Substitute Luna, Runaway With His Quadruplets novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: No Cardiac Activity

The pack healer came in at noon with a clipboard and two enforcers.

Priscilla had gone out an hour before. She'd squeezed my hand at the door and told the nurse to let me sleep.

I had not slept.

I lay still and kept my palm flat on my stomach, and I felt it.

A tiny, quick flutter, low down on the left side.

Then another beside it.

They were alive.

"Nora." The healer stopped at the foot of the bed. She was a tall woman with grey in her hair who had taught me how to splint a paw, and she would not meet my eyes. "I need to talk to you about the crash."

"Check the babies."

"The crash caused a great deal of trauma to your body."

"Check them. Use the Doppler. It's on the cart."

"You lost them, Nora."

She said it flatly, reading from the clipboard.

I could see the page upside down from the bed.

Under the heading Outcome someone had typed: spontaneous loss, all fetuses, no cardiac activity.

"That's wrong," I said.

"I'm so sorry."

"There is a heartbeat. Four of them. Put the wand on me."

The healer didn't move. The nearer enforcer shifted his weight.

"Grief does this," she said, to the clipboard. "It can feel like they're still there."

"I'm not grieving. I'm asking you to look."

I pulled at the strap on my right wrist.

My hands had gone cold again. The leather strap went stiff, then white, and when I yanked on it, it cracked in two.

The enforcer swore and took a step.

I got to the cart first.

I snatched the Doppler wand, tore up the hospital gown with my free hand, and pressed the cold head hard against my belly.

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