It always comes back.”
“I didn’t do this!”
Something shifted in her expression when I yelled at her, something that looked like I might not be able to fix, but then the doors behind us flung open and through them came my screaming, fighting father held back by four orderlies that didn’t look nearly strong enough to keep him in the waiting room.
“No! Don’t you fucking dare!” Dad say, pushing back at a tall, but scrawny looking guy in green scrubs.
“Stop,” I told them, moving to Kona’s side as he struggled. “Dad, please. What the hell is going on?”
My father was the strongest man I knew. He was power and strength, he always seemed in control and ready to tackle anything that came at him. But just then, as Aly and I managed to move him from the doors without his doing any harm to himself or the orderlies who ran back through the doors, my father looked completely lost.
It took him a second to get his breathing under control and he let Aly sit next to him, holding onto his arm as he scrubbed his fingers through his hair, then massaged his neck. Finally, a few more exhales and he looked up at me. His hands didn’t stop shaking.
“She…they said it was…something about the amniotic fluid and a…” he licked his lips like the words stuck on his tongue, “an embolism…I…” Dad covered his face, breathing in again as though he’s lost all his energy.
“Souple, Kona, it’s okay. Take your time,” Aly told him and for a second I wondered how she managed—to be composed, to not scream like the world was shattering all around her. It was. Right there in that damn waiting room with those strangers’ pending celebration broken apart by the shock and fear pulsing off the three of us.
“I…” Dad cleared his throat and got up from his seat like there was too much adrenaline pumping in his veins and he needed to move. “Half an hour ago we were home…we were…” Kona closed his eyes, moving his head like he couldn’t understand how any of this had happened. “She was nauseous, short of breath…I didn’t want to mess around, not with the preeclampsia…I called 9-1-1. It…it got worse.”
“Dad…” He only looked at me when I grabbed his arm, clinging onto the hope that his fear was just an overreaction, that this wouldn’t be as final as the look on his face told me it would be. “Where…is she okay?”
“Ransom…”
One look at Kona, at the shock, the realization of what he’d seen and I felt as though I’d been knocked down, like something heavy landed right on my chest. “Oh God… you have to…”
“She started bleeding…” Kona wobbled a little when I gripped the thin fabric of his scrubs. “There was…there was just so much blood.”
“Kona?” Aly said, stepping behind me. “Is she okay?”
The only time I’d seen my father cry was the day he married my mother. It had been one of the best days of our lives. We were finally whole, and on that secluded beach in Hawaii, with sixteen years of distance falling away, my father cried as he kissed his bride. Today his tears came from fear and because my own fear crippled me, because Kona could not seem to get the words out, I cried right along with my father.
“Is she…Dad…please…is she gone?”
He blinked, mouth working like he couldn’t believe I thought the worst. “No! No, Ransom, no, keiki kane, no, she’s not.” My father held me, tried to keep my arms still when my forehead fell against his chest. “No, brah. She’s sick.” He pulled my face up. “When the blood…it freaked everyone out. I lost it, I…I got too loud. They wanted me out of there so they could work on her. She’s okay. I think…I think she’s going to be okay.”
“You think? What do you mean you think? Is she okay or not?” My fists balled tight, gripping my father, but he didn’t move. I’d hit him once back when I thought he’d released that stupid video of me. But Kona had let me. Now he stood like a stone as I let that fear cradle me, as it shifted to rage. “How can you not know? You…you’re supposed to…”
“Ransom, stop,” Aly said, making attempts to pull me back.
“You can’t let this happen. She’s…if she…I can’t do this again.” I tried to push him again, a little desperate to make this moment something I’d dreamed, something that wouldn’t completely devastate me. “I can’t do this…Mom…you don’t know, Kona. You have no idea what this is.” When he shook me and he looked down at me like he had no idea who was, that I meant anything at all to him, I opened my mouth, not thinking, forgetting anything but the fear I felt and the pain it caused me. “You don’t know about this. What it is to do something like this…to know you’ll never get to take it back. You’ll never love someone like that again…you’ll never get to say you’re sorry…”
“Enough!” My father had my shoulders between his hands and jerked against them. His face was dry, but he still looked lost. “That is enough.” His eyes slipped over my shoulder and that frown on his face hardened. “I don’t know? Me? Ransom, of course I do.” I pushed away from him, stepping back when I realized where my fear had really come from, how it had suddenly become about more than just my mother. This was the regret that came with terror, the burning, sharp knowledge that your life would never be the same and because we are all pathetic, selfish creatures, because loss is more about our grief than the final goodbye of the people we love, our first worry is the absence of their presence in our lives. I knew my expression left me open, wholly vulnerable and my father had seen that, likely for a while.
“You were sixteen and you were careless. You were responsible for Emily’s death.” Though I could never forget what I’d done, even hearing my father say that was a burn I deserved but never wanted to feel. “Ransom, I was twenty. I was supposed to be a man and I put my brother on that street. Where he died. I know this.” He gripped my shoulder. “I’ve been trying to remind you that I know this for a year and a half.”
Dad’s breath came out hard then, as though he swallowed down that shame and the taste was toxic. “I’m a man now and I’ve never been more scared in life. Right now, in this moment, I am unbelievably scared. Three years ago I was responsible for myself. Just myself. I had no real worries. And now…now I have sons. I have…” Dad blinked, as though only just realizing how his life had changed completely in less than an hour. “Jesus, I have a daughter and I have no idea what to do. Keira, my Wildcat… I don’t know what will happen. I’m so fucking scared. And I love you. I’d kill for you, but I cannot let you destroy yourself.”
Then everything fell away—the small sniffles around us, the low, mumbled prayers I heard an old woman to my left making in our name, everything disappeared but the tight grip I placed on my father and the strength I felt draining, just a little from him. Instead of wondering what would happen, instead of expecting the worst, the impossible, I sat down by my father, arm to arm as we waited for those doors to open.
We waited all damn night. We waited alone.
Real grief is brutal. It was something that my parents had tried explaining to me when I lay in that hospital room over a year ago, my mouth blistered from exposure and my heart emptied by Emily’s death. That was unbearable. This, though, none of us would walk through this and be the same people on the other side if Mom didn’t wake up.
There wasn’t much room in the ICU—a small bed elevated, holding her as that damn tube worked to keep her breathing steady. She was out, completely, her face still swollen from the dangers of the pregnancy and her already fair complexion hollowed by the blood loss.
“This is a serious condition, Mr. Hale.” The doctor had kept his voice calm, his expression impassive and I’d caught the way he stayed several feet from my father, as though he half expected another alpha protest like the one in the delivery room. “Amniotic fluid embolism.” My father and I both frowned at the man and he held up his hand as though he knew questions were coming. “It’s extremely rare and so little is known about the condition that we really aren’t certain how to prevent it. But we can treat it. You got her here in time, that’s the most important thing.”