Silenced

by Alicia Renee Kline

  In a deserted hospital corridor, I pressed my back to the wall, slumping down to the floor. I parted my legs, forcing my head between my knees in a semi-successful attempt to counteract the nausea that raged through my body.

  It didn’t help with the suffocating feeling of helplessness. But it did assist with the lightheadedness. I focused on drawing in air, pretending that the simple act of breathing was the most important thing in my world. The ruse was enough to trick myself into calming down, but I knew in the back of my mind that it didn’t matter.

  When I felt like I could stand again without falling over, I grabbed onto the wall behind me and hoisted myself up. Sheer will propelled me on my way through the maze that would take me out to the waiting room of the maternity ward. I walked blindly, my eyes not seeing anything around me. Since I knew this place like the back of my hand, this wasn’t a problem, and I found myself at my destination before I’d planned what to do once I arrived.

  It must have been a slow night for having babies. I didn’t have any trouble finding Gracie and Will, seated in a loveseat over in the corner of the room. They’d fallen asleep; wrapped in the comfort of each other’s love. Will’s head was perched on Gracie’s shoulder, her black hair falling over his auburn curls, mixing together and uniting them even further in slumber.

  I watched them from afar for longer than I should have. It seemed like I was encroaching on a private moment, and I felt like a voyeur, seeing something intimate that should have remained behind closed doors.

  Eventually, I pried myself away from the threshold of the room and made my way over to them. I crouched down before them, on eye level with Gracie. I whispered her name softly. She didn’t flinch.

  My hand went to her face, brushing her cheek gently. She moaned, then raised her arm to swat it away. I caught her by the wrist and tried again.

  “Gracie, sweetie, please wake up.”

  I swallowed down the words I really meant: I need you.

  Slowly, her beautiful brown eyes opened, taking me in. I was greeted with a megawatt smile, the kind that begged for you to return it. But I couldn’t, and she caught on quickly. The grin fell from her lips.

  “Chris?”

  And with that one syllable, she broke me. I slumped down into the chair next to her, all intentions of keeping up a stoic appearance swept away. She could see through it; she’d done it already.

  “What’s wrong?” she pressed. “Is it Dylan?”

  The way she said my son’s name, like we’d talked about him for years and he wasn’t just minutes old, prompted a sob to tear through my body as I shook my head, confusing her even more.

  “No,” I whispered, “I think he’s okay.”

  “You think?” Gracie snapped.

  Yes, I already knew my actions in his short life wouldn’t be winning me any father of the year awards.

  “The nurses took him away and said they’d take care of him,” I explained.

  She knotted her eyebrows and scrambled to right herself. In doing so, she lowered Will’s head to her lap so she could turn in my direction, seemingly to glare at me. He must have been a sound sleeper, for he didn’t even budge.

  “It’s not Dylan. It’s Blake.”

  That porcelain face of hers turned even more pale. She nudged Will awake. As if he could sense her desperation, within seconds he was upright and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. I sat and waited until they were both with me. The less I had to say this, the better.

  Gracie grabbed Will’s hand with one of hers, then reached for mine with her other. But try as she might, she couldn’t pry my fingers apart.

  “What you got there, big guy?” she asked me, trying to lighten the mood.

  I stared down at my hand as one by one, my fingers released. It was like on the walk out here my muscles had atrophied. I couldn’t feel anything, only numbness, as we all stared down at my wife’s engagement ring and wedding band. Gracie drew in a sharp breath, but waited for me to say something.

  “Labor and delivery went okay,” I said in a monotone. “I turned around for just a second to take some pictures of Dylan and that’s when all hell broke loose. The placenta didn’t detach like it should have, and Blake started hemorrhaging.”

  Gracie began to rub her hand up and down my arm in a show of support. I had silenced her, stolen any words that she would have uttered. There were no words for this, but I had to try to come up with some anyway.

  “It was like I was trapped in a nightmare. There was chaos, and all these doctors and nurses talking over each other and saying things that normal people wouldn’t understand. But I knew what they meant, Gracie, and it wasn’t good.

  “I rushed back over to her, but there wasn’t anything that I could do. I wanted to keep her calm at the very least, but I don’t even think I did that. I remember the look on her face and I’m pretty sure she saw the same thing on mine. I grabbed her hand and begged her to stay with me. But her blood pressure just kept dropping. Her hand went limp in mine and her eyes rolled back in her head.

  “And that’s when they pushed me away. And they went into crisis mode, lowering the head of her bed and shouting out orders. As I backed away, I saw all the blood. There was so much blood.”

  When it became clear that I was done for the moment, Gracie cleared her throat and asked what I had left unanswered.

  “So what does that mean?”

  “She’s in emergency surgery right now.”

  Gracie nodded, the wheels spinning in her head as she tried to make the best of a shitty situation. For his part, Will remained quiet. He was letting Gracie take the lead on this one. I didn’t mind. I desperately needed her to.

  “So the ring thing is just a precaution then,” she began. “Like if she was having her appendix or gallbladder out. It doesn’t mean anything bad. It means that they don’t want to be sued because it comes up missing, or face accusations that they switched out the diamond for a piece of glass or something.”

  “It’s not a routine operation, Gracie,” I choked out. “That could have been the last time I ever see her alive. Blake could die.”

  Gracie winced. Wisely, she didn’t argue that point. The next words she said shocked me to my core.

  “I’m such an idiot. I should have told you.”

  “Told me what?”

  “Blake predicted this. She was having dreams. I thought she was just nervous, or thinking too much about the messed up shit with Matthew and Lauren. But she had a feeling that things wouldn’t go well. And I discounted that and forgot about it.”

  “There was no way that she could have known. No way to predict this. A miscarriage doesn’t mean that you’ll have issues with any further pregnancies.”

  “But it bugged her, and I basically told her she was nuts. And then it happens?”

  “What exactly did she say about the dreams?”

  “That either she or Dylan, or the both of them, died.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Fuck,” she agreed.

  “She can’t give up. It can’t come true.”

  Gracie swallowed visibly. “She’d never leave you again if given the choice.”

  “I saw her slip away. I watched it with my own eyes. Like she had made peace with her dream and she was ready to accept it. God damn it.”

  “No, Chris. You know her better than I do, and even I know that she’d never just lie there and take it.”

  “I watched her do it!” I screeched.

  Will tensed up instinctually, ready to protect Gracie if he had to. For her part, Gracie didn’t even flinch. My outburst wasn’t cause for her concern, because she knew I’d never hurt her. Especially not now, when she was the only thing keeping me from plunging off the deep end.

  “No, Chris. You watched her get taken by surprise. You didn’t get to see her start fighting. That’s happening now.”

  “How can you be so sure?” I asked through my tears.

  “Because she has everything to live for.”

  I
considered this as I stared down at the rings in my palm, now blurry in my vision. Gracie followed my gaze but said nothing.

  “I was never supposed to get these back,” I choked out. “I held onto this damn engagement ring for her for ten fucking years. I couldn’t let her go, because I knew there would never be anyone else. And there wasn’t. There never will be. And the moment she put it on her finger, it was like all that darkness had never happened. Like all the shit we had gone through to get back to each other was all worth it.”

  “It was, Chris. It was all worth it.”

  Gracie had let go of my arm and was now running her fingers through my hair. Though she hadn’t started crying yet, her voice was thick with emotion.

  “She promised me forever when we got married, Gracie. This is not long enough. This can’t be forever.”

  “No, it can’t be. And it won’t be,” she said with as much conviction as she could muster.

  Her hand slid down to mine, covering the rings. Her fingers interlocked with mine, her palm flattening against me as best as it could with the bands between us. Confident that they had been secured, she raised our joined hands, pressing them against my chest, directly over my heart.

  “You are going to put these back where they belong, Chris. Do you hear me?”

  I nodded, knowing she could see it.

  “Good. Do you feel what I do?”

  For this, I was clueless, so I shrugged. She pressed her hand harder against me, taking mine with it.

  “I feel your heart beating. And as long as it is, Blake is going to be in it. You know it, I know it, Will knows it, but most of all Blake knows it. And she needs you to be strong for her right now and keep her there. You can’t give up. The two of you are connected here, and she’ll feel it if you do.”

  “I don’t know if I can, Gracie,” I admitted. “I’m so scared.”

  “I know, Chris. Believe me, I know. But I’m not going anywhere. We are going to hold on to these rings, where she can feel them, together. Until you can give them back to her, I’m not going to let you give up. I’m not about to let you go.”

  “I love you, Gracie,” I said, forgetting our present company. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I regretted them. For some reason, Will had always been a little leery of my relationship with Gracie, even though nothing untoward would ever happen between us. And here I was, not thinking and adding a substantial amount of fuel to that fire.

  Why couldn’t he understand that at this very moment, I was insanely jealous of him? No matter what happened in the next few hours, eventually the two of them would walk out of this hospital together and carry on with their lives. Likely picking right back up where they’d left off when I called them here. Not bad for something that had started out as a drunken hookup.

  Me? I had no clue where tomorrow would find me, or if I’d even want to see the light of the next day. Being without Blake for over a decade had been brutal in and of itself, but at least I had known she was okay, relatively speaking. Living in a world without her would be unbearable.

  “I love you, Chris,” Gracie said.

  Well, that was unexpected.

  “Holy hell, William,” she said, addressing the green eyed monster in the waiting room. “Simmer your ass down. You know exactly where we stand, especially after tonight. And deep down, you’ve always known that Chris and I could never be anything more than friends. If there had ever been a spark between us, don’t you think we would have acted on it long ago, when we were both single? We are way too much alike to be a couple. If we ever hooked up, the first damn fight we’d get into, one of us would end up murdered. And I’m not sure who’d be the victim and who would be the suspect.”

  If tears hadn’t have been streaming down my face, if Blake hadn’t been in a sterile operating room, fighting for her life, I might have laughed at that. Even if it was true.

  “Chris is our friend and he needs this. And it would sure as hell look strange if you were the one holding his hand right now. So are we good?”

  “We’re good,” Will confirmed from the other end of the loveseat, albeit reluctantly.

  “Awesome. Now give me your cell phone.”

  I wasn’t sure who she was talking to. But before I had the opportunity to reach down into my pocket to grab mine, Will had produced his.

  “Why?” he asked, even as he let go of her, placing the phone in her hand where his had been seconds before.

  “Because I’m making an executive decision.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Lauren

  Saturday mornings were quickly becoming my favorite times of the week. Matthew had devoted this portion of the day to spending some quality time with Sadie one on one, and it was so heartwarming to watch that I usually did so from afar. Okay, not really so far away, but I made sure that I was firmly in the background.

  So even though this was intended to be my relaxation time, where I could do anything or go anywhere I wanted to, I chose to spend it observing my husband and daughter interacting. This particular week, they were on the floor in the living room, stacking up blocks with the sole purpose of knocking them down. Sadie would laugh and clap and they would do it all over again.

  I sat on the couch, a magazine open on my lap, largely ignored. My family was far more interesting than the celebrities that graced those pages, even though I still had a desire to keep up with all their unnecessary gossip. Most of the time, it made me feel much better about my own crazy, messed up life.

  My cell rang and I silently cursed the interruption. Even so, I reached over to the table to grab it to see who was calling. An unknown number, though local. I debated with myself on whether or not to answer it. Everyone who I talked to on a regular basis had been programmed in, even my staff. Against my better judgment, I swiped the touchscreen and connected the call.

  “Hello?” I answered, rolling my eyes. I really should have just let it roll over to voice mail.

  “Good morning, Lender Girl,” came the greeting.

  “Gracie?”

  “Who in the hell else calls you that?” she asked.

  “Whose phone do you have and why? Do I need to bail you out of jail or something? I figured your man could take care of that.”

  Matthew looked up from his seat on the floor, mildly paying attention to my end of the conversation.

  “Hah hah. So very funny. Actually, this is Will’s phone. Mine is, um, indisposed.”

  “Care to explain?”

  “I happen to be sitting with my man and Chris at the moment, staring at the walls of a hospital waiting room.”

  “She’s having the baby?” I asked for Matthew’s benefit. He was all ears now. “Wait. Why isn’t Chris with her?”

  “Dylan Andrew Taylor was born this morning at seven thirty-two. Seven pounds, fourteen ounces. Twenty-one inches long. Baby is doing fine.”

  “That’s awesome. I have a nephew.”

  “While that is great, that’s not really why I called.”

  “Why then? Did Blake ask for us?”

  “Blake is not doing so well. There were complications and she’s been rushed into surgery. She’s lost a lot of blood, Lauren.”

  “Fuck,” I whispered, though I might as well have screamed it.

  Matthew jumped to his feet, his eyes wide with questions. There wasn’t time for answers, nor did I want to alert Sadie to anything being amiss. Call it a mother’s instinct, but I needed to protect her from the harsh realities of life and death. She’d have plenty of years to learn about those.

  “Go,” I mouthed to Matthew. He nodded, sliding on his shoes as he grabbed his keys off the table. Seconds later, I heard the door into the garage close with not enough force to be considered a slam, but with much more gusto than a casual exit.

  “Matthew’s on his way,” I confirmed. I stood up and walked into the threshold between the living room and the kitchen, where I could still be seen, but my words would be incomprehensible to my daughter if said quietly enough
. “I’ll call Regina as soon as we hang up and hopefully she can watch Sadie. If so, I’ll be right behind him.”

  “Good. You need to be here, Lauren. Even if it’s just for the baby. Chris hasn’t even spent time with him yet. Someone should.”

  “Did you call his mom?”

  “Patricia?” she asked, misinterpreting my question. “Why in the world would I open that can of worms?”

  “No. Chris’s mom. Arlene. He probably called her when they headed to the hospital. She’ll be looking for an update.”

  “No, I don’t know her number. I doubt Chris called her either. Dude can barely put a sentence together, and I’m sitting right with him. He’d be hell to talk to on the phone right about now.”

  “Ask Will if he knows her number. If not, I’m sure Matthew will once he gets there. You can have him call her.”

  “I’ll do it. I don’t mind.” Gracie must have pulled the phone away from her ear, for the next part was quieter, and wasn’t directed towards me. “Sweetie, I’m going to call your mom.” Then she returned to me. “I’m all set. I’ve got Chris’s phone, too.”

  “I’m sure that’s all going well.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can. I’m going to let you go now.”

  “We’ll be here. Hurry. Please?”

  I hung up with her and immediately dialed Regina. Thankfully, she answered right away and was more than willing to help out. In a pinch, I could have craftily asked Patricia to step in, but somehow that seemed wrong in about a million different ways. Nothing like having to ask your mother-in-law to babysit while you rush to the hospital where the daughter she’s had nothing to do with for years is in the operating room. There was no way I wanted to touch that with a ten foot pole.

  “Mommy and Daddy are going to see your brand new cousin,” I said cheerily to Sadie. “While we’re doing that, you’re going to play with Regina and Quinn, okay? I promise, you’ll get to meet him soon. But not today. Aunt Blake and Uncle Chris are really, really tired.”

  Those innocent little blue eyes stared up at me as I scooped her into my arms, squeezing her a little tighter than normal. She may have been conceived at an inopportune time, but my daughter had never been anything other than a blessing. And everything surrounding my pregnancy and her birth had gone so smoothly, it was like the whole event had been orchestrated by my own mother, watching over me and making sure nothing bad happened.