Chapter 8: Forty-Four Dates

Harrison's POV

I had taken two steps toward the hall before I knew I was moving.

That was the thing I could not forgive.

My feet went first, as they had for five years, and my head caught up afterward.

I stopped on the second step and turned around.

Lucy lay with her face to the window, and her hand was pressed flat on her belly.

"Nurse," I said. "Please send the lobby doctor to her. Tell her I'm not coming down."

The nurse blinked. "Sir, she's asking for you by name."

"I know she is."

"Harrison," Lucy said without turning her head. "Go if you're going."

"I'm not."

"She might really be hurt."

"Then she'll be treated by a doctor, in a hospital, which is where she is."

I went back to the bed and sat on the stool beside it.

I picked up Lucy's hand again.

She did not take it away.

At ten past two in the morning, the bleeding came back.

I saw it before the monitor did, a dark spreading stain on the sheet, and I heard my own voice shouting for the nurse.

After that, everything happened fast and in a language I didn't speak.

Four people in blue scrubs filled the room and pushed her bed toward the doors.

A man in a mask put his hand on my chest.

"Sir, you can't come in. It's general anesthesia, and we have to go now."

"Lucy," I said. "Lucy."

She turned her head on the pillow, and she was white to the lips.

"Harrison."

"I'm here."

"Stay out of the hall," she said, and her mouth moved almost into a smile.

The doors swung shut, and I stood there with my hands open.

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