“I don’t know.” As he strode across the room, he kept one eye on the forbidding double-doors, marked with the sign, Hospital Staff Only. “They were all yelling and running around and grabbing things. Then a man in scrubs just shoved me out the door. I tried to look through the glass window, but they shut the blinds.”
“Didn’t they come out and explain what was going on?”
“After a few minutes a doctor came out and made me sign something saying they could do whatever was necessary to save her life, including surgery.”
“What kind of surgery?”
“I don’t know. She said something about blood loss and oxygen levels. Then she told me someone would come out and talk to me, but that was fifteen minutes ago.” Cole had a crazy urge to punch a hole in the wall, right under the sign that said, MAKING HOUSTON HEALTHIER, ONE PATIENT AT A TIME.
“She must’ve said something else,” Bran urged. “Something that would give us a clue what’s going on.”
“She talked so fast,” Cole said. “And I signed a paper saying I was aware that Brooke might die and the baby might die. How am I supposed to be sane after signing that?”
A voice called from a cubical on the side of the room. “Mr. Miller?”
“I’ve gotta go! They’re calling me.” Tucking his phone away, he trotted to the sign-in desk, tucked behind a privacy wall.
The woman behind the counter barely glanced up from her computer as she pushed a clipboard toward Cole. She tucked a strawberry-blond curl behind her ear. “I’ll need you to fill out this paperwork, please. Be sure to sign or initial where you see a red X.”
His heart pounded behind his forehead, every muscle fiber trembling, as he put both hands on the counter and leaned over it. “Trudy,” he read from her name tag—Trudy Cordle, Patient Coordinator—“I’m not filling out a single page until someone tells me what’s happening to my wife.”
He was proud that he hadn’t shouted. But his mannerisms must’ve been threatening, because her eyes looked like green dinner plates.
“I’m only an intake clerk,” she said, with a trembling voice. “I don’t know anything about the patient’s treatment.”
Her gaze dropped down from his eyes, and her mouth hung open—she’d probably noticed his green hand. Cole glanced at Shrek and realized his fingers were bloody. In fact, a coating of mostly-dried blood covered both his hands. He clenched them into fists.
“Then go find someone who does,” Cole growled, ignoring the fact that he was taking out his frustration on an innocent bystander.
“I’m sorry.” She gulped, visibly. “But I can’t go into the emergency ward and—”
“Now! I want to know something now!” He slammed Shrek’s bloodied hand onto the counter with a loud clank.
Trudy jumped up from her chair and took a few steps back. But he was blocking the only way in or out of the small cubical. At least a foot shorter than him, she shrank away and he drowned in sudden guilt. “I’m sorry, Trudy. I—”
Cole felt a hand on his shoulder and reacted by reflex, grasping the wrist and twisting as he turned.
“Ow!” The hand’s owner was bent over at the waist, his arm wrested behind him.
“Dave!” Cole released him and helped him straighten. “Sorry. I didn’t know it was you.”
“I’m okay, I think.” Dave rubbed his arm gingerly. “I got here as soon as I could, but I had to change into scrubs. Tell me what happened.”
Cole let his friend lead him away from the frightened clerk, who probably contacted security the moment he left. He related the details of the accident to Dave, his pulse rising even higher as he read the concern on his friend’s face.
“Sounds like a placental abruption,” Dave said.
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning the placenta that attaches the baby to the uterus was torn, to some unknown extent.” Dave reached in his pocket and pulled out an ID, attaching it to his scrub top. Then he aimed his gaze at Cole’s bloodstained pants. “And all that came from Brooke?”
“Yes.” He swallowed at the inference of the question. “Will she be okay? And the baby?”
“If they got here fast enough.” Dave headed to the double doors and punched a number into the keypad. The doors swung open. “Let me see what I can find out. I’ll be—”
“Please,” Cole begged in a ragged voice. Dave’s image rippled in his watery eyes. “Please, take me with you.”
“It might be best for you to wait here.”
“I can’t! You saw me—I’m going crazy! I told her I wouldn’t leave her, and she’s in there all alone.” He swiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “Please, Dave. If our friendship means anything.”
Dave’s hand gripped his arm like a vise. “If it’s bad, can you hold yourself together?”
Cole nodded, swallowing the rock in his throat.
“Okay.” Dave’s eyes darted over his shoulder down the long corridor. No one seemed to pay them any attention. “But you have to stop in the restroom and wash the blood off your hands… and your face.”
Freshly washed and looking less like an actor in a horror movie, Cole sat on a hard metal chair against the wall in the hallway, his boot tapping a nervous rhythm on the tile floor. Every minute lasted an eternity as he waited for a report on Brooke’s condition. Dave came around the corner. Cole stood up, trying to read his friend’s face. All he could see was worry.
“They’re both alive,” Dave said, pushing his fingers through his hair.
“Both? Meaning the baby is here?”
Dave nodded. “They had to take the baby via C-section. They didn’t have a choice—Brooke had lost too much blood and the baby was in distress.”
“She was only thirty-six weeks along,” Cole said, his mouth so dry he could barely make his tongue work.
