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“Answer the fucking question,” I demanded.
This was a man used to calling the shots, people treating him with reverence, not answering back because of that white coat he wore. “I walk out of this hospital without both my child and my woman, I’m driving straight to your place,” I told him. “Then, I’m going to hold a gun to the head of your wife, a knife to the throat of your child and ask you to choose which one I will kill and which will survive.”
I let the words hang there, settling in the air. This was a doctor in Los Angeles, it would be a safe bet to assume he’d had people threaten him in the past. But I doubted he’d ever had someone who truly meant it to threaten him.
He looked like he might piss himself.
Message received.
Then I went to my wife, sweat sticking to her forehead, her face red, eyes wild with pain, fear and mostly determination. There was a film over that expression, though. Something was gripping onto her, trying to take her away from me. The delirium that followed with death. I’d seen it many times.
Only in my worst nightmares did I think I would see that look in Wren’s eyes. I hid my fear from her. She would not see defeat on my face. Not now when she needed my strength and faith in her.
“I’m not going to lose him,” she said through gritted teeth.
It was a boy. We’d found out as soon as we could. Wren did not want surprises this time around.
“I know,” I agreed. My woman would not let anyone take another child from us. She’d wrestle the reaper himself. She’d fight with everything she had to bring our son into the world. With her last breath.
Happily she’d give all of the life she had inside of her for our child.
Chaos was erupting around us, and I knew I had moments left with her. “I’m not going to lose you,” I told her, inches from her face. I clutched onto her neck. “This is your battle, darlin’. Yours only. I can’t do anything here. I can’t save you, my Viking woman. You are going to save yourself too.”
Her eyes cleared as she remembered the conversation we’d had a lifetime ago. Determination pinched her brows together. My woman was exhausted and experiencing pain I couldn’t fathom, but no one would dare go against her with that look on her face.
Not even death.
“Mr. Walker,” the doctor interrupted the moment I had with her. “You need to let go of your wife now.” His tone was even, detached. No more fear existed in it. It still lived there, inside of him, though, pushing him along. But he’d buried it in order to do his job.
Save my Wren.
In order to give him space to do that, I had to let her go. It went against every instinct I had. But I was powerless here.
I laid my lips onto Wren’s, lingering for a moment longer before I stepped back.
People kept telling me to leave the room, but I didn’t move. They finally stopped trying, focusing their attention on Wren. There were too many people around her for me to see her. Fear paralyzed me. Alarms were going off.
I didn’t know how Jay and Stella managed to get in the room amid all the chaos, and my eyes flitted over them with disinterest. Jay’s face paled as he took in the scene in front of him, then he tried to pull Stella out.
She bore down, moving to my side and putting her small hand in mine.
I barely felt it.
“We need to prep the OR, now!” the doctor yelled.
“There’s no time,” someone else called.
A nurse walked up to me. “Sir, your wife went into cardiac arrest. We are currently doing a postmortem c-section,” the nurse said.
I stared at her. She had tears in her eyes. She was upset. A doctor delivering this news probably wouldn’t be. They trained themselves not to care about human life in the way nurses did. You couldn’t cry over every person you couldn’t save. I knew it because my life was that in reverse. I couldn’t care about all the people I had to kill. They were my job. Nothing more, nothing less.
You couldn’t care.
But this woman in front of me cared.
She cared because she thought she was telling me that they were cutting my baby out of my dead wife.
Stella let out a whimper from beside me. It was a primal sound. Of pure pain. I didn’t look at her. I kept my eyes on the nurse. “You are mistaken.” I enunciated my words. “You are going to go in there and tell the doctor that he is going to bring our son into this world safely. Then, he is going to make sure that my wife wakes up to hold him.”
