He Left His Pregnant Bride at the Altar novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Thirty-Five Weeks

Ruggero forces his way into the delivery room and holds their daughter, but Nerina's sobbing in the corridor pulls him away again.

I told the paramedics to take me to St. Agnes, because the obstetrician I trusted worked there.

Ruggero rode in the ambulance with me, and nobody dared to tell him he couldn't.

By the time they wheeled me into the delivery ward, my wedding dress had been cut off and I was wearing a gown printed with little blue ducks.

The contractions came every four minutes.

"You can stay," I told him between two of them, "but you don't speak unless I ask you something."

"Understood."

"And you don't touch your phone."

He took it out of his pocket and set it face down on the windowsill.

I stared at it.

In ten years I had never seen it more than an arm's length from his hand.

The first hour was easy.

The second hour wasn't.

My obstetrician checked me and said, "Seven centimeters. You're doing beautifully, Marisa."

"I'm a surgeon," I said through my teeth. "I know what seven centimeters means."

Ruggero's laugh came out cracked.

I looked at him for the first time since the curb.

His shirt had dried stiff, his hair stood up, and he was holding a paper cup of ice chips.

"Open your mouth," he said.

"You aren't allowed to speak."

"You asked me a question."

"I didn't."

"You were about to."

I took the ice.

He kept his hand under my elbow for the next contraction and the one after that, and when I dug my nails into his forearm over the tattoo, he didn't flinch.

At nine centimeters I started swearing in Italian.

I said things my grandmother would have crossed herself over.

Ruggero translated nothing and agreed with all of it.

"Yes," he said. "Yes. I know. Yes. I deserve that."

"You deserve worse."

"Tell me worse."

"Shut up and hold my leg."

The nurse looked at the ceiling very carefully.

At 8:52 that night, with rain still hammering the window, my daughter came out furious.

She was small, five pounds eleven ounces, with a wet black fuzz of hair and a scream that filled the whole room.

They laid her on my chest.

She turned her face into my skin, and everything I had decided in the church went quiet for a moment.

"Hello, Rosa," I whispered.

"Rosa," Ruggero said behind me, like he was trying out a word in a language he'd never spoken.

He had gone gray around the mouth.

"Do you want to hold her?" the nurse asked him.

He looked at me.

I nodded once.

The nurse set Rosa in the crook of his tattooed arm, and he stood absolutely still.

His whole body was braced, and his hand covered the length of her back.

Rosa opened her eyes.

They were dark, and they were his.

"Mari," he said.

His voice failed him.

Tears ran down his face, and he didn't wipe them.

I had seen him bury three men and shoot a fourth.

I had never seen him cry.

"I'm here," he told her, very low. "I'm here, I'm here. I'm never leaving you."

I looked away, because that was a promise I wanted to believe.

"Ruggero," I said.

"Yes."

"Why does March ninth belong to Nerina?"

He didn't look up from the baby.

"Not tonight."

"You've kept that date for fourteen years."

"I'll tell you. I swear I'll tell you. Not tonight, Mari."

"That isn't an answer."

"It's the only one I can give right now."

He leaned down and pressed his lips to Rosa's head.

Then someone knocked at the door.

The nurse opened it a few inches, and I heard a voice I knew too well.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I just need to see him."

Nerina stood in the corridor in her pale blue bridesmaid dress, soaked to the knees.

Her hair clung to her face, and her gray eyes were huge.

She was shaking so hard her teeth clicked.

"I couldn't breathe," she said. "I'm so sorry, Mari. I just heard you were here, and I couldn't be alone."

Ruggero went rigid with our daughter in his arms.

He looked at Nerina.

Then he turned back and looked at me.

I held his eyes and said nothing, and I made sure he saw that I wasn't going to say it for him.

He handed Rosa gently to the nurse.

"I'll be right back," he said.

Then he walked out the door to my sister.

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