The very second she drew away a pain unlike any other shot through her lower abdomen bringing her to her knees. She blindingly reached for Gabe’s hand while trying to breathe through the pain. "Gabe," She whispered, holding on with unbelievable strength. "Gabe!" she wailed as another bout of pain wrenched through her.
"Ellie, what is it? Is it the babies? What's going on? Ellie!"
"Call…call the ambulance!" Ellie managed to gasp, hand falling to her stomach as pain laced up from the tips of her toes, up her legs and fired off canon sized blasts in her lower abdomen. On her hands and knees now, she groaned as contractions wracked her body.
Gabe returned in a beat and was instantly at her side. “They're on their way, Ellie. They're on their way baby, hold on…oh God!" He caught sight of the blood reddening Ellie's pajama bottoms. Gabe paled, breaking out in a cold sweat.
It took this exact moment for his fucking anxiety attack to happen? Now? Gabe's mind was in a rage as he desperately attempted to calm himself down. "Fuck…RONNIE!"
Footsteps were heard, and Gabe wanted to yell at his girlfriend not to run---it wouldn't do to prematurely induce her own labor now. It'd just be his luck if Ronnie did follow Ellie into labor! God! There was so much fucking blood!
"Gabe…Oh God, Ellie." Refusing to panic, Ronnie appraised the situation before making a quick dash for dish towels and the roll of paper towel on the kitchen table. Handing the paper towel to Gabe, she slipped the dish towel over the pool of blood between Ellie's parted legs. "Hey sweetheart it's okay. It's alright, Ellie. Everything's going to be okay. Just relax and breathe. That's it sweetie just like that." when she looked up Ronnie met Gabe's ashen face and the grim expression on her face was mirrored back at her. "Gabe did you call the ambulance?"
"They're on their way." No sooner had he finished the sentence, they heard the familiar wails of sirens. Relief should've pooled in their veins, but Gabe and Ronnie did not allow themselves the luxury, they weren’t out of the woods yet.
"I'll go open the door for them...." Gabe stood on wobbly legs, the jellyfish effect causing him to stumble. But once he found his footing, he hastened to the foyer. He led the two EMT’s to the kitchen and watched as they maneuvered a pale Ellie on the stretcher.
Face contorted in pain, Ellie held onto Ronnie's hand as they carried her away. "Don't leave me." She sounded so much like a child in that moment that it brought tears to Ronnie's eyes.
"Never." Ronnie replied emphatically walking alongside the stretcher as the EMT's questioned her on Ellie's contractions, then her age, date of birth and so on. Ronnie answered as best as she could until Gabe returned.
"You ride with her, Ron. I'll take the car and follow with Sophie." Humbled in being given the opportunity to stay by Ellie's side through this difficult situation Ronnie fell even more in love with her raven haired lover. With a shared kiss goodbye, they separated. Ronnie hopped in with Ellie in the ambulance and Gabe ran to the ridgeline.
~*~*~*~
By the time they made it to the hospital and she was admitted, Ellie had lost a copious amount of blood and was going into shock. The situation went from bad to worse when it was discovered that the twins’ heart rates was dropping. With a caesarean inevitable, Gabe, Ronnie and a sleeping Sophie waited in limbo for news to come.
Two hours later, a nurse emerged from the O.R to report that the twins had been safely delivered. Fraternal, the girl weighing in at six pounds five ounces was older by a few minutes than the boy who weighed an ounce less than his sister.
Gabe and Ronnie’s joy was fleeting as they discovered that Ellie was still in danger.
“The Doctors are doing all they can to stabilize her.” She was gone after that leaving Gabe and Ronnie in a perpetual limbo of worry. With the hours creeping by and still no news Gabe, on instinct decided to give Dina and Phillip a call.
Not trusting himself not to yell at them, Gabe did not tell them much, simply that they needed to get their asses here as soon as was possible.
While they waited for news, they haunted the halls like unsettled specters, refusing to leave. So they were given a room, a bed for Ronnie to recline on and one for Sophie to get the sleep she was being denied. Hospital food, still as deplorable as the last few times they had been there, tasted like gourmet sawdust. But Sophie loved the applesauce and so they allowed her to eat it. The waiting added to the agony of not knowing---worrying. The only uplifting thing was visiting the twins in the maternity ward. They were pink little bundles of flailing arms and legs, poking from the pink and blue blankets that were wrapped around their tiny little bodies. Sophie always managed to giggle a storm when Gabe pointed out her little brother and sister.
"My bwotha and sishta!" her little face remained glued to the glass panel, her chubby hands touching the window.
"Yeah, squirt, that's your little brother and sister. They need to sleep and you and I need to get back to Ronnie, okay?" Gabe saw that she wanted to protest, but seemed to think better of it. Sophie had been very good for them since they'd come to the hospital and he was glad that she continued her good behavior as they made their way out the maternity ward. Temper tantrums were not needed right now.
They found Ronnie napping when they entered the room with the T.V on the stand set to mute. Gabe dropped a small kiss on her forehead before taking Sophie to the solitary chair in the room. He sat with her on his lap and watched the images flashing across the television screen.
The hours ticked away at a snail’s pace, Ronnie awoke and they distracted themselves with a game of thumb wars, which Sophie got a kick out of it. News finally came in the wee hours of morning.
"We've managed to stop the bleeding and she is now in the process of receiving blood transfusions. While we've done all we can, there were serious complications and we fear that Ellie may no longer be able to bear children. This delivery put a great amount of stress on her body, and it's a miracle she's come out of it relatively unscathed."
Relatively unscathed? Ellie would be devastated to hear that she could no longer bear children.
"But she's okay? Can we see her?"
"Yes, she'll be all right. She just needs a few more hours to recuperate. Like I said, she's lost a great amount of blood and so we need to give her time to rest so that her body can replenish all the blood lost. Nancy, the night nurse on duty will come and get you when she is ready for visitors." He left once he was assured that they had no further questions for him.
~*~*~*~
Dina and Phillip arrived around ten that morning, both looking haggard. Although Phillip hid it far better than his wife, who appeared as though she'd shed buckets of tears in their long journey. Her navy blue pea-coat was open enough that Gabe saw the black cardigan she had on over the knee length skirt. She'd gathered her dark hair into a tight bun, the severity of it making her appear far older than she was.
There were age lines that hadn't been there before, mostly around her almond shaped eyes and her pale pink mouth. When she attempted a smile, the deep lines stood out more and as she approached Gabe was gripped with the strong urge to gather in her in his arms and comfort her as best as he could. It'd been close to five years since he'd laid eyes on her. Seeing her now, Gabe wished he’d done more in keeping contact with them.
Dina and Phillip had been his best friends in high school, but more than that, they'd been the closest thing Gabe had to family. His mom had been a drunk who did just about anything for a pack of smokes and his dad walked out on them even before the Doctor cut the umbilical cord. There'd been nothing steady, loving or remotely homey in the trailer park he'd grown up in. Dina and Phillip had been Gabe's escape from his harsh reality.
Phillip had been their moral divining rod being raised in a family of Mormons and all and Dina, well Dina had been the buffer between them when the testosterone ran a little too high. Over all they'd been great together and even when Dina and Phillip started seeing each other, the dynamics of their relationship hadn't changed that much.
&nb
sp; High school had been the best time of Gabe's life as well as the first two years of college. He'd dated Ronnie off and on in those two years, breaking it off truly when life had interfered and he'd been unable to pay for school. Gabe had dropped out, falling in with a bad crowd soon after that. When Phillip first told Gabe about going on a mission, Gabe had been boosting cars to sell their parts. Their relationship suffered a blow after that and while Phillip and Dina moved on to greener pastures, graduating college, getting married and having a baby of who Phillip named Gabe Godfather. Gabe had been busy avoiding the law, graduating from misdemeanor to felony and finally getting caught in a burglary/murder attempt that had put him away for almost ten years.
During those years in the Pen, he'd managed to keep in touch with Dina, and Gabe had welcomed every care package she'd sent him. The pictures of Ellie had been the best, always keeping a smile on his face. Those pictures, along with the letters they'd exchanged he'd kept close to his heart. They'd continued on much in the same way with their friendship until Phillip had forbidden Dina from seeing Gabe anymore. Despite the pain it caused him, Gabe had thought it best, seeing as their friendship was threatening Phillip and Dina's marriage. Dina no longer came to visit him. The care packages, the letters along with the pictures of Ellie stopped coming.
When Gabe was finally released, he only contacted Dina one time to let her know where he was and that was a few years after being out in the world. Having moved to a new town, with nothing but the shirt on his back and the two dollars he'd had in his pocket when he'd been locked away, Gabe literally had nothing and nowhere to go. If it hadn't been for old man Mike who'd given him a place to stay and a job working at his restaurant as a bus boy, Gabe would've probably ended up back in prison or worse.
That one opportunity had been all he'd needed to get his life back on track and though the journey hadn't been easy, Gabe believed he came out alright. As luck would have it, Gabe having worked his way from bus boy to manager of the restaurant had been quite shocked when Old man Mike left Splendor to him in his will when he'd passed. Brody Wallace, who Mike had described as a spoilt, self-serving, incompetent man, had been Mike's only child and rightly so, Brody contested the will for years after. But Splendor had remained in Gabe's competent hands, thriving even.
The last time Gabe had heard from Dina had been a few weeks after Ellie arrived at his home and over the course of their conversation, Dina had joked that one day they would all eat at Splendor and reminisce over good desserts and laugh at their own stupidity. Gabe was still waiting for that day to come.
It had been years since Gabe laid eyes on his estranged friend. Phillip still looked the same, but older. The lines of time pulled at his eyes, creased the area around his mouth and wrinkled his forehead. In dark eyes, Gabe saw weariness, the sort that was associated with having lived with certain burdens that were far too heavy to be carried on the soul for such an extended period of time. His hair had the same tousled, windswept look from when they'd been younger although it was longer now and still inky black, with only a dusting of gray at the temples.
"Where is she? How…How is she?" Dina hesitantly asked.
Gabe sighed before running a hand through his hair. "She's fine, stable."
"That's good…that's good." This from Phillip and Gabe looked at him; they locked gazes for a moment before Phillip averted his eyes.
"When can we see her?"
"Probably soon, the doctor wanted to give her some time to rest first and that was…"
"Two hours ago." Ronnie stepped closer to Gabe, Sophie at her hip, stomach looking as though it was ready to burst at any second. Dina's eyes widened.
"You're…congratulations, Veronica. I'm happy for you." Gabe and Ronnie's relationship back in college had been too precarious for Dina and Ronnie to have become friends, but they both knew each other.
"Thank you." Ronnie said with a smile, hand automatically moving to her five month belly.
Dina's eyes glistened as she looked at Sophie. "Can I…can I hold her?" In that instant, Gabe almost felt sorry for her and his heart broke when Sophie shied away from Dina, her little arms fastening around Ronnie's neck, face hidden.
"She's shy around strangers." It hurt to realize what he'd just said was true but the sad fact was that Dina and Phillip were virtual strangers to Sophie. It wasn't the little squirt's fault that she didn't know her grandparents.
"She delivered safely...she had twins." Ronnie said quickly to alleviate the pained expression on Dina’s face.
"Twins…oh goodness, Phillip, twins!" Dina grabbed her husband's hand and held on tightly as they shared a look.
"Yes," Phillip gently patted her hand. "It'll be great having twins in the family." His voice held warmth and…contentment? From Phillip Holbrook? Surely the sky was falling. Pigs must've sprouted wings and hell of course definitely froze over. For surely there was no way in hell, that Phillip Holbrook would ever say something like that about his daughter having three children out of wedlock. It just wasn't comprehensible. Gabe wondered if the world was coming to an end.
"Are you all here for, Ellie?" they all turned around and faced---Gabe looked at her hospital badge---Nancy McCormick. "Hi I'm Nancy, and I'm one of the nurses looking after, Ellie." She paused for effect and added a small smile for good measure. "She woke up half an hour ago and is coherent enough now to talk to you. But it's going to have to be one at a time and each visit can be no longer than ten minutes each."
Gabe volunteered to go first and took Sophie along with him. When they entered the room, the first thing they saw was Ellie swallowed up by the bed and several hospital sheets, wires coming out from her body were attached to beeping machines. She looked small and so tired, her eyes were open and her lips lifted in semblance of her usual smile when she saw them approaching.
"Hey sweetheart," Ellie croaked, grimacing when she attempted a smile and winced instead.
Sophie began to cry as she wiggled in Gabe's arms, reaching for her mother. "Sophie stop, you've been a good girl so far, why are you being such a bad girl for your Mom?"
"Mama shick! and she go bye bye... Nicky go bye bye too." she bawled.
"No," Ellie cleared her throat before continuing. "No monster, I'm okay. I'm not sick anymore." Gabe saw how much it pained her to speak, but Ellie's face remained joyful for Sophie. "Mama's just a little tired, I'm not going anywhere. I promise okay?" the Nicholas comment was not acknowledged, because it did not bear acknowledgement.
Gabe hurried the visit along, telling Ellie of her twins all the while preparing her for the sight of her parents.
"I can't believe they actually came." She whispered in mild astonishment.
"They love you and I think they're ready to show you how much." Gabe sighed. "This is a step in the right direction. It'll take time, but I'm sure its time they are now willing to sacrifice in order to reconcile."
"I don't know if I can forgive them, Gabe. I'm not even sure I want to."
Gabe leaned over Ellie and placed a small kiss on her forehead. "Baby steps."
He left the room after that, allowing Ronnie some time with Ellie. That visit lasted only a few minutes, with Ronnie wishing Ellie well and giving a parting kiss on the cheek.
Her mother was the first to enter her room. It felt like decades since Ellie had last seen her. "Eleanor," The utterance of her name was both bittersweet and disheartening, Ellie didn't know whether to cry or tell her mother to fuck off. It was a crying shame that it had taken being on the brink of death for them to give a damn. Her father Ellie didn't expect shit from, but her mother? Her mother should've been her backbone, the force that kept her erect when life's troubles threatened to beat her down.
"Hi, Mom." the endearment sounded odd, it'd been a while since she'd called her that.
"Oh Ellie," She sounded pitiful. The remorse of a bishop's wife smeared across her too perfect face. She approached Ellie's bedside, hands held in front of her. "How are you feeling?"
"A little late
on the sentiment, Mom, but I've been better." Childish of her to throw in that low blow, but damn it! She was fucking entitled! What the hell would've happened to her had Gabe not taken her in? She had trusted them to care for her! Love her for God sakes! And all Ellie had received was an ultimatum to abort her child or leave.
"I'm so sorry, Ellie…"
Ellie sighed, and bit back the urge to rant and rave, to scream at this woman until her voice cracked and her throat split. No matter what their issues, no matter how heavy the baggage, this woman gave her life. Being a parent herself, Ellie knew how horrible she'd feel if Sophie and now her twin babies ever treated her like scum. Ellie couldn't offer absolution just yet, but compassion she could share in spades. If there was to ever be harmony between them, steps had to be taken in order to achieve it.
"I'm glad you're here." Ellie grabbed her mother's hand, and squeezed. Like Gabe said, they had taken the first step; it was up to Ellie to meet them halfway.
Dina silently wept. "Thank you. Thank you for this." There was so much meaning behind that and they were both very aware of it. She squeezed Ellie's hand back.
Later Ellie was told that visiting hours were over which was probably a good thing considering her dread of the inevitable reunion with her father. Her mother was one thing but the bishop was on another level. Ellie's nurse tumbled in after her mother left and administered painkillers that lulled her fatigued body into a dreamless sleep. With the mindless thought of what her twins looked like, Ellie surrendered to the night.
~*~*~*~
"There aren't words that could begin to explain how horrible I've treated you. I've allowed pride to influence my behavior for far too long. I've preached unconditional love, and love for family and neighbors and yet when it came to you, Ellie," Phillip sniffed, nose congested, his eyes beginning to blur.
Redemption (The Bet) Page 4