hooking me up to so many machines, I felt like more of a robot than a person by the end of it.
Jesse’s hand had gotten me through so many tough times. It didn’t falter as I went through what would prove to be my toughest either.
THEY WANTED ME to leave. They’d told me to leave. They’d ordered me to leave.
I was still here.
I didn’t know how these nurses and doctors could just expect people to leave the ones they love because they’d asked that person to. I didn’t know why they’d even expect a husband to go quietly back to the waiting room while his wife and child were in trouble. Maybe it worked sometimes. It didn’t work this time though.
Screw protocol, procedure¸ and policy. I wasn’t leaving Rowen.
The swirl of doctors and nurses didn’t seem to stop, all of them rushing in and out, rolling in new machines each time. By the end of the initial whirlwind, Rowen was attached to a heart rate monitor—actually two, one for her heart and one for the baby’s—an oxygen mask, and an I.V. with a couple of different bags dripping into her veins. The baby’s heartbeat was so fast—so strong—in comparison to hers. Rowen’s sounded slow and weak, like it was dwindling down to its last beat. I didn’t think I stopped staring at that heart rate monitor until the buzz of medical staff had calmed to a gentle trickle and a woman carried in a clipboard of paperwork.
“So you’re the stubborn one.” She was close to my mom’s age and had perfected the fine workings of the “Mom look” as was evidenced by the one she aimed my way.
I answered with a non-committal shrug and took the clipboard when she handed it over.
“Well, I see why the nurses didn’t insist security throw you into the waiting room where you belong.” She lowered her reading glasses as she took a good look at me. She followed that up with a shake of her head.
“Why’s that?”
She shook her head again. “For the same reason they’re in the break room, fanning themselves and talking in high-pitched squeals.”
I clicked the pen and filled in the first box. Name: Rowen Sterling-Walker. “Because they’re hot?”
The lady gave a sudden laugh before walking away. “They’re hot all right.”
I didn’t spend any more time trying to decipher what she was implying. I focused on filling in every column of every page of the dozen sheets attached to the clipboard. Most were front and back. Paperwork wasn’t typically my thing, but I didn’t mind it so much right now. It gave me a temporary distraction from the beeping machines and dripping I.V.s, and it made me feel as though I was useful for one thing at least, instead of feeling utterly useless as I would if I were just sitting there, holding her hand, and holding my breath while hoping that everything would be okay. I was on the back of the last page when one of the doctors from earlier slipped back into the room.
“We’re going to move her upstairs,” he announced, inspecting the machines and Rowen and just about everything else as he spoke to me. “We’ll keep her for a couple of days to make sure she and the baby stay stable, then we’ll send her home.” His inspection of his patient complete, his gaze shifted my way. “Are you the father?”
My brows pinched together. Raising my left hand, I pointed at the gold band circling my finger. “I’m her husband.”
The doctor didn’t even blink. “Are you the baby’s father?”
That was why he was looking at me like I was an asshole. “Oh, yeah.” I nodded, staring at Rowen’s stomach. “I am.”
“Great. And since I already know you’re her husband, I can skip the next question on my list.” The doctor spoke in one of the most monotone voices I’d ever heard. I didn’t think people generally used that word to describe a person’s expression, but if a person could have a monotone expression, the doctor had nailed the mastery of it.
“I’m her husband and the baby’s father.” I felt like I was stating the obvious, like telling him E.R. rooms weren’t a peaceful, happy place.
“Thanks for clearing that up. Sorry I had to ask, but you’d be surprised how many husbands we get in here who aren’t the ones who fathered the children inside their wife’s uterus.”
I shifted in my chair. Something about hearing the word uterus in the same statement circling around adultery was all kinds of awkward.
“What happened?” I clicked the pen a few times, as afraid of the question as I was of the answer. “Exactly?”
Everyone had been so busy since we’d showed up, myself included, that I still didn’t know exactly what had happened to put us here. Other than Rowen looking like her insides were being ripped apart, piece by piece, while she struggled to take a solid breath, I didn’t know what had happened. I guessed it had something to do with her heart, but I wasn’t sure exactly.
The doctor gave me a strange look, like he was surprised by my question or that I had to ask it. “Your wife went into early labor.”
I leaned back in the chair. “She’s not due for three months though.”
“That’s why we were all rushing around like a child’s life depended on it.” The doctor motioned around the room, continuing on in that monotone voice that seemed close to tipping the tired scale. “Because it was.”
“But the baby . . .” I automatically checked the fetal heart rate monitor. “It’s okay now, right?”
“Yes, it’s fine, and even if we hadn’t been able to stop the labor and your baby had been delivered today, chances are good it would have been okay too. It would have been in the NICU for a few weeks, of course, but statistically speaking, your baby had a very good chance of surviving a preterm labor.” He lifted a brow, almost like he was challenging me to ask another question.
I bit my tongue. Instead of firing off a half dozen qualifying questions, peppering in a few less-than-kind words, I inhaled a deep breath. I told myself these E.R. doctors and nurses probably saw dozens of patients on every shift. Some of them made it, some didn’t. They had to find a way to distance themselves from the patients and their families to keep from going crazy. I got that. I could sympathize even.
But this was my wife. My child. They weren’t just one of the dozens for the night or hundreds for the month. They were my whole entire world.
“Will we have a different doctor when we get moved upstairs?” I didn’t blink as I addressed the doctor.
He nodded.
“Then when can we move?”
I didn’t know if he took the hint or just needed to move on to a different patient, but he didn’t say anything else before leaving the room. I exhaled a
fter he was gone. I probably should have felt bad for being less than courteous with one of the people responsible for helping my wife and unborn child, but I couldn’t seem to conjure up much sympathy for a person when it was clear his concern and compassion were in the lacking zone.
By the time I’d finished the last few columns on the back page, a couple of nurses popped back into the room.
“Damn. Thank God for drawing the long straws,” the light-haired nurse said, nudging the dark-haired one beside her.
“I’m thanking God for a lot more than that if you know what I mean,” the other replied.
“Like tight jeans and men who don’t mind wearing them?”
“It’s like you’re reading my mind.”
It was like they thought they were the only two people in the room and I wasn’t standing a whole ten feet in front of them.
“Wasting your time, girls,” another nurse scoffed as she shouldered through them. “This one likes a different kind of nurse.” She didn’t glance back, but she must have guessed their expressions had shifted into the confused spectrum. “The male kind.” She fired a wink at me.
It had been years since I’d graduated from high school, but my class had had a whole thirty-two students. I could see any one of them fifty years from now in the most unlikely of places and probably still remember their name. Katy had grown up a few farms down from ours, and both of her big brothers had worked for my dad when they came home from college in the summers. We’d never been particularly good friends, but that was mainly because I was too busy helping my dad out with the ranch and she was too busy studying to become a genius. Or a nurse. Kind of the same thing. Knowing how smart Katy had been in school, I was relieved to find out she’d be helping Rowen in some capacity. Even if it was just to check a fluid bag.
“But I thought he was her husband.” The dark-haired nurse crossed her arms, continuing to have a conversation that would suggest she didn’t realize or care that I was in the room.
Katy’s mouth drew into a tight line to keep from smiling as she stopped beside Rowen’s bed. “Sperm donor.”
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