by Janice Lynn
The past few hours, he’d felt as if that was where he’d been.
What did it matter what she said? She was alive, could say whatever she wanted, and he’d just be thankful that she had the ability to speak.
He stepped next to the hospital bed, placed his hand over hers, grateful for the warmth he felt there, for the lifeblood still flowing through her body.
“Dr. Trenton says you’re going to be okay,” he said, his thumb rubbing over her hand and his voice choking up. Should he touch her? How could he not? He wanted to pull her into his arms and hold her close and protect her from the whole world.
As if he could protect her.
He couldn’t. Just as he’d not been able to protect his mother. She’d died and it had been his fault.
He stood next to Savannah’s hospital bed, caressing her hand and wishing he knew what to say to make everything better.
Wishing he could take away her pain.
She stared at him from between her swollen eyelids that looked as if they were getting heavier and heavier. Her oxygen saturation alarm sounded, indicating that her level had dropped and earning them a concerned glance from the nurse.
“Take a deep breath, Savannah. You’ve got to breathe deep to keep your sats up.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” she mumbled, but took several deep breaths after doing so.
“I just want you to be okay.”
“How can you say that?”
His heart cracked at her question.
“How can you think otherwise?” he countered.
“You left me.”
There it was. He had left her. How could he ever make her understand that he’d left for her own good, for their baby’s good? She hadn’t grown up in his house, hadn’t heard the fights, felt the blame, the guilt. No, Savannah’s parents had loved each other and her until the day her father had died. Her mother had continued to shower her with love every day since.
“Your mother is here.”
Her gaze shifted, looking for her.
“Not here in Recovery, but in the waiting area.”
Her cracked lips formed a semblance of an “O”.
“Your cousin drove your mother and aunt up.”
She stared at him but didn’t say anything, just took a few more deep breaths.
“They’re anxious to see you. Dr. Trenton says that once you are settled into a room he will let them visit.”
“Did I lose our baby?”
Did she not know? Had no one told her? Or had she just forgotten or thought they’d lied to keep her spirits up? Was she unaware of the baby heart monitor beeping just as it should?
Then again, she’d sustained trauma and could have been told a dozen times and still not recall at this stage in her recovery.
“The fetal monitor is real, the results are real. Our baby is hanging in there.”
She seemed to consider his comment a few minutes, then her worried gaze met his. “Am I going to miscarry?”
He didn’t want to have this conversation with her. Not now. Not ever.
“I don’t know, Savannah. I hope not.”
“Why? Why would you care one way or the other? You don’t want our baby.”
Her words stung. Stung deep.
“I never said that.”
“But you don’t.”
“I don’t want you to miscarry, Savannah.” Odd, as the best thing for her would be for her to be free of him completely. Yet he knew how much she wanted this baby. He’d seen it on her face in Chattanooga. He saw it now.
“They will do everything they can to keep you from miscarrying. If you do end up delivering, you couldn’t be at a better neonatal unit than at Vanderbilt to increase our baby’s chances of survival.”
“Too early,” she mouthed.
It was, but he wasn’t going to confirm her fears.
“Babies are surviving at earlier and earlier gestation.” Yes, they both knew the statistics weren’t great and that the risks of complications were high.
Savannah didn’t answer, just grunted, and closed her eyes.
Her alarm sounded again.
“Take a deep breath, Savannah.”
“No,” she countered but did so anyway, her sats immediately responding in a positive manner.
“Is there anything I can get you?” he asked, wishing there was something he could do to ease her pain and suffering. Wishing he could have somehow taken her place and be the one lying in the hospital bed instead of her.
“I don’t want anything from you.” It was the clearest sentence she’d said since he’d entered the recovery room area.
His gaze met hers.
“I was...I was coming to tell you...to give back your house.”
What she said registered.
She was here because of him.
If he hadn’t given her the house she wouldn’t have driven to Nashville, wouldn’t have been on I-24 when her car got struck, wouldn’t by lying in this hospital bed recovering from serious injuries.
This was his fault.
He might not have been the one driving the car that slammed into Savannah, but it had been his fault she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Just as his mother’s wreck had been his fault.
“I’m sorry, Savannah.” He was. So very sorry.
She didn’t respond to his apology, just closed her eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” he repeated, this time a little louder.
“Just go,” she finally said, her eyelids not budging. “Just leave me alone.”
* * *
Savannah’s head hurt, but as far as she could tell her brain was working. It was working, right? Because she was telling Charlie to go away.
Okay, so what she wanted to do was beg him to hold her, to let her cry over her pain, over her aches, over how scared she’d been when she’d braked, the moment of relief when she’d gotten stopped prior to ramming the car in front of her, then the sheer terror when she’d felt the impact, and then again. She wanted his comfort over the fear she might lose their baby.
She didn’t want to lose their baby.
Despite how heavy her hand and arm felt, she moved her hand to cup her abdomen. Several blankets were between her palm and her belly.
She wanted to move them but didn’t seem capable so maybe her brain wasn’t working so well after all because she was telling her hand to move, but her arm wasn’t cooperating.
“Let me.” Charlie pulled back the blankets and guided her hand to her slightly rounded belly.
She expected him to immediately pull away, but he didn’t. Instead, his hand stayed there with hers.
On cue, their baby moved. Just the tiniest of flutters, but one that made Savannah’s heart sing. She shifted her hand, placed Charlie’s over where she’d felt the movement.
His hand rested there for several long moments, but moved away before anything happened.
Disappointment filled her that he’d moved before getting to feel the magic of their baby’s movements. But more than that. Disappointment filled her that he was no longer touching her, that the comfort of his touch was gone.
His touch shouldn’t comfort her. She didn’t want him or trust him. His touch should enrage her.
Yeah, maybe she was wrong. She’d told him to go, yet she did want him there.
Her brain wasn’t working at all.
Maybe she had a concussion.
Actually, she probably did have a concussion.
She’d had a hard hit, had whiplash.
What had they told her was wrong with her?
She didn’t know. Maybe they hadn’t told her. Maybe she was dreaming. After all, why would Charlie be standing over her with that look in his
eyes?
That look that for so long she’d believed was one of love.
He didn’t love her.
Yet, when she stared into his eyes, she’d swear there were unshed tears there, that there was such raw emotion that he must care about her.
But thinking about it, trying to figure it out when she hadn’t been able to understand for months why he’d left, made her brain hurt worse.
Her brain already hurt enough. Too much.
“Take a deep breath, Savannah.”
Annoyed, she took another deep breath. “Why are you still here?”
“I’ll be here until I know you’re okay.”
“I’m okay.”
“God, I hope so.” He sounded so sincere that she couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Go away, Charlie,” she moaned. “You are nothing to me anymore so just go away.”
She expected him to argue, to say something. He didn’t say anything for so long that Savannah opened her eyes.
Her breath caught.
He was gone.
Had she just dreamed that he was there?
At this point, reality and non-reality all seemed to swirl together.
CHAPTER NINE
“I FEEL FINE,” Savannah protested for the hundredth time and was mostly telling the truth. Yes, she hurt all over still, and especially her left lower leg, but every day she felt a little stronger than the day before. “I want to go home.”
Although, not really. Not until she was one hundred percent sure she wasn’t going to go into early labor. If that happened, she wanted to be in the hospital, where her baby could get immediate medical attention. Five days had gone by since her wreck and although she’d had several contractions, they’d stopped on their own each time. The obstetrician had started injections as a precautionary measure to more rapidly mature the baby’s lungs and every day that she didn’t go into labor was critical time for her baby to continue to develop.
“Leaving the hospital is not going to happen for at least another twenty-four hours,” Dr. Kimble told her.
Twenty-four hours. That both excited and scared her. She was ready to be home, back in Chattanooga, away from Nashville and wondering if she’d see Charlie that day. She hadn’t since the recovery room. Which was her own doing. She couldn’t remember much of their conversation, but she’d told him to leave. She hadn’t wanted him there.
“Thank you. I’ll let my family know so someone can be here to bring me back to Chattanooga tomorrow.”
The doctor shook her head. “I don’t want you that far away from the hospital for at least a week, preferably longer.”
“A week?”
She nodded. “I want to check you closely until I’m sure you and the baby are stable.”
“But I live in Chattanooga,” she reminded her. “I can’t make that drive back and forth.”
She didn’t even own a working car at the moment.
“You’re right. You can’t make that drive back and forth. You need to stay in Nashville.”
She stared at the doctor. She didn’t want to stay in Nashville. She wanted to go home. Driving back and forth sounded better and better.
“You don’t have to drive back and forth. You can stay at my place.”
Savannah hadn’t seen Charlie since the recovery room. For a while, she had truly questioned if he’d been there or if she’d imagined him. But her mother had commented on how he’d kept vigil in the waiting area, how he’d called her, how he’d arranged for a room at the Loew’s Plaza Hotel and paid for it.
Her mother had gone home last night, fatigue overcoming her and Savannah insisting she go home. Under protest she had, but had called to check on her several times today.
Chrissie and a couple of the nurses from the cardiology floor had driven up to visit earlier in the week, and several other coworkers had called to check on her.
But until this moment she’d not seen or heard from Charlie.
The high-risk obstetrician didn’t seem taken aback by Charlie’s presence, which told Savannah that he’d been communicating with the specialist. Perhaps that should upset her, but at this point she didn’t care.
“That’s preferable to her driving back and forth two hours each way,” the obstetrician agreed. “She’ll need to be confined to bed rest, of course.”
“Of course,” Charlie agreed.
“There are excellent specialists in Chattanooga,” Savannah pointed out, annoyed that the two were making decisions about her as if she weren’t right there in the room and capable of making decisions for herself. She might have been in a major automobile accident and suffered a concussion, but she hadn’t lost her mind. Not yet, anyway.
“Agreed, but I’d like to keep a check on you myself and I’d prefer you not to be in a car for the two plus hours each way. You need rest, not an exhausting ride.”
“Two hours isn’t an exhausting ride. Not really,” she argued, despite knowing she’d do whatever was best for her baby.
“Regardless, I’d rather keep you here longer than for you to travel far from the hospital.”
Did they really expect her to agree to stay at Charlie’s? If circumstances were different she might suspect a set-up, but Charlie had left her, not the other way around.
Why would he volunteer to let her stay? Guilt?
“I will stay in Nashville,” she agreed without actually agreeing to stay at Charlie’s. Yes, she’d do whatever she had to do to protect her baby, but staying at Charlie’s wasn’t required to do that.
Only perhaps it was.
The only way Dr. Kimble would agree to release her to leave the hospital the next day was with the understanding that she would be under Dr. Keele’s care. Hello, he was a cardiologist, not an obstetrician. It wasn’t as if he was trained to deliver babies or to take care of pregnant women. He wasn’t. Still, they were Dr. Kimble’s conditions.
Not happy with the arrangement, Savannah allowed the nurse to wheelchair her out to Charlie’s car, allowed Charlie to stow the bag of her things Chrissie had brought to her when she’d visited, allowed the nurse to assist her into Charlie’s car.
It hit her again at that moment that she no longer had a vehicle. Hers was demolished. At some point she’d have to deal with her auto insurance carrier, with buying a new car, with getting behind the steering wheel and not thinking of the crash.
Her head hurt at the thought.
She’d deal with that later.
She settled back into the seat and closed her eyes.
“It’s just as well I live so close. Dr. Kimble wants you to keep your legs up as much as possible.”
“I don’t think sitting in a car is going to cause me any problems.”
“There’s no reason to take any chances.”
She kept her eyes squeezed shut and didn’t respond. What was the point? For the next few days, maybe the next week, she was stuck as Charlie’s house guest.
* * *
Charlie settled Savannah onto the sofa. With her feet propped up on one end and several pillows on the other, she lay there looking pale and much too quiet.
He’d half expected her to argue at every point, but she hadn’t. She hadn’t responded with anything more than one-word responses and a few thank-yous.
Not so long ago he’d felt closer to Savannah than anyone in the world. Now, in many ways, a stranger lay on his sofa.
A stranger because the withdrawn, obviously in pain woman wasn’t the woman he’d known in Chattanooga. Not even close.
He’d done that to her.
Not directly.
But he was responsible for her pregnancy, for her unhappiness, for her being on that interstate.
He’d only been trying to help.
Just as his father had only
been trying to help when he’d married Charlie’s mother. That hadn’t turned out so well.
Neither had Charlie’s involvement in Savannah’s life.
Perhaps he should have hired a nurse to take care of her twenty-four-seven. He sort of had.
What would she think of the fact that he had hired her friend Chrissie to care for her while he was at work?
She surely would appreciate that he hadn’t hired a stranger to stay with her. Her mother had thought it a good idea and given her blessing. Plus, Chrissie had jumped at the opportunity to make what he’d offered to pay her to stay with Savannah. Fortunately, the nurse had just worked four twelve-hour shifts in a row and was off for the next four days. Charlie had hired her for three of those four days. She would be with Savannah while he was at work through Friday. He was off work and call this weekend. He’d care for Savannah himself on Saturday and Sunday, had rearranged his schedule so he could go with her to her appointments with Dr. Kimble and Dr. Trenton on Monday. They’d figure out what needed to happen from there.
Regardless, he’d make sure she was taken care of.
Always.
Which might not be his right.
It wasn’t even now.
But he felt responsible for her, for their baby.
He wanted to take care of her.
And their baby.
Which was why he’d paid for a hotel room for Chrissie and her son for them to go to in the evenings after he got home. He’d take care of Savannah and their baby while he was home from work. Chrissie had agreed to return to his apartment if he had any emergencies and had to leave after hours.
He studied Savannah on the sofa. He’d given her a blanket, and she’d covered herself. She looked frail and banged up, with her black eye, bruised face and body, healing but still swollen lip, and bandaged leg.
“Can I get you anything?”
Without looking at him, she shook her head.
“Something to eat or drink?”
Again, she shook her head.
“Are you not going to talk to me?”