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“How bad, Al? Was anyone hurt?” I asked, worried.
“Only you, baby, and…”
“And?” I pushed gently.
“You were four months pregnant. But you had a large cyst. The baby leant on the cyst and made it burst, which caused you to possibly blackout and have the accident,” Big Al said.
I heard the grief in his voice. No! I shook my head. That was impossible. We’d long ago accepted we wouldn’t have kids. The doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with either of us, so it made no sense that I was now pregnant. Or was I?
“The baby?” I asked.
Big Al’s gaze skittered away. No baby, okay then. I was unsure how I should act. I hadn’t known I was pregnant, so was it two-faced to want to bawl my eyes out?
“When you crashed, you drove into a truck carrying pipes. One went through your stomach and the other your shoulder. The surgeons were positive you’d already miscarried the foetus by then. Blood was streaming from between your legs.”
“Do we know what it was?”
“A son.”
Tears welled as a sense of complete devastation flooded through me. A boy, a little child to carry on Big Al’s legacy, and I’d lost him. Not being strong enough to carry our son and make it through. Guilt swamped me, and I tucked under Big Al’s chin. For over twenty years, we’d tried and finally given up a decade ago. We accepted it was just one of those things. Hellfire was our family, and we poured our love into the club.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered before bursting into tears.
“Tati, you nearly died, and I can’t live without you. We lost our son but still have each other,” Big Al murmured.
“Al, I wasn’t strong enough to carry him,” I wept.
“No, honey, no. You had a cyst, and it burst. The docs said you may have peed more or been in slight pain, but you couldn’t have known,” Big Al whispered, pulling me in tighter to his body. “All I ever wanted was you. I got you; that’s all I need. Can’t live without you by my side, baby, and losing you would have killed me. Tati, I’d have eaten a bullet as soon as I buried you.”
“Don’t say that. You’re too important to me, to Hellfire. They need you as much as I do,” I sobbed.
“There’s no colour in my world without you. No laughter, no tears, no hope. I couldn’t live the next twenty years in darkness waiting until I joined you. There is no air to breathe unless you lived,” Big Al said, making me cry harder.
I’d never understood how this remarkable man cherished me, but I accepted Big Al did. And I loved Al back just as hard. He was my everything, my world, my very existence. I felt Big Al’s tears drop onto my head as together we mourned our precious son that we never got to meet.
???
A week later, I was allowed home from the hospital; while my body healed, my soul was wounded. As was Al’s. We couldn’t wait to be home and grieve in peace. Not that anyone had over-stepped, but with strangers coming and going, we didn’t want our grief to be displayed. To my amusement, we had an escort, as all of Hellfire turned out to honour my recovery. They all knew our loss, and once home, Chance approached and said in a week, we would have a cookout to celebrate my recovery. Until then, Hellfire would leave us alone unless we called one of them.
Chance held us tightly as he ordered us to heal and grieve and that if we needed him, pick up the phone. We’d both given Chance love back and then curled in our massive bed for three straight days. By the fourth, we were feeling stronger; while the pain hadn’t gone, it had faded slightly. There would forever be a hole in our hearts for our angel. Big Al ensured the hospital didn’t dispose of him the usual way and organised a funeral. We held that on the fifth day, just us and Hellfire. We’d named him Chase Gates, and Chance and Al had sorted a headstone for Chase.
Chase was buried alongside Enigma, Jawbones, Bullet, and Slash. Around them were Animal, Saint, Whiskey and Willa, Chaser, Amy and their three children. Chase would be well-loved and cared for by them. The funeral was our closure. The tears didn’t stop, but the grief lessened from that day. I knew most miscarriages were cremated, and I’d fretted that would happen to Chase. Big Al and Chance had made sure it was not so. We had a teddy carved into Chase’s stone with the words, ‘Much loved and never forgotten.’
Three days after that, we had the cookout, which doubled as a celebration for my recovery and a wake for Chase. Time moved forward as it always did, and we couldn’t stand still.
???
“Baby, what are you doing?” Big Al asked as he walked into the bedroom and saw me naked in front of the mirror. I was examining my body and pulling a face.
“Checking the scars,” I said with a dark pout. While I’d put a few pounds on over the years, my breasts remained upbeat and my waist slender, while my hips, ass and thighs stayed ample. That hadn’t changed despite the stay in the hospital. But what had been flawless skin was now severely marked, and I was not sure I liked it.
My shoulder was the neatest of the scars; even so, it wasn’t pretty. The scar was circular, and although the stitching was neat, the hole where the pipe had torn through me wasn’t. A tattoo could cover that; I decided once it had healed properly. My hands ran down to my stomach, and there I winced. I had a jagged horizontal line from my belly button to my pelvis. That was where I’d been cut open to remove Chase and to repair the damage caused by the second rod.
To the left was the wound where the pole had driven through me, and there was a corresponding one on my back. A tattoo again could hide that mark, but not on my stomach. The scars were too horrific, and I hated them. They reminded me of my failure to protect Chase, and, plus, they just looked awful. I didn’t see how Big Al would desire me anymore. I was in a mess.
“Why are you doing that?” Al asked as he shucked his clothes and threw them in the hamper. It had taken me years to train Al to do that, and it caused a small smile.
“Because they’re ugly,” I hissed, and Big Al lifted an eyebrow.
