Always (Family Justice Book 1)

by Halliday, Suzanne

  Once everyone was in one place, they sat around and discussed what was going on. But with no new information, they eventually drifted into two distinct groups—the ladies having a conclave over Dylan and his amazing baby-town, and the guys, sharking around the doorway with an eye on the hallway and nurse’s station.

  “Alex, did you look this shit up and find out what’s probably going on back there?” Cam asked.

  Bah. Of course, he had. Even viewed a few birthing videos until he got too emotional to watch anymore and Meghan had forced him to shut the laptop and go to bed.

  “Yeah. Pregnancy complication, man—what else can I say? I did, however, check out the hospital and everyone working obstetrics. These guys are first rate. I mean, just look around at this birthing center,” he told them as he waved his hand to make the point. “It’s small, yeah, but this isn’t exactly the big city. But it’s brand new and I found out from a little digging that when they started fundraising to build it, a bunch of wealthy patrons ponied up at least five times an ass-load of cash to make it happen. That says a lot.”

  Cam snorted in amusement. “Well fuck, Big Daddy, that’s sure as shit comforting to know after we’ve already given birth here!” Calder laughed.

  He just shrugged and laughed it off. “Dude—Lacey never had so much as had a headache when she was pregnant. We weren’t thinking in terms of high-risk events and shit like that with you guys. This is uncharted territory.”

  Cam threw a fake punch and danced around him jabbing playfully. “I know. Just fucking with you.”

  Hours crawled by with no contact from Drae. Things must be pretty intense if he wasn’t leaving Tori’s side at all. Alex got more and more worried as time went by. Every so often, he’d look at Meghan, and she’d respond with a shake of her head and an uneasy frown.

  It was getting late and the group was gathered in a tight circle deciding what to do when Drae finally appeared. He immediately went to Stephanie then did an emotional bro hug with him and Cam. Spying baby Dylan, he hung over the kid’s napper seat and played the dutiful uncle.

  “How’s she doing?” Lacey asked.

  Alex could see Drae was glad she was there. Lacey might be able to shed some light on what Victoria was experiencing.

  “They inserted a line for IV fluids. Something about her being dehydrated, but I heard the nurses commenting that it was a good thing to have the line in place if they need it for anything else.”

  Lacey frowned but said, “Okay.”

  “And in addition to the ever present blood pressure equipment, she’s strapped to a fetal monitor.”

  “I had that,” Lacey observed with firm assurance. “Not all the time, but every so often during my labor. It’s normal.”

  “Do they think she’ll go into labor?” Meghan asked.

  Stephanie groaned when the question hung in the air.

  Drae looked like he was very close to crumbling. In a choked voice, he told them, “That is a possibility.”

  “How many weeks along is she?” Calder asked.

  “I don’t know—like thirty-three or thirty-four. This shit’s a wonky science of strange factors. Last period isn’t the same thing as date of conception.”

  “Anything before thirty-seven weeks is considered premature,” Stephanie squeaked. Calder immediately put his arm about her.

  Okay. That is enough, Alex thought. He couldn’t stand there and let them all, including Drae, get worked up.

  “Tell Tori that we’re all here, rooting for her, and we send our love, okay?”

  A nurse motioned to get Drae’s attention indicating that she needed him to sign something. He nodded then addressed the group.

  “You might as well head out for home. This is a waiting game now. Pumping her full of fluids and getting the blood pressure under control will take some time. Hopefully, it’ll all resolve itself, and we can go home.”

  “Call if you need anything or her situation changes.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” Drae muttered with half a fake reassuring smile.

  Calder asked, “Stephanie and I will grab a change of clothes for you from home? Anything else?”

  While Drae conferred with those two over what to bring from the house, Alex helped Meghan and Lacey start to pack up Dylan’s gear.

  “Lace,” he murmured so Drae wouldn’t hear. “He say anything that you think we should be worried about?”

  “Only the premature labor thing, but even that isn’t a huge crisis. There are lots of babies delivered just fine at thirty-four, thirty-five weeks. And up till now, all signs indicate Bunny Cha Cha is healthy and has been chubbing up.”

  After some hasty good-byes and a few last private words, once again there were a couple of carloads full of quiet, concerned people making the long drive home in the dark.

  AND SO IT WENT FOR two more days. Drae was hanging by a thread. Victoria was coming unglued. Everyone else had spent long mind-numbing hours in the waiting room. Other couples came and went from the birthing center. Something had to give—one way or the other.

  Their birthing suite included a private bathroom and small seating area with a long sofa where he’d been able to catch some z’s. Some of the luxury suites had large bathtubs that were called birth pools. He’d almost passed out when the nurse explained what a water birth was.

  The support staff made quite a production of bringing them meals and snacks at regular intervals. He’d been able to get Victoria to nibble here and there and thankfully, they were less concerned about her fluids. Once she’d stabilized somewhat, they even removed the constant fetal monitoring.

  It even seemed like the crisis was passing and things were calming down when she went into labor right after dinner. After a tense exchange with their doctor when they practically melted down, it was determined that she was far enough along to expect a normal, although slightly premature, delivery. The baby was showing no signs of stress. They’d been able to stabilize Victoria’s pressure so things looked good.

  At first, in the early stages, the entire ordeal felt surreal. Every fifteen to twenty minutes, Victoria felt a twinge. They let her get up and move around and encouraged her to go to the bathroom often. One minute they were managing a health crisis—the next they were counting down to birthing their baby.

  She made him leave her long enough to jog into the waiting room and announce that the baby was coming. Loud whoops of happiness and high fives broke out, Family Justice style. Everyone even huddled into a group for a hilarious photo op they insisted Drae snap with his phone to show Victoria.

  Drae learned a lot about his wife over the next couple of hours once she’d transitioned into active labor. How her little body handled the longer and more intense contractions put him in his place and gave him a profound admiration for his spitfire wife. She might be small, but she was powerful when unleashed.

  Because she wouldn’t have been able to handle two hours of driving once a week to attend a childbirth class, they’d used Lacey’s traveling doula to walk them through what to expect. Drae had also spent long hours searching the Internet and watching YouTube videos so he’d have a better handle on what was expected of him. Being the very best support for his brave and magnificent wife was uppermost in his mind.

  Their doctor was all smiles and full of encouraging banter when he checked on her progress. Drae tried not to think too much about cervical dilation and what that meant because only an idiot wouldn’t realize that a dilating cervix had to hurt like a mother.

  Around two in the morning, shit got fucking real. The contractions got stronger and stronger until eventually talking became too difficult. But still his little woman soldiered on.

  They breathed together. He rubbed her back and fed her a constant stream of ice chips. When the contractions seized her, Drae talked her through the worst of it then praised her efforts. The fetal monitor was back, but it was intermittent. For the most part, everything was going like clockwork.

  After Victoria had been in active labor
for two and a half hours, her water finally broke. When the medical team saw green in the amniotic fluid, a call went out for the delivering obstetrician to return, stat. Right then and there, Drae lost control of the situation.

  Following a quick evaluation, the doctor informed them in brisk, no-nonsense terms that meconium was present in the fluid. In a nutshell, what this meant was that the baby had a recent bowel movement. Long story short, this put the fetus in danger of meconium aspiration if they were to continue with a vaginal delivery. Because they were facing a preterm birth when the development of the baby’s lungs was a major issue, they were advising an immediate Cesarean to avoid complications.

  Next thing Drae knew, he was whisked away and told to wash up and don scrubs while Victoria was prepped for the surgery. He went through the motions aware the entire time of his rapid breathing and the thunderous beating of his heart. An emergency C-section. Jesus Christ.

  He didn’t settle down until he was taken back into the OR and given a seat at Victoria’s head. An epidural had already been administered so when she clutched his hand and he saw her wide, frightened eyes, he knew she was unnerved by how quickly things were moving.

  Having not prepared for what a C-section would be like, they were silent when the medical team raised a birthing screen side to side along Victoria’s chest.

  “That’s to keep the area sterile,” a nurse murmured. It was also to keep the anxious expectant parents from having a visual of the incision being made, something he realized when the word “scalpel” made its way into his brain followed by a request for clamps. He swallowed hard and kissed Victoria’s hand.

  He was stunned by how fast everything moved. The amount of blood that ended up on the floor shook him up. He was very, very glad that Victoria was unable to see it.

  Next thing he knew, the doctor told him if he stood up and glanced over the screen, he’d be able to witness the moment the baby emerged. On shaking legs, the battle-hardened Special Forces vet stood like a weak-limbed colt and watched awestruck as their baby was lifted from Victoria’s body. He looked down at his wife as tears filled his eyes.

  “Congratulations, you two. It’s a boy for the St. Johns,” the doctor announced to all present. Very quickly, he held the newborn above the screen for Victoria to see then the baby was quickly whisked away by the nursing staff to be cleaned up, weighed, and evaluated.

  Almost immediately, the lusty cries of their son resonated around the room and the nurse called Drae over to help cut the baby’s cord.

  The doctor reassured Victoria that things looked good, excellent in fact, and let her know she’d remain on the operating table for another half hour while they stitched her up and closed the incision. After that, she could hold her baby and see if he wanted to nurse.

  Watching the nurse wrap his newborn son up and put a little cap on his head, Drae could barely hold it together. When she handed him the baby to hold, a paradigm shift happened inside him. This was his son. His and Victoria’s. They’d made a baby together and now after a shitload of drama he was safe in his daddy’s arms.

  The nurse led him gently back to his wife. He was thankful for her intervention because at the moment he wasn’t entirely sure if he remembered how to walk.

  Drae lowered their son onto Victoria’s chest so she could get a good luck at him.

  “Oh, my God,” she cried. “He’s so beautiful. Draegyn! Look. He has such sweet lips and a nose. He has a nose!”

  He bent over, kissed her tenderly, and enjoyed those first few moments of absolute wonder as they bonded with their firstborn.

  Before long the nurse came and took the baby away with a brief explanation that there were a series of tests they needed to run. A wristband was attached to the baby’s leg and one to his and Victoria’s wrist identifying them as a family. Baby St. John was now an actual thing.

  An hour later, after Victoria was wheeled back to her room and they’d had a brief time to put their son to the breast, she’d been shaking so violently from the epidural that they had to let Victoria recover fully before they tried again. A nurse stayed close by in the suite, walking them through everything that had and was happening and what to expect for her recovery following the C-section.

  She also rattled off a string of stats that they’d both remember for the rest of their lives.

  Time of birth: 5:15 am

  Weight: 7 lbs. 5 oz.

  Length: 19.5 inches

  It was his wife who reminded him that he needed to let the family know that a new Family Justice member had come into the world. He and Victoria already knew what his name would be—something they’d decided unanimously just recently. But she didn’t want him to announce it just yet because she wanted to be the one to tell her mom.

  Drae looked at his beautiful son sleeping quietly in the bassinette, then at his magnificent wife, and choked up. He bent over and kissed her tenderly.

  “Thank you, my sweet, sweet love. He’s amazing and so are you.”

  She smiled and caressed the side of his face. “I love you, Draegyn Henry St. John.”

  “And I adore you, Victoria Bennett St. John.”

  DRAE DIDN’T KNOW EXACTLY WHAT to expect in the waiting room. He was sure Alex would still be there and Stephanie, too. What he hadn’t anticipated was that they’d all be there. Every one of them, even Dylan, had stuck in there with their silent but unwavering love and support through the long night that ended at the dawn of a new day with the birth of his son.

  Of course, everyone looked like warmed over shit. Especially him. He hadn’t shaved in days, and at the moment, his normally well-groomed hair looked more like the hair on that dude from the History Channel, who babbled about ancient aliens. Everyone appeared a little worse for the wear.

  And then he thought of his Victoria. Despite the fact that she was still recovering from the epidural and the surgery and shaking like a leaf, she looked and sounded amazing. The moment they heard the first cries of their newborn son, all the anxieties and agonies of the last couple of months simply vanished from her look. Her smile brightened. Relief and contentment shone in her eyes. She was the one who had gone to hell and back to give him this moment of glory and yet all of them were the ones who looked like hell.

  Alex’s radar pinged first, as it always did, when he came around the corner into their view. Lumbering to his feet and shaking his injured leg out, he looked expectantly toward Drae.

  Stephanie rushed toward him. Cam stepped forward with a hopeful expression. Lacey and Meghan roused from the sofa. Calder went and stood near Stephanie, who was now clinging to his arm. When he looked down at the hand clutched around his arm, he realized he still had the blue scrubs on.

  “Draegyn?” Stephanie chirped breathlessly. He could feel her excitement as she bounced up and down on her toes waiting. They were all waiting.

  Grinning broadly, he covered Stephanie’s hand with his own and proclaimed, “It’s a boy!”

  A holy hell meltdown of exuberant, delirious joy broke out in that waiting room. He got thumped soundly on the back so many times he was sure there’d be bruises. The women lost their fucking shit immediately, screaming with delight—kissing and hugging him soundly and playfully mussing his hair even more.

  As the excitement started to calm down, he told them, “Look. If you can hang in there another hour or so, you’ll be able to come into the suite and meet the baby. We have to give Victoria a little breathing room.”

  “She’s really okay?” Meghan asked.

  “Oh, my God. She’s fucking amazing. Really. I can’t even tell you, Irish. Inside that little lady beats the heart of a warrior who is ten times stronger than the three of us battle-scared bullshit heroes ever were. What she went through. All of it. Not just the last few days. I’m talking all along the way. And to keep it together right to the end.”

  Everyone had gathered round so he might as well tell them the whole story and prepare them for Victoria’s condition.

  “Okay. So it went d
own like this. Right after dinner last night, she went into labor. It was like the minute they got her stabilized, all hell broke loose. Everything went smoothly for a few hours. She was completely amazing. Even after everything she’d been through. She was in active labor for a couple of hours—we were getting close to the end, when her water broke. Apparently, my son thought he’d have himself a little poop during birth. Protocol for that meant we had no choice but an immediate C-section to prevent the baby from aspirating the fluid. It took a little doing and certainly had its share of ups and downs, but at the end of this crisis, we had the most beautiful baby boy you ever did see.”

  He looked at Cam and Lacey, grinned, held up his hands, and said, “Sorry.” Lacey laughed and beamed while he and Cam flipped each other off.

  He took Stephanie’s hand again. “Mom, your daughter was a fucking gold star champ, and no, I’m not apologizing for my language. She may be small but let me tell you, that lady is strong as steel when the going gets tough. You should be real proud of her.”

  “She do okay with the surgery? I remember when she had her tonsils out; she was quite a handful in recovery.”

  “Well, so far, so good. She’ll have to take it real, real easy for a few weeks. You and I are gonna be busy! But the doctor told us she handled the surgery really well. We’re just waiting for the effects of the anesthesia to wear off. That epidural shit is brutal. She’s shaking pretty bad and her lips were kinda blue, but they have all this sophisticated stuff to warm her up and ease the shock.”

  He was talking faster and faster as the adrenaline rush of new fatherhood overwhelmed him. He was grateful when Alex took over the conversation and wrapped things up, or he would have stood there and babbled for hours.

  “Well, my friend, looks like your son came into the world on a shit. Somehow that sounds exactly as it should be!”

  Everyone chuckled. That part of the story would definitely end up being told at his son’s birthday for many years to come.

  “You run along now and get back to your new family. Tell Victoria we all love her to fucking death and can’t wait to meet the newest addition to the family. Hey,” Alex barked suddenly, “this kid have a name yet?”