Page 165 of Mile High Ex's Dad
Plain. Careful. Worse than comfort.
Sienna turns her head and looks at me. She doesn’t ask the question aloud because she doesn’t have to.
Is the baby alive?
Yes.
Are we safe?
Nobody has said that.
A porter appears with a machine. The nurse starts shifting the bed.
The doctor says, “We’re taking her through.”
I step forward automatically. “Can I go?”
The doctor looks at Maksim. Maksim looks at Sienna.
Sienna says, “Yes.”
That seems to settle it.
The nurse nods. “Only one person.”
Maksim says, “Go.” I look at him. He adds, lower, “I’ll handle everything else.”
Which means bloodwork, paperwork, getting answers before anyone else in this building decides to start keeping them from me.
I nod once.
They start moving her bed down the corridor. I walk beside it, close enough that she can still hold my hand. The hospital lights are unforgiving. The wheels rattle over small joins in the floor. Everyone we pass looks busy and detached.
Sienna stares at the ceiling for a few seconds, then says, “This wasn’t supposed to happen today.”
I almost say nothing was supposed to happen today.
Instead, I say, “I know.”
She turns her head toward me, eyes wet, face pale against the pillow. “You were right there.”
The words hit me strangely. As accusation? Gratitude? Pure shock that the world broke open and I was in it when it did?
“Yes,” I say.
“If you hadn’t been?—”
“I was there.”
I need her to stop at that sentence. I don’t need the rest.
She seems to understand. Her fingers tighten around mine.
They wheel her into imaging. The technician is already there, gloved, focused, all business. She tells Sienna what she’s doing while spreading gel over her stomach with quick, practiced hands.
The screen lights up.
I don’t understand what I’m looking at. I only understand faces, and I see the doctor’s face change as she looks.
