Surprise Delivery (Page 32)

No. Bullshit. My trust is hard to earn, but once you have it, I’m ride or die with you. Until you prove to me that I made a mistake in giving you my trust. Once you break the trust I give you, it’s next to impossible to get it back again. Like the old saying goes – screw me once, shame on you, screw me twice, shame on me.

Brad had broken the trust I put into him. Flat out shattered it. The way he spoke to me that night on the street, the things he said – like I owe him my love or something – enrages me.

“You were supposed to be my friend, Brad,” I snap.

“I am your friend.”

“You obviously think I owe you more than that,” I reply evenly. “That’s not going to work. This friendship isn’t going to work.”

“Lexi, don’t say that,” he whines. “I went a little crazy, I admit. I said some things I regret and –”

“No, you told me exactly how you feel,” I interrupt. “You showed me exactly who you are, Brad.”

“Look, you’re in pain right now,” he says. “You’re not thinking right –”

“Not thinking right?” I hiss. “Are you fucking kidding me? Are you fucking serious right now, Brad?”

I feel anger flooding my body and as my blood pressure and heart rate rises, the beeping from the machines all around me grows louder and more insistent.

“Get out of here, Brad,” I say, my voice dripping with disdain. “Get out of here right now.”

A sad smile touches his lips, though the expression of condescending arrogance remains in place. He looks at me and nods.

“That’s okay,” he says. “I’ll give you a little time to recover and get to thinking clearly again.”

“Fuck you, Brad.”

“It’s all going to be okay, Lexi,” he says. “You’ll see.”

If I didn’t know the pain of moving quickly would explode in me with the force of an atomic bomb, I would pick something up and throw it at him. But after one more tense moment, he turns and leaves the room. Thank God. I settle back against the pillow and take several deep breaths, letting them out slowly as I try to get myself back under control.

As I sit there with my eyes closed, focused on gathering myself, there’s a knock at the door. I open my eyes and see Duncan standing in the doorway. He’s got a white coat on and is looking down at the clipboard in his hand.

“Duncan,” I breathe.

He looks up and gives me a tight smile. “How are you feeling today, Alexis?”

“I hurt,” I say, a soft laugh escaping me.

“I expect that you’ll experience some discomfort and pain for a few days yet,” he says.

I cock my head and look at him. Something seems off with Duncan and I’m not sure what it is. His words are short. Clipped. And his tone is distant – maybe even a little cold. He’s not looking at me and in fact, seems to be actively refusing to meet my eyes. Instead, he’s checking the machines that surround my bed and consulting the clipboard in his hand almost obsessively, as if something on those pages is going to suddenly change somehow.

“Are you okay, Duncan?”

He nods but still doesn’t look at me. “I’m fine,” he clips out.

I look at him curiously, not sure what’s going through his mind or why he’s suddenly being so frosty with me. I tell myself that it’s because he’s at work and has to maintain a professional distance from his patients. But I don’t know that I entirely buy it. I see something in his face, hear it in his voice – he’s intentionally putting up a wall between us.

“What happened?” I ask. “I mean, I remember some things, but other details are a little hazy.”

He moves to the foot of my bed and consults his clipboard again. I want to rip it out of his hands and throw it across the room, just to force him to look at me.

“When you went into labor – I’m assuming it was from the stress that night – your baby was in the breech position,” he explains. “I performed an external cephalic version or ECV. What that means is that by applying pressure to your body, I was able to manipulate your baby into the proper birthing position.”

He finally looks at me, but I see nothing in his eyes. No spark, no sense of that connection, nothing. When he looks at me, all I see is emptiness. His face is a mask of cool neutrality and it’s suddenly all business with him. There is definitely more going on than just keeping a professional distance. A lot more.

“When you first went into labor, you suffered what’s called a perineal tear, which caused a tremendous amount of blood loss. Once we got the baby turned, you were able to give birth normally,” he said. “By that time, the paramedics showed up and we were able to get you to the hospital where you underwent emergency surgery to repair the perineal tear. It was touch and go for a while and you were in and out of consciousness for a few days, but you are going to be fine. You should be back on your feet and at full strength again very soon.”

I nod, but don’t say anything. I’ve got enough of a working understanding of medicine to understand what he’s saying and know how lucky I am to be alive. If not for Duncan, I very well might have died out there on the street.

“How is my baby?” I finally ask.

“She’s fine,” he replies. “Or, she will be. The doctors want to keep her in the neonatal ICU for a few more days just for observation, but they don’t foresee any problems and think she’ll be good to go home with you soon.”

His entire demeanor is so clinical and cold. So detached. It’s the polar opposite of what his usual demeanor with me is and it’s leaving me confused.

“If you have any questions, I’m sure your regular doctor – Doctor Larson, I believe – will be able to answer them for you,” he says. “I just wanted to stop by to check up on you.”

I give him a tight smile but before I can open my mouth to say anything, he turns and walks out of my room, his strides quickly efficient, carrying him down the hallway. I’m left there wondering what in the hell just happened and not having the first clue.

I sit there puzzling it over for a few minutes when Sabrina walks into the room, a wide, warm smile on her face. She runs to the side of the bed and is careful when she leans down to hug me, making sure to not squeeze me to tight, or move me too suddenly.

“Hey girl,” she says. “How are you feeling?”

“Like garbage,” I grumble. “Everything on me hurts.”

“Well, that’s not shocking, given what you’ve been through,” she says. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“To be honest, I don’t recall most of it,” I confide. “Bits and flashes, but it’s almost like it wasn’t real. More like a really vivid, bad dream more than anything.”

“Well, you’ve got a beautiful baby girl that proves it wasn’t just a dream.”

A baby girl. I have a baby girl. The thought still doesn’t feel real to me. And yet, at the same time, the thought fills me with an array of profound emotions I can’t really describe – all of them good.

It’s strange. When I found out I was pregnant, I was terrified. I didn’t know what I was going to do and even gave serious thought to putting the baby up for adoption when it was born. But now, everything’s changed, and I can’t picture my life without my baby girl. The mere thought of her makes my heart swell with a fierce sense of love and pride I would have never predicted I’d feel – and I haven’t even met her properly yet.

“It’s a good thing Duncan happened to be there,” she says. “I really don’t know what would have happened if he wasn’t.”

“Neither do I,” I say softly.

My stomach churns as I think about Duncan. Specifically, about how cold and aloof he was just minutes ago. I don’t know what I did or what changed. Something obviously had, though. It was like he didn’t even want to be in the room with me all of a sudden.

I try to push the thoughts out of my head for the moment. The last thing I want to do is break down and have a crying fit right now. Right now, I just want to celebrate the fact that I’m still alive – that my baby and I are both going to be okay.

“Can you take me to see her?” I ask.

Sabrina gives me a smile. “I thought you’d never ask.”

I take her hand and give it a tight squeeze. I honestly couldn’t have asked for a better person in my life than Sabrina. She’s there for me without question and without fail whenever I need her. She’s my rock and my strength, and I can’t ever truly express just how grateful I am for her.

I’m sitting in a wheelchair in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows that make up the front wall of the nursery in the neonatal ICU. I’d wanted to walk down just to stretch my legs and give my muscles some work, but Bri had insisted that it’s proper procedure for her to push me around in a chair until I’m formally discharged.

It’s embarrassing. I’m a healthy young woman. There’s no reason for me to be riding around in a wheelchair.

I scan the rows of baskets, smiling at all of the wiggling, pink newborns. They’re all utterly adorable. I never considered myself a baby person before – honestly, I really hadn’t given much thought to having children. At least, not until I’d gotten pregnant. As I look at the babies all tucked into their bassinets, I realize for the first time that yeah, I do want to be a mom.

“Which one is she?” I ask. “Which one’s my baby girl?”

Sabrina points to an incubator set off to the side and I feel my heart fall. Far from being a pink, wriggling little bundle of flesh, my baby is lying still. She looks too pale and too gaunt.