by A. J. Downey
“Are you kidding me? This is fantastic! I’ve been so scared that thing was going to leave me stranded somewhere I’ve had Ghost on speed dial right underneath your number!”
I hugged him tightly and he smiled down at me, “Cool deal. Feed me and you can give me a ride back to the shop so I can get my bike. Test out your new wheels.”
“What doing?” Noah asked and we turned to look in the open doorway.
“Lookin’ at your mom’s new car, you wanna see it?”
I let the boys play, Archer showing Noah all the cool new things in my new van while I set the table and dished up dinner, all the while thinking to myself that this was perfect. This was what I had always secretly dreamed of, and because of love, and more than a little perseverance, it was finally mine.
Chapter 38
Archer
“Archer! Archer, wake up!”
“Huh, what?” I demanded and sat up, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. Melody was sitting up in bed next to me, distress drawn in every line of her body. “What’s wrong?” I demanded.
“My water just broke!”
“Ah shit, hang on Baby. I’ll get us going.”
She sat in bed and breathed while I woke up Noah and got him dressed. I put out a call to the club, while she whined through a contraction, probably one of the more heartbreaking noises I’d ever heard. I helped get her up and dressed while Noah watched us, and moved around with as much efficiency as I could muster juggling my very pregnant wife and two year old son. I got everyone into the van, and Mel’s bag in the back and started for the hospital.
“You’re doing good, Baby. Just breathe.”
Mel looked at me, the fear in her eyes very real and alive and it was all I could do not to speed. Didn’t matter either way. When I pulled up outside the hospital a bunch of brother’s waited outside. Aaron took my van keys and said, “I’ll bring up her bag, stay with your ol’ lady.”
“Thanks, Kid.” I grunted and before I could get Noah, Rev was there, getting him out of the back seat.
“You’re gonna stick with me, okay, Kiddo?”
“Is Mamma hurt?”
“No, son. Mamma’s coming with me to go get your baby brother.”
Noah perked up at that one, and started talking Rev’s ear off while I picked up Mel and took her through the hospital doors.
“A little help, please?” I called.
“Oh boy, do you know who your OB is?”
I explained to the nurse that Doc was going to be making the delivery as I set Mel into a wheelchair. We were whisked back into a room and they started helping my wife into a gown. I felt helpless and I didn’t like it. She was hurting and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it, which sucked, like epically and royally sucked.
“It’s okay, I’m okay,” Mel said breathing through her pain and I balked.
“You’re about to squeeze a human being, the size of a fucking watermelon out of your snatch which is a hole the size of a lemon and you’re trying to reassure me?” I demanded.
Melody laughed, the nurses right along with her, and I took her hand in mine now that they were finished putting an IV into the back of it.
“God damn, nobody told me I married a total bad ass!”
More laughter and Mel moaned out, “I love you, I love you so much.”
“No way that you love me more than I love you, Baby. You just hang in there, okay? When can we get her something for the pain?” I demanded.
“Gotta see how far along she is, just a minute,” the nurse said and thank fuck, that’s when Doc breezed into the room.
“Hey, Girly. Someone told me you was ready to have this baby.”
“I hopes so,” she cried, “I really hope so!”
“Okay, let’s have a look…”
***
Seven grueling and agonizing hours later, I was holding Melody’s hand as she looked over and said, “No pain, no gain, right?” I pressed a cool cloth to her forehead and shook my head. I was scared, and I knew she was too, but she was trying to keep me from being afraid, too which was nuts.
Doc was looking at some kind of read out shaking his head, “Mel, I’m sorry, Honey, but we gotta take this to the OR. I gotta give you a cesarean.”
Mel dropped her head back to the gurney and groaned, “Ohhhhh, no. What’s wrong? What’s wrong with our baby, Doc?” she asked but Doc was already getting my woman ready to move.
“I think the cord is around his neck, honey. We gotta do this and we gotta do this fast, come on papa; you’re going too.”
“Well, no shit, Doc!” I cried. I hadn’t left Mel’s side. Not even once, and I wasn’t about to now that one of her biggest nightmares had reared its ugly head.
“Oh! I don’t want to do this again! I don’t want to do this again!” she cried as she was wheeled down the hall, clinging to my hand for safety.
I held it tight and told her, “I’m right here, Baby. I’m not going anywhere, you just hang tight.”
“What’s going on!?” Dragon called from up the hall.
“Emergency c-section!” I called back and we were through the doors, everything happening so fast after that.
The nurses let me stay by Melody’s side as they gowned me and I kept talking to her as they put up the drape.
“Look at me, Baby. You just keep looking at me, don’t stop. I’m right here, I’m right here…”
“It hurts!”
“I know, Mel. You just hang in there, I’m not going anywhere.”
“Oh God, just make sure our baby’s okay!”
“Chandler’s gonna be fine, and you’re gonna be fine, and we’re all going to go home as a family. You’ll see, Baby.” They put an oxygen mask over her face and I coached her, telling her to take deep breaths.
“That’s it, deep breaths.”
“Melody!” Doc called.
“Yeah?” she asked, voice muffled by the type of oxygen mask they’d put over her nose and mouth.
“Can you feel this, Honey?”
“No!”
“Good! That’s good, Honey. We’re almost there, just a little bit more okay?”
“I don’t feel anything this time! Are you cutting? Doc, why aren’t you cutting? Get him out! You have to get him out!”
I looked over the drape and oh, holy fucking shit! Mel’s insides were on the outside, my baby still in his sack laying out, Doc ripping it open and getting the cord off from around my baby boy’s neck. I felt tears sting my eyes for the first time in a long time. He was perfect, he was perfect in every way, except he wasn’t making any sounds.
A nurse took him over to a lighted table and they frantically worked on our son, and I turned back to Melody, “He’s perfect, Baby! He’s perfect!”
A high, thin wail went up from his tiny body and I swear on my colors, all my insides went liquid with relief. The nurse brought him over and laid him on my wife’s chest and we marveled at our son, our beautiful baby boy with his momma’s hair, and eyes too dark to tell if they would be mine or hers yet.
“He’s beautiful!” Mel said and she looked exhausted, she dragged her head woozily to look at Doc over the drape and asked, “Why don’t I feel right? The room is spinning, and I – ”
Her eyes rolled back in her head and her arms dropped, if I hadn’t had a hold of Chandler she would have surely dropped him. A nurse reached around and straightened me up.
“Doc? What’s happening?” I demanded but the old man ignored me, in favor of digging around in my wife’s stomach.
“God damn it!” he cried, “I can’t fucking find it. Where are you, you little bastard?”
Something was terribly wrong with everything that had just come out his mouth. I shifted from foot to foot and said, “Talk to me, man! What’s wrong with my wife?”
“Get him out of here, take the baby, let me get this done – suction!”
I was ushered out into the hall and stood numbly outside the OR doors, watching Doc’s back through the little pane of glass as nurses
and more doctors rushed around my wife. Alarms were going off, saline and even bags of blood were hung as they worked frantically to save her.
I cradled Chandler to my chest, as he wailed and cried repeatedly for his mother and it was everything I could do to stay sane and not completely lose my shit. I watched, and watched, and the seconds dragged on into minutes and the minutes on into tens of minutes and Doc continued to work frantically, ceding to an actual surgeon who had come onto the floor, running down the hall, to push past me and my newborn son.
I watched monitors and numbers flash, lines bounce, readouts grow fainter, the alarms in the room screeching almost louder than my boy when a hand touched my shoulder. I jerked back and looked down at the nurse who was speaking, but I couldn’t process what she was saying. She was trying to take Chandler away from me, and I let her – something in the back of my brain agreeing that yes, this was best for him. She said, “I’m going to take him to the nursery, he’s just fine. You stay here with your wife.”
The sympathetic look she gave me was enough to make me want to throttle her, and then I don’t know how, but Rush and Nox were there, standing shoulder to shoulder with me, holding me up as the line on the screen went flat and I just couldn’t watch anymore. I couldn’t watch her die. I couldn’t do this without her…
I turned around and collapsed back against the wall, sliding to the floor, the twins bracing me as the sobs came and wouldn’t stop. She was everything to me, and I couldn’t fathom it. I couldn’t fathom doing any of this without her. That’s just not the way it was supposed to be.
Mel had a fire inside, and it wasn’t supposed to be snuffed out like this, there was nothing tiny nothing spark-like, she had a fire inside and this was not how it was supposed to go out!
I bowed my head and raised my knees, bracing my forearms on them and lost my fucking shit in the hallway. I sobbed like a little fucking girl and didn’t give a shit who fucking saw me.
Melody, our family, our love and life together. We were just getting started and if there was a God, which I didn’t personally believe there was, he was a cruel fucking bastard if he was going to rip it away like this. I closed my eyes, supported by my two brothers and pulled out all the stops, powerless in the face of all of this, I did something I had never done before, not once, not ever…
I fucking prayed, if you’re up there, you son of a bitch, prove it to me. You leave her alone. You don’t take her from me, not now, not yet. Just leave her here. For our sons, for me, for everyone’s life she just makes brighter just by breathing… you leave her down here for us.
Frantic voices filtered through the doors to one side and at my back. Shouting messages back and forth, all indistinct enough I couldn’t make out words, but distinct enough in the emotion that they held. They were losing this fight and I was losing my wife, my children were losing their mother.
“Please, God don’t you take her from me,” I uttered and Rush and Nox both did their best to shore me up but there wasn’t anything they could do, just like there wasn’t anything I could do. I was helpless, powerless to stop this from happening and it was probably the worst fucking feeling in the world.
The door swung open, and Doc came out into the hallway. He bowed and rested his hands on his knees for a minute before straightening up. He pulled at the surgical gown, saturated with Melody’s blood and swept the surgical cap off his bald head. I looked up, and just stared, waiting, breath held…
Doc looked down at me, the tension draining from his shoulders, his face unreadable, and my whole fucking world crashed and burned, skidding along the asphalt of the road called life leaving me raw all the way to the fucking bone.
Epilogue
Archer
Four months later
Shit, we were going to be late. Noah was standing next to me on the family courthouse steps while I held Chandler in my arms, and he was being a demanding little shit.
“Daddy up! I want up! Daddy!”
“Noah, you need to stop, Little Man, I got Littler Man here, I can’t hold you both!”
“Daddy!” Noah held his chubby little arms up and opened and closed his hands and I swore to myself in my head.
“I’ll take him so you can get Noah,” Nox said and I passed my baby boy to my brother so I could lift my big boy up. Of course the second I relinquished Chandler to Nox was the second he started to fuss and cry, kicking his little legs in their blue footied onesie and declaring his unhappiness with a sharp, piercing cry.
I picked up Noah who was yelling louder and louder for me to do so and hitched him high on my hip. I guess I couldn’t blame Noah for wanting to be the center of attention, it was, after all, his day.
Still, and not for the first time since Chandler was born, I thought to myself, I just can’t do this alone.
“I’ve got it! Let’s go!” Melody called and came running up the steps, her stylish flats slapping the cement.
I smiled at my beautiful wife and breathed easier. Thanks to Doc and the efforts of the hospital staff, I wouldn’t ever have to do it alone… but it’d come at a price. Mel had been bleeding so bad, they’d had to do a partial hysterectomy. Noah and Chandler were it for us, but all four of us were alive, healthy, and happy which hadn’t been the case the day Chandler’d been born.
I’d lost my beautiful wife for four minutes. Her heart had stopped, and she’d been clinically dead for the most agonizing four minutes of my fucking life… but then she’d come back and it’d been a fuckin’ miracle. My fuckin’ miracle, and I’d thanked God just about every fuckin’ day since.
“Are you ready?” Mel asked, smile sparkling, Noah’s baby book with his birth certificate clutched against her chest.
“I am, you?”
“Ohh, as soon as I get Chandler to calm down!” she thrust the book at Rush and he took it. She took our squalling son from Nox and turned around discreetly, fishing in the top cup of her dress.”
“Free the nipple!” Rush said grinning and Melody scowled at him.
“Oh you hush! Just stop!” she told him and I called out to him.
“That’s my ol’ lady you’re talking about there.”
Nox helped to situate a baby blanket over my wife’s chest so she could feed and calm our son, saying “Worse than that, that’s your sister you’re talking about there you sick –”
“Language!” Mel and I barked simultaneously.
Nox and Rush fell out laughing, slapping each other on their suited backs. It was just them with Mel and me for adoption day. The day I legally made Noah my son on paper. We didn’t feel the need to make everyone dress for court, so the rest of the club was back at the clubhouse getting the party ready for when we got there.
Noah was playing with the gold disc at the end of my braid, and Melody smiled up at me. I bent down and kissed her and Noah cried “Eww!” Just another charming thing that his Uncle Rush had taught him – that kissing was gross; like worms or dirt except worms were cool or some shit.
It’d been a long road full of red tape to get this far in the adoption proceedings. I’m pretty sure I’d filled out a couple of phone book sized stacks of paperwork over that time, and today was the day to get a new birth certificate and social security card issued for Noah with my name on it.
Noah Jerimiah Turner.
My first son.
We went in, and remained seated until we were called up. With a funny quiver of excitement in my chest, we filled out the last of the paperwork and a Judge blessed it and the courtroom applauded and we had our first official picture taken with all the proper documents as a family. A legally recognized family, which I honestly could have given a shit about that last part.
We’d been a family a long time without no stamp of approval from a citizen court of law. We were a family, in every way that counted.
I leaned down and kissed Melody, my heart made whole, mended just like magic, the moment she’d opened her eyes, touched the side of my face, and asked for our sons. I kissed my woman,
my wife, my ol’ lady, the mother to my children and for the first time in my life since my broken as fuck childhood, I not only felt whole but like a man should.
I was more than just Archer now. More than just an outlaw rider. I was a brother, a father, a husband and this woman’s ol’ man.
Family. I had a family, and it was the center of more than just my fuckin’ world. It was the center of my universe.
“I love you,” I whispered to Melody and she smiled up into my face and said, “I love you, too.”
The End
Fate introduces people at both the right and the wrong times…
So it is for Maren on the absolute worst day imaginable. When all hope was gone, and she was whittled away to little more than tears and despair, up walks Nox, an unlikely hero to save the day. Maren is about to discover that sometimes the good guys wear black, and there are times that the lines between good and evil blur beyond recognition.
Nox is a bad man with a heart of gold, or so it seems. It also seems that Maren has captured that heart with her wide, tear filled brown eyes. Nox never saw himself going for jailbait before, but that’s just what Maren is, all woman trapped in a seventeen year old package. Still, what he wouldn’t do for her, including taking on the unlikely role of keeper to her unruly preteen brother.
This mess could end beautifully or in some serious time spent behind bars for Nox, but sometimes, it’s worth risking it all.
The Sacred Brotherhood #2:
HER BROTHER’S KEEPER
Other books by A.J. Downey
The Sacred Hearts MC
1. Shattered & Scarred
2. Broken & Burned
3. Cracked & Crushed
3.5. Masked & Miserable (a novella)
4. Tattered & Torn
5. Fractured & Formidable
6. Damaged & Dangerous
