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“Tam?” I practically shouted. “Tam, how is she? How’s my sister? Is she alive?”
“Yes, she’s alive. She’s not good, though.”
I exhaled for what felt like the first time since I’d got the call. “Oh, thank fuck. I want to see her.”
“Not now. She’s not even woken up yet.”
“She almost died, Tam. I want to see her.”
He positioned himself in front of the hospital room doors. “No, she shouldn’t be disturbed.”
I shoved him in the chest. “Get out my fucking way.”
“Don’t fucking touch me.”
“What is all this?” one of the nurses snapped at us. “You want to brawl, go to a bar. This is a hospital. It’s not even visiting hours.”
I assumed Tam had thrown some extra money around to make sure he got to stay.
We both took a breath, and Tam stepped out of the way.
I looked in at the private hospital room.
Hallie seemed somehow shrunken—and I didn’t just mean her belly. Her cheeks were gaunt, her colouring sallow. How could twenty-four hours have changed a person so much? Around her, machines beeped steadily, and a drip was threaded into the back of her hand.
My chest tightened. “Hallie?”
She was unconscious and couldn’t hear me, but I still wanted her attention. Fuck, I was a selfish son of a bitch. She was my big sister and had practically raised me, and here she was, having gone through a trauma, and all I wanted was for her to wake up and make me feel better.
I turned back to Tam, who’d followed me in.
“Where’s the baby?” I asked.
Tam covered his face with his hands. “She’s in the Neonatal Intensive Care. She wasn’t breathing for a little while after she was born. She had the cord wrapped around her neck and then she got stuck, but the doctors and midwives were brilliant. They got her breathing again, but they want to keep an eye on her.”
“And Hallie?”
“She lost a lot of blood. She’s had to have a transfusion.”
“Jesus. We could have lost them both.”
“Icould have lost them both. She’s my wife, and that’s my baby.”
“And she’s my sister and my niece. It’s not a fucking competition, Tam. We’re both allowed to love her.”
I realised he was scared. Not just scared, fucking terrified. Tam Cornell had finally come across a situation where he hadn’t been able to control the outcome, and it had rocked him to the core. These were the people he loved most in the world—the people who’d become his family outside of the other Cornells—and if he’d lost Hallie and the baby it would have destroyed him.
“Has she got a name yet? The baby, I mean.”
“No. We talked about a couple, but Hallie said she wanted to meet her first. I thought it would happen right after the baby was born, that the midwife would put her in Hallie’s arms and we’d decide what her name would be together, but it didn’t happen that way.” His voice grew thick as he spoke.
Tam was close to tears. The man who practically ran most of London had been reduced to a mess because of the love he had for his wife and baby.
“Hey, it’s going to be okay. These things never end up the same way we picture them, but as long as they’re both going to be all right, that’s all that matters.”
Tam’s lips pinched, and he turned his head, clearly embarrassed about his emotion.
“Did you get hold of Layla?” I asked. “Hallie would want her best friend here for support.”
