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“Elara,” I hear my father’s voice. It sounds so far away and yet so close at the same time. “Elara,” I hear again.
My eyelids feel like they are being held down by weights but somehow I manage to peel them open, one after the other until I am looking into my father’s deep brown eyes.
“Dad,” I croak, my voice thick with sleep.
“Hi, baby.” He smiles, letting out a slow exhale.
“What are you doing here?”
“Kane called me after they took you back to surgery. Hopped on the first flight I could get to Chicago.”
“What time is it?” I lift my head, looking for the pitcher of water the nurse left on my bedside table earlier.
“Three in the afternoon,” my dad says, reaching for the pitcher, sensing what I’m looking for without me having to say a word. He pours me a cup and then extends it to me.
I take a tentative drink, my throat still sore from the tubes they ran down it during surgery the day before. Once finished, I hand the cup back to him.
“How are you feeling?” he asks, setting the cup on the table before taking my hand in both of his much larger ones, careful not to disturb the I.V. still attached to it.
“I’m okay,” I force out, knowing he’ll see right through it.
“How are you really, Elara?” He narrows his gaze at me, the wrinkles around his eyes highlighted by the action.
“Honestly, Dad, I’m not sure.” I let out a bitter laugh as I try to sit up, but instantly fall back onto the pillow when an angry pain rips up my middle.
“Your body has been through a lot. It’s important you give yourself time to heal,” he coaxes, fixing the blanket around me.
“It’s not my body that’s the problem.” I turn my gaze away, not able to look at him.
“Your mother and I lost a baby.” I turn my gaze back toward him, eyes wide with surprise. “Two actually,” he adds, staring at where his hand is holding mine again.
“I didn’t know.”
“We didn’t want you to know.” My big, strong father looks up at me with tears swimming in his eyes and it takes everything in me not to fall apart all over again.
“Your mother thought it best,” he continues after a long pause. “She was right of course. There’s nothing for a child to gain from learning she had siblings that died before they were born. But now…” He squeezes my hand. “Now I feel like you should know. Because no matter how badly you’re hurting right now, Elara, I promise it will get better. It will get easier. But honey, I know from experience that it will never go away.”
“Tell me what happened,” I interject, my voice thick.
“We got pregnant with our first child the year we were married. It was a surprise but a happy one. Everything was going great until one day your mother started bleeding. I rushed her to the hospital right away but it was too late. The baby was gone.”
“Dad.” It’s my turn to squeeze his hand.
“The second baby was harder. Your mother was about twenty-two weeks when she went into labor. They weren’t able to stop the labor but it was far too early for her to survive. We got to hold her after she was gone.”
“She?” I swipe at a tear that streaks down my cheek.
“You had a sister. Malory Everett,” he confirms, a sad smile on his lips.
“Malory,” I say out loud, trying to wrap my head around all this.
“It was probably one of the hardest things we’d ever been through. Me and your mother. She was sick with grief. We both were. But even through that sadness and loss, she wasn’t ready to give up just yet. So after a year, we tried again. And what we ended up with made all the pain and loss worth it. Because we got you. The most precious, beautiful baby girl in the entire world. We didn’t forget about what we had lost, but the sadness was eventually replaced with happiness. You did that for us.”
“Dad.”
“I know it may not feel like it now, but you will get through this. Your body will heal and eventually so will your heart. You just have to give yourself time to get there. I’m not going to lie and say I wasn’t a little disappointed when I heard you had gotten pregnant. In my opinion, it’s far too soon and you two haven’t known each other long enough to be taking on a commitment like that.” He looks toward the door and then back to me before continuing, “But I will say you’ve got one heck of a guy out there, honey. I can tell just by looking at him that he worships the ground you walk on.”
“He’s still here?” I question without really processing anything else that he said.
