The Strength of the Pack

  Leo. Of course. Nate nodded, still numb, fumbling around for his phone and finally getting it out. He punched in Leo’s number and hit send…then realized he had no clue what to say to the man.

  Leo answered. “Nate?”

  “Um, yeah.”

  Leo’s voice changed. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

  Nate caught sight of people hurrying into the waiting room and realized it was Marcia and Derrick, followed by June and Scrye. June wore a long trench coat over her bare lower legs and sandals, no doubt covering up whatever Scrye had been in the middle of tying when all hell broke loose. Scrye had been in the middle of suspending her when everything happened. June carried a bag and headed straight for a bathroom as Scrye followed Marcia and Derrick over.

  “Nate?” Leo asked.

  Nate spotted a raw end of red rope peeking out past the trench coat’s hem, brushing against the backs of June’s calves, before the bathroom door swung shut after her.

  Scrye cut his ropes. He never cuts his fucking ropes. As that thought sank in, he realized Leo was yelling at him over the phone to talk to him.

  “We’re at Proctor-Collins,” Nate hoarsely said, his throat closing as tears hit. “The emergency room.”

  Tilly saved him, gently taking the phone from him. “Leo? Tilly.” She got up and walked away, waving for Marcia, Derrick, and Scrye to follow her to listen as she told Leo what was going on.

  Landry slid over into Tilly’s seat and draped an arm around Nate’s shoulders. “She’s strong and tough. She’ll be okay.”

  It felt like he couldn’t even breathe. Had he thought nothing could be worse than that day at the air show?

  Fuck that.

  This was worse.

  A thousand, million times worse.

  And once again, he was helpless to do a fucking thing to save the people he loved.

  * * * *

  Tilly got the phone tree going, including making sure Cherise was called. Leo and Jesse still hadn’t arrived when a nurse in surgical scrubs came out and called for him. He grabbed Tilly’s hand and dragged her with him.

  “I don’t know if they’ll let us both in,” Tilly muttered as they jogged behind the nurse down several halls.

  “Then use that bloody brilliant charm of yours to get yourself in,” he muttered back. “I need you.”

  “Roger roger.”

  The nurse had him and Tilly scrub in, apparently missing the fact that Tilly wasn’t actually an employee. Then she helped them gear up—cap, gown, face mask, booties, and gloves, before handing them off to another nurse who was similarly garbed and took them in.

  “Her vitals are stable and they’ve delivered your son,” the nurse said.

  “Son? How is he?”

  “They’re still evaluating him. I’m taking you to your son, but you can’t go in with your wife yet.”

  He started to ask why when they pushed through another door and spotted three people in scrubs surrounding a crying baby in an open incubator bed.

  “Congrats, Daddio,” Tilly said, sounding near tears. “Your pack just got bigger.”

  They let them approach and even though they were talking to Nate, he didn’t comprehend a word they said. The world pulled into a tight focus as he reached out a gloved finger and touched his son’s tiny right hand.

  The baby’s fingers closed around Nate’s finger. His color looked purply and reddish and not what he thought a baby was supposed to look like.

  Fortunately, Tilly was talking and listening and getting the information he wasn’t capable of absorbing at that time.

  Two of the people departed, heading to another room to their left where he heard commotion and suspected that was where Eva lay fighting for her life.

  If he turned that direction, he’d want to run to her side, and only be in the way.

  And he knew it.

  Tilly walked over to the other side of the bed and looked across at him. All he could see were her eyes, between the cap and the mask.

  “Nate, look at me. I need you to listen to me, buddy, and I need to know you understand me.”

  He nodded.

  “Did you get any of what they just said?”

  He shook his head.

  “Okay. Are you listening to me?”

  He nodded.

  “They’re going to transport him to St. Pete, to the NICU at All Children’s. They’ve already dispatched an ambulance. It’s en route, ETA less than thirty minutes at this point.”

  “Transport?”

  “Shh, listen to me, Nate.” He tried to focus through his growing fear. “That’s good, because it means they don’t feel he’s critical enough to air flight, and they’re waiting for All Children’s to send one of their special ambulances instead of sending him out in a regular ambulance. This is good. He’s stable, but he needs critical care for now because he’s a preemie.”

  He nodded.

  “You’re going to go with him, okay? We’ll stay here with her. I promise.”

  “Why can’t I stay with Eva?”

  “Because your son needs you, and you’re the only one right now who can authorize treatment. We can stay with Eva.”

  “Don’t leave her, Til,” he whispered. “Swear to me.”

  “I swear, I’ll stay with her. Until Leo and Jesse and Wade get here and I know she’s stable. Then I’m coming up to St. Pete to be with you. Okay?”

  He slowly nodded. Some damn Dom he was. Here was his son, and he could barely even think.

  The nurse monitoring the baby reached out and touched his arm. “Dad? Do you have a name picked out yet?” she asked. “I need to fill out his paperwork.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. We hadn’t decided yet. We didn’t even know if we were having a boy or a girl.”

  “Okay. I’m going to list him as Baby Boy Crawford for now.”

  “Cooke-Morrow-Crawford,” he said, feeling both silly and comforted as he said it.

  “Is that his whole name?”

  “His last names,” Nate said. “Hyphenated together. Baby Boy Cooke-Morrow-Crawford,” he said, spelling it out. “We have a very large…family.”

  * * * *

  Tilly found out that they’d stabilized Eva, but they were still trying to stop the bleeding. She’d needed several units of blood already and because of her fragile condition they weren’t going to let anyone into the OR with her.

  Tilly spoke with the nurse who was monitoring his son and was able to talk them into letting her stay there in the prep area, as long as she promised not to get in the way or go into the OR.

  When the ambulance crew arrived from All Children’s, they transferred “Baby Boy” into one of their incubator beds, swapped all his monitor leads over to their monitors, and his oxygen tube, and quickly shuttled them both out through the ambulance bay.

  Nate barely had time to catch a glimpse through the windows of Leo and Jesse, with Laurel in Leo’s arms, standing in the ER and surrounded by at least twenty of their friends, including Cherise, before the ambulance doors swung shut and they were on their way.

  Seat-belted into one of the jump seats, Nate laid his head back against the wall and cried.

  He felt the medic nudge his hand and realized it was a package of tissues.

  “Thanks.”

  The man offered him a smile. “It’s all right. We’ll take good care of him. His vitals are good, and his weight’s good, too. I’ve seen preemies far younger and smaller than him make it.”

  “I wish you could give me those kinds of odds about his mom,” he hoarsely said.

  * * * *

  If Nate had to tell someone where he was to save his life, he couldn’t. Between the ambulance ride, and then the twisting and turning and moving and doors and corridors—he knew he was somewhere in St. Pete, but beyond that, he was lost.

  And some time close to two in the morning, he finally ended up parked by a nurse in a nearly empty waiting room just outside the NICU, a cup of bloody awful coffee in one han
d, and in the other hand, where his wrist now bore two different medical bracelets from two different hospitals linking him to his wife and newborn son, a nearly dead cell phone.

  And he didn’t have a charger.

  The NICU nurse supervisor had called down to Sarasota for him and confirmed Eva was still listed in critical condition, but they couldn’t tell her anything beyond that, or if she was even out of surgery and in recovery yet.

  And until he got a charge on his phone, Nate didn’t dare call anyone.

  He sat there for nearly two hours and was about to send a text to Leo when a nurse came for him.

  At least she wore a smile. “Mr. Crawford?”

  He stood.

  “Follow me, Dad.”

  He did, nearly stumbling as he got up.

  She turned. “Are you all right?”

  “Just very…exhausted.”

  “I’m sorry.” She led him into an anteroom and explained scrub-in procedures, got him gowned, capped, masked, and led him back to his son’s bed.

  A female doctor in scrubs stood there going over his chart. They had something taped over the baby’s eyes, but his color looked better, and they’d cleaned him up even more than before.

  “What’s wrong with his eyes?” he asked the doctor.

  “Oh, it’s just to protect them because of the lights,” she said, pointing up. “Bilirubin lights.” She launched into a litany of information that washed right over his skull and into the ether. “Do you have any questions?” she asked when she finished.

  He nodded.

  She waited, and finally asked, “Sir?”

  “I’m sorry. Can…can I hold him?” He choked up. This wasn’t how he’d imagined their big day.

  This wasn’t right at all. It should have been all four of them, and Laurel, together for the birth and welcoming him into their pack. A celebration.

  Not…not just him, not a man barely in his right mind and unable to put sentences together standing here in a strange hospital in another county while he didn’t even know if his wife was going to survive.

  “Yes, let us get everything set up.” The nurse brought a glider rocker into the bed area, one with a matching footstool, and then got Nate settled in with a pillow in his lap and warm blankets over his chest. Then, working together to transfer all the baby’s monitor leads and oxygen tube and IV lines over, the nurse and doctor got his baby settled in his arms before the doctor headed off, leaving him with the nurse and his son.

  He stared down into the baby’s face and started crying again, not caring who saw him.

  The nurse, apparently used to this, knelt next to him and provided a nonstop stream of tissues for him as she patiently answered his questions. He knew he probably asked the same ones several times, maybe even stuff the doctor had told him, but nothing was sticking.

  Dammit, where the hell is Tilly?

  “Can he eat? Is he hungry?”

  “That’s what the nose tube is for,” she said. “Hopefully your wife will be able to pump breast milk, but we’ve got him on a special formula for now.”

  He had a little blue stocking cap over his head, and tiny cloth mitts on his hands.

  And even though they hadn’t settled on a name for him yet, he knew what he wanted to name him.

  “The nurse at the other hospital needed his name,” he said.

  “Yes, but we can fill that in later.”

  “I know what his name is.”

  “Are you sure? You can wait a little, if you want to talk to your wife first. It’s difficult to get a birth certificate changed once it’s issued.”

  “She’ll be okay with this. It’s Kenneth Leonard Jesse Cooke-Morrow-Crawford.”

  She wrote it down and stared at it. “That’s a mouthful,” she tried to joke. “Family names?”

  “Yes. My step-father, and…” What were Leo and Jesse? “My brothers,” he said. “My brothers’ names.”

  “You must be a very close family.”

  He couldn’t take his eyes off his son. “We are.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Nate startled awake at a touch on his shoulder. The nurse had taken Kenny, as Nate was already thinking of him, a little while ago and settled him back in his incubator bed. Then…

  Then he’d nodded off before he could even get out of the chair.

  In front of him knelt Tilly, looking far more haggard and drawn than he’d ever seen her, and still wearing, apparently, underneath the gown and mask and everything he also wore, the scrubs from earlier.

  Last night?

  Nate felt terrified to ask. “Is she—”

  “In ICU when I left,” she said. “Critical, but stable. Leo and Jesse and Wade are there. Wade’s nearly a nurse. He knows enough to help them out with understanding what’s going on. Eva’s not conscious yet and probably won’t be until later today. They’re keeping her sedated for now in case they have to take her back to surgery a third time.”

  He nodded. “What time is it?” The disorientation wouldn’t fade, tenaciously muddying his thoughts and brain to the point he wasn’t even sure if he was actually awake or not.

  “Nearly nine. The supervisor let me in since you were here. Said you slept right through shift change and they didn’t have the heart to wake you up.”

  “Bloody hell.”

  He sat up. On the other side of the bassinet, a different nurse perched on a high stool, tapping notes into a laptop on a rolling stand.

  She lifted her hand and smiled. “Hi, Dad. I’m Louisa, your son’s day nurse.”

  He nodded, still feeling…

  Wrong.

  Tilly didn’t move, one hand on his arm, waiting on…something.

  “What?” he asked. “What’s wrong?” It finally penetrated his brain. “Wait…surgery…a third time?”

  That’s when Tilly blinked back tears and had to look down, away from him. The nurse quietly brought over a box of tissues and passed it to her before returning to her station.

  That scared him more than anything, seeing Tilly cry.

  She forced her mouth into a thin line, struggling to compose herself before her gaze focused somewhere just below his eyes. On his nose, or mouth, maybe, but she wouldn’t look him in the eye.

  “Eva started bleeding again in recovery the first time. Hemorrhaging really bad. The first time, they fought and fought to get the bleeding to stop. This time, they had to make a hard decision, and fast.”

  “What?”

  “They had to do a partial hysterectomy. I’m so sorry.”

  “Partial?”

  “She’s still got her ovaries, but it was that, or risk her bleeding to death.”

  He slumped back in the chair. “She can’t have any more children.”

  “No, but she can still donate eggs, and if you all use a surrogate, you can do that.”

  Dammit. That was going to crush Eva. She already felt guilty enough as it was that Jesse’s opportunity to be a birth father had been accidentally taken from him.

  “Focus on the fact that she’s still alive,” Tilly said, squeezing his arm. “And the baby’s alive and doing well.”

  He looked over at the nurse again, and received another kindly smile. “He’s doing well. You slept through rounds. The neonatologist on call can come back to talk to you, if you want. He’s still here.”

  He nodded and pointed to Tilly. “To her. Have him talk to her. I can’t…I can’t even…”

  He tried not to think about the smells of aviation fuel and the feel of Cherise viciously struggling in his arms, kicking and screaming and trying to get to their parents.

  He shoved that memory away. “Can I sign a form or something giving Tilly authority?”

  Tilly and the nurse both frowned. “What?” they asked.

  “For treatment or to get information or access or whatever. If I’m not here, I need someone else who can.”

  “Cherise is out in the waiting room,” Tilly said. “Why don’t we let her—”

  “Bl
oody hell, both of you, then,” he said, struggling to keep his voice down. “And Leo and Jesse, too. I can’t be up here all the time, I need to be with Eva.”

  Tilly cupped his face in her hands and waited until he focused on her again. “She’ll be okay in a few days, most likely. We need to get you a room at the Ronald McDonald House and get you some food and some sleep.”

  “But…I need…” He broke down again.

  The nurse brought another chair for Tilly, and she sat in front of him, holding him as he sobbed against her shoulder.

  “It’s okay,” she soothed, stroking his hair, rocking him. “The baby’s doing good right now. Damn sight better than you’re doing, to be honest. Now, I’m exhausted, you’re exhausted, and the back end of my car looks like someone got murdered. You’re cleaning that up, FYI.”

  He managed a snort through his tears, which he knew damn well was her intention.

  “There, see?” she said. “If I can crack a joke, you know it’s going to be okay. But you need to breathe, and you need to eat. And you damn sure need to sleep. Cherise drove me up here. We went by the house and grabbed you some clothes. Now, I’m going to go get her and bring her in here and the nurse can have you sign whatever and Cherise will stay here with the little guy until you and I sleep.”

  He nodded.

  “Okay.” She kissed his forehead and got up, leaving the unit.

  She returned a short time later with Cherise, now scrubbed in and gowned and masked. The nurse had Nate sign forms authorizing Tilly and Cherise to make decisions and receive information on his behalf.

  “What about Leo and Jesse?” he asked.

  “When they get here,” Tilly said, “we can do that, but for now their asses better be at Eva’s bedside.”

  “Laurel?”

  “June and Scrye took her. She’s fine.”

  He felt horrible that Laurel had been an afterthought to him and apparently Tilly and Cherise picked up on that.

  “Yo, bro,” Cherise said. “Don’t feel bad. Not like you didn’t have a shitload already on your plate. She’s fine.”