Bleeding Out While He Said I Do novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Code Blue
Bleeding out after giving birth alone, Andie gets her husband's best friend's wedding photos, crosses him off her chart and signs her own consent, then hears him tell the whole OR on speaker that he doesn't have a wife.
"She's bleeding faster than we can hang the bags. Where is her husband?"
The doctor said it over my bed.
There was blood on the sheets, the floor and the doctor's paper shoes.
All of it was mine.
My daughter had come out forty minutes earlier, tiny and purple and furious, five weeks early.
They let me see her for barely a moment.
Then a nurse rolled her away to the NICU in a clear plastic box.
That was when the bleeding started, and it hadn't stopped since.
I could have told them where my husband was.
Reece was a trauma surgeon in this same hospital, two floors up, most nights of the week.
Not tonight.
Tonight was his best friend's thirtieth birthday.
My phone buzzed on the tray table.
A nurse put it in my hand because I wouldn't stop reaching for it.
It was a text from Kaitlyn.
"Thanks for sharing him tonight, sis!"
Then a photo loaded.
Reece in a black tux at the end of an aisle made of gold balloons.
Kaitlyn in a short white dress with a veil clipped into her blowout.
He was kissing her cheek.
Behind them, every friend they'd had since college was holding up a drink and screaming.
Another text came in.
"Relax, it's just a birthday bit. No wedding night, pinky swear!"
I called him.
It rang six times.
On the seventh, he picked up with a band playing behind him.
"Andie. What?"
"Reece, I'm bleeding. They can't make it stop."
He sighed into the phone.
"The baby's out, right? Then you're in the best hospital in the city. Let the team work."
"Come here."
"It's Kait's thirtieth. People flew in from Denver. I promised her I'd stay to the end."
"Why do you always do this on her night?"
The line went dead.
I was still staring at the screen when Kaitlyn sent one more photo.
A king bed in a hotel suite, covered in rose petals.
Reece lying on it beside her with his bow tie undone.
Their friends were throwing handfuls of rice at them and laughing so hard they were blurry.
The monitor next to my head started to shriek.
"Pressure's sixty over thirty. She's going into shock."
"Get me blood up here. Now."
A young tech in the doorway looked sick.
"We don't have it. Her type's rare. Nobody in the city has it on a shelf."
I closed my eyes.
At thirty-two weeks, Reece had kissed my forehead and told me he'd set it up with the blood bank.
He'd said, "Stop worrying. I handled it."
"Call the registry," the doctor snapped. "Call every hospital in three states."
A short gray-haired nurse leaned over me with a clipboard.
Her badge said RUTHANN, and she was chewing gum like she wanted to kill it.
"Andie? Honey, we're taking you to the OR. If you go under, we need family to sign for you."
She tapped the form.
"Your parents?"
"Dead."
"Then your husband. Is this him?"
On the line for emergency contact, in my own neat handwriting from six hours ago, it said Reece Pelham, husband.
I took the pen out of her hand.
I dragged it through his name so hard it tore the paper.
"Nobody," I said. "Take him off. I'll sign for myself."
"You're about to pass out."
"Then hold the board still."
She held it.
I signed my name at the bottom.
Under it, in letters that slid downhill, I wrote, Whatever it takes.
Ruthann looked at the torn line, then at me.
She didn't ask.
She just yelled for the elevator.
They gave me a shot in the spine in the OR.
Everything below my ribs went cold and heavy, and then it went away.
The rest of me stayed.
I couldn't lift my hand.
I couldn't open my mouth.
But I could hear every word.
"Who's on call for vascular?"
"Pelham's covering, but he's out. He took the whole week."
"Pelham? Trauma Pelham?"
"Honeymoon, apparently. He married his best friend tonight. Kaitlyn, from the foundation."
"Shut up. That man told me he'd die single."
"Guess he was waiting for her."
Someone laughed behind a mask.
I lay there with my eyes half open and my blood running into a bucket.
Seven years.
He'd sent me across the river for every prenatal visit.
He'd said his staff would fuss.
Now I knew why.
Nobody up here had ever heard of me.
"Pressure's still dropping," the anesthesiologist said. "She's waking up on me, too. Her eyes are tracking."
"Then talk to her."
Ruthann's face appeared over the blue drape.
"Stay with me, Mama. Your girl's in an incubator downstairs, and you haven't even held her yet."
I couldn't nod.
I thought it as hard as I could instead.
Kinley.
I'd named her in the cab, between contractions, alone.
I can't die before I hold her.
"We can't save the uterus," the surgeon said. "Not without blood."
"She signed," Ruthann said. "Whatever it takes. Her words."
Then Ruthann looked down at the clipboard again.
She held it up under the big light and squinted at the torn line.
Her jaw stopped moving.
She walked to the wall phone and dialed with one finger.
"Page Dr. Pelham. I don't care if he's on the moon. Put him through on speaker."
Then the speaker crackled, and the OR filled with a party.
A band. Glasses clinking. Somebody shouting, "Kiss the bride!"
"Pelham," Reece said, laughing. "I'm off this week, guys."
"Doctor, this is the charge nurse in OR four," Ruthann said. "I've got a postpartum hemorrhage on the table."
"So call vascular."
"The patient listed a Reece Pelham as her husband. Is that you?"
The band kept playing.
Every head in the room turned toward the speaker.
I heard Kaitlyn giggle, very close to his phone.
Then my husband laughed again, easy and loud, so everyone at the party could hear him.
"I don't have a wife," he said. "Whoever she is, she's lying."
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