“I’ll do whatever you say,” Em bursts out, begging him for my life.
My mind goes very clear. I’m not going to let this continue a second longer.
If you’re ever grabbed from behind,Omar’s voice tells me in my memories,don’t pull, it doesn’t do any good and you could end up hurting yourself. Drop into a crouch instead.
It’s tricky because of my belly, but I manage it, hissing through my teeth at the sharp scratch of the knife point at my side. I don’t think it’s too deep, and I can’t worry about that now, because I need to get out of the grapple fast. Just like we practised in class, I jab my elbow into his crotch, making him shriek like a wildcat, before standing, grabbing his arm, and spinning my whole body around, pushing him to the floor.
I don’t do it as smoothly as I could while training because my unwieldy body is kind of in the way, but I still get the job done,gulping in some air before scrambling around the desk to get clear of him.
I almost make it.Almost. But not quite.
When he grabs at my ankle, the world jolts, and I just manage to get my arms out before I hit the floor. Pain radiates through my middle, and I reflexively struggle against his grip, but it’s so tight, and my baby is hurt, I fell andmy baby is hurt…
There’s an angry squawk, and I look up just in time to see a flurry of green feathers as Gary flies in the man’s face, snapping his beak and cawing and flapping angrily. He’s like an extra from Hitchcock’sThe Birds, and I want to cry as I watch him. The creep bats and swipes with his hands, even jabbing at the air with his knife, but Gary keeps coming at him, fierce and furious and refusing to quit protecting his mother no matter how many times he nearly gets hit.
My leg is free, but all I can manage to do is curl myself around my bump, holding onto it, struggling to breathe through the waves of sharp pain rolling through me.
The next time he tries to grab Gary to make him stop, he misses as Gary flies away, and there’s a smashing noise. Shards of pottery scatter all over the ground, along with soil and leaves, as Em breaks a plant pot over his head. He looks stunned for a second, and then he lays flat out, making throaty groaning noises.
“Sadie?!” Em shouts, and I vaguely make out her face as she leans over me, clutching one of my hands and gently shaking my shoulder, but she’s blurry. Everything’s blurry, and getting darker.
I try to say something, to ask her to get Leo and call for help for my little bean, who may be in danger, but the pain… Oh god, the pain in my side throbs again, excruciatingly this time, and however hard I fight to stay awake, the pull of the darkness is stronger and stronger and overwhelms me…
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Leo
Come on, baby, wake up…
It feels like I can’t breathe in or out all the way, like the fear is smothering me.
It’s felt like this ever since I got Em’s frantic phone call. The one that stopped my heart and turned my head to shit.
Sadie’s unconscious in the hospital bed. The doctor told me they gave her something to help her sleep, and that she’ll wake up soon. I tried to make them promise me that, and they just kept saying the same thing: it’s not a coma, she’s just resting, she needs to rest.
Even so, my legs won’t stop shaking, and I think they’re going to carry on like this until she opens her eyes again.
I only have the vaguest flashes since my mobile rang, interrupting our ring hunt. Em’s shaking voice, telling me what happened and that she’d been trying to call me for ages. Eli shouting a long way behind me. My car. Horns blaring as my car careened all over the road in my hurry to get to them both.Racing through the hospital, asking random faces where Sadie was, hoping someone, anyone, knew.
Some guy led me to a seat that I collapsed into. He had a lanyard that said he was a nurse, and he was wearing blue scrubs. I focused on his face as best I could, and his mouth was moving, and my brain took a moment to catch up with the words he was saying.
Stitches in the side of her abdomen…wound wasn’t too deep…contractions…fortunately no placental abruption -
“Is she OK?” I plead with him.
His eyes are sympathetic. “She’s going to be fine.”
I let out half a breath. “And the baby?”
“From what we can tell, the baby is unharmed.”
I exhale the rest of the way, such a long way past relieved that my head swims and I see sparkles, and I have to put my head between my knees.
“We’re monitoring them both, and we’ll keep her in overnight just to be sure, but I’d say she had a lucky escape.” He puts a hand on my back. “Breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth. You’re fine.”
After a few steady breaths, the world seems to level out, and I look up again. “Where is she?”
“This way.” He leads me down a couple of corridors to a room with a bed curtained off. When I pull the green fabric aside, she’s there, banged up with a drip in her arm, her eyes closed. Em is sitting with her, and lifts her finger to her lips to keep me quiet.
