There was a pause, and she took a deep breath, which trailed off into a pained groan.
“Logan,” she managed to whisper. “Please…I…I need your help.”
“What’s wrong?”
Another pause.
“Daisy?”
In the background, he could hear the sound of her breathing heavily, ragged and shallow like she was fighting just to stay conscious. “Daisy,” he said again, growing more panicked. “Talk to me.”
“I think I'm in labour. There's blood,” she gasped. “So much blood.”
“Talk to me. How much blood?”
She didn’t answer, and the phone landed on the ground with a deafening thud. He was already moving, swinging his legs over the bed, reaching for his keys with shaking hands.
“I’m coming,” he said, unsure if she heard him. “I’ll be there in fifteen.”
He didn’t remember the drive, only the way his hands gripped the wheel so tightly, his knuckles turned white, and how he’d come close to hitting an early morning messenger cyclist. He ran red lights, didn’t care. The whole city could’ve been on fire, and it wouldn’t have mattered.
When he reached her flat, he didn’t bother knocking before pushing the door open with his shoulder. And then he saw her, curled over herself on the bed, her hand shoved hard against her mouth.
He froze, his eyes scanning the room. It was in disarray, almost as if she’d been struggling to stand and had pulled everything in reach to the floor. Then he saw it—the sheets pulled halfway down the bed were soaked in blood, dark red and clotted.
For a second, he couldn’t breathe before instinct took over.
He crossed the room in three steps, dropping to his knees beside her. “Daisy,” he said, gently peeling her hand away from her mouth. Her skin was clammy, her pupils blown wide.
“I—” Her breath hitched as another contraction hit. “Logan, please—”
“I’ve got you,” he whispered.
He scooped her into his arms, ignoring the way her fingers dug into his shoulders or the blood seeping into his shirt, and carried her down the stairs. She was lighter than he expected, frighteningly so, and her body was shaking with such violence, he was afraid he’d drop her.
He wasn’t an obstetrician, but he’d been in enough clinical settings to know she was in trouble. “Come on,” he murmured, placing her into the passenger seat. “Stay with me.”
The drive to the hospital was a blur, and as he glanced at Daisy, her ragged breaths growing slower and her head lolled against the window, he started to crack.
“Fuck!” he yelled, gripping the steering wheel tight. “Daisy, don’t you dare.”
By the time he pulled into A&E, she was unconscious and limp. He rushed her inside, screaming at anyone and everyone to help him. A nurse appeared, then an orderly, and suddenly, she was being wheeled away from him, disappearing behind swinging doors.
The next few hours stretched endlessly. He paced the waiting room, hands buried in his hair, the scent of blood still clinging to his shirt. No one would tell him anything other than they’d taken her into a theatre, and it made every second feel like a lifetime.
At some point, exhaustion won. He sank into a chair, head dropping forward, the weight of it all pressing him down until he was awoken by an older nurse, tapping him on the shoulder.
“She’s out of the theatre now,” she said, giving him a polite smile. “Would you like to see her?”
Daisy was asleep when he entered the room, and he took a seat next to her.
“She was lucky,” the same nurse who’d brought him in from the waiting room. “It didn’t look good for a while there.”
Logan couldn’t answer her, his brain too numbed from the last six hours' events.
“Placental abruption,” the nurse continued, checking her vitals. “It’s when the—”
“Placenta separates from the uterus,” Logan cut in robotically. “I’m a doctor. Well, a neurologist.”
