My lungs are raw with emotions when they answer my silent prayers like the elderly lady is no longer cuffed to the industrial bin at the entrance of the alleyway. They arrive at our side in five heart-thrashing seconds and offer urgent medical care to Macy.
The entire time paramedics assess her, I hold Macy’s hand. I don’t even let it go when they place her on the stretcher and rush her to the closest hospital. As promised, I stay with her and encourage her to breathe through the contractions during our scary ride.
“Pant, pant, blow. Pant, pant, blow.”
She follows my instructions, her cries weakening as she mimics my breaths. I’m so fucking proud of how brave she is, and I don’t keep it from her. I tell her again and again, and I will continue telling her until she believes every word I speak.
When the ambulance screeches to a halt outside the ER faster than I can snap my fingers, doctors and nurses swarm Macy. I follow their weave through the ER, never once letting go of Macy’s hand.
“Patient is thirty-five weeks pregnant with blunt force trauma to the back of her skull and suspected internal bleeding,” one paramedic yells, rattling off her vitals. “BP is unstable, and we noticed deceleration of the fetal heart rate during transport.”
A team of doctors wheels Macy into a trauma bay. Only a flimsy curtain maintains her modesty when a nurse cuts off her clothes so they can adequately assess her injuries.
When the tattered remnants of her dress float to the floor, I catch a glimpse of the blood pooling beneath her bed. The sheets are already soaked because there’s so much blood.
“Get me two units of O-neg and page OBS. We need to prep for an emergency C-section,” a doctor shouts while a nurse slaps an oxygen mask over Macy’s face.
Panic riddles her eyes while she trembles all over.
“You’re okay, freckles,” I repeat, seeking faith in my motto as much as she does. “They’ll take care of you and your baby. It’s okay.”
Macy’s chin veers toward her chest half a second before her eyes roll into the back of her head. I crank my neck to the right when the monitor a nurse only just hooked her up to erupts in alarm. Macy’s heart rate is plummeting, and the line on the fetal monitor next to it is entirely flat.
“Let’s go!” a doctor shouts before she climbs onto Macy’s bed and begins chest compressions. “She’s crashing. We need to move now!”
They rip Macy’s hand from my grasp as they race her out of the trauma bay and steer her toward flapping plastic theater doors. I try to stay with her, to restore our lost connection, but as they exit the doors locking in the sanitary smell of the operating theaters, the nurse in blood-covered scrubs holds me back.
“You need to stay here.”
My eyes don’t move off Macy as they push her through another set of doors halfway down the corridor. “I promised I’d stay. She’s my partner. I need to stay with her, to support her through this.”
“Sir, please,” the nurse begs, pushing me back with more strength than her tiny frame should hold. “She needs our help, but we can’t do that in an unsterile environment, so you need to remain here.”
Everything she says is accurate. I’ve issued them a dozen times myself while undercover, but this is different. This is Macy.
I want to fight, but the longer I keep the nurse here, the less time she has to help Macy.
“Save her. Please.” My voice is almost a sob, and my cheeks are seconds from being drenched.
Nodding, she squeezes my arm before she bolts through the flapping plastic doors. “We will do everything we can.”
A second later, she disappears through the double doors of an operating theater, leaving me alone with Macy’s blood on my hands and my soul shattered in a million pieces.
37
GRAYSON
Every second feels like eternity as I wait for an update on Macy. I’ve been pacing the hallway outside the operating theaters since they took her in, praying for a miracle. Crew arrived hours ago, but I haven’t left my post for even a second. I used my credentials to stay as close to Macy as possible, and it’s the first time I’ve felt honored by the privileges my badge grants me.
After what feels like a lifetime, the double doors halfway down the corridor swing open, and a nurse walks through them. I don’t pay any attention to the bloodstains on her scrubs. I focus on the tiny bundle wrapped in blue in the incubator she’s wheeling my way.
The baby is wailing too loudly to mistake his prognosis.
He made it.
Macy’s son made it through the ordeal that almost claimed both his and his mother’s lives.
The nurse looks up from the baby, who is crying so distraughtly that his little face is as blue as his blanket, and recognition dawns when our eyes collide. She’s the nurse whoheld me back hours ago, the one who said she’d do everything she could to save Macy.
