God, she’s so beautiful. The thought flickers and fades like my courage.
Baxter’s wet nose in my back snaps me to, and I suck in a breath I didn’t even know I was holding. I get a little better grip on my reality—my fucking sanity—and it’s not very strong but at least it’s there. I press down and let out a shout in relief when I feel the weak pulse of her heart.
All I want to do is bury my face in her neck and hold her, tell her it’s going to be okay, but I know the thirty seconds I’ve wasted sitting here have been more than too much.
I tell myself that I need to think, that I need to concentrate, but my thoughts are so fucking scattered I can’t focus on just one.
Call 9-1-1.
Carry her downstairs.
So much goddamn blood.
I can’t lose her.
“Stay with me, baby. Please, stay with me.” I plead and beg but I don’t know what else I can do. I’m lost, scared, fucking beside myself.
My mind whirls out of control with what I need to do and what’s most important … but the one thing I know more than anything else is I can’t leave her. But I have to. I pull her out of the small room housing the toilet, my feet slipping on the blood all over the floor, and the sight of it smearing—dark marring the light floor—as I drag her to the rug causes new panic to arise.
I lay her gently down. “Phone. I’ll be right back.” I tell her before I run, slipping again to the nightstand where my phone is. It’s ringing in my ear as I reach her and immediately bring my fingers to her neck as it rings again.
“9-1-1—”
“5462 Broadbeach Road. Hurry! Please—”
“Sir, I need to—”
“There’s fucking blood everywhere and I’m not sure—”
“Sir, calm down, we—”
“Calm down?” I scream at the lady. “I need help! Please hurry!” I drop the phone. I need to get her downstairs. Need to get her closer to where the ambulance can get to her faster.
I pick her up, cradle her, and I can’t help the sob that overtakes me as I run as fast as I can through my bedroom to the stairs and down them. Panic laced with confusion and mind-numbing fear runs through me. “Sammy!” I’m screaming. I’m a madman, and I don’t fucking care because all I can see is her blood coating the bathroom. All I can think of is being a little kid and that damn doll Quin used to have—Raggedy Ann or some shit like that—how her head and arms and legs lolled to the side regardless of how she held her. How she’d cry when I’d tease her over and over that her doll was dead.
And all I keep thinking of is that fucking doll because that’s what Rylee looks like right now. Her head hangs back over my bicep completely lifeless, and her arms and legs dangle.
“Oh God!” I sob as I hit the bottom of the stairs, the image of that doll stuck in my head. “Sammy!” I scream again, worried that I told him to go home last night like usual, rather than sleep in the guest room because the press were so out of control.
“Colton, what’s wrong?” He runs around the corner and I see his eyes widen as he sees me carrying her. He freezes and for the odd moment I think how mad Rylee would be at me right now for letting him see her like this—in just a tank top and panties—and I hear her voice chastising me. And the sound of her voice in my head is my undoing. I drop to my knees with her.
“I need help, Sammy. Call 9-1-1 back. Call my dad. Help me! Help her?” I plead with him as I sink my face into her neck, rocking her, telling her to hold on, that it’s going to be okay, that she’s going to be okay.
I know Sammy’s on the phone, can hear him talking, but my shocked brain can’t process anything other than the fact that I need to fix her. That she can’t leave me. That she’s broken.
“Colton! Colton!” Sammy’s voice pulls me from my hypnotic panic. I look up at him, the phone held up to one ear as I’m sure he’s getting instructions from the 9-1-1 operator, and am not even sure if I speak or not. “Where’s she bleeding from?”
“What?”
“Look at me!” he shouts, snapping me somewhat out of my fog. “Where is she bleeding from? We need to try and stop the bleeding.”
Holy shit! What is wrong with me? I open my mouth to speak, to tell him, and I realize that I’m so panicked I have no fucking clue.
Sammy’s eyes lock on mine as if to tell me I can do this, that she needs me, and he’s able to break through my slow motion mental state. I immediately lay her down—as much as it kills me to because I feel like she’s so cold that I need to keep her warm. I start running my hands over her body, and I start shaking I’m so mad at myself for not thinking of this, so scared at what I’m going to find.
I cry out in fear as I realize blood is still running down her legs, and I can’t even begin to process why. “Her accident. Something from her accident,” I tell Sammy as I lift her shirt up her abdomen to show him the scars that mar her skin as if that will explain it. And then I grab her and pull her onto me again—her cold body against my warm skin—as Sammy starts talking again to whomever’s on the other end of the phone.
“Hang tight, sweetheart. Help’s coming,” I tell her as I rock her, knowing that there is no way I can stop the bleeding—hers or my heart’s.
I hold her tight and I swear I feel her move. I scream out her name to try and help her come back to me. “Rylee! Rylee! Please, baby, please.” But there’s nothing. Fucking nothing. And when I sob in despair her body shudders again, and I realize it’s me moving her. It’s my body shaking and begging and pleading that’s moving her.
“Oh God!” I cry out. “Not her. Please not her. You’ve taken everything good from me,” I scream into an empty house to a God I don’t really believe exists any more right now. “You can’t have her,” I yell at him, holding onto the only thing I can because everything else I hold true is slipping through my fingers. I bury my face in her neck, the sobs ruining me as my warm breath heats up her skin cooling beneath my lips. “You … can’t … have … her.”
“Colton!” A hand jolts my shoulder and I snap out of my trance, unsure of how much time has passed, but I see them now. The medics and the flashing lights swirling on my walls through the open front door. And I know they need to take her from me to help her, but I’m so fucking scared right now I don’t want to let her go.
She needs me right now but I damn well know I need her more.
“Please, please don’t take her from me,” I croak as they lift her from my arms and I’m not sure who I’m talking to, the paramedics or God.
“How long, Sammy?” I shove up from the chair, nerves gnawing at me and my legs not able to eat up enough ground to make them go the fuck away.
“Only thirty minutes. You gotta give them time.”
I know everyone in this waiting room is staring at me, watching the man with blood all over his clothes pace back and forth like a caged animal. I’m antsy. Restless. Fucking terrified. I need to know where she is, what’s wrong with her. I sit back down, my knee jostling like a goddamn junkie needing a fix and realize that I am. I need my fix. I need my Ryles.
I thought I lost her today only to know I didn’t, and then when I think she’s safe— protected in my arms as we fall asleep—she’s ripped the fuck away from me. I’m so goddamn confused. So fucking angry. So … I don’t even know what I am anymore because I just want someone to come out from behind those automatic doors and tell me she’s going to be okay. That all the blood looked a hundred times worse than it really was.
But no one is coming. No one is giving me answers.
I want to scream, want to punch something, want to sprint ten fucking miles—anything to get rid of this fucking ache in my chest and churning in my stomach. I feel like I’m going crazy. I want time to speed the fuck up or slow the fuck down, whichever is best for her, as long as I can see her soon, hold her soon.
I get out my phone, needing to feel a connection to her. Something. Anything. I start to type her a text, express to her in the way she understands best how I fe
el.
I finish, hit send, and hold on to the thought that she’ll get this when she wakes up—because she has to wake up—and know exactly how I feel in this moment.
“Colton!”
It’s the voice that’s always been able to fix things for me and this time he can’t. And because of that … when I hear his voice call out to me, I fucking lose it. I don’t stand to greet him, don’t even lift my head to look at him because I’m so overtaken by everything that I can’t function. I drop my head in my hands and start sobbing like a damn baby.
I don’t care that there are people here. I don’t care that I’m a grown-ass man and that men don’t cry. I don’t care about anything but the fact that I can’t fix her right now. That my endgame superhero can’t fix her right now. My shoulders shake and my chest hurts and my eyes burn as I feel his arm slide around me and pull me into his chest as best he can and try and comfort me when I know it’s not going to do a goddamn fucking thing for her. It’s not going to erase the images of her lifeless Raggedy Ann body and pale lips that are staining my mind.
Humpty fuckin’ Dumpty.
I’m so upset I can’t even speak. And if I could, I don’t even know if I could put words to my thoughts. And he knows me so damn well he doesn’t even say a word. He just holds me against him as I expel everything I can’t express otherwise.
We sit in silence for some time. Even when my tears are gone, he keeps his arms wrapped around my shoulders as I lean forward with my head hanging in my hands.
His only words are, “I’ve got you, son. I’ve got you.” He repeats them over and over, the only thing he can say.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to rid my mind of everything but it’s not working. All I can think of is that my demons have finally won. They’ve taken the purest thing I’ve ever had in my life and are stealing her fucking light.
Her spark.
What have I done?
I hear shoes squeak on the floor and stop in front of me, and I am so scared of what the person has to say that I just keep my head down and my eyes closed. I stay in my dark world, hoping I have the control to keep it from claiming her too.
“Are you the father?” I hear the soft, southern accent ask the question, and I feel my dad shift and assume he’s nodding to her, ready to listen to the news for me, bear the brunt of the burden for his son.
“Are you the father?” The voice asks again, and I move my hands off of my face and look over at my dad, needing him to do this for me, needing him to be in charge right now so I can close my eyes and be the helpless little kid I feel like. When I look over, my dad is looking straight at me—meets my eyes and holds them—and for the first time in my life I can’t read what the hell they’re saying to me.
And they don’t waver. They just look at me like when I was in little league and afraid to go up to the plate because Tommy-I always-hit-the-batter-Williams was on the mound, and I was scared to get beaned with the ball. He looks at me like he did way the fuck back then—gray eyes full of encouragement telling me that I can do this—I can face my fear.
My entire body breaks out in a cold sweat as I realize what that look is trying to tell me, what she’s trying to ask me. I swallow loudly as the buzzing in my head assaults me, then leaves me shaken to the core, as I angle my head up to look at the patient brown eyes of the woman in front of me.
“Are you the father?” she asks again with a somber pull to her lips as if she’s smiling to abate the words that she’s about to tell me.
I just stare at her, unable to speak as every emotion I thought I’d just emptied out of myself while my dad held me comes flooding back into me with a fucking vengeance. I sit stunned, speechless, scared. My dad’s hand squeezes my shoulder, urging me on.
“Rylee?” I ask her, because I have to be mistaken. She has to be mistaken.
“Are you the baby’s father?” she asks softly as she sits down next to me and places her hand on my knee and squeezes. And all I can focus on right now is my hands, my fucking fingers, the cuticles still caked with dried blood. My hands start to tremble as my eyes can’t move away from the sight of Rylee’s blood still staining me.
My baby’s blood staining me.
I raise my head, tear my eyes away from the symbol of life cracked and dead on my hands, and hope and fear for things I’m now not sure of all at the same fucking time.
“Yeah,” I say barely above a whisper. I swallow over the gravel scraping my throat. “Yes.” My dad squeezes my shoulder again as I look over at her brown eyes as mine beg for a yes and no at the same time.
She starts out slowly, like I’m a two year old. “Rylee is still being tended to,” she says, and I want to shake her and ask what the fuck does tended to mean. My knee starts jogging up and down again as I wait for her to finish, jaw grinding, hands squeezing together. “She suffered from either a placental abruption or a complete previa and—”
“Stop!” I say, not understanding a word she’s saying, and I just look at her like a goddamn deer in the headlights.
“The vessels attaching her to the baby severed somehow—they’re trying to determine everything right now—but she lost a lot of blood. She’s getting transfusions now to help with—”
“Is she awake?” My mind can’t process what she just said. I hear baby, blood, transfusion. “I didn’t hear you say she’s going to be okay, because I need to hear you say she’s going to be fucking okay!” I shout at her as everything in my life comes crashing down around me, like I’m back in the goddman race car, but this time I’m not sure what parts I’m going to be able to piece back together … and that more than anything scares the fuck out of me.
“Yes,” she says softly, that soothing voice of hers makes me want to shake her like an Etch A Sketch until I get a little more assurance. Until I erase what’s there and create the perfect fucking picture that I want. “We’ve given her some meds to help with the pain of the D & C, and once she gets some more blood transfused, she should be in a lot better state, physically.”
I have no clue what she just said, but I cling onto the words I understand: she’s going to be okay. I hang my head back into my hands and push my heels into my eyes so I don’t cry, because any relief I feel isn’t real until I can see her, touch her, feel her.
She squeezes my knee again and speaks. “I’m so sorry. The baby didn’t make it.”
I don’t know what I expected her to say because my heart knew the truth even though my head hadn’t quite grasped it yet. But her words stop the world spinning beneath my feet and I can’t breathe, can’t draw in any air. I shove myself to my feet and stagger a few feet one way and then turn to go the other way, completely overwhelmed by the buzzing in my ears.
“Colton!” I hear my dad, but I just shake my head and bend over as I try to catch my breath. I bring my hands to my head as if holding it is going to stop the turmoil bashing around inside of it. “Colton.”
I push my hands out in front of me gesturing for him to back off. “I need a pit stop!” I say to him as I see my hands again—the blood of something I created that was a part of Rylee and me—saint and sinner—on my hands.
Untouched innocence.
And I feel it happen, feel something shatter inside of me—the hold the demons have held over my soul for the last twenty-something-years—just like the mirror in that goddamn dive bar the night Rylee told me she loved me. Two moments in time where the one thing I never wanted to happen, happens and yet … I can’t help but feel, can’t help but wonder why hints of possibilities creep into my mind when I knew then and know now this just can’t be. This is something I never, ever wanted. And yet everything I’ve ever known has changed somehow.
And I don’t know what this means just yet.
Only how it feels: different, liberated, incomplete—fucking terrifying.
My stomach turns and my throat clogs with so many emotions, so many feelings that I can’t even begin to process this new reality. All I can do to keep from losing my sanit
y is focus on the one thing I know that can be helped right now.
Rylee.
I can’t catch my breath and my heart’s pounding like a fucking freight train, but all I can think of is Rylee. All I want, all I need, is Rylee.
“Colton.” It’s my dad’s hands on my shoulders again—the hands that have held me in my darkest hours—trying to help me break away from this smothering darkness trying to pull me back into its clutches. “Talk to me, son. What’s going through your head?”
Are you fucking kidding me? I want to scream at him because I really don’t know what else to do with the fear consuming me but lash out at the person closest to me. Fear that is so very different than ever before but still all the same. So I just shake my head as I look up at the brown-eyed lady trying to figure out what to do, what to feel, what to say.
“Does she know?” I don’t even recognize my own voice. The break in it, the tone of it, the complete disbelief owning it.
“The doctor’s spoken to her, yes,” she says with a shake of her head, and I realize in that moment Rylee is dealing with this all by herself, taking this all in … alone. The baby she’d give anything for—was told she would never have—she actually had.
And lost.
Again.
How did she take it? What is this going to do to her?
What is this going to do to us?
Everything is spiraling out of control, and I just need it to be in control. Need the ground to stop fucking moving beneath me. Know the only thing that can right my world again is her. I need the feel of her skin beneath my fingers to assuage all of this chaos rioting through me.
Rylee.
“I need to see her.”
“She’s resting right now but you can go sit with her if you’d like,” she says as she stands.
I just nod and suck in my breath as she starts to walk down the corridor. My dad’s hand is still on my shoulder, and his silent show of support remains until we walk farther down the hallway to the door of her room.
“I’ll be just outside, if you need me. I’ll wait for Becks,” my dad says, and I just nod because the lump in my throat is so huge that I can’t breathe. I walk through the doorway and stop dead in my tracks.