When I wake up, it takes my eyes a minute to adjust and my brain a minute longer to clear the fog of disorientation.
I look around and see that I am in a private hospital room, but unlike one I have ever seen before. Not that I have ever been in a hospital room for any length of time before, but in my limited experience of visiting relatives in hospital beds, I have never seen a room that hasn’t looked sterile and unwelcoming. This, on the other hand, is a sight to behold. Which is probably why it takes me a minute to realize where I am.
I can tell by the single bed that it’s a private room. I still have an IV affixed with a drip of some sort going into it. There are a few wires, a lot of monitors, and all the regular hospital stuff that one would expect to encounter during a hospital stay. But what is entirely unusual are theloadsof flowers filling every corner of the room. There are vases upon vases of beautiful flowers of every type and color on every available surface. It looks more like a garden in here than a hospital room, which is entirely wonderful if not surprising.
There’s also somethingverysoft beneath my hand, and I look down to see a soft, velvety blanket draped over me. Even my hospital gown isn’t the usual hospital gown made of thin fabric in a washed-out blue. It’s cozy, feels like warm flannel, and covered in a pretty floral print to match all the flowers in the room.
There’s even a softly glowing pink Himalayan salt lamp, and a sound machine in the corner that makes it sound as if there is a gentle rainstorm inside the room with us.
I am weak, and definitely drugged with pain meds since I can’t feel much more than a dull ache and numb sensation around my stomach. All of my insides feel like they are swimming around, including my head, and it’s making it hard for me to know whether I am dreaming or not.
“It’s a lot to take in, isn’t it?” a voice asks.
I turn my head, with a gesture that feels like I am moving in slow motion and see a nurse smiling from beside me as she checks my vitals.
“You aredefinitelygetting the special treatment,” she grins.
“Why?” I ask in confusion. “Special treatment from who?”
She looks over and nods her head toward the corner of the room. “Him.”
I follow her stare and see Chad asleep in a chair in the corner of the hospital room. “All of the nice things inside this room arehisdoing. He had them all brought in for you. I have to say, I’ve seen a lot of devoted and adoring husbands in my time here at the hospital, but I’ve never seen anything like this. That man trulylovesyou.”
I open my mouth to tell her that Chad isn’t my husband, but then close it again because it doesn’t matter.
“Have you seen my babies?” I ask, still feeling as if my words are being slurred together but wanting desperately to know if they are okay.
“Yes,” she nods.
I can’t tell if she hesitates, or if I am still too woozy to keep up with what is going on around me, but it seems like it is taking herforeverto answer me.
“One of your babies is in the nursery,” she says with a smile. “He was in here with you and yoursignificant otherfor a long while, but then I suggested that we put him in the nursery so that you couldbothget some rest. I swear, that man has spent all day and all night holding your hand, holding your baby, or bringing in more flowers.”
Her remark makes me wonder just how long it has been that I have been unconscious. But more importantly, what about mydaughter?
“And the other baby?” I ask. I feel like I am already trying to choke down sobs in anticipation of bad news.
“That tiny little girl is a fighter, likeyou. She’s still in the NICU, and she’smuchtoo small, but she is holding her own. I think that she is going to be just fine., the nurse tells me.
I want to ask her more questions, about my daughter and why she is so small and what exactly she is facing in the NICU, and about what happened to me and why I am still hooked up to all of this stuff. But I can’t utter a word before the nurse adds more meds to my drip.
“These pain meds will help to take the edge off and help you get more rest that you need to heal. Sleep well, and don’t worry. You will need your strength.”
I feel myself getting glassy-eyed again. The drugs are quick to start working but slow to take full effect and knock me out. Instead, it feels like I am sinking down the rabbit hole, observing things around me as I slide into some sort of delirium. The nurse was right though, I don’t feel any pain at all. I don’t even feel my body.
This is not how I wanted this to all go. I wanted to be sitting in the birthing suite, holding my two babies in my arms.
I see Chad open his eyes and sit up in the corner of the room, just as I lose consciousness. The last thing that I see before my eyes close, is him walking over to the bed and sitting down beside me with his hand on mine. I want to talk to him, but I fall instantly back to sleep before I can even say his name, thanks to the very potent pain meds.
A part of me still wonders why he came after me. Did he know that I was in trouble? Did he simply change his mind about being okay with me leaving? I wonder if he found the blank check that I left for him to keep. I wonder if he told Lilly about any of this at all.
Mostly, I wonder if he would have come after me, even if it hadn’t been an emergency, or if Lorna had somehow gotten word to him and he came to help me out of sheer guilt.
I want to believe the words that he said to me in the van, but sometimes people say things that they don’t really mean when they are in situations that are out of the ordinary.
As I start to fall into a deep, drug-induced sleep, I let all of my worries and questions fall away. There is nothing that I can do right now until I heal. Then, when I wake up, I want to see my babies and talk to Chad. It’s amazing what he has done in this room for me, trying to make it beautiful and make me comfortable. And from what the nurse said, he’s been trying to do the same being there for our babies too. Maybe I was wrong about him and about everything. Maybe he will rise to this moment and isn’t at all the billionaire bachelor that was depicted in that newspaper article.
Chapter Eighteen