I shoot her a glare. “You are not fucking fine, baby doll. You’re in a hospital. The place itself means you are most definitely not—”
“She’s fine,” the doctor reassures, shooting me a wink I don’t appreciate.
I cross my arms, widening my stance as I stare down at the young fucker who can’t be more than an intern. “She collapsed.”
“Fainted,” Shiloh corrects. “I got dizzy and fainted.”
My heart clenches as those terrifying moments where she was completely unresponsive come back to me. I rub a hand across my chest to ease the ache and her face softens. Reaching out, she tangles her fingers with mine.
“I’m okay, baby,” she whispers. “Really, I’m fine.”
I kiss her wedding ring. “Stop saying you’re fine.”
“But I am!” Turning to the doctor who’s checking her vitals, she tries to enlist some backup. “Tell him! It was hot and I haven’t eaten enough today. Fainting is a normal response.”
He flicks his gaze between us, adjusting his glasses. “Actually, it’s not all that normal. Do you faint often?”
“No!” I bark, making him jump. Oh damn well. Maybe he needs to toughen up for this job. “She never faints.”
“That’s not exactly true,” she murmurs, brushing a hand over her belly. “I fainted a few times when I was pregnant with the boys.”
The monitors strapped to her finger and arm shift, and my throat clenches.
I hate seeing her like this.
After she’d collapsed, I’d called Stephen while the horse handler, who I found out was named Henry, called 911. She woke up not even a minute later, but she was out of it. So despite her protests, I insisted on an ambulance. Stephen and his familystayed behind with boys, distracting them with all the activities at the spring fair we hadn’t gotten to yet.
Shiloh fought me the entire way here, demanding we go back to the fair, that she’d be fine after some food.
Yet, here we are, so clearly, I won.
The doctor drops her chart onto a small table and sits in his seat, wheeling to her bedside. “I’m still waiting on your blood tests to come back, but is there any chance you could be pregnant now?”
Shiloh’s eyes gloss over almost instantly and she shrugs. I tighten my hand around hers and brush my thumb over her soft skin.
“I mean, technically…” she starts, biting her lip.
He turns a questioning look toward me.
I clear my throat. “We’ve been having unprotected sex for over three years. Since we conceived our twin boys, who are two and a half. There have been three chemical pregnancies and one thirteen week loss.” I run my fingers through her hair, knowing these words sting. “So, yes, technically she could be pregnant, but—”
“But my cycles are irregular. I have PCOS and was recently diagnosed with endometriosis,” she adds, pushing her shoulders back.
I smile at her. My strong, brave girl.
The doctor nods in understanding. “I’m so sorry for all you’ve been through.”
I can tell he means it, but platitudes are nothing but that at this point. No one can understand what repetitive loss feels like unless they’ve experienced it firsthand. The heartbreak isn’t even nearly as painful for me as it is for Shiloh. It hurts, kills me, to lose our babies, but it’s not my body experiencing what hers does.
What does break me, however, is watching my wife, the woman I love more than the air I breathe, go through heartbreak again and again. It destroys me to not be able to fix this for her.
“Thank you,” she mutters. Her throat bobs. “Did you, uh, run a lab to test my pregnancy hormones?”
“We did,” he says kindly as he reaches for the phone next to her bed. “It’s standard protocol when women are admitted. But the lab is backed up so why don’t we see if we can find out definitively? Settle our nerves, hmm?”
Shiloh’s mouth opens, but before she can say anything, he’s murmuring quietly into the phone. With a nod, he sets it down and pushes to his feet.
“Are you okay with a quick intrauterine exam, Mrs. Huxley?”
