Bleeding Out While He Said I Do novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Glitter

Andie tells the ICU nurses exactly who Reece is, the head nurse bars him from the NICU, Andie holds her daughter for the first time, and in the hall she hears a voice she's known for six years.

The ICU nurse stopped writing.

Her marker hovered over the whiteboard.

Another nurse paused in the doorway with a tray of syringes.

Reece didn't notice either of them.

He never noticed nurses unless he needed one.

"Do you know what that looked like?" he said. "Ruthann Tolver calling me on speaker in front of the whole OR?"

My throat felt like sandpaper.

I said it anyway.

"It looked like a man with no wife."

"It was a party, Andie. A bit. Everybody knew it was a bit."

"Your OR didn't."

"Because they don't need to know my business."

"I was your business. On the table. With your daughter in a box downstairs."

He dragged a hand through his hair.

Glitter rained onto my blanket.

The nurse in the doorway looked at it, then at me, and her face changed.

"Ma'am," she said quietly. "Do you want him in here?"

Reece laughed.

"Excuse me? I'm an attending in this building."

"Not in this room you're not," she said. "In this room you're a visitor."

He turned to me with the smile he used on donors and deans.

"Tell her, babe."

I looked at the nurse with the marker.

Then at the one with the tray.

Then at the respiratory therapist who'd stopped outside the glass to watch.

"I'm his wife," I said. "Seven years. Courthouse on Grant Street, I wore green. He told your OR last night he didn't have one."

The nurse with the marker capped it.

"He told them I was lying," I said. "While I was bleeding out."

"That is not what happened."

"It's on the OR log. Ask the anesthesiologist. Ask the scrub tech. Ask the twelve people in that room."

Reece's jaw worked.

"You were drugged. You misheard."

"Did I mishear Kaitlyn laughing too?"

The respiratory therapist outside the glass said, "Oh, no," out loud.

Reece heard it.

His ears went red under the glitter.

He switched tracks when he was losing.

"Fine. We'll talk about it when you're thinking straight. Where's the baby?"

"NICU."

"Then I'm going to see my daughter."

He was already walking.

"Wait," I said.

He didn't.

I pushed the call button and held it down.

"I need a wheelchair," I told the nurse. "I'm going with him."

"Honey, you're eight hours out of surgery."

"Then push fast."

It took two of them and a pillow over my stomach.

Every bump in the hall went straight through me.

I didn't care.

The NICU doors were at the end of the third floor, locked, with a camera and a buzzer.

Reece was already there, pressing the buzzer with his badge held up to the lens.

"Dr. Pelham, trauma. Open up."

The doors didn't open.

Then a short woman in navy scrubs and a parka came around the corner with a coffee.

Ruthann.

Off shift, gray hair coming out of its clip, gum going.

She looked at Reece.

She looked at me in the wheelchair.

"Morning, Mama," she said to me. "You look like hell. Good."

"He wants in," I said. "I don't want him in."

Reece turned.

"Nurse Tolver. You're L and D. This isn't your unit."

"Nope." She pressed the buzzer herself. "But I know the rules better than you do. Parents get matching ID bands at delivery. Mom's got one."

She held up my wrist.

Then she held up her empty hand.

"You weren't at the delivery, Doctor. No band, no door."

"I'm her father."

"Says who? Last I heard, you didn't have a wife."

The NICU charge nurse had opened the door by then.

She'd heard every word.

She looked at Reece's badge and then at Ruthann.

"Mom's call," she said.

Everyone looked at me.

My stomach burned under the pillow.

My husband stood there in glitter and tux pants, waiting for me to fold the way I had for seven years.

"No," I said.

The NICU nurse stepped aside for my wheelchair and closed the door in his face.

Kinley was in the third incubator by the window.

She was so small.

Her diaper came up to her armpits.

She had a tube taped to her cheek and a little knitted cap, and she was furious about all of it.

"Five pounds two ounces," the NICU nurse said. "Strong girl. Want her?"

I couldn't answer.

I just held my arms out.

They opened my gown and laid her on my chest, skin to skin, wires and all.

She was warm.

She smelled like nothing I had a word for.

She stopped yelling and turned her face into me.

I'd named her alone in a cab.

I'd signed for myself alone on a gurney.

I wasn't alone now.

"Hi, Kinley," I said. "I'm your mom. I'm sorry I'm late."

Ruthann pulled a chair over and sat with her coffee and didn't say a thing.

I don't know how long I held her.

Long enough for the window to go from gray to white.

Long enough for my arms to shake.

When they finally took her back, Ruthann wheeled me out.

Reece was gone.

At the far end, by the elevators, stood a very big man in a hi-vis coat.

He had a hard hat under one arm and ice melting off his boots onto the tile.

He had a phone to his ear and his back half turned.

"Yeah," he said. "Tell dispatch Nine's clear."

I knew that voice.

I'd heard it every winter night for six years, through a headset, saying those exact words.

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