My stomach was tossing, and I knew I needed to try to eat something since I’d only had a few crackers the day before. I placed a slice of bread in the toaster and then searched Google for what the spotting and cramps could mean.
Monroe had had the same thing happen to her when she was pregnant, but it had been because she was carrying twins and a vessel had ruptured while her uterus was expanding. With Maverick being a triplet, and his sisters identical with twins of their own, it was obvious multiples ran on his side. I hadn’t thought that I could be carrying more than one baby, but it was a huge possibility.
“That’s what this is,” I muttered to myself. “It’s like what happened with Mon. The baby…or babies are okay.”
After the toast popped up, I walked into the living room to eat it while I flipped through my phone. I had over twenty texts from Dad waiting on me, and that wasn’t counting the fifty missed calls from him. Rolling my eyes, I ignored his texts and skimmed over the ones from Monroe, Mila, Nova, Aunt Raven, Aunt Willa, and my mom.
They all asked if I was okay, told me my dad was pissed, but Mom had made him go home. I was thankful she’d had my back through everything. Even when I thought she was cheating on Dad and I’d been angry with her, I never once doubted that she would put me first. She might not be June Cleaver, but she sure as fuck was a great mom, and I loved her.
It was Monday, so I had to go to school. With only a few more weeks left, I couldn’t let anything get in my way to keep me from graduating. The thought of putting on the clothes I’d worn the day before made me cringe, but there wasn’t anything of mine at the apartment.
I texted Mila, knowing she was up with one or both of the boys by now, and asked if she would mind bringing me a few of her own clothes over until I could get my things from my parents’ house.
Mila: Lyric will drop them off in 15.
Relieved that I would at least have something clean to wear to school, I walked back to the bathroom and took a quick shower, not bothering to wash my hair. But as I got out, another cramp hit me. “Fuck,” I cried, bending in half from the pain.
Wetness gushed out of me, a few drops hitting the white tiles on the floor and smearing across my thighs. I blanched. This was definitely not just a little spotting now.
I told myself not to panic, but that didn’t stop it. Scared, I stumbled naked and wet into the bedroom. “Maverick!” I yelled, my voice trembling from fear and anxiety.
He jerked upright in bed, his eyes wide and alert. “Babe?” When he saw me, he jumped to his feet. “River, what’s wrong?”
“I-I’m bleeding. And I’ve been c-cramping,” I stuttered, tears blinding me. “I think…I’m losing the baby.”
He picked me up and sat me on the end of the bed. “Give me two minutes,” he said, kissing my forehead.
I sat there watching him pull on clothes. He came back to me with one of his T-shirts and some sweat pants. But before he could help me into them, there was a hard knock on the front door.
“That’s probably Lyric,” I told him. “Mila was sending me over some clothes to wear to school.”
He nodded, helping me into his clothes before picking me up again and carrying me through the apartment. Shifting me in his arms, he opened the door just as Lyric lifted his arm to knock again. There was a small gift bag in one hand that must have held the borrowed clothes, but once he saw the tears streaming down my face and how tense Maverick was, the smile on Lyric’s handsome face disappeared.
“What’s going on?” he demanded.
“You got your SUV?” Mav barked instead of answering.
“Yeah, but—”
“She’s bleeding, man. I need to get her to the hospital.”
“No!” I cried, shaking my head frantically. “Not the one here.”
“River,” Maverick gritted out. “You need medical assistance.”
“I know,” I sobbed. “B-but we can’t go to the hospital here. It will get back to my dad and he’ll know and then Ben will arrest you and…and…and…” I was starting to gasp as my anxiety made it harder and harder to breathe. A part of my brain was screaming to calm down, this was just a panic attack, but I couldn’t.
Lyric lifted his free hand. “It’s okay, River. We’ll drive a few counties over.”
“Fine,” Maverick gritted out. “But if you get worse, we’re stopping, no matter how close we are. I’ll deal with your dad and Ben if it comes to that. But I’m not going to risk something happening to you, baby.”
I couldn’t get my voice to work, so I only nodded.
While Maverick carried me down to the SUV, Lyric ran inside to grab Mav’s phone and keys since he’d forgotten them. It only took a few minutes, and then we were on the road. Lyric called Mila, telling her what was going on, but when she said she was going to follow us, Maverick convinced her to stay home and cover for me with school and my dad.
Not even thirty minutes into the drive, another cramp hit me. It was so painful, it robbed me of oxygen, and I curled into a ball on Maverick’s lap in the back seat. It was only the third cramp of the morning, but each one of them had gotten worse and worse. “Drive faster!” he roared, his fingers trembling as he stroked my hair back from my face. “It’s okay, baby. You’re going to be fine.”
“Th-the b-baby,” I cried, burying my face in his neck. I knew in my soul that I was losing the baby. The cramp had pushed more blood from me, and I didn’t need to look down to see that it had leaked through the sweat pants and onto Maverick’s jeans.
“Shh,” he soothed in a choked voice. “Don’t think about that.”
But how could I not?
Just the week before, I’d nearly aborted our baby. And now I was losing him or her. Guilt engulfed me like a physical vise. Was this my punishment for even thinking of getting rid of something so precious?
Pressed up against Maverick, I felt the vibrations as he spoke, but I was crying so hard I couldn’t hear anything he or Lyric said. When we started to slow down, I clung to Maverick. “N-no. We aren’t far enough away.”
“Shut up, River,” he growled, kissing the top of my head.
Moments later, Lyric braked hard, and Maverick threw the door open. Holding me against his chest, he ran into the emergency room and yelled for help. As he laid me on a gurney, another cramp hit me, knocking the air from my body, and I curled into the fetal position as the pain became too much to withstand. It was the worst pain of my entire life, so intense that the world began to go dark around the edges.
Vaguely, I heard someone asking questions, but I couldn’t answer as I tried to breathe.
“River Masterson,” Maverick was saying. “She’s my wife. Please…” His voice cracked, making my heart hurt even more than it already was. “Please, just help her.”
I felt the gurney moving, and then someone was stabbing a needle into my arm for an IV line. A doctor started examining me, but other than the feel of her ice-cold hands, I didn’t understand much of what was going on. This cramp was different from the others. It was lingering, making it hard to even think about anything outside the circle of agonizing pain.
They must have given me something for the pain through the IV, because suddenly, I felt as if I were floating. I blinked up at the ceiling a few times, the fluorescent lights glaring down at me as if judging me. Maverick was holding on to my hand so hard, my fingertips felt numb.
Then the lights went dim, and I felt something warm and gooey being squirted onto my belly.
“There’s the heartbeat,” someone said, unknowingly stabbing a knife into my heart. “And here…that’s the fallopian tube. It’s ruptured, by the looks of it. We need to get her into surgery. Now.”
“No!” I screamed at the doctor. “You can’t. Y-you just said that there was a heartbeat.”
She gave me a sympathetic grimace. “I’m sorry. There’s nothing we can do. Right now, your life is the one in danger. You’re losing too much blood.”
“No, no, no,” I whispered. “Maverick, tell them. Make them
understand I don’t want surgery. I-I’ll be fine. Our baby still has a heartbeat. That’s all that matters. Tell them!”
I felt his free hand stroke down my cheek, but when he spoke, he broke my heart. “Do whatever you have to,” he told them. “Anything to protect her.”
Ten
Maverick
“No!”
River’s scream as they wheeled her away for surgery echoed in my head. It was full of grief and anger. But if there was a choice between her life and anyone else’s—anyone’s— I would pick hers every fucking time.
When she was gone, another nurse came up to me, telling me I needed to register River. Feeling like I was in a daze, I followed the woman. I gave them all of her information, but when they asked for her date of birth, I lied and told them she was born a year earlier than she actually was. The woman behind the desk asked about insurance, and again, I lied. Instead, I handed her my credit card and told her to charge everything to it.
I had some money saved, and there was plenty of it in my trust fund. I would dip into that if we needed to.
Once I’d signed all the paperwork, the woman gave me an sympathetic smile. “Hope your wife gets well soon.”
Nodding in thanks, I took my copies of the papers and then walked back out to the waiting room.
Lyric pushed away from the wall near the entrance as soon as he spotted me. “Well?”
I rubbed my free hand over my face. “The baby was in her fallopian tube. When it grew too big, the tube ruptured. She’s in surgery now.”
“Fuck, man. I’m so sorry.” He squeezed my shoulder. “Do you need anything?”
“All I need is for her to be okay,” I muttered.
“Yeah, man. I understand. If it were Mila—” He broke off, but he didn’t need to say anything else. I knew. Fuck, I was feeling it.
The nurse who had put the IV in River’s arm came over to us. “The doctor asked me to tell you to wait upstairs in the OR waiting room, and she will come speak to you once your wife is out of surgery.”
Upstairs, the waiting room was already pretty crowded with family members of patients also having surgery. Most of them had been scheduled, unlike River’s, which was an emergency. Lyric and I found two empty seats near a window and sat, neither of us speaking as we waited.
“Dude, you need me to get you a change of clothes?” Lyric asked after a while. “You’ve got blood…” He waved his hand at my legs.
Glancing down, I realized he was right. River’s blood was all over me. A lump filled my throat, and I fought against the sting of tears. “She has to be okay, Lyric,” I whispered, unable to get my voice to go any louder. “If I lose her, I’ll lose everything that means anything to me.”
One of his heavy hands fell on my shoulder, squeezing hard. “I know, brother. It will be okay. Just have faith in the doctors. Your girl is strong.”
All I could do was nod, knowing he was right. River was a strong woman; she wouldn’t let anything keep us apart. Not her dad, and sure as hell not this. But that didn’t stop me from being scared out of my mind that something might still take her away from me.
It felt like days passed before the same doctor from the emergency room walked into the waiting room. My eyes were glued to the door, so as soon as I saw her, I was on my feet. Spotting me in the still-crowded room, she walked my way. She had on surgical scrubs, whereas in the ER, she’d only had on regular clothes and the typical white jacket. Her scrubs were damp with sweat, as was the surgical cap she pulled off her head when she reached us.
“Everything went as expected,” she said without preamble. “We didn’t run into any complications. She’s in recovery for now, but she will be put on the labor and delivery floor once she starts to wake up. That should be in about an hour or so.”
“But she’s going to be okay, right?”
She gave me a sad smile. “Physically, she will be back to normal in no time. Given her reaction to having to have this procedure…” She shrugged. “The recovery time for that isn’t something I can give you a time frame for, Mr. Masterson. Just be prepared for her to be…fragile.”
Fragile? River?
Those two words didn’t go together.
The doctor patted me on the arm. “Someone will be in to show you to your wife’s room as soon as she’s settled.” Her gaze went to my jeans. “Maybe you should clean yourself up before then. Her emotions are going to be scattered, and seeing her blood on you might be a bad idea.”
“I’m not leaving.” I wasn’t stepping foot outside the building until River was able to go with me.
“I got you covered, bro,” Lyric assured me. “I think we passed a mall as soon as we got off the interstate. I’ll grab you a change of clothes and pick us up some food.”
“Yeah, thanks,” I muttered, not caring one way or another. I didn’t want to upset River if she saw the blood all over me, but all I could think about was just getting to her. Nothing else mattered but seeing with my own eyes that she was okay, that she hadn’t been taken from me.
“Do you have any questions for me?” the doctor asked, looking at me as if she expected me to.
“Will she be able to—” I broke off, not even sure I wanted an answer to the question that was lingering in my head now that the woman had told me my girl was going to be all right.
“Have more babies?” I swallowed hard and nodded. “Her chances have been cut in half, but she’s young and healthy. There shouldn’t be any reason why she couldn’t have another baby—when she’s ready.”
A little of the pressure weighing on my shoulders eased. Thanking the doctor, I shook her hand, and she promised someone would come to get me soon. As she walked away, Lyric said he was going to go get me a change of clothes and followed her out.
Feeling like I was walking through a fog, I returned to my seat by the window and pulled out my phone. I’d had it on silent so it wouldn’t annoy me, but I knew Mila would have been texting me as well as Lyric. I’d seen him sending a message every now and then while we waited, but he’d mostly just been there for me. Even if we hadn’t spoken much, just having my brother-in-law there had kept me from losing my mind and trashing the entire room, scaring everyone and no doubt getting myself arrested.
Me: Hey. She’s out of surgery. Just waiting for someone to come get me once she’s in a room.
Mila: That’s a relief. I was so worried. I called the school and pretended to be Aunt Kelli. Told them she was out sick today.
Me: Thanks, Mil.
Mila: I wish I were there. I’m so sorry. My heart hurts for both of you.
I didn’t know how to respond to that. My heart hurt too. Now that I knew River was going to be all right, the reality of what we’d lost was starting to hit me. When she’d told me she was pregnant, I’d been so damn happy. It was too soon for us to start a family of our own, but that hadn’t mattered to me. I loved that little munchkin so much without even having met him or her.
Now I never would.
I scrubbed my hands over my face as exhaustion and a sadness that felt like it went bone-deep seemed to press me into the chair hard. I loved our baby, but not nearly as much as I loved River. Her life had been in danger, and just the thought of losing her had robbed me of any other course of action. There would be more babies, but there was only one River.
Would she hate me now?
Fuck, I hoped not.
When the doctor said River had to have surgery, she’d stressed that even though the baby still had a heartbeat, it wouldn’t be viable for long. At the time, I hadn’t even cared. All I could think was that River’s life was in danger and a decision had to be made right then, right there.
But there wasn’t a decision to make.
Nothing came before River.
Ever.
Lyric returned with a bag of clothes for me, as well as for River, along with two large coffees and a sack of fast food. By the time I’d changed and eaten, a nurse came to get me.
River looked so tiny lying
in the hospital bed with a blanket tucked up around her chest. Her face was pale, making the dark shadows under her eyes more prominent. There were wires sticking from everywhere, letting the monitor attached to the wall read her oxygen levels, heart rate, and blood pressure. Her IV line was attached to a few different bags that hung from a pole, supplying her with fluids, antibiotics, and blood.
The nurse gave me an update on River’s condition and said she would be out of it for a while with the medication they were given her for pain management and the nausea she’d experienced upon waking from the anesthesia. I nodded like I understood everything the woman told me, but honestly, I didn’t take much of it in. It was hard to concentrate on words when the girl I loved more than life was lying there so helplessly.
As the door closed behind the nurse, I dropped into the chair beside the bed and picked up River’s hand. Her skin felt chilled, and I bent to breathe a little heat onto her fingers. As I did, I rubbed her index finger with my thumb, only then realizing the ring she always wore there was missing.
She’d only been fifteen when I’d put that ring on her hand, but I’d already known I was going to spend the rest of my life with her.
There weren’t many places in Creswell Springs for people to get jewelry, so I’d ordered a ring off the internet. The damn thing had been too big to put on her ring finger, but River had still loved it and put it on her index finger instead, promising me she would never take it off.
Swallowing the lump in my throat, I looked around and spotted it in a clear bag on the bedside table. Still holding her hand in one of mine, I reached for the bag with my other and pulled out the ring. Bending again, I kissed her finger as I slid it back into place, skimming my thumb over the simple platinum heart with the teeny little diamond in the center.
I’d used all the money I’d had saved up to buy that ring, which admittedly hadn’t been much since I’d only been sixteen at the time. But the way River had reacted to the sight of the ring had been as if I’d given her one of the crown jewels. Her green eyes had lit up, and the smile that spread over her beautiful face had brought a flame alive deep inside me.
Sacred Vow Page 7
