Jim nodded his head with the saddest, most terrified look in his eyes, a look only a parent could have when faced with losing a child. A look that should had been seared into my fucking soul eighteen years ago, but no, my self-absorbed excuse for parents never had that look. Not the night of the crash, not the night they said Kimi would never wake up, not even the night she died. You only get that look when you fucking love someone more than yourself or your fucking country club membership. I didn’t have time to waste thinking about them. Not one fucking millisecond more.
I updated Jim and explained that we needed a scan before we made any decisions about surgery. He stared at me with those fucking eyes. And if they didn’t look just like my girl’s … fuck me. I wished he would punch me square in the face or curse me out. He had to blame me, and so he should. I told this man point blank I fucking loved his daughter, and this was how I protected her.
My insides sizzled with so much built-up rage I was sure I was in hell. And all because I told her to leave my case early. Alone. It had nothing to do with making a flight. I was a jealous imbecile, pissing on my territory and making the point that she was mine. I hated that Guy had tasted her sweet lips, even if the jackass was too drunk to remember. A stupid dick move that left my girl vulnerable, like she hadn’t been through enough.
And how the fuck did I miss how unstable that douchebag was? I kicked his ass out of my OR on more than one occasion because he always seemed dazed and confused. In hindsight, he was fucking strung out.
Damn it. This was all fucking wrong. All of it. She was so excited to spend the morning with her parents, to tell them about last night, about us, about being mine. She beamed when I kissed her delicious lips goodbye this morning.
We quietly stood together and watched transport wheel her lifeless body from the trauma bay toward CT. It ripped the fucking heart from my chest, slicing it back into a million pieces. Pieces my girl just stitched back together after all these years.
Adam interrupted our eerie silence, introducing himself to Jim, Sharon, and Sierra. “I’m sure Dr. Colton has explained the serious nature of Lili’s injuries. Her vital signs are currently stable, but she’s still unconscious, which is worrisome. We won’t know more until we have imaging studies back. She’s on her way to MRI as we speak.”
CT scan took thirty seconds and was the test of choice for a head injury. “Why the fuck did you send her for a MRI? That takes twenty minutes!”
Gupta stared at me like I had two heads. His mouth needed to start moving with an explanation because if his fucking incompetence wasted one more precious second of my girl’s time he was going to need brain surgery himself. And I sure as fuck wasn’t the one doing it. “As I said, her vitals are stable, as well as her blood count, so I felt it was safer to send her to MRI.”
“What! That makes no fucking sense.”
“I don’t get it! Why is that test safer? What the hell is he talking about, Chase?” Sierra pushed past Sharon and got right in my face. “Would you two mind breaking it down for the rest of us without a medical degree!”
There was no time for medicine 101. My whole life, the reason I woke up in the morning, the reason I breathed easy again—fuck the reason I breathed at all—was lying in a fucking magnet, probably hemorrhaging into her fucking brain. All because of a strung-out junkie who called himself a doctor. That useless piece of shit got caught stealing drugs from his anesthesia cart by his own girlfriend. Behind bars for fucking life was the only safe place for Carl Jennings.
That shit needed to wait. I needed to get a grip and focus if I was going to operate on her. Gupta looked like he was choosing his words carefully. “A CT scan is usually the test of choice, but it would expose Lili to a large amount of radiation and-” he continued, but all I heard was silence. The loneliest, most heartbreaking fucking silence imaginable. The vice around my chest where my heart had been ripped out tightened like a vacuum sucking all the fucking air from the open hallway.
“Doc, are you telling me my babydoll’s pregnant? Chase? You knew this?”
I ignored Jim’s question.
No. He was wrong. This was a fucking cruel mistake. Adam was wasting time with a MRI over a fucking lab error. Blue was not pregnant. She was OCD with taking her birth control pills. Same time, every day without fail. The thought of getting pregnant again scared the living shit out of her. It was her way of taking back control. She cried in my arms that day on the beach and told me next time she got pregnant it needed to be on her terms. Prenatal vitamins, the whole nine.
“It’s a mistake, the lab screwed up. Run it again.” I was surprised at how even toned and rational I was.
“Chase, I’m sorry, there is no mistake. Lili is pregnant. I can’t be the first to tell you that no birth control is one hundred percent, and a lot of things can interfere with the pill. Has she been sick?”
No fucking way. Period. This asshole was not speaking to me like I just walked into day one of medical school.
“Don’t give me that shit. She weighs a buck ten soaking wet and she’s not even on a low dose pill. Run the fucking test again. That ninety-seven percent effective bullshit has more to do with people fucking it up or it being too low of a dose. You know that-”
Sierra stopped me dead in my tracks. “Chase, she was … she was sick.”
“What the hell are you talking about? When was she sick? I would have known if she was.”
“She had a really bad urinary tract infection ... um ... when, when you were away.”
Away? I fought the sensation to vomit in the closest garbage can. I turned and sat in a chair. Fuck no, this was not happening, not now.
She meant the week I walked away. The week I tried to convince myself she was better off without my fucking demons. The week after that piece of shit forced her to relive being violated in court. The week I fucking pounded my fists to shit when I should have been home holding her against my chest. The week I tracked down that son of a bitch responsible for the vulnerable look in Blue’s eyes and informed him that he was never to step foot near her again. The bastard didn’t even deny it, didn’t even pick his hands up to defend himself when I knocked that smug look off his face. The eviction notice was the least of his worries. That week. The week she fucking needed me most.
The deafening beat down taking place in my head was a sharp contrast to the dead silence surrounding me. Jim and Sharon refused to look in my direction. Fuck, I wouldn’t look at me either. Shit. My poor girl was sick, pissing razor blades and I never knew about it. Worse, there was no doubt my insatiable need to bury my mouth and cock deep inside her sweetness every single chance I got caused the fucking UTI. I couldn’t help myself. Her smell, her taste, her tightness, the way our bare skin fit together were two pieces of a jacked puzzle that only made sense intertwined. She was my heaven. And with my sins, she was the only heaven I’d ever know.
I choked on the burning realization.
Blue was pregnant.
Pregnant with my child.
Our child.
We weren’t near ready yet, not by a longshot, but there was no doubt in my fucking mind that Lili would want this baby. Her miscarriage three years ago almost wrecked her. That bastard violated her and she conceived in the worst way imaginable, but she was still ready to love that kid, ready to be a mama. That’s who she was. Pure Sweet.
Utter devastation rocked my soul. And the only person to fucking blame on every single level was me. She trusted me. She loved me. Damn. I needed her to wake up so I could tell her over and over again how much I loved her. She was my baby.