Gypsy Brothers: The Complete Series

by Lili St. Germain

  “How could you keep this from me?” he asks. “From the doctors?”

  My head is pounding, my mouth dry. I can’t focus. I can’t do this.

  He looks at me now, and the look of betrayal in his eyes is enough to make me want to die. I have failed him. I will always fail him, because I am a liar and a cheat and I have become my mother.

  “You would have left me,” I say, a small sob coming from my throat as my eyes fill with tears. “I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t tell anyone what he did to me. Who he made me.” I whisper the final words.

  Jase looks like he wants to kill me. “What is wrong with you?” He roars, pounding his fist into the wall.

  Everything is wrong with me, I think sadly.

  I’m sweating so much from the comedown (will it ever fucking end?) and I need to get clean, to rinse off my skin and let warm water ease my cramps and aches. I go to push past Jase, to make it to the shower, but as I pass him he reaches out a hand and locks it around my upper arm, spinning me around to face him. At the same time, he switches on the main light of the room, casting us both in a bright amber glow.

  He opens his mouth again, the look on his face clearly saying attack, but his scowl fades rapidly as he looks down at something.

  I follow his stare, seeing nothing.

  “What?” I ask. The sweat is pouring off me now, and I think I’m going to be sick again. I swallow thickly, fighting the nausea, deeply alarmed by the look on Jase’s face.

  “Juliette,” Jase croaks, pointing at my legs. No—pointing at my panties. I’m not wearing pants, just a thin tank top and white cotton panties.

  “You’re bleeding,” he says, horrified. “Why are you bleeding?”

  I’m bleeding? Why am I bleeding?

  I’m so drenched in sweat, I didn’t even notice. But Jase is right; beyond the slight swell of my stomach, when I tilt my head to the side and down, I can see sticky red fluid coating the insides of my thighs.

  Oh, God. I immediately put my hand between my thighs and bring it back to my face; red. Bright red and the most horrifying thing I’ve ever seen.

  “Juliette,” Jase repeats, and this time it sounds more like he’s begging me to give him an answer that doesn’t spell tragedy.

  A whisper. “Why are you bleeding?”

  Too good to be true. Too good to be true. I always knew this was too good to be true.

  I start screaming.

  Jase takes over because I’m screaming and bleeding and I don’t know what to do.

  The baby. The baby.

  Is she okay? Is she even alive? When was the last time I felt her move?

  Before I know what’s happening, I’m being gathered up in strong arms and then, I’m in the passenger seat of the pick-up truck Luis left for us. There’s a thick towel between my legs and I watch in horror as the beige cotton turns red.

  It hurts. It hurts everywhere, sticky and clammy, but mostly it hurts in my chest. In my throat. I did this. This is my fault. And although we’re hurtling away from the house at illegal speeds, I can already see there’s too much blood for this to end well.

  A sharp pain stabs my back, gripping me and staying there, like a razor blade, for several seconds. I hold my breath and squeeze my eyes shut as it builds to a fiery peak. Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen. I’m biting my cheek hard enough to draw blood as the inferno finally lets up a little, but it doesn’t go away completely.

  I draw in a breath, looking at Jase as I clutch our baby through my scarred skin.

  When was the last time she moved? I need to know, but for the life of me, I can’t remember. Did I do this? Did the drugs make me bleed? I can’t even entertain the possibility of what that could mean.

  The possibility I’ve killed our baby.

  I would cry, but I’m too shocked. Five minutes ago, we were screaming the house down, and now, everything is melting away, fading, taking the last bit of my hopes and dreams along with it.

  The only good thing to come out of this clusterfuck—and now I’m going to lose this, too?

  FIFTEEN

  The pain is so great by the time we get to the hospital that all I can see is red. This is more painful than being held down and raped. This is more painful than having my skin excised, piece by violent piece. More painful than a knife in my leg, than a cocaine overdose, than anything. This. Is. Hell.

  This is like being ripped apart, from the inside out.

  Somebody is screaming. I want to tell them to shut up, until I realize somewhere through the thick red haze that I am the one screaming.

  OhGodOhGodOhGod.

  I can’t walk. My legs don’t want to function right now. I’m panting as pain racks my body, onetwothreefourfive, reaches a violent peak, sixseveneight, before coasting back down, easing off, settling into a familiar dull ache for a few minutes of respite.

  Contractions.

  No! I refuse to accept that. These are cramps, I tell myself, just cramps, nothing more, just the comedown.

  But you’re bleeding, the rational voice in my head whispers sadly.

  I want to smash that rational voice in the face until she shuts her mouth.

  Strong arms circle around my waist and pull me from the car; it’s raining, and I lean into Jase as he runs, two of us moving as one.

  Three of us. But for how much longer?

  When I open my eyes again we’re in a foyer, all drab beige paneling and plastic bucket chairs. I pant as another wave of pain slams into me, biting my lip so I won’t scream again.

  “Sangre,” Jase yells. At first I think he says Sangue, as in Il Sangue, Emilio’s Cartel, and I go rigid. Until he says it again and I realize he’s saying Sangre. Spanish for blood. Jase glances around the walls, looking for the right word, I guess. “Embarazada!” he yells, turning me toward the bored-looking receptionist. She peers at me in alarm, her doe-like brown eyes going wide, and then she’s yelling something in Spanish. Embarazada. Pregnant. I remember that from the forms I filled out at the hospital before the ultrasound.

  Out of nowhere, a stretcher appears. Stranger’s faces surround me as Jase lowers me onto the flat trolley and then I’m moving, watching the ceiling whizz past above me as I hear Jase and the medical staff try to communicate in broken English and Spanish. I hear sixteen weeks and blood. There is so much blood.

  Before we make it wherever they’re taking me, I black out.

  ***

  When I come to, I’m propped up on a hospital bed, and there’s a doctor hovered between my open legs. I come to with a start, trying to press my knees together, trying to remember what the hell is going on. My legs are trapped in stirrups, and I can’t figure out why.

  Then it hits me. I’m bleeding. Everything hurts so bad, I’m in agony. Is it already too late?

  A hand squeezes my shoulder softly and I turn my head sharply, locking eyes with a generically pretty woman, probably only a few years older than me, dressed in nurse’s scrubs. She’s got one hand on a portable ultrasound machine, the same kind the doctor used just a few weeks ago when we saw our baby’s strong, steady heartbeat and reedy legs that kicked and somersaulted.

  “We’re just going to take a look at your baby, okay?” Her voice is kind, her accent thick. I nod vacantly.

  I hike up my singlet, my panties already gone, my lap and knees covered by a green hospital sheet, to retain a little dignity, I suppose. The doctor stands and strips bloodied plastic gloves from his hands, glancing at the nurse and nodding before he leaves the room. She squeezes the cold stuff on my stomach, just like the doctor did a few weeks back, and presses the plastic thing onto my skin.

  Jase enters the room, wearing green surgical scrubs. I frown at him quizzically for a moment before I realize he was covered in my blood before. They must have given him clean clothes to wear. He rushes to my side, his expression pinched.

  “You’re awake,” he murmurs, kissing the top of my head. I give him a brave smile and turn back to the screen. The pain is still here, still intense, but
being somewhere where people know how to fix me tapers my hysteria dramatically. Everything will be okay, I chant to myself. It has to be.

  On the screen, black and white materializes. It takes the nurse a few moments to locate the baby, floating in my womb. Nothing looks different than the other day, but everything is different. There’s no kicking legs, no rolling.

  There is no movement at all.

  “Do you know what you’re having?” the nurse asks cheerfully. Distracting me.

  “A girl,” I say tonelessly, Jase’s hand squeezing tighter around mine.

  She nods, a look of intense concentration on her face. My mouth goes dry as I listen to the nothingness that surrounds us, the nothingness that says I can’t find a heartbeat.

  “Is the sound on?” Jase asks, pointing to the screen. He must be thinking what I am - where is that noise, where the fuck is that gallopgallop that tells us our baby is okay?

  The nurse gives us a tight smile, placing the plastic thing back into its tray. She doesn’t answer Jase. “Let me get the doctor,” she says, patting my hand reassuringly. “He’ll be able to get a better look.”

  I swallow thickly as she leaves my peripheral vision and exits the room, my gaze locked firmly on the display, currently empty.

  Jase side-hugs me, kissing the top of my head again. “The doctor will find it,” he says, and I don’t know if he’s trying to convince himself or me.

  It doesn’t matter, though. I haven’t felt movement in hours, and there’s no heartbeat on the ultrasound screen. I’m not an idiot. I know what that means.

  The doctor enters the room quietly, and he searches for a long time for the heartbeat of the baby I already know is beyond this world. Finally, he turns the machine off and turns to me with a grave expression.

  “I am very sorry,” he says. “There is no heartbeat.”

  “Well keep looking!” Jase yells across me. I squeeze his hand, pull him down to me. As our eyes meet, I give my head a little shake, my lips quivering, and I pull him to me. A strangled cry comes from Jase, breaking my heart all over again.

  Jase pulls away from me and punches his fist into the wall next to the bed, making the room shake. I put a hand to my mouth to try and stifle the noise coming from deep inside me, a noise between a sob and a scream.

  Our baby is dead. Our baby is gone.

  SIXTEEN

  I thought finding out our baby had died inside me was the worst possible thing that could ever happen to me, but I was wrong.

  Because she had passed away, her little heart still, but she was still inside me. And somehow, she had to come out.

  “Your waters broke with the bleeding,” the doctor informs me, peering at me as he holds a surgical mask over his chin. “You’re in labor. We’ll give you something for the pain.”

  His accent is even thicker than the nurses, and I’m glad he’s pulled his mask away from his mouth to address me, or I’d have no clue what he’s saying.

  As it is, I nod numbly, dazed. Devastated. As the nurse pricks my arm painfully—her fifth unsuccessful attempt to get an IV into my arm—the doctor casts a suspicious glance over my bare arms.

  “Are you a drug user?”

  Humiliation wracks me. Humiliation and despair. I nod. Beside me, Jase tenses. I don’t even have to look at him to feel the anger and sorrow pouring off him in waves.

  The doctor asks me what I’ve been using, and as the word heroin falls from my mouth, I experience a rage deep inside of me, a rumble in my soul, a battle cry rising from within my veins. Dornan. You did this to me. I hope you come here, you motherfucker. I hope you come here so I can kill you.

  “When was the last time…?” the doctor asks, massaging the veins on my arms. He taps the back of my hand and gestures to the nurse, who hands him the needle already slick with my blood. One pinch on the back of my hand, and it’s in.

  “A month?” I guess quietly, trying to think back through the haze of grief that’s squeezing my heart. I can’t look at Jase. I’m shaking violently, and part of that is fear and shame. I can’t look at him. We are all speaking around the tragedy we’ve just discovered, speaking about things that don’t even matter. Maybe it’s because none of us can talk about what’s really happening. Your baby is dead. Your baby is gone.

  All of a sudden things get really quiet, and I start to zone out. Painkillers. They’ve given me something for the pain. What a blessed fucking relief.

  The pain at my back and deep in my womb starts to recede a little. The pressure is still there, lapping at me in steady waves, but the red, crushing pain is mostly tamped down. I feel woozy, and struggle to stop the room from spinning.

  “Try and get some rest,” the nurse says, patting my hand again before she leaves the room with the doctor. Rest? How am I supposed to rest right now?

  But whatever they give me is strong enough that I virtually pass out, dozing between those steady waves of pressure that lap at me. I’m still struggling to catch up, still so confused. Our baby is dead?

  Jase doesn’t speak. His eyes are red and glassy, and I can see the rage that surrounds him like fire.

  “Jase,” I say suddenly, snapping out of my haze.

  “Yeah,” he says, back at my side like a rocket, obviously hearing the urgency in my voice.

  “I think I need to push,” I whimper, already pushing down. The pressure around my back and lower torso has reached a crushing peak, and bits of pain start to creep through the artificial numbness created by the pain relief. I fist the sheets beneath me as I grit my teeth and bear down against the pain.

  Jase gives me one look and sprints into the hallway, yelling for a doctor. The nurse from earlier enters the room just in time to grab our baby as I deliver her in one push. She’s so small, she comes out so easily. Too easily. It’s not fair.

  She’s perfect. Tiny, but fully formed, a miniature button nose and little tufts of light brown hair. She’s beautiful. She’s ours.

  The nurse wipes the baby’s face and wraps her in a white blanket before handing her to me, and it pains me how woefully small she is. Barely longer than a dollar bill, eyes closed, and completely unmoving.

  I hold her to my chest and sob.

  Jase gently places a hand on our daughter and I realize, of course, he wants to hold her, too. To see her, to know her. It kills me to let go of her, but I hand her up to him, her absence from me as harsh and as painful as the moment I realized she had passed away inside me. He sits on the bed beside me, cradling her in his hands, absolutely devastated.

  He wanted this baby. He doesn’t say much, just looks down at her. Pulls her up in his arms and holds her close to his chest. It kills me, how much he wanted her. He wanted our baby so much. But she’s gone.

  Will he even want me now? Or will I remain the empty, tarnished vessel – unlovable, dead on the inside, forever alone?

  That’s what I deserve.

  Jase and I sit together on the narrow bed for hours, both of us in grief-stricken shock, studying every perfect thing about the child we will never get to know. The little girl who should chase butterflies and eat cake and finger paint. Gone.

  Eight hours later, and the nurse comes in and takes her away. Jase helps me into new clothes, and I sit numbly in a wheelchair as he pushes me to the car, clutching onto a 3x5 piece of card with a tiny set of footprints printed onto it. The only proof we have that she even existed.

  And, it’s over.

  I am empty once more.

  SEVENTEEN

  Three Days Later

  “Come here,” Jase murmurs. Moving slowly. Everything is slow and foggy in the midst of our grief. Deep inside me, I can feel a new seed beginning to sprout, deep in my belly, in the place where our child used to be.

  Rage. Pure, unadulterated rage. I didn’t know I could hate Dornan Ross any more than I already did. But I do. Now. I try to grab hold of that rage, to use it to keep me afloat, but the grief has me drunk, vacant, and I lose my grip on the rage, sinking back down again as I dro
wn in our collective despair. It’s not even the lack of heroin anymore that makes me sick. After the first couple of days back from the hospital, my body adapted, finally adjusted to life without a constant dose of something to sedate the demons inside me. Now, my only companion is the heart-rending grief that threatens to destroy me.

  I let him pull me off the couch, because I am a zombie. I resist nothing. I force a mouthful of food down when he tells me, I watch the steam billow from the tea he fixes me, and I lay like a little girl when he tucks me into bed at night.

  I am a ghost. I am nothing, and inside me, that tiny seed of rage grows patiently, a little each day, and I know when I’m strong enough I’ll be able to harness it for my own survival.

  I need the rage to come back to me, because without it, I am a shell. Our future is gone. Our baby is gone. The promise of rage is all I have.

  He pulls me into the bedroom. Sometimes I notice he’s making an effort to look me in the eye, like a real effort, staring at me until I meet his gaze. Only, I never do. I avert my eyes to the floor, stuck in my own world, almost preferring that I’m alone in here. I don’t know what to say, what to do, how to act. I don’t know how to be this person anymore. This person who was selfish enough, stupid enough to lose our baby.

  I lost our baby, and it’s all my fault.

  Mine, and his. Dornan’s.

  I repeat those words inside my mind. My vengeful mantra. Come and find me, you motherfucker. Come here and find me, so I can kill you.

  Jase has pulled one of the dining chairs into the bedroom, set it up in front of the floor-length mirror. He gestures for me to sit down, and finally, I do return his gaze.

  “I don’t want to look at myself,” I say quietly.

  His face falls. He squeezes my hand. “Trust me. You can close your eyes if you want.”

  I sit. Look at the floor instead of the mirror. I can’t bear to see myself. To see what I’ve become.