She coughs now, and I stand up and hold my hand out to her. Oh God, how I want to take the pain away that I caused. She’s killing me and the tears I’ve been holding back burn in my eyes. She thinks I’ll take the baby once it’s born and kill her. Oh god how did this get so fucked up.
She coughs hard now, and Carlos steps up and puts the blanket around her. I move to hold her and Isabella backs away, slipping in the snow, almost falling backwards. Carlos catches her arm and quickly scoops her up.
“Hold on Izzy. You need to get warm. Alexander, open the car door and get in.”
He jogs to the car, and I ran ahead to open the door and removing my wool jacket to cover her with. Carlos puts her on my lap, and I cover her with my coat. She is so goddamn cold. Everywhere she’s cold, freezing. I hold her close and kissed her cheeks and stroke her hair. All I can do is cradle her in my arms and tell her how sorry I am.
She stutters out a fuck you, Alex. And then she coughs hard. Itdoesn’t sound good. Her chest rattles and she is having a hard time getting air.
“Shhh, baby. Shh, it’s okay. Just hang on a bit longer, okay, love?” I stroke her cheek and kiss her cold lips.
She tells me how tired she is and how cold she is. I look at Carlos in their rearview mirror and the tears are slowly falling down my cheeks. I don’t care that he is watching me fall apart with Isabella in my arms. She is all that matters now.
He barks at me. “Don’t let her fall asleep till she’s warm and her body temperature is back up. She’s sick and more than likely caught a touch of hypothermia standing out in the fucken snow in her nightgown.”
I panic now because she keeps trying to shut her eyes. She keeps trying to go to sleep.
“Stay with me for a bit, love? Don’t go to sleep? Yell at me. Call me a prick again. Because I deserve everything you have to say to me and more, okay? Just don’t go to sleep yet.”
She curls up and holds her stomach, so I ask her if her tummy hurts, and she croaks out.
How much she loves our baby and that she’s cold in her little tummy. I have never sobbed in my life, but she kills me with her words. She loves this little baby so much that she’s more worried about it being cold than about herself. It’s mine, she pleading with me, and my heart breaks in half all over again.
I put my hand on top of her cold one that cradles the life we created together. I can feel the little flutter move inside her and I cry. She is everything to me, they are everything to me. She closes her eyes and drifts off to sleep. I shake her and call her name, but she won’t wake up.
“Fuck!” Carlos slaps the steering wheel and I start to panic now.
“How far away are we?”
“Five minutes.” He grabs his phone, and, with one hand, he calls Janice to get the bedroom ready and grabs every warm blanket we have. He pulls up at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the plane and takes her from my arms and runs up as I follow him, and we head straight to the back bedroom.
Janice has the covers pulled back, and extra blankets piled at the end of the bed. Carlos barks at me to get undressed and get in. And I do. He hands me Isabella. And he takes the damp quilt off of her, covering her with a comforter and piling more on top.
“Take her clothes off and put one of your hands between her thighs and put her hands under your armpits, we want to get her warm. That’s the fastest way to warm the body and get her as close to your naked skin as you can. I’ll be back with a heating bottle.”
He keeps tossing blankets on top of us and I try to get her nightgown off and over her head. I strip off my shirt and pull her close, holding her tight.
Carlos tosses the last blanket on top of us. “Don’t rub her fingers or her toes. She probably has a bit of frostbite. Just let everything warm up naturally. She’s already sick, so she’ll have a fever and she’ll start to sweat. But we want to get that body temperature back up. I’ll be back.”
Carlos comes back in with water and a heating bottle and tucks it by our feet. “Don’t let it touch her toes, just keep it close.”
I have her wrapped tightly in my arms. She’s shaking, and she’s still so cold. Her fingers are bright red, and I can just imagine what her feet look like. Those slippers weren’t very thick or warm.
I look up at Carlos. “I want you to get a hold of Anna and Danny. I want them at her house before we arrive. She doesn’t trust us, Carlos, and when she wakes up, she’s going to need someone.Please contact my father and instruct him to summon Dr. Andrews. He needs to take a look at her.”
Carlos nods his head and leaves, closing the door behind him, and I just hold her. For the full two hours, she doesn’t wake up; she doesn’t say anything, but she’s breathing. She’s still breathing, and that’s all that matters.
We land, I dress, and we bundled her into the car, and hurriedly got to the house, driving around the back driveway and parking in the garage beside her car. Carlos opens my door and I hand her to him. He grabs her and quickly runs her through her garage, coming in through the back of the kitchen. I followed them quickly and everyone is there. Christopher, Sebastian, my father, Danny and Anna.
Anna immediately breaks from the group in the living room and follows Carlos into the bedroom. She pulls the covers back, letting Carlos settle Isabella in the bed, and she stops and glares at me, her eyes red from crying.
She looks at Isabella’s pale shaking form and then turns on me. “What the fuck did you do to her? What did you do now, you fucken asshole?”
I can see she wants to slap me or punch me or whatever she wants to do to me, and that’s fine.
My only answer. “I didn’t do anything; I just wanted to talk, that’s all. But she ran, and she got cold in the snow.”
Carlos settles Isabella into the bed, still bundled up in all the blankets that we covered her in. I remove my suit jacket, toss it to the floor, and crawl to the other side of the bed. Anna sits beside her and strokes her face.
