Lean on Me

by Candy Crum

  “Will he be able to have full use of it?” Bri asked.

  “I’m unsure of that without seeing the X-rays. But, I’m sure it will be fine. We will head over as soon as they will let us leave. Jason is taking care of everything. You guys did a good job calling him.”

  Shaelyn and Derek talked to the police and Jacqueline reported seeing Mike standing in the door when she pulled up. Before she’d even gotten off the phone with 911, she saw him hit Bri in the face, knocking her over. Now having two complaints of assault against him, they arrested him and took him to the hospital for treatment and questioning.

  Matt and Bri handed over all of the evidence that they had against Mike for the earlier attack and told them what they were trying to pull together for Molly. They told the police Molly’s story and even called her. She was all too happy to come and lend a hand. Earlier that very day she’d managed to get copies of the security tapes from her apartment manager and she brought those along with her medical records. It would still be another week or so before the DNA came in, but they said that it would be enough to get started.

  Ironically enough, it was the same male cop that had come to the school that day. He’d been cocky that day; sure that Bri had been lying. Now, he seemed thoughtful, regretful. He offered his apologies and assured her that he would use everything that she gave him and do his best to find more.

  Once everyone was cleared for medical release; those in need of treatment were taken to the hospital and treated for various injuries. Mike was probably going to need plastic surgery and Matt was going to need surgery and physical therapy for his hand. Bri was lucky that no bones had been broken and the baby was still just fine.

  “How are you feeling?” Bri asked. Matt was lying in a hospital bed, hooked up to an IV for pain.

  “Actually, I’m feeling awesome. The meds are hardly touching the pain, but I feel awesome.”

  “You might still go to jail.” Bri looked down at her hands. She felt horrible for what had happened. She should have looked before opening the door. She should have tried to stop Matt long before or made Derek stop him long before he did. She couldn’t stop thinking about the things that she felt that she should have done. “I can’t stand the thought of you going to jail because of me.”

  “Baby, I’ll gladly go to jail over this. He finally got something he deserved, and I was the one that got to give it to him. No one touches my family and walks away. Especially not the mother of my child.”

  Bri smiled. She loved him and loved that he wanted her little girl to be his, too. “As long as they can prove that you didn’t use unnecessary force – which, comparing his bodily damage to yours will make it look like you Hulked out – then you won’t go. I just hope Jason can figure something else out.”

  “Eh, there’s always temporary insanity. Don’t worry, babe. I might spend a couple nights in holding, but I won’t be sentenced to anything. We’ve got him. That’s why I don’t care how much pain I’m in right now. We’ve got the bastard. We win. I just know it.”

  The hope that he felt began to wear off on her and she felt some of it, too. For the first time in a while, she felt complete. She felt like everything was truly going to be okay. Even after coming home from her last stay in the hospital, though she’d felt happy then, there was still that nag in the back of her mind. It had been Mike. Now, that was lifted. Hope filled them both that maybe they wouldn’t have to worry about him anymore.

  Bri leaned over the railing and kissed Matt on the forehead, like he always did to her. As she did, a sharp pain went through her head and the room began to spin. She winced in pain and grabbed at the side of her head. Something then shifted in her abdomen and she felt her leggings get warm before quickly cooling in the room air. She stood bolt upright and looked down, touching her inner thigh. The material was soaked. Pulling her hand away and examining it, she saw nothing but moisture, having feared that it may be blood.

  “Oh,” Bri said.

  “What’s wrong?” Matt asked, worry all over his face.

  Her vision started to go blurry as her adrenaline spiked. She was petrified. It was too early to go into labor. She couldn’t have the baby yet. Her breaths were now coming in short pants as her panic grew. She looked to Matt, tears filling her eyes, further blinding her.

  “My water broke,” she said.

  Chapter 16

  Hearing herself say it out loud seemed to be too much for her to take. Her eyes rolled in the back of her head and she dropped to the floor. Matt jumped up, his arm snagging on the IV. Without hesitation, he ripped the IV from his arm and stood, hitting the call button on the bed as he moved. He braced himself for the pain as he knelt down and picked her up bridal style and laid her down on his bed. He hit the call button again and again.

  “Yes? What can I get for you?” the nurse asked.

  “Hurry! Her water broke and she passed out!” he yelled.

  Matt watched in horror as the bed soaked with blood and fluid underneath her. He held her hand, tears coming to his own eyes. Don’t let anything bad happen, he prayed silently. Loud, heavy footfall could be heard moving down the hall. Two nurses ran in the door. One ran to Matt to check on him, but he quickly shooed her away. The nurse that had been checking on Bri ran to the phone across the room.

  “I need OB to 302, now. We have a preterm labor.”

  “She has preeclampsia and placenta previa!” Matt called out. “Doctor Metcalf is her doctor!”

  “Shit. She’s preeclamptic and has placenta previa. Her pulse is low and her respirations and shallow. Get Metcalf here as soon as possible. She’s soaked in amniotic fluid and blood. Prep surgery.”

  “Surgery?” Matt asked. “It’s too soon!”

  The nurse standing closest to him placed her hand on his back. “Women with placenta previa can’t deliver normally because the placenta is covering the cervix. Her water is broken. We have no choice. We have to deliver now, especially with her having such terrible complications. The longer this goes, the worse she and the baby will be.”

  “Call my mom, she needs to be here. She’s the only other family Bri has.”

  The nurse nodded and left. Within minutes a team of people entered the room and prepped Bri for surgery. They put her on another gurney and took her to surgery. When Matt tried to follow, a male nurse stopped him.

  “You need to stay here. You need to need to get back in bed. We brought a new one in for you. That swelling has to come down before it does worse damage.”

  “I don’t care if you have to amputate the damn thing! I’m going with her! She can’t be alone,” Matt countered. He was angry, no one was going to separate them as far as he was concerned.

  “The doctor won’t want you in there. This is a high risk procedure and they need absolute concentration. Do you want something to go wrong? Do you want to be there for that?” the nurse harshly asked.

  Matt faltered, not wanting anything to happen to her, he agreed. “Fine, but I’m going to OB. So get someone to wheel me up there if you have to. But I’m going to be waiting for her when she gets out.”

  “Fine,” was all he said before storming out of the room to catch up with the surgical team.

  Moments later, Doctor Metcalf ran into the room with a wheelchair. “You coming?” she asked.

  Matt was a little caught off guard to say the least. “But, they said that I wasn’t allowed. That I’d be a distraction.”

  “Well I’m the one delivering and I say it’s fine. Just keep your mouth shut. And Matt…”

  “Yes?” he asked, sitting in the wheelchair.

  “With what happened, she could be hemorrhaging more than it looks like. I need to tell you that this could go badly. If it does, it’s you that has to make the call. She doesn’t want her parents notified and you’re the one she wants on the birth certificate and you’re eighteen. That gives you legal right to make the decision since she is unconscious. Are you ready for that?”

  She all but ran down the hall to the
elevator, yelling at people to move as she pushed Matt along with her.

  “I – I have to be. For her. What happens if it goes badly? Will I have to leave her?” he asked. His voice shook with fear. He didn’t want to think about something going badly. He didn’t want to think about what life would be like without Bri or without the baby, even though he’d never met her.

  “If it starts to go badly, I’ll need you to tell me what you want and then go to the waiting room. It’s considered a liability and the hospital will throw a fit if you stay, especially if the worst happens. I’m not saying this to scare you; I’m saying it to prepare you.”

  Matt knew she wasn’t trying to make him fearful, but it didn’t change the fact that everything about this was very painful to see. He had no idea what was going on and everyone was moving too fast to stop and explain it. As long as she was being taken care of and they were focusing that much on her, he didn’t mind withstanding a little torture.

  Matt was asked to wash his hands and change into scrubs and put on the personal protective layers that werecustomary in a C-section. They had him sit by her head on a rolling backless chair. She’d been intubated and he knew what that meant: she hadn’t been breathing on her own. What could have happened? What could have caused this? She’d been just fine only moments before.

  “What happened to you?” he asked, Bri as he gently stroked her face. He knew he’d get no answer back, but it soothed him to speak to her anyway. “You were completely fine. I shouldn’t have let you lean over the railing.”

  “What?” Doctor Metcalf asked, pausing before making the incision.

  Matt looked up at her with guilt all over his face. “I – I let her lean over the railing to kiss me. I don’t know what happened. Her face twisted like she was in pain, but she grabbed her head, not her stomach.”

  Alarms began going off, everyone in the room jumping into action. Matt zoned out. Voices blurring together and only the sound of the alarms and the breathing machine holding his attention. He heard Doctor Metcalf saying something - to push something – but he had no idea what someone would be pushing or why. One of the nurses began doing CPR. He only noticed because Bri’s body began moving.

  “Matt – you are sure she grabbed her head?” Doctor Metcalf asked, somehow managing to keep calm.

  Matt came to when his name was spoken. “Yes! What’s happening?”

  “This is the part that I warned you about,” she said flatly, sympathy all over her face. Matt’s entire body went limp. Doctor Metcalf turned to one of the nurses. “Page neuro and get me the scans that we did of her head after the assault. Now!” She turned back to Matt. “I need to know. It’s possible that she has a ruptured aneurysm, but I can’t be certain until I see those scans. What do I do? I can take the baby now, but it could kill Bri. By waiting for neuro, the baby’s stats could drop and it could kill her, but Bri would possibly live.”

  The alarms stopped and a familiar steady beeping returned. A momentary sigh of relief escaped everyone in the room. Matt’s mind completely blacked out. She warned him, he’d been thinking about it, but now that the time had come, he couldn’t do it. Silent tears streamed down his face as he stared at Doctor Metcalf, a woman that now seemed so much like a stranger. How could she speak so casually of killing one of the two people that he loved so very much?

  “Matt!” she snapped. “I can’t smack you back to reality or I’d soil my gloves. Focus. I need to know.”

  “Is the baby okay for right now?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Her stats are fine, but they won’t be for long with Bri having so many complications. Oxygen will be depleted and the baby won’t be able to breathe. She’ll die.”

  He nodded and stood. He leaned over and kissed Bri on the forehead. “I have to make a call. Do I have time?” he asked.

  Doctor Metcalf looked at the monitors. “She’s fine for right now, but hurry. You only have a minute. Treat this like a life and death emergency because it is a life and death emergency.”

  Matt ran out of the room and nearly collapsed when he saw his parents standing by the nurses’ station. He wanted to fall into their arms and cry like a child, but he didn’t have the option. He walked over to his mother and grabbed the phone out of her pocket.

  “Matt, what’s going on?”

  He went through the address book and found Ellen’s number. He made the call and it rang three times before she answered.

  “Shaelyn? Hi! How are you?” she asked.

  Matt’s voice was strained, shaky as he spoke. “You bitch. How can you sound so happy when your daughter and your granddaughter are both dying!”

  “What?” Surprising enough to Matt, there was worry and urgency in her voice. “What’s wrong, Matt? Where is she?”

  “When she was beaten half to death by Mike, he was trying to force her into a miscarriage. She apparently developed an aneurysm. Well they think it just burst and she is lying in there on a surgical table and I am the one that gets to make the decision on if I want to save Bri and allow that baby to die, or if I want to save the baby and let the woman that I love die on that table. I can’t make that decision on my own. I just can’t. So I called you. I figured whatever the fuck you said to do, I’d do the opposite. I figured that was the best shot I had in doing what was actually in her best interest.”

  There was a momentary pause. Matt heard Ellen sniff on the other end. “The baby,” she said.

  “What?” Matt asked. Her voice had been too shaky to understand.

  “Save the baby. Bri has fought so hard to have it. Save the baby.”

  Matt didn’t know what to think. In that moment, he realized that she was right. It didn’t matter if it was hard for him or for anyone else. All that mattered was that Bri fought with everything she had to make sure that baby was born and lived. If he saved her and not the baby, she would kill him. She’d never forgive him. He’d rather her die knowing that they loved each other with everything they had and that their little girl was safe than have her live and hate him and herself for the rest of her life.

  “Thank you,” he said. His voice was stronger and more sympathetic now that he could hear just how upset Ellen was, though he didn’t understand why he cared. He imagined tragedy could either deepen hate or open the window for forgiveness if the circumstances were right. “She’s at County General if you want to come, though I won’t wait around for you. I have to go. The doctor needs the decision now.”

  Matt hung up the phone and handed it back to his mom. “I have to save the baby. Call Jason Metcalf. He needs to go down to the jail and get Mike to sign away his parental rights. Otherwise the baby might go to him or into the system. I have to be able to be put on the birth certificate. I don’t know how all this works, so just call him and make sure that I’m going to be able to be the father.”

  Matt ran off, not giving his mother time to respond. He saw her tears and that she was shaking, but he didn’t have time to console her. He ran into the surgical area, but not into the room, knowing that he wouldn’t be allowed to now that he was considered contaminated. He stopped a nurse and told her what he’d decided. She nodded and walked in to tell Doctor Metcalf.

  With his head low, Matt walked back out to his parents. He’d forgotten about his hand. He’d forgotten all about being admitted at all. He’d forgotten about his impending surgery and that he even cared to get use of his hand back. He looked down at his arms and saw a blood trail from what was once his IV site. It had actually bled quite a lot.

  “Let’s go sit down,” Derek said, putting his arm around his son and leading him over to a row of chairs across from the nurses’ station. “Did you get to tell them?”

  Matt nodded. “Yeah.” It was the only word he was able to speak as he stared wide-eyed at the floor in front of him. “She’s going to die, Dad. I just got her, and now I’m going to lose her.”

  Derek pulled his son close to him. Shaelyn grabbed one of Matt’s hands and kissed it as she did her best to control
her tears.

  “It will all be okay. Don’t lose hope. Stay realistic, but pray for a miracle. That’s what I always say.” Derek did his best to console his son, but he knew there was nothing that he could actually do. This was going to kill him on the inside.

  Matt became increasingly fatigued, his emotional trauma and the left over pain meds draining him of his remaining energy. He closed his eyes and almost immediately drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

  “Matt,” Shaelyn said, lightly shaking her son awake. “Doctor Metcalf’s back.”

  Matt sat straight up, looking at the doctor. His mind quickly came around as he waited for the news. “What happened? Is the baby okay? Is Bri…” He couldn’t even bring himself to finish the sentence.

  Doctor Metcalf smiled. “The baby girl is healthy and happy. She’s tiny, of course, weighing in at three pounds two ounces, but she’s healthy. She’s in the NICU right now. She’s a bit jaundiced and we need to make sure her breathing stays normal. She’ll probably be here a couple of weeks, but she is healthy enough for you to hold, though I’d wait a few days. You’ll just have to be extra careful with germ control.”

  Matt smiled, happy that their little girl made it okay. “Bri – what happened to her?”

  “She is a fighter,” Doctor Metcalf said.

  “Is? Present tense? She’s not gone?” Shaelyn asked, hesitant relief flooding her.

  “No. She’s still holding on. When we did the scans from her initial attack, she had an aneurysm form that was very small. It didn’t stick out to me, so I overlooked it. I didn’t even see it. When she bent over the railing earlier today, with her change in blood pressure and the earlier hit to the face, the aneurysm sprung a leak. We were lucky that it didn’t explode or we would be having a very different conversation. The scans that I had sent up showed us exactly where the bleed is and Doctor Kessler thinks that he can repair the damage. We have no idea if any lasting effects will be seen, not until she wakes. But right now, things are looking good. Just keep in mind, they are working on her brain. Anything can happen. Stroke, paralysis, communication difficulties, death. She’s not out of the woods yet, but things certainly aren’t as bleak as they were before.”