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Watching Danny try to help Mariang would have been comedic gold if I’d been watching them on a sitcom. Every time she screamed, he jumped up from the chair next to her hospital bed, ran to the other side of the bed, then back again, tugging at his hair and shouting at her that it would all be okay. Then he shouted at the nurses to make her pain go away. Then he shouted at his brothers to get her more ice, though she had twelve cups of the stuff.
Every. Single. Time.
He’d tried to kiss her to give her a little bliss time in their happy place to take the edge off the pain, but the heartrate monitor blared that Mariang was dipping into the danger zone, so we ended that experiment right quick.
Then the heartrate monitor kept going off no matter what we tried, making everyone panic. By the time the nurses came into the room to check it, her heart would be just at the bottom end of normal again, so they would leave. The whole thing was pretty frustrating.
Danny was in a world unto himself, and didn’t temper his aggression when he yelled at the nurses. “Are you blind? Something’s wrong! I can hear that insufferable machine beeping every few minutes! Have the doctor check her again!”
When the nurse looked like she might finally shout back at Danny, I intervened. I placed my hands on Danny’s shoulders, making sure he took a full second to focus on me. “You need a break. You’re stressing Mariang out, and she needs to calm down. It’s a big deal, what she’s about to do, and you freaking out isn’t helping her.” My tone turned syrupy when I checked Mariang’s vitals. “Honey?”
“Yes?” Mariang’s face was red and sweaty. Her pulse was weaker than I would’ve liked, but the baby’s heartbeat was strong. I tried not to say anything that would make her worry.
“Is it okay if I take Danny out into the hall for a minute? Give you a little space to breathe?”
Mariang yanked me down by the front of my shirt and threw her arms around my neck, squeezing as tight as she could – which wasn’t tight at all. “Thank you. You’re a good sister. That you’re here at all... I love you.”
I kissed her cheek and smoothed her raven hair back. “I love you, too. Can I get you anything? I mean anything. I’m pretty sure if you asked for the moon, Danny would lasso it for you. If you ever wanted a really nice piece of jewelry, now’s the time to ask for it.”
Mariang held her back, wincing. “Just do what you can to calm him down. Is Dad okay? He knows, right?”
“Of course. He was the first call. Alton’s fitted the black tether bracelet to him so he can’t leave the mansion, otherwise he’d be here with you.” I couldn’t imagine the carnage if Ezra showed up, what with Mariang’s baby coming ’round the mountain. There’d be an elephant-sized lion roaming the hallways of the hospital for sure. I clicked my fingers to Boston for his phone and dialed Ezra, putting him on speaker. “Ezra? Mariang just wanted to hear your voice.”
I set the phone on the nightstand, instructing the guys to watch her while I shoved Danny out the door into the hall. He grabbed his chest, breathing too sharply to actually get any useable oxygen. “I can’t do this! She’s not strong enough for any of it! What were we thinking?”
I didn’t know the right words to say, so I pulled Danny in for a hug, his pulse racing in uneven thumps. His heart moved only for Mariang, and now that her heartrate was weakening, his was erratic as well. “Listen to me. They’ve got her hooked up to a heart monitor.”
“And it keeps going off! They’re looking like something’s wrong, but they don’t want to say it aloud. I know something’s wrong!” His fist banged to the wall behind me, making me jump. “Don’t bandy around the bush. Tell me straight what’s happening to my wife!”
“First off, she needs to calm down. Thanks to you being amazing at keeping her safe, she’s not used to being in a whole lot of prolonged physical pain. Labor is... rough, and it’s long. So the more you freak out, the more she will. She needs to breathe and chill out as much as she can. You running around the room and barking like a lunatic isn’t going to help with that.”
“Okay. Yeah. I guess I am a bit stressed.” Danny closed his eyes and leaned into my embrace. “Tell me the truth. It’s bad, isn’t it?”
I rubbed his back to soothe his worst fear. “Her heartrate is a little lower than it should be. I’m worried about her pushing with it low like that. I want to talk to the doctor about a C-section, but I know Mariang didn’t want one.”
Danny nodded, his cheek brushing mine. “Whatever gets the baby out safe and keeps Mariang healthy is fine by me. All we have to do is convince her.”
“Good. Then come with me to talk to the doctor. Give Mariang five whole minutes of space. Then I promise you can hover all you want until she decks you.”
“Thank you. I feel like no one’s listening to me. The nurses just shrug at the monitor, and then leave when her heart goes back to normal. But I know my wife. I know when she’s too weak for something, and she can’t handle much more of this!”
“I know. I’m watching the whole thing.” We walked to the nurse’s station and requested the in-house doctor, since Mariang’s wasn’t there yet. It took only three minutes to get an audience with him, and he had many of the same concerns I did.
“Our first option is to do the cesarean, where we can control the circumstances a little more. The second option is that Mariang can try to deliver the baby, her heart gives out or she faints, and we have to rush the C-section. I’m worried about how weak she looks. The fetal monitor shows the baby’s strong, but if we can’t get her out safely, that won’t matter.”
“Do what you have to do to keep them both alive,” Danny agreed, clutching my hand so hard, I thought he might break my only functioning one.
The doctor had salt and pepper colored hair, the beginnings of a pooched belly, and just the right amount of compassion in his voice as he explained the options to Mariang. He let her know she could still choose to try and deliver the baby naturally, and he’d let her go as long as her heart would allow her to try, but that there wasn’t much hope for it, weak as she was.
“I want to wait a bit longer,” she ruled, her face red and sweaty. “Am I close? Can we check again to see how much I’m dilated?”
The brothers were shooed out of the room, but Mariang insisted I stay with her and Danny. I held her hand through the examination and subsequent contractions, wishing I was anywhere else in the world. I tried not to feel the pain of losing my baby, but every now and then, the fresh memory coiled itself around my neck and squeezed, until I had barely any breath to speak with. Luckily, Mariang didn’t need me to speak; she needed me to smile at her and stay by her side.
Mariang was closer to delivery than she’d been half an hour ago, but still wasn’t dilated enough for the big moment. She screamed through yet another contraction, and try as he might to be her beacon of calm strength, Danny was at his wit’s end. I pulled out a chair and sat him in it, and then helped Mariang to roll onto her side to keep her heartrate from dipping. I rubbed her back as I whispered encouraging things to her, and she cried through the pain I wished I could take on myself, so she didn’t have to feel it. She had that certain quality about her – the kind that makes you want to move Heaven and earth to make sure she never stubbed her toe again. She pulled me down to lay in the bed next to her. There was barely enough room, but we made it work. She was scared, so I was there, making sure she didn’t have to be afraid by herself. I spooned my sister, letting silent tears fall into her hair. I would endure any kind of emotional torment for her.
Ollie stopped by, but quickly darted out after a sweet kiss to Mariang’s cheek and chuck to Danny’s shoulder. He sat with the brothers in the hall to distance himself from Mariang’s agony. I didn’t much blame him. I wanted to be out there, too. But Mariang needed me, so I stayed by her side and muscled through my dread. “Just think,” I said, rubbing circles into her back while she shook with pain, “in just a little bit, you’ll have your girl in your arms. I think she’ll have Danny’s mouth and your eyes. Maybe Danny’s ears and your hair. Super cute, right?”
“It hurts! It hurts so badly!”
“I know, babe. I’m here.”
“And I’m here,” Von announced, bolting into the room like friggin’ Superman. He paused to kiss my cheek and then knelt on the other side of Mariang’s bed, pressing a kiss to her wet nose. “You thought you’d start the party without me? For shame. You know how much I love a good party.”
When Mariang opened her mouth to reply, a contraction hit, and the only thing she could do was howl. Von matched her cry with one of his own, smiling sympathetically and squeezing her hand when she worked out a short laugh at his dramatic antics after the pain subsided. “You came,” she marveled. “You and October, you didn’t have to be here. After everything you’ve been through, you still came?”
“Of course. You’re my sister. I want to meet my niece. I was thinking of taking her horseback riding next week. Kabayo’s wrapped around this one’s finger,” he said, jerking his thumb over at me. “I bet we could talk him into some shenanigans.”
She reached out and touched Von’s cheek with a trembling hand and tears in her eyes. “I love when you smile. I adore you, Von.”
“Let me meet my niece, and I’ll never stop smiling for you, darling.” Von grinned when he kissed her palm, staying in her eye line until the next contraction. He started howling again to match her yells. “See? I’m so much better at this than you. My cries were more operatic, yeah? Let’s let November decide. Who’s better at being in labor, me or Mariang? I personally think she’s faking it.”
Mariang and I both laughed. Von was exactly what the room needed. “I’m glad you’re here,” I said, smiling at his handsome face as I rubbed Mariang’s back.
“I am too, but perhaps you should take a break, yeah? This is all a little too fresh for you. Maybe Graham can take you down to the cafeteria.”
I was about to say that I was okay to help Mariang, but Danny beat me to it. “No, she has to stay. The doctor listens to her. If something goes wrong, I want a medical professional in the room with Mariang.”
Von stood, looking over us to stare at Danny in the chair. “You don’t understand what you’re asking her to do, being in here like this. She was just the one in labor, mate. It’s cruel, asking her to stay.”
Danny looked up, hopeless and lost. “Then I’m cruel. I don’t care. All I know is that we need her to stay.”
I rolled onto my back and reached out to hold Danny’s hand for a brief moment. “It’s alright. I’m not going anywhere.”
After the twentieth contraction, Von decided he didn’t want to scream anymore with Mariang, so he simply held her hand, shooting me looks of silent concern when the heartrate monitor kept beeping even after her contractions subsided.
“We have to reconsider the C-section, hun.” Danny spoke into his hands, his nerves shot. “Your heartrate’s taking longer to come back up.”
“No, Danny. I want to try! Everyone thinks I can’t do anything. I can do more than people give me credit for. I can do this! Don’t you believe in me?”
Danny hesitated, and then nodded. “Okay, we can wait it out a little while longer. As long as the doctor lets you.”
I held onto Mariang’s hand, letting her squeeze it through her next contraction. Only this time, she barely put any pressure to the vice. “You alright? I barely felt you squeeze my hand that time,” I asked in concern.
“I... I can’t feel my fingers,” she admitted, sounding drunk.
I barked over my shoulder, “Danny, get the doctor!”
“No,” she whined, but she had been officially overruled. What had been just enough heartbeats a few minutes ago to keep the doctor on the fence, and let her decide her method of delivery, was now past the point of no return. Danny obeyed, knocking over his chair and shouting down the hallway for help.
It was at that exact moment I felt something familiar and cold shoot through me like a lightning bolt of ice in my veins. I’d just reaped someone, but knew it couldn’t be. I couldn’t have reaped. There weren’t any humans in the room. The nurses were all out in the hallway, fearing Danny’s wrath. I was the only partial human in the room.
That is, except for the other partial human I was currently wrapped around while she howled.
My mouth went dry, and all other noises in the universe faded from my mind, save for the sound of my own terrified heartbeat. My muscles went on lockdown as the ice stayed tight inside of me, my eyes widening as I tried to work out the panic that foreshadowed the thing that absolutely couldn’t be.
I hadn’t just reaped Mariang. I couldn’t have. Mariang was strong. She’d dipped in the healing waters. There weren’t any Terraway monsters clawing at her right now. We were Topside, safe from the drama.
I couldn’t find my breath as the cold crept through me, freezing me around Mariang while I tried to reason with the ice, telling it that it didn’t belong in me. There was no way Mariang was going to die today. It would be too soon. If she lived to be a hundred, it would be too soon. “No!” I worked out, my voice choked with tears that stung my face.
Von reached over Mariang to grip my shoulder in solidarity, no doubt assuming I was crying because of the baby emotions. When Mariang’s soul leapt from me into him, he shot up from his kneeling position. “Was that... Did you just...”
Screw fate. I would fix this. I bolted out of the bed the second the chill left me, and ran to fetch the doctor, who was already on his way in. “Something’s wrong!” I told him, stating what he no doubt already knew. He checked her, frowning that she still hadn’t dilated enough to deliver yet. Mariang’s breath was shallow and her eyes kept fighting to stay open between contractions that didn’t seem to hurt her anymore. Her pain was gone now, because I’d just ensured that she would have a peaceful death. It was the cruelest kind of tease, to give her a chance at everything she’d ever wanted, only to have it ripped away inches before the finish line. I couldn’t work out words to warn the room at large that irreparable things were happening.
Surely not death. I couldn’t have reaped Mariang. She has years left. Dozens and dozens of years! I’ve done everything, reaped more than I should, to make sure she lived. She’s going to be a mother in just a few minutes!
With a kind but grave bedside manner, the doctor explained to Mariang that he wasn’t willing to gamble on her heart being strong enough anymore. “I’m afraid we have to take your daughter out now if you want to live to see her.”
“No! I... I can...”
Mariang struggled to sit up, but the second she did, her sweaty body fainted in my arms. Her heartrate plummeted to a dangerous low and stayed there. The monitor blared, yelling at us that we’d waited too long – listening to her when we should have been taking over.
Von scrambled to help me support her, lowering her back into the bed while I started chest compressions. Nurses flooded the room, edging Von and me out and shoving scrubs at Danny, who looked like he might be the one passing out. They ran her bed down the hall, shouting instructions to each other and pumping her chest that ceased to move on its own.