Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 128307 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128307 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
A copper-tinged breath puffs from her mouth. “Th-that’s why I’m sc-scared. This isn’t how I wa-wanted you to see my vagina.”
I laugh. It is a highly inappropriate time, but it is either laugh or kiss her. Since she is grappling for every breath, I went for the one that wouldn’t cause her more pain.
“What if I promise to stay away from the tail end of things until you give me explicit consent to look? If that’s not until six months down the track, a year, or ten, I will respect your wishes. I won’t even take a peek.” I mark my chest. “Scout’s honor.”
Shock overtakes the fear in her eyes. She stares at me, clueless about her appeal. That’s my fault. I let guilt choose my path for seventeen years, and more times than not, that path led me away from what I really wanted. Or should I say, whom I wanted.
That ends now.
“Macy…” Before I can get out another word, a relieved sob garbles in my throat. Flashing lights paint the brickwork across from us a second before the familiar sound of a gurney being pulled out of the back of an ambulance trickles down the alleyway. “They’re here, Mace. They’re finally here.”
I shout for the paramedics. “Down here! We’re down here.”
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.