Voices.They kept entering my head and then leaving. Or I couldn’t stay awake long enough to put the conversation together. I just felt tired and extremely weak, like I was losing vital pieces of myself. I was freezing cold, but the cramps in my womb felt like they came with scalding hot knives cutting through tender flesh.
I was almost afraid to open my eyes.
This entire night can’t be real. Can’t be real. It just can’t.
I wish my mom was here with me to hold my hand and tell me it was all going to be all right.
I wish my dad wasn’t so far away, so he could rustle my hair and tell me this wound was too far from my heart.
I want my husband.
Cian. Oh God. Cian.
“Mrs. O'Callaghan.”
The unfamiliar voice pulled me closer and closer to the surface, but I didn’t want to break it. I didn’t want to disturb anything. I wanted things to go back to the way they were the day before.
“Maeve!” Fiona screeched at me, and I heard the true panic in her voice. She took me by the shoulders and started shaking me. “Maeve! Time to wake up! You’ve been sleepin’ long enough now.”
The unfamiliar voice told her to stop, but she wouldn’t. She was losing it.
“Fiona,” I barely got out.
“Maeve!” She pulled me close and set her head on top of mine. “Tell me you’re still breathin’.”
“I’m still breathing.” My voice cracked. “But barely. What’s going on with…me?” I forced my eyes to open. I was in a proper hospital. The light was bright in my eyes, and I was hooked up to an IV and one of those monitors that takes blood pressure readings. The smell of antiseptics clung to my nostrils.
The unfamiliar voice belonged to an unfamiliar doctor. She went to pull up a seat when chaos erupted outside.
“That’d be her husband,” Fiona rushed out, getting to her feet. “Wait till he gets in here to speak.”
The doctor nodded, but her eyes were on me. I shifted mine to the side, waiting for Cian to come through the door. He crashed through it, tilting like the world was unsteady, and collapsed into the seat next to my bed. He was wearing a sweatshirt, but I could see the bulge of thick bandages underneath.
“Cian,” I barely got out, and tears rushed down my cheeks.
“Hush now, baby,” he whispered, pulling my head against him. “You’re all right. You’re still breathin’. You’re here with me.” He turned toward the doctor. “What’s going on with my wife?”
She cleared her throat. “We did an ultrasound. The babies are fine…right now. The bleeding could be normal, or not. We’re waiting to get the test results.” She looked at me. “If your levels are off, you might need medicine to keep them normal, and bedrest until we tell you otherwise.”
“If that doesn’t work?” I whispered.
She sighed. “There’s nothing else we can do. These things just happen sometimes. Nature can be cruel.”
Cian went to go after her, but I held onto his sweater, pulling him back down. His panicked eyes looked into mine, searching for the cure for this, but I didn’t have it. He made a noise from the deepest part of his chest, like he was carrying the weight of the world’s pain on his cut shoulder. I rested my head against his, crying like I’d never cried before.
We held on to each other like the last trembling petal had held onto the time it had left, and hoped it would be enough.
Epilogue
MAEVE
Ten Years Later
“Booty and daROAR!” Talula was bending down in the grass, making her little figurines dance. She was doing her own version of her favorite movie: Beauty and, as she called him, da ROAR. In five-year old speak, that meant the growl, which translated to the Beast.
A strong wind gushed down from the emerald hill covered in grass, and I squinted against the sun, checking on my family.
Cian and our son, Camden Conor, were hiding behind the fort Cian had built for them to watch for sea pirates. Camden had a wooden telescope I’d made for him pressed to his eye. Cian kept popping up and down, pointing in the distance at what they were “seeing”—a wide ocean filled with dangerous pirates. Caitlin Mona wanted to be a part of the action, but she was torn between playing princesses with her sister or joining her fraternal twin brother and her dad in a game of pirates.
