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“What’s happening?”Kiki pleaded.
“Her water broke and she’s in labor.” Kiki knew it already. Of course, she knew it, but she still felt compelled to ask the question from Andie’s solemn-eyed doctor. The confirmation only solidified her fear. It was now embedded within her, a festering tick, engorging in her gut like a cancerous mass.
“But the baby?” she choked out, the words acid on her tongue. “Will the baby be okay?”
“Time is our enemy now.” The doctor’s cool gray eyes held an inescapable truth in them that Kiki hated. The look in them gave her no place to hide from this oh-so-grim reality they were facing, and Kiki hated her for it. Where were the empty platitudes and reassurances? Where were the “there, there” and “everything is going to be all rights”?
“She’s not quite six months along. At this stage, the baby is too small, and the lungs won’t be developed enough for it to breathe on its own. The baby is so small we don’t even have needles or tubes small enough to aid us. That’s on the slim chance the baby survives the birth.”
Kiki wanted to punch her. She wanted to claw into this cool, collected woman who spoke these soul-crushing words with such calm composure. She wasn’t unkind or dispassionate; on the contrary, she was like a port in this storm of turmoil and fear. Maybe that’s why Kiki hated her so much. There she stood like a beacon of safety, and yet she offered no hope.
“Make it stop.” Andie’s voice was haggard with the tears she tried to contain; one hand clung to Kiki’s while the other was engulfed in both Luke’s. “Please. Please, make it stop.” Her imploring eyes bounced between the doctor and Luke. When she found no solace there, she turned those desperate eyes her way, and Kiki would have given anything—anything—to have the power to stop this. To change the fate of this dreadful day and make everything okay again. Kiki felt as if the fear and pain were filling up the whole room until she was going to suffocate in it. She lifted her eyes from her best friend’s desperate plea to meet Luke’s across from her, and it was even worse there. The man looked as though he were facing a firing squad; terrified and resigned, he could see the end coming, and he was just as helpless to fight it as the rest of them were.
Kiki bent, laid her lips on her friend’s temple, and felt how cold she was. Dread had leeched all the warmth from Andie’s skin, and Kiki’s chin wobbled as she pressed her lips in a kiss meant to convey all the words she couldn’t say. Words that would adequately describe all she felt in this moment hadn’t been invented yet, so Kiki did the only thing she could. She tucked her head into the pillow next to Andie and cried with her, sharing her friend’s pain as deeply as she had shared her joy.
“I don’t wanna do it. No! No, I don’t wanna do it. Not if the baby won’t live. No. God, please no. Knock me out or something. Please don’t make me go through this if my baby’s only going to die!” The desperate pleading was devastating in its quiet delivery. Andie’s cry was muffled into Kiki’s neck and for her ears alone. It was the hopeless prayer of a child trying to wish away the monsters that lurked in the night. But today, the monsters were all too real. And there was no escaping them.
Kiki heard a stifled sob and looked across the bed to see Luke on Andie’s other side, clutching her free hand and glaring at the monitors. If he could stop things with will alone, the world would cease its turning with that look. The effort he was putting into holding back his fear brought a fresh rush of sorrow to Kiki. Andie wasn’t the only one losing a child today. The wave of sorrow that realization brought almost drowned her.
With trembling lips and a quivering chin, Kiki pressed a watery kiss to Andie’s temple then reached out to give Luke’s tightly clenched fists a squeeze. “I am going to find Jax and Logan, make sure they made it okay and know where we are.” When Andie stiffened and turned panicked eyes her way, Kiki’s anguish multiplied. “I’ll be back in a jiff. Luke’s going to be right here. He’s—”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Luke said, his voice rough gravel amidst the beeping and buzzing of the hospital room. Andie’s gaze swung his way as if she’d forgotten he was there—or maybe forgotten this was his tragedy as much as it was hers.
“Oh, Luke,” Andie sobbed. “Our baby.” The last came out nearly inaudible, and yet it echoed louder than any of the machines. Like the final drop of water breaking a dam, Kiki watched as Luke lost his battle with control. Chest heaving, tears flooding, Luke braced his elbows on the bed, bowed his head, and gave in to the storm of emotions battering him. His grief as rending as Andie’s, and it stopped the breath in her lungs to see it.
Andie tugged until Luke released her, and then she wrapped both arms around him, and they clung to each other, mother and father adrift in an ocean of anguish. Kiki backed away slowly. Leaving felt like sawing off a limb with a rusty blade, but this was a moment for the two of them. As much as she loved Andie and had grown to love Luke, this loss was theirs, and she was going to give them the space they needed to get through it.
Out in the hall, she saw Jax and Logan barreling her way with the matching expressions of shipwreck survivors. When Logan caught her eyes, she saw a desperate hope fill his, and she would’ve given all she owned to give him the reassurance he sought.
“I’m sorry, Logan,” she told him before he could ask questions she didn’t have the answers for. “They’re saying if the baby comes now, there’s no hope.” Fresh tears welled in her eyes, and she rubbed them away with a rough palm then told him the rest. “And the baby’s coming. They’re trying to stop the labor, b-bu-b-but—” And she cracked, unable to finish. She didn’t need to though. The horrible truth was already evident, and Kierra covered her face with her hands and let the grief come. When Jax’s arms engulfed her, she welcomed his warmth, burrowed into it, and clung while fear and sorrow had their way.
“It’s going to be all right.”
It wasn’t, but she didn’t contradict Jax, knew he was only trying to comfort her.
Logan moved aside, and Kiki lifted her head to see him drift to stand in the open doorway. New cracks of pain broke into her chest as she watched the young man look into the room where his unborn sibling struggled for life. He looked so young, she thought, too young to face an ordeal of this magnitude, yet too old to be told to not worry about it and go out and play.
Kiki pulled away from Jax slowly, tapped his arm, and indicated with her eyes where her attention had gone, and the two of them moved as one toward Logan. She had no idea what either of them could do to help, but they were going to offer what comfort they could. Unfortunately, when Logan caught their move in his direction, his expression shuttered up and he stepped back. When they continued to close in, he lifted both hands in the air and backed farther away.
“I can’t. I just can’t be here. It’s too much. Tell Dad. Tell him—” He gulped, looked back to the room in despair, and then closed his mouth, turned on his heel, and fled. Kiki tried to go after him, but Jax didn’t let her. “Leave him be.” She turned drenched eyes his way. “C’mon. Let’s find coffee and a waiting room. Logan’s a good kid. Smart. If he needs to step away for a while, nothing we can do about that. Let him process the way he needs to process. He’ll come back when he’s ready.”
“M'kay,” Kiki gave in reluctantly. She didn’t like to think of Logan out there dealing with this on his own, but Jax was right. She had no option but to let him. It wasn’t like she could order the boy back.
They found a vending area that offered rancid coffee in one machine while the other three offered a wide variety of stale and repulsive-looking snacks. After she and Jax made their selections, they wandered to a waiting room close to where Andie was. It was a maternity ward though, and it only took thirty seconds of sitting in a room surrounded by photos of happy, healthy babies before they both fled out the door without needing to say a word. Theirs was not a joyous wait, and the smiles of anticipation on the faces of the others there were more than either could bare.
So they walked. Kiki didn’t know when they started holding hands; she only realized that, as they made their third or fourth lap of the ward, she wasn’t as afraid as she’d been on the first go-round. When she looked down to see her fingers tightly entangled with his, her heart did a funny little flip; not joy, no, there was no place for joy during this time. But something, something small yet monumental was happening between them as they paced and worried. She hoped whatever was trying to grow between them now didn’t get strangled by the weeds of despair growing with it.
Chapter 16
“I changed my mind. I don’t want to do this. Not today.” Sharon had been expecting this.
“If not today, then it’s just going to keep festering until you do. He’s known we’ve been back for months now, and he hasn’t come calling or answered the notes we left on his door.” She rubbed a calming hand over Christy’s shoulder. They were parked in front of some beautiful, old country farmhouse out in the middle of Bumfuck. Sharon had no idea how Christy could tell where they were out here; all the orchards and fields looked the same and they’d driven miles without seeing anything she could’ve used as a landmark. It baffled her that Christy had driven straight here without getting lost. Twenty years later, and she still remembered where everything was.
“I know,” Christy hedged, stalling for time. “I thought it sounded like a good idea back at home. But now that we’re here, I can’t believe we decided to bother him at work. We should go.” Before she could restart the car, Sharon pulled the keys from the ignition.
“No, you don’t.” She steeled her resolve against the beautiful pleading eyes her lover flashed her way. “I’m not letting you chicken out. We decided to do it here, because you didn’t want to risk having another run-in with Logan’s dad again. And it’s not like we’re expecting him to sit down and have an hour-long chat with us. We’re just going to invite him for lunch. That’s it. That’s all.”
