When we finally get to the tiny hospital in Beasley, we find Charlie sitting in the waiting room, his head in his hands.
“What happened?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I woke up and she was screaming, and there was all this blood—so much blood!” He buries his head back in his hands. “She didn’t want me in the hospital room. She kicked me out. No one’s talking to me. I don’t know—I don’t know what’s happening.”
He’s losing it, driven mad by worry and fear. He looks up and sees Poppy, as if noticing her for the first time, and I watch as he struggles to gain control over himself. “It’s fine,” he says to her. “It’s going to be fine. These things happen.”
Poppy nods and, letting go of my hand and reaching for his, sits beside him. I sit down in the empty seat on his other side, Albert next to me, and the four of us wait in that blank space in silence, all of us trapped in our own thoughts.
I’ve managed to banish that ugly voice from my mind, and now all I’m left with is worry. Because despite everything I feel for Charlie, despite everything I think about Blair, he loves that baby. He’s got to be hurting so much right now, and it kills me that there’s nothing I can do to help.
Finally, a doctor comes out into the waiting room. He’s young, probably just out of school. Which may explain why he looks so nervous as Charlie springs up from his chair.
“How is she?” Charlie all but shouts.
“She’s fine,” the doctor says, but there’s a strangeness in his voice. A tone that tells me something’s off.
“And the baby?”
The doctor hesitates, as if trying to choose his words carefully. Then, instead of speaking at all, he just shakes his head.
Charlie’s expression falls, utterly and completely, and my heart breaks. I want to pull him to me, to wipe that mess of hurt and pain off his face, but I can’t move. And he doesn’t need me right now. He needs her.
“What happens now?” he asks, sounding so lost despite the courage in his tone. “What does Blair need?”
The doctor shakes his head again, clicking his pen open and closed in an erratic rhythm. “She’s perfectly fine. She can go home now.”
“Already? She has to be in shock, or pain, or . . . something.”
“She’s just fine,” the doctor repeats. “You can take her home now. In fact, that would be best for her. If you’ll excuse me,” he says, giving us an apologetic look before moving past us to the nurses’ station, where he starts filling out some paperwork.
Charlie watches the doctor for a few seconds, stunned, before he walks back to find Blair. I put my hand on Poppy’s shoulder, and she pivots to hug me tightly. She’s crying, and I feel my T-shirt soak up her tears. “What about the nursery?” she asks in sobbing gasps.
I bend down to look her in the eye. “Hey, it’s going to be okay. Charlie—and Blair—we’ll get through it, okay?”
I hug her close to me again, and she nods. “I’m just so tired of having to get through things,” she whispers, and I have to blink back sudden tears.
Because Poppy’s lost yet another member of her family. And there’s nothing I can do to help her either.
• • •
Albert drives all of us home. I’m up front with him; Poppy, Charlie, and a very quiet Blair sit in the back. Charlie is in the middle, a protective arm around his fiancée. No one talks. No one wants to disturb the grief-filled silence that’s settled all around us.
When we get back to the castle, Charlie helps Blair out, handling her gingerly. She looks pale in the early morning mist, and there are dark circles under her eyes. She leans heavily on Charlie’s arm but doesn’t look at any of us. The two of them make their way up the stairs, leaving us below.
I don’t remember that it’s Christmas until my eyes land on the evergreen garlands lining the stair railing.
Mabel marches up to Poppy and me, her hair neat as always under her white cap, her eyes flashing with anger. “Poppy, go to bed at once,” she says, then turns to me. “You’ve exhausted and upset her, taking her out to the hospital in the middle of the night,” she spits.
“It was a family emergency,” I say, staring her down. “She needed to be there, whether you understand that or not.”
She lifts her chin defiantly at me. “If you think I don’t care about this family, you’re sorely mistaken.”
“Poppy, go on upstairs,” I say sweetly, ignoring Mabel. “Get some sleep.”
Hardly able to keep her eyes open, Poppy nods and trudges up the stairs. I turn back to Mabel. “Enough,” I say, my voice full of warning.
Mabel huffs, but retreats back toward the kitchen.
Soon I’m back in my room, trying to sleep that awful night and the morning away.