8
VIVIEN
“Miss? Can you hear me?” an unfamiliar voice asks as I slowly come to. Pain rattles around my skull, pounding, like someone is hammering on my head from the inside. I’m hot. Too hot. And there’s a dead weight pressing me into the seat, gluing my ballgown to my back. Slowly, I blink my eyes open, wishing instantly I could close them again.
It all comes back to me in horrifying technicolor, and I cry out. The air is cloying and thick as it wraps around me. My eyes scan the confined space with mounting trepidation. “Reeve,” I croak, lifting my hand, tentatively touching the back of my husband’s head. I scream as thick blood coats my fingers. “Honey,” I sob, shaking Reeve’s frozen shoulder. “Wake up! Please, Reeve, I need you.” Tears stream down my face as I stare at my husband’s prone body. He’s trapped between the dented roof and me, and the fallen tree ensures he can’t move even if he was presently conscious. I don’t have the strength to lift his head, to see his face, and I’m terrified to attempt to dislodge either one of us.
“Miss?” The voice speaks close to my ear, and I startle as the sound of blaring sirens echoes in the near distance. “Are you okay?”
I wince as I angle my head back, peering at the gray-haired stranger poking his head through the windowless back door. “Help,” I croak. “My husband needs help.” My eyes pop wide with shock as warmth pools under my butt, and I know what’s happening. “My baby.” I pin panicked eyes on the man. “Something is wrong. Please help us.” All the lights are out in the car, so I can’t see the blood spreading under my ass, but I feel it.
“Help is on the way. They should be here soon. I’m so sorry.” I stare at him blankly with tears pouring down my face. “I was driving the other car. I didn’t see you. It was dark and—”
He hangs his head, but I don’t have time to concern myself with him. I’m too busy worrying about my baby and Reeve. Placing one hand on my bump and the other on top of Reeve’s head, I pray like I’ve never prayed before.
Sobs rip through the eerily still night air as I barely cling to my sanity. “Reeve, please wake up. Please, baby. Don’t leave me!” I cry. “You can’t leave me. Not like this. Not when we were so angry with one another. Please, God,” I scream, tilting my head up, brushing my forehead against the battered roof of our car. “Please don’t take my husband and my daughter! Haven’t you done enough already?”
The sirens draw closer, and I will them to hurry up.
* * *
I watch in a numbed haze as the firemen work to remove the fallen tree and lift the roof so they can reach us. Large lights shine down on the car as they work, illuminating the carnage. Physical and emotional pain ravages my body as I survey the wreckage I’m trapped in. There is blood everywhere, and Reeve still hasn’t moved. I’m terrified and barely clinging to sanity. I whisper apologies to my husband as I run my bloody fingers through his hair. I beg him to wake up. I plead with him to hold on. I silently beg my little Lainey to fight. My head pounds, and my vision blurs in and out, but I refuse to close my eyes. I fight to remain conscious for my husband and my unborn child.
A paramedic asks me questions through my open window, but I can’t answer her. I only have enough energy to focus on my family. Fear has a vise grip on my heart, squeezing and tightening until it feels like I can’t breathe. My breath oozes out in wheezy, panicked spurts, and I’m struggling to get enough air into my lungs. An oxygen mask is carefully placed around my nose and chin just as the roof is finally lifted off.
A fireman wrenches the driver side door away, leaning in to press his fingers against Reeve’s neck. He avoids eye contact with me while holding his fingers against Reeve’s pulse point. Looking over his shoulder, he shakes his head at the male paramedic waiting behind him. He turns back around, and his sympathetic eyes lock on mine. An anguished sob escapes my mouth. “No!” I scream. “No! Don’t say it! Don’t you dare tell me that!” Hysteria bubbles up my throat, and I tighten my fingers in Reeve’s hair, crying as I silently plead with the universe.
It’s a mistake.
It’s got to be.
Reeve would never leave me.
He’s promised me so many times.
“Mrs. Lancaster,” the kind paramedic lady says. She told me her name, but I can’t remember it. “I’m so very sorry for your loss. There is nothing we can do for your husband now. We need to focus on you and your baby.”
“Reeve.” I hold on to him, clinging to his shoulders, crying with the worst, most unimaginable pain sitting on my chest. “You can’t leave me. I love you too much! I can’t go on without you. Please, wake up. Baby, please.” It physically feels like my heart is rupturing behind my rib cage. Wracking sobs heave from my chest, and I want to die too.
“It’s time, Mrs. Lancaster,” the paramedic says, squeezing my arm in a show of support. “You need to let my colleagues remove your husband from the car.”
“No,” I sob. “Don’t take him from me.” Tears coat my face in a steady stream, and fluid leaks out of my nose.
“You need to let go, sweetheart.” A male paramedic gently pries my hands from Reeve as they pull him from the car and lay him on a stretcher. A blue sheet is placed over him, covering him from head to foot. My tears crawl to a stop, and I’m in a daze as I’m lifted out of the car and placed on a stretcher on the ground while the paramedics check me out.
“Mrs. Lancaster?” Kara—that’s her name—says. “Can you feel the baby moving?”
I shake my head, running my hands over my bump. Warm liquid gushes down my legs. “She’s not kicking,” I whisper, closing my eyes. If I lose my daughter too, I won’t survive this.
“We’re going to airlift you to the hospital,” she explains, pointing to a chopper in the middle of the field behind us. I hadn’t even heard it land. I look up, spotting other helicopters in the sky. “Your baby is in fetal distress, and you’re hemorrhaging badly. We need to get you to the delivery room.”
Nausea swims up my throat, and I feel disoriented. My eyelids grow heavy. “Stay with me, Vivien,” Kara says, her voice sounding distant. “We’re losing her!” she shouts as I’m lifted off the ground, and that’s the last thing I’m conscious of before I pass out.