“Fine,” I say.
He shoots me an unimpressed look.
“But Ryan is in a lot of pain,” I add, wincing as she squeezes my hand, riding out another contraction.
“So it’s game on.” He sounds completely unconcerned as he watches the nurse hook Ryan up to a monitor. “We’ll have a wee look, then, shall we?” he says, turning to the sink.
“Please.” Ryan grabs for the back of the doctor’s scrubs. “Please, don’t risk my baby.”
“I have no intentions of that, hen.” He gives a reassuring pat to the back of her hand.
“I mean it. You have to put her first.”
“I know this is overwhelming for you right now, but you’re in safe hands.” He holds them out as though ready to catch a ball.Catching wasn’t mentioned in the baby bible, was it?
“If there has to be a choice,” she says, raising her voice for all to hear. “The baby comes first. Those are my wishes.”
“Now, Ryan,” the doc begins again.
“The baby,” she reiterates, louder. And more Ryan-like. “That’s all that matters. She comes first or he’ll sue your ass. Tell them,” she demands. “Promise me, Matt.”
“Ryan, please.”
She puts her hand to her stomach one last time, her gaze finding mine. “I love you,” she whispers. And then, right before my eyes, she just ... fades.
“She’s bradying.” A nurse—midwife—takes Ryan’s wrist in her fingers.
“She’s hemorrhaging,” says someone else.
Everything seems to speed up, actions and reactions seeming to happen in fragments. The top of the bed is lowered, equipment appearing from nowhere as something akin to controlled pandemonium hits the room.
“You have to leave.” The wrist-holding nurse, I think, begins to push me bodily toward the door.
“No. Tell me she’s okay,” I demand. “What’s going on? What’s happening, please?”
“Someone will be with you shortly to explain. But right now, we need to get Ryan into surgery.”
The bed and medics whip by me in a blur, the woman at the center of my world small, unresponsive, and unreachable in the eye of that storm.
Chapter 43
Matt
Dear Baby Maeve,
I want to tell you about how you came into this world. Longed for but early.
You were supposed to be a July baby, but you were in a bit of a hurry ...
When you read this letter and learn of those precarious first days, I hope you’ll know that whatever else life has in store for you, you can face it. Because you’re tenacious. A fighter. Just like your mother. And so damned beautiful like her too.
You were born a little early, nearly thirty-five weeks, and you came into the world at five fifteen in the afternoon due to something called a placental abruption. My heart feels heavy just writing that because I couldn’t protect you. Or your mother.
You needed to be resuscitated. You both did. And I wasn’t there when this happened, rushed out of the room by the medics because the stakeswere too high. I thank God for it now because I don’t think I could’ve stood to watch you both suffer.
Instead, I waited and waited for news of you both, wearing holes in the hospital floor. And I swore to all that is holy that, once I had you both in my arms, I’d hold you so tight and never let either of you go. It was the longest two hours of my life and the most terrifying thing I have ever faced. I felt alone for the first time ever, and it was the saddest place in the world.
When they told me what had happened, I cried. Oh, fuck, how I cried. Sorry for the cursing. (I know you’ll fleece me out of cash as soon as you’re old enough for your cousin Clodagh to teach you her ways).
