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Faith, who was starting to stand, dropped back into her chair as the blood rushed from her head to her heart. She stared at her son in disbelief. “Are you serious?”
He stared back, his expression a mix of wariness and concern.
“Why didn’t you tell me before now? I could have stopped her.” Or at least Fitz could have, if he were willing to get involved.
Grayson broke eye contact. “She made me promise,” he said quietly.
“God.” It was a plea for help. Faith brought her hands up and scrubbed her face as dizziness assaulted her. “I can’t believe she’s doing this after she was nearly killed the last time. And now there’s a war in Venezuela. My sister is headed into awar!”
“Maybe she’ll be sent back. Why would they even let her into the country?”
Why, indeed?“Maybe.” She appreciated Grayson’s effort to comfort her, but the news was devastating. A need to seek Jerry’s comfort swamped her suddenly. Coming on top of fear, her emotions buckled abruptly, and she burst into tears, something she had never done before in front of her son, not even when she first got news of Jerry’s death.
She could sense Grayson coming around the desk. “I’m sorry, Mom.” His voice cracked as he apologized.
“It’s not your fault.” With a sharp sniff, she dashed the tears from her eyes and went to stand up. Pain seared the underside of her belly, causing her to double over with a gasp. “Oh!”
“Mom! Are you okay?”
With her son’s hands on her shoulders, helping her to straighten slowly, her fears for Grace moved to the backburner as she analyzed her symptoms. She’d had two babies before. Grayson, a ten-pound whopper, had been a C-section, Olivia a vaginal birth. With neither pregnancy had she felt so many sharp pains. She’d passed them off as Braxton Hicks, knowing all the while that they were not.
She’d meant to ask her OBGYN for an ultrasound on her last visit, only she had canceled that appointment because her horses were due on the same day, and then she’d forgotten to reschedule. The warm gush of fluid leaking from her told her it was now too late. She glanced down, expecting to see evidence that her water had broken. Instead, what she saw was blood. A lot of blood.
The Latin words for what was happening jumped into her head.Abruptio placentae.The baby’s placenta was tearing from the wall of her uterus, which meant her fetus wasn’t getting the oxygen it needed.
Drawing a deep breath to quell her panic, Faith fell upon her training as an ER nurse and said calmly, “Grayson, take my cell phone and call 911.” As she sat slowly back down, she had to grit her teeth against the sharp rending sensation caused by her movements.
“What? Now?”
Poor Grayson was having to grow up literally overnight. “It’s okay. Just call 911 the way I showed you. You don’t need my passcode.”
She would have called the number herself, but she was concentrating on holding completely still and catching her breath against the knifelike pains, coming and going intermittently. The professional in her listened in as Grayson placed the call, his face ashen.
She whispered the words for him to convey, then added, “Tell them to hurry.”
Her baby—the one she’d been too busy to care about—was suffocating. God forgive her for the lack of love she had shown the poor little thing.
Grayson put her cell phone back on the desk. He knelt in front of her. “They’re coming right away, Mom. They’ll be here soon.” He rubbed the length of her arms, even as he searched for words to reassure them both.
Touched, Faith raised a hand to his thick hair, the same color as hers. Her boy needed a haircut before school started at the end of the month.
Blood was now pooling in the seat under her. She didn’t want him to see it. Her children had lost one parent already. Who would care for them if she died, also? Grace was the obvious choice, but she had been slipping toward anger and self-destructive thoughts ever since her miscarriage.
Faith couldn’t afford to die. “I’ll be okay, honey. Would you do one more thing for me?” She wasn’t sure what it would accomplish, but the Spirit was nudging her, so she asked anyway. “Hand me my cell phone.”
Grayson placed it in her palm. Opening it with facial recognition, she went to her contacts and looked up Fitz’s number. “I want you to call Casey Fitzgerald. Tell him what’s happening. He’ll make sure you and Olivia aren’t left here by yourselves.”
Given Grayson’s hesitation, the thought of involving Fitz did not appeal. “We’ll go to the hospital with you.”
“They won’t let you into the ambulance, honey. If you call Fitz, he can bring you to the hospital later, if he’s not out of town. Take down this number and use your own cell phone to call.”
With a grimace of reluctance, Grayson scribbled Fitz’s contact information onto a pad on her desk.
“Now, go fetch my purse from the front closet and bring it to me. I’m going to need my ID and my insurance cards.”
Grayson straightened, stuffed the note in his pocket, and ran for the house.
Faith took advantage of his absence to gauge how much blood she was losing. The blood pooling in the seat beneath her was sobering. If the baby wasn’t rescued soon, they might both die. Thank God, she could hear sirens in the distance, coming closer. She clasped her hands together and prayed with every ounce of her being.
