Gypsy Brothers: The Complete Series (53 page)

FIFTEEN

The pain is so great by the time we get to the hospital that all I can see is red. This is more painful than being held down and raped. This is more painful than having my skin excised, piece by violent piece. More painful than a knife in my leg, than a cocaine overdose, than anything. This. Is. Hell.

This is like being ripped apart, from the inside out.

Somebody is screaming. I want to tell them to shut up, until I realize somewhere through the thick red haze that I am the one screaming.

OhGodOhGodOhGod.

I can’t walk. My legs don’t want to function right now. I’m panting as pain racks my body,
onetwothreefourfive
, reaches a violent peak, s
ixseveneight
, before coasting back down, easing off, settling into a familiar dull ache for a few minutes of respite.

Contractions.

No! I refuse to accept that. These are cramps, I tell myself, just cramps, nothing more, just the comedown.

But you’re bleeding
, the rational voice in my head whispers sadly.

I want to smash that rational voice in the face until she shuts her mouth.

Strong arms circle around my waist and pull me from the car; it’s raining, and I lean into Jase as he runs, two of us moving as one.

Three of us. But for how much longer?

When I open my eyes again we’re in a foyer, all drab beige paneling and plastic bucket chairs. I pant as another wave of pain slams into me, biting my lip so I won’t scream again.

“Sangre,” Jase yells. At first I think he says Sangue, as in
Il Sangue
, Emilio’s Cartel, and I go rigid. Until he says it again and I realize he’s saying
Sangre
. Spanish for
blood.
Jase glances around the walls, looking for the right word, I guess.
“Embarazada
!” he yells, turning me toward the bored-looking receptionist. She peers at me in alarm, her doe-like brown eyes going wide, and then she’s yelling something in Spanish.
Embarazada
. Pregnant. I remember that from the forms I filled out at the hospital before the ultrasound.

Out of nowhere, a stretcher appears. Stranger’s faces surround me as Jase lowers me onto the flat trolley and then I’m moving, watching the ceiling whizz past above me as I hear Jase and the medical staff try to communicate in broken English and Spanish. I hear
sixteen weeks
and
blood
. There is so much blood.

Before we make it wherever they’re taking me, I black out.

***

When I come to, I’m propped up on a hospital bed, and there’s a doctor hovered between my open legs. I come to with a start, trying to press my knees together, trying to remember what the hell is going on. My legs are trapped in stirrups, and I can’t figure out why.

Then it hits me. I’m bleeding. Everything hurts so bad, I’m in agony.
Is it already too late?

A hand squeezes my shoulder softly and I turn my head sharply, locking eyes with a generically pretty woman, probably only a few years older than me, dressed in nurse’s scrubs. She’s got one hand on a portable ultrasound machine, the same kind the doctor used just a few weeks ago when we saw our baby’s strong, steady heartbeat and reedy legs that kicked and somersaulted.

“We’re just going to take a look at your baby, okay?” Her voice is kind, her accent thick. I nod vacantly.

I hike up my singlet, my panties already gone, my lap and knees covered by a green hospital sheet, to retain a little dignity, I suppose. The doctor stands and strips bloodied plastic gloves from his hands, glancing at the nurse and nodding before he leaves the room. She squeezes the cold stuff on my stomach, just like the doctor did a few weeks back, and presses the plastic thing onto my skin.

Jase enters the room, wearing green surgical scrubs. I frown at him quizzically for a moment before I realize he was covered in my blood before. They must have given him clean clothes to wear. He rushes to my side, his expression pinched.

“You’re awake,” he murmurs, kissing the top of my head. I give him a brave smile and turn back to the screen. The pain is still here, still intense, but being somewhere where people know how to fix me tapers my hysteria dramatically.
Everything will be okay
, I chant to myself. It
has
to be.

On the screen, black and white materializes. It takes the nurse a few moments to locate the baby, floating in my womb. Nothing looks different than the other day, but everything is different. There’s no kicking legs, no rolling.

There is no movement at all.

“Do you know what you’re having?” the nurse asks cheerfully. Distracting me.

“A girl,” I say tonelessly, Jase’s hand squeezing tighter around mine.

She nods, a look of intense concentration on her face. My mouth goes dry as I listen to the nothingness that surrounds us, the nothingness that says
I can’t find a heartbeat.

“Is the sound on?” Jase asks, pointing to the screen. He must be thinking what I am - where is that noise, where the fuck is that
gallopgallop
that tells us our baby is okay?

The nurse gives us a tight smile, placing the plastic thing back into its tray. She doesn’t answer Jase. “Let me get the doctor,” she says, patting my hand reassuringly. “He’ll be able to get a better look.”

I swallow thickly as she leaves my peripheral vision and exits the room, my gaze locked firmly on the display, currently empty.

Jase side-hugs me, kissing the top of my head again. “The doctor will find it,” he says, and I don’t know if he’s trying to convince himself or me.

It doesn’t matter, though. I haven’t felt movement in hours, and there’s no heartbeat on the ultrasound screen. I’m not an idiot.
I know what that means.

The doctor enters the room quietly, and he searches for a long time for the heartbeat of the baby I already know is beyond this world. Finally, he turns the machine off and turns to me with a grave expression.

“I am very sorry,” he says. “There is no heartbeat.”

“Well keep
looking
!” Jase yells across me. I squeeze his hand, pull him down to me. As our eyes meet, I give my head a little shake, my lips quivering, and I pull him to me. A strangled cry comes from Jase, breaking my heart all over again.

Jase pulls away from me and punches his fist into the wall next to the bed, making the room shake. I put a hand to my mouth to try and stifle the noise coming from deep inside me, a noise between a sob and a scream.

Our baby is dead. Our baby is
gone.

SIXTEEN

I thought finding out our baby had died inside me was the worst possible thing that could ever happen to me, but I was wrong.

Because she had passed away, her little heart still, but she was still inside me. And somehow, she had to come out.

“Your waters broke with the bleeding,” the doctor informs me, peering at me as he holds a surgical mask over his chin. “You’re in labor. We’ll give you something for the pain.”

His accent is even thicker than the nurses, and I’m glad he’s pulled his mask away from his mouth to address me, or I’d have no clue what he’s saying.

As it is, I nod numbly, dazed. Devastated. As the nurse pricks my arm painfully—her fifth unsuccessful attempt to get an IV into my arm—the doctor casts a suspicious glance over my bare arms.

“Are you a drug user?”

Humiliation wracks me. Humiliation and despair. I nod. Beside me, Jase tenses. I don’t even have to look at him to feel the anger and sorrow pouring off him in waves.

The doctor asks me what I’ve been using, and as the word
heroin
falls from my mouth, I experience a rage deep inside of me, a rumble in my soul, a battle cry rising from within my veins.
Dornan. You did this to me. I hope you come here, you motherfucker. I hope you come here so I can kill you.

“When was the last time…?” the doctor asks, massaging the veins on my arms. He taps the back of my hand and gestures to the nurse, who hands him the needle already slick with my blood. One pinch on the back of my hand, and it’s in.

“A month?” I guess quietly, trying to think back through the haze of grief that’s squeezing my heart. I can’t look at Jase. I’m shaking violently, and part of that is fear and shame. I
can’t
look at him. We are all speaking around the tragedy we’ve just discovered, speaking about things that don’t even matter. Maybe it’s because none of us can talk about what’s really happening.
Your baby is dead. Your baby is gone.

All of a sudden things get really quiet, and I start to zone out. Painkillers. They’ve given me something for the pain. What a blessed fucking relief.

The pain at my back and deep in my womb starts to recede a little. The pressure is still there, lapping at me in steady waves, but the red, crushing pain is mostly tamped down. I feel woozy, and struggle to stop the room from spinning.

“Try and get some rest,” the nurse says, patting my hand again before she leaves the room with the doctor. Rest? How am I supposed to rest right now?

But whatever they give me is strong enough that I virtually pass out, dozing between those steady waves of pressure that lap at me. I’m still struggling to catch up, still so confused.
Our baby is dead?

Jase doesn’t speak. His eyes are red and glassy, and I can
see
the rage that surrounds him like fire.

“Jase,” I say suddenly, snapping out of my haze.

“Yeah,” he says, back at my side like a rocket, obviously hearing the urgency in my voice.

“I think I need to push,” I whimper, already pushing down. The pressure around my back and lower torso has reached a crushing peak, and bits of pain start to creep through the artificial numbness created by the pain relief. I fist the sheets beneath me as I grit my teeth and bear down against the pain.

Jase gives me one look and sprints into the hallway, yelling for a doctor. The nurse from earlier enters the room just in time to grab our baby as I deliver her in one push. She’s so small, she comes out so easily. Too easily.
It’s not fair.

She’s perfect. Tiny, but fully formed, a miniature button nose and little tufts of light brown hair. She’s beautiful. She’s ours.

The nurse wipes the baby’s face and wraps her in a white blanket before handing her to me, and it pains me how woefully small she is. Barely longer than a dollar bill, eyes closed, and completely unmoving.

I hold her to my chest and sob.

Jase gently places a hand on our daughter and I realize, of course, he wants to hold her, too. To see her, to
know
her. It kills me to let go of her, but I hand her up to him, her absence from me as harsh and as painful as the moment I realized she had passed away inside me. He sits on the bed beside me, cradling her in his hands, absolutely devastated.

He wanted this baby.  He doesn’t say much, just looks down at her. Pulls her up in his arms and holds her close to his chest. It kills me, how much he wanted her.
He wanted our baby so much
. But she’s gone.

Will he even want me now? Or will I remain the empty, tarnished vessel – unlovable, dead on the inside, forever alone?

That’s what I deserve.

Jase and I sit together on the narrow bed for hours, both of us in grief-stricken shock, studying every perfect thing about the child we will never get to know. The little girl who should chase butterflies and eat cake and finger paint.
Gone.

Eight hours later, and the nurse comes in and takes her away. Jase helps me into new clothes, and I sit numbly in a wheelchair as he pushes me to the car, clutching onto a 3x5 piece of card with a tiny set of footprints printed onto it. The only proof we have that she even existed.

And, it’s over.

I am empty once more.

SEVENTEEN

Three Days Later

“Come here,” Jase murmurs. Moving slowly. Everything is slow and foggy in the midst of our grief. Deep inside me, I can feel a new seed beginning to sprout, deep in my belly, in the place where our child used to be.

Rage. Pure, unadulterated rage. I didn’t know I could hate Dornan Ross any more than I already did. But I do. Now. I try to grab hold of that rage, to use it to keep me afloat, but the grief has me drunk, vacant, and I lose my grip on the rage, sinking back down again as I drown in our collective despair. It’s not even the lack of heroin anymore that makes me sick. After the first couple of days back from the hospital, my body adapted, finally adjusted to life without a constant dose of something to sedate the demons inside me. Now, my only companion is the heart-rending grief that threatens to destroy me.

I let him pull me off the couch, because I am a zombie. I resist nothing. I force a mouthful of food down when he tells me, I watch the steam billow from the tea he fixes me, and I lay like a little girl when he tucks me into bed at night.

I am a ghost. I am nothing, and inside me, that tiny seed of rage grows patiently, a little each day, and I know when I’m strong enough I’ll be able to harness it for my own survival.

I need the rage to come back to me, because without it, I am a shell. Our future is gone. Our baby is gone. The promise of rage is all I have.

He pulls me into the bedroom. Sometimes I notice he’s making an effort to look me in the eye, like a real effort, staring at me until I meet his gaze. Only, I never do. I avert my eyes to the floor, stuck in my own world, almost preferring that I’m alone in here. I don’t know what to say, what to do, how to act. I don’t know how to be this person anymore. This person who was selfish enough, stupid enough
to lose our baby.

I lost our baby, and
it’s all my fault.

Mine, and his.
Dornan’s
.

I repeat those words inside my mind. My vengeful mantra.
Come and find me, you motherfucker. Come here and find me, so I can kill you.

Jase has pulled one of the dining chairs into the bedroom, set it up in front of the floor-length mirror. He gestures for me to sit down, and finally, I do return his gaze.

“I don’t want to look at myself,” I say quietly.

His face falls. He squeezes my hand. “Trust me. You can close your eyes if you want.”

I sit. Look at the floor instead of the mirror. I can’t bear to see myself. To see what I’ve become.

He reaches over and grabs something. “Stay still,” he says, one hand stroking my hair, and then he’s brushing it for me. It hurts at first, more than three months worth of knots in the wild rat’s nest atop my head, but he’s gentle, and he takes his task seriously. I watch his face, the subtle changes in his expression as he untangles strand from strand, and finally the brush glides through. It makes me think of my father. How, when I was a girl, he would brush my hair every day. It makes me think that Jase will never get to do that for his own daughter, because I lost our baby, and now we have nothing.

He puts the brush down and picks up something else. A hair straightener. My chest constricts as I remember the deal we had, the deal that if I ventured into the storm with him, he would straighten my hair for me. The straightener looks old, dusty. He must’ve found it when he was checking out the bathroom.

“I told you I’d do this for you,” he says, his voice thick with emotion. “Do you remember?” His hands are steady but soft as he scoops up a chunk of my hair and runs the iron over it. As he releases it, warm strands settle against my cheek, and it takes everything inside me not to cry. He’s so gentle, so loving, I wonder again to myself what I could have possibly done to deserve someone as beautiful, as capable, as unwavering as Jason Ross to carry me through this darkness that threatens to split me apart.
That is splitting me apart.

I nod in response. To speak would be impossible right now. But I meet his eyes when I nod, offer a pathetically sad smile, and that is enough for him.

He continues the rest of the job in silence, and the feeling of him tending to me, taking care of me with this one small gesture is so fucking good, it floods me with warmth. A fragile warmth, a temporary one, but while it lasts, it is a blissful relief.

When he’s done, he rests his chin on the top of my head, so his face is directly above mine in the mirror. He angles his face into my hair, leaves a lingering kiss there.

“I love you,” he says. “More than anything. Do you know that?”

A lump rises in my throat. I nod. I know.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he adds.

My eyes slide back to the floor.

“Yes, it was,”
I reply.