I sit down, arms braced on my knees, and drop my head into my hands.
“You okay?” Garrett asks, sitting next to me. The genuine concern in his eyes nearly breaks me.
“No. Fuck. If anything happens to her or to the baby…” The dark abyss of that gut-wrenching scenario is enough to scare the shit out of me.
Please let them be okay.
“Can I get you anything? Coffee? Food?” he asks.
I shake my head. “No. But thank you.”
He claps a hand on my shoulder when he stands and walks back to his wife, pulling her a little farther away and having a quiet conversation with her. Her gaze continues to dart to me before she lets out a massive sigh.
“Fine.” She starts to walk away, and Garrett pulls her back into his arms.
She buries her nose in his chest, her shoulders shaking as his hands move up and down in a soothing motion. My attention shifts to the door, the desire to soothe Michaela the same way choking me.
I’m powerless. Useless. And the lack of knowledge is another thorn in my side.
“Well?” Mia asks Sawyer when he returns from the nurses’ station, her eyes shiny with tears.
“A doctor is with her now.”
“What does that mean?” She asks the question I’ve been thinking.
“Hopefully we’ll find out more soon.”
He moves to the wall in the corner, leaning back and bending one knee to rest his foot against the wall behind him. If I didn’t know him so well, I would think he’s fine. But there’s a tension around his eyes, in the thinness of his compressed lips. He’s as worried about Michaela as the rest of us.
Another hour goes by, doctors and nurses bustling back and forth in the busy emergency room, but no one stops to update us on the woman I can’t imagine my life without.
“West Abbott?” A new nurse stands at the open door where they wheeled Michaela earlier.
“Y-yes?” I stand, swallowing around the lump of fear still sitting on my windpipe, making it hard to breathe.
“Can you come with me, please?”
Part of me wants to say no, to run out of the hospital without a second look. What news am I going to face when I step through that door? But a bigger part is desperate to see Michaela, to feel the silk of her skin under my fingertips, to reassure myself that she’s okay.
“Why him?” Sawyer growls, stepping forward. “He’s not family.”
I can’t stop the wince at the pain his words create. Six months ago, he was the closest thing to a brother I had.
The nurse isn’t intimidated, even though Sawyer towers over her.
“Listen here. I have two grown boys, both about as big as you are, and both are still afraid I’ll blister their behinds faster than they can run away. So you can take your grumpy bear attitude and go stand back in the corner you’ve been holding up. He”—she points at me—“was specifically requested.”
“By whom?” he asks, and she simply raises an eyebrow until he stalks back to the corner.
“You.” She points at me. “Follow me.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She turns, walking briskly in the direction she came from, and I increase my pace to catch up as we pass an empty u-shaped desk and several rooms and cubicles with curtains around them—some drawn and some not. The smell of antiseptic burns my nose, and I take several breaths through my mouth.
“Here we are.” She stops in front of a glass door with a curtain pulled behind it.
“Ms. King? You have a visitor.” She steps to the side, and I release a breath I wasn’t aware I was holding when I see the woman who took my heart with her when she left Pennsylvania. Who held it captive while I waited in the waiting room, praying she would be okay. That they both would be.