by Naomi West
“Turn your phone’s tracking on. I’ll come to you.”
Message sent, he opened the tracking app and waited. Her phone was one he’d given her not long after she arrived at the compound, and a tracking ID had been part of the deal. He remembered, with a wry smile, that she was less than thrilled to know he would be able to keep tabs on her at all times. But Chopper didn’t trust her back then. He had to make sure he knew where she was and that she wasn’t feeding information to Spike somehow. In truth, he’d never used the app to find her. He never had to. Now, he was glad he had it.
An incoming message came onto the screen.
“I think it’s on. I’m at a pub near your neighborhood. I’m safe.”
Chopper exhaled a breath he didn’t know he was holding. At the same time, a blue dot popped up on the tracking map. He knew the place she was at; he’d gone there himself, before the Outlaws. For some reason, it gave him comfort to know she was sheltered, outside of gang territory. As he started up his bike again, his thoughts swirled. She was safe, but Chopper didn’t need to be told how close of a call it must have been. No one knew better than him that Spike was dogged in pursuit of things he thought belonged to him. And he certainly thought that about Kelsey.
But Chopper was more concerned about what Kelsey thought now. Could he blame her if she thought he had betrayed her, that he’d struck a deal with Spike for reasons she wasn’t told? That sort of thing happened all the time in Chopper’s world — or it had before he met Kelsey. Did she think that he had done it? He felt a burst of anxiety. What if his own arrogance had caused him to lose her? How could he be so stupid?
Chopper tried his best not to be consumed with his worries before he reached the pub, but he had no idea what to expect as he walked through the door into the brightly-lit foyer. The hostess behind the front counter smiled brightly. “Just one?” she asked.
“Uh, actually, I’m here to pick someone up,” Chopper told her. He felt suddenly awkward and out of place. “My girlfriend.” He paused. “She’s pregnant.” Briefly, he entertained the terrifying fantasy that this girl would tell him she hadn’t seen a pregnant girl, that he must be confused. “She’s got long dark hair,” he added.
A look of understanding came across the girl’s face. “Oh, I just saw her,” she said. “I think she went to the bathroom. You can feel free to wait for her up here if you want.” She hesitated. “Uh, by the way … I don’t want to alarm you, but some of the other customers said she looked like she was running from someone when she got here. She came in alone, so I’m not sure what happened, but … I hope she’s okay.”
“Yeah, she — she told me about that. That’s why I’m here.” Chopper looked down. “Thanks for looking out for her.”
“Of course, no problem.” A couple walked in behind Chopper and the hostess turned her attention to them. She walked away into the seating area, and Chopper backed up to stand beside the door, scanning the place for signs of Kelsey. He pulled out his phone.
“I’m here, babe.”
A minute later, he saw her moving toward him from the back — where the restroom was, he assumed. Her face was pale and he could see a few scratches on her arms and hands. Chopper felt anger smoldering in his chest, If Spike had touched her, there would be hell to pay. He reached out to her when she got close enough, and she gave him a small smile. Her hands were firmly planted on her stomach, Chopper hugged her. “Are you okay?” he whispered. “Tell me that son of a bitch didn’t do anything to you.”
“No,” she said. But her expression was tense and unhappy. She glanced at him. “You didn’t go back to the house, did you? They might still be there.”
He shook his head. “I figured they would be. We’ll just get a room or something for tonight. Whatever they do to that place can be fixed.” He grinned. “Best part is, technically Spike will be paying for it.”
She smiled back, but it was strained. He felt a pang of sympathy. “Let’s get out of here,” he said quietly, taking her by the hand. Kelsey followed him out to the sidewalk, but when she saw his bike, she balked.
“I don’t know if I should get on that,” she said uneasily. Her hands seemed to tighten on her belly.
Chopper grimaced, annoyed with himself even though he knew he had no choice. “I’m sorry, Kels,” he told her. “I couldn’t get a car out of the garage, with them all blocking me in.” In retrospect, he supposed a car might have vastly simplified his confrontation on the road, but that hardly mattered now. “Come on,” he said, urging her gently forward. “I know a place that’s close to here. I’m friends with the guy who owns it. We’ll be safe.”
She remained reluctant. “I think —” Suddenly her voice cut off into a whimper of pain. Kelsey doubled over, both hands clenching.
“What’s wrong?” In his panic, the question came out sounding more like a demand. All she could do was shake her head. He brushed a piece of hair from her face and, seeing that her eyes were wet with tears, started to feel the first inklings of an unfamiliar emotion: fear.
“I need to see a doctor,” she gasped. “Now. We have to go to the hospital.”
“Then we’re going to have to take the bike, and you’re gonna have to hold on real tight, okay?” He guided her over to the motorcycle and helped her get her leg over the back. Once she was perched on the seat, he saw where her concerns came from; even to him, she looked precarious. But she didn’t protest, her worries overridden by pure survival instinct. Chopper didn’t waste another second. He jumped on in front of her, made sure her arms were wrapped securely around him, and peeled away from the curb. Kelsey huddled behind him, silent except for the occasional moan. He wanted to say something comforting, but he didn’t even know where to start. All he knew was that he blamed Spike, and Spike was going to pay.
Chapter Fourteen
Kelsey
On a normal day, Kelsey might have cared that she, pregnant as she was, sat wedged on the back of Chopper’s bike, held there only by the firmness of her own grasp on him. She might have cared that neither of them had a helmet, that the back seatbelt didn’t fit around her belly. Hell, even an hour ago, she might have cared. But at that moment, as they sped toward the hospital, all she could think about was breathing through the pain.
Deep breaths, she told herself, eyes squeezed shut against Chopper’s shoulder blade. The wind whipped through her hair. In…out. The doctor had suggested at her last appointment that she think about attending Lamaze classes. Kelsey had smiled politely in response, but hadn’t felt any desire to follow through. Now, she sort of wished she had.
She angled her head down so that she could see the curve of her stomach pressing awkwardly against Chopper’s back, and prayed that she wasn’t actually in labor. She didn’t think her water had broken—she would have noticed that, right? But fear and pain were dulling all of her perceptions, so she knew she couldn’t be sure. She couldn’t trust anything she was feeling.
The ride to the hospital seemed to last an eternity. Kelsey thought dimly that maybe Chopper should have called an ambulance instead. She was starting to feel lightheaded, and when the motorcycle finally slowed to a stop, she nearly fell onto the asphalt. Chopper caught her in his arms, swearing like a sailor. He half-carried her through the emergency doors. She heard him shout for assistance, then dimly saw a circle of faces swim into her view. There were voices all around her now, talking at her, trying to get her to respond. Kelsey did the best she could, but even in her addled state, she knew it wasn’t much.
Immediately, the nurses put her on a gurney and started to wheel her away. With her head back, the vertigo seemed to subside just a little, and Kelsey’s vision cleared. She became aware that Chopper had not been permitted to accompany her, that she was alone with a posse of nurses. One of them was holding her hand.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” the woman was saying, in a low and gentle voice. “Everything will be just fine. Can you hear me? Just fine.”
A pinprick pierced the inside of h
er elbow. Kelsey felt something heavy but strangely removed trundling along beside her. She turned her head to see what it was, and the comforting nurse smoothed her hair tenderly. “It’s all right, baby,” she cooed. “You’re all right. We’re just taking you somewhere to rest.” The hand that wasn’t holding Kelsey’s pushed an IV stand on which was hung a bag of clear fluids.
Kelsey closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the bed had been parked in a room, and the nurses were bustling around her. Moments after she had arrived, a female doctor came into the room, her hands already gloved. She smiled at Kelsey reassuringly. “Hi, honey,” she said. “I’m here to check you out, is that okay? Make sure everything is fine.”
Kelsey nodded. She didn’t know what else to do. Her insides felt numb. Quickly, the nurses stripped her from the waist down, and she sat in stunned silence while the doctor performed the exam. It ended with an ultrasound, and after the ultrasound, an ugly quiet descended on the room. Kelsey stared fixedly at the crisp hospital bed sheets. She tried to find words, questions, anything, but it was all too surreal.
She wanted to beg them to save her baby. She wanted to let them know that without her child, she didn’t know how she would survive. She thought about her last glimpse of Chopper’s face as she was whisked away, how worried he had seemed.
What would he do if the baby was gone? Sitting there in the cold confines of the hospital, Kelsey realized she didn’t really know, and that terrified her. She hadn’t ever stopped to consider the possibility that her baby would not be born, yet … here she was. What if, when she left, she was no longer pregnant? Chopper would have no real reason to support her. He’d been determined to take care of his own, but if his own was dead, then she had to assume that things would change. She put her hands on her stomach again, hardly noticing the ultrasound gel that smeared across her palms. For the first time, she lifted her gaze to look at the team in the room.
The doctor who’d examined her pressed her lips together. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I’m so, so sorry.” Kelsey looked at herself and realized there was blood in the bed. She felt empty.
“Oh,” she said. Her voice wavered slightly. The doctor and two nurses reached forward for her hands, and she let them hold her for a minute. Then she said. “I — was it a boy or a girl? I never —” She’d meant to say that she never asked, but the words wouldn’t leave her.
“A boy,” came the doctor’s reply.
Chopper’s son. Chopper’s son, who was gone, and who would never meet his father. “I don’t have a name,” Kelsey murmured, staring at nothing. It was brutally true. She had thought that she would have so much more time.
The team busied themselves with cleaning her up, and then they all seemed to vanish, leaving her with her thoughts. It was a moment that Kelsey both needed and dreaded: the moment when all the noise around her ceased, and reality had a chance to set in. She glanced over at the spot beside the bed where the ultrasound machine had been, before one of the nurses tactfully wheeled it away.
Kelsey herself hadn’t looked at the image, and she found herself experiencing a regret that was hollow and raw. The only time she ever laid eyes on her child was through machinery, and she hadn’t taken the time to take her last look. She wanted to tell herself it was because she hadn’t known it would be the last — but she’d known, deep in her heart. She had known as soon as she staggered into emergency that she had lost her child.
What she had not known was that it would hurt. The nurses had given her medication for the pain of her cramps, but they could do nothing to treat the ache in her heart. Kelsey felt tears build up behind her eyes and spill slowly down her cheeks, dripping from her jaw and chin to the white sheets. She touched them with her fingertips, as if she didn’t know what they were. She felt betrayed by her own emotions. The pregnancy had never really been anything more than a grand inconvenience, a huge wrench in her elaborate plans to uncover the truth. But now that it had ended this way, she felt like a failure. And she didn’t know how to deal with the onslaught of unexpected grief.
The doctor returned with a box of tissues, which she presented gently. Kelsey took one and blew her nose, took another and wiped her eyes. Then she took the whole box, just to have something to occupy her hands. She listened as the doctor began to tell her about what would happen next: something about having a procedure, staying overnight, bed rest. None of it stuck in Kelsey’s mind. She felt herself nodding whenever there was a pause.
“You’ll need to sign papers,” the doctor said. “Can you do that?”
“Yes.” Her own voice sounded distant and unfamiliar.
It was the doctor’s turn to nod. She paused, her warm blue eyes trained on Kelsey’s face. “Your husband is still in the waiting area, honey,” she said. “Do you want me to tell him?”
Kelsey held up her left hand to show that there was no ring on her finger. “He’s not my husband.” The words were flat. “You can tell him, but then he has to leave. I don’t want to see him.”
The doctor’s eyebrows knit in subtle skepticism. “You’re sure?” she asked. “He seems … distraught.”
“He can’t come back here,” Kelsey answered, a little more vehemently than she meant to. Her emotions bubbled abruptly, and she struggled to keep her voice level. “I don’t want to see him.”
“All right.” Her hand was squeezed, and then the doctor was gone. Once more, Kelsey was alone with her racing mind. She didn’t have any idea what she was feeling, but in the midst of emotional chaos, she fell back on her reporter’s instincts to make a plan.
Except this time, there was no plan to be made. She had no money, nowhere to go, no friends to call upon. By rejecting Chopper, she had rejected all of the Savage Outlaws, and that meant she could no longer rely on them. And besides, with a gang war on, who knew if any of them would even be left when it was over? That thought brought more tears. Whether she had meant to or not, Kelsey had cultivated a life with those men, and leaving it behind hurt almost as much as losing her baby. She hadn’t realized how much she’d taken for granted, how she had started to look forward to a future that was now shattered.
It was, in some way, like losing Hannah all over again. And now she wouldn’t even get to finish her original mission. Congratulations, Kelsey, she thought bitterly. You have fucked up so badly that you couldn’t even accomplish one single thing. You have nothing to show.
She was alone a lot that evening, except for the times when nurses would pop in to check on her. Kelsey suspected that they thought she was a suicide risk, and she couldn’t blame them. Every time they looked in on her, her face was streaked with tears, the mountain of tissues slowly growing in the wastebasket. They probably thought it was like nothing they’d never seen before; another deeply unfortunate young mother trying to cope in the wake of a miscarriage. But the pain went so far beyond that. The Savage Outlaws had begun to grant Kelsey something she hadn’t really thought possible. She could have had a second chance with them. Sure, maybe it would have been a little bit unsavory, a far cry from the place where she used to be, but she could see Chopper warming up to family life. It was a little spark of hope in a world that had become so bleak for her.
Now everything was bleak again. Before, she had been certain that she could find some way to persevere. She was driven first by love for her sister, then love for Chopper, and then, budding love for the small being growing inside of her. In the space of a few hours, all of that evaporated. Knowing it was all over, the harsh sterility of the hospital felt like a bastion of comfort compared to the rest of her life. She closed her eyes and saw herself homeless and destitute on the street, too humiliated to go crawling back to the family she’d abandoned so long ago. There were too many mistakes, and too much shame. She’d gone beyond the realm of their understanding long ago,
The doctor put Kelsey to sleep for her procedure. When she awoke, she remembered nothing but the harsh lights of the room as they blurred and swam together just before she lost co
nsciousness. Her body looked and felt different; more than that, she could sense the change within her. The absence was shockingly palpable. Alone in her room yet again, Kelsey cried.
The night turned into morning, and the nurses did a shift change. The new ones must have been told about her, because no one intruded on her solitary grief except to give her more water, take her vitals, and refresh her tissues.
Her fresh tears lasted until late morning. When they stopped coming, she turned her back to the door and willed herself down into the comforting, empty darkness of sleep.
Chapter Fifteen
Chopper
A small eternity passed with no word from either the emergency team or his men. Chopper sat in the hard, plastic waiting room chair with his head between his knees. He felt sick. Thoughts of the ongoing fight at the compound — he was sure it was still happening — nagged at the back of his mind, but he could focus only on Kelsey. Chopper didn’t know too much about childbirth, but he did know that pregnancies could sometimes turn bad in a way that was very dangerous to the mother. His own mother had once told him a story about how she had almost lost him, and almost lost herself in the process. He prayed that this was not the case for Kelsey.
