Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 77422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
It was like a balm and a blow to my soul to have her within arm’s reach again.
“I’m pregnant,” she said, her eyes going to the belly that I couldn’t help but notice the moment I’d walked into the room.
I nodded at her.
Then swallowed thickly.
She had been pregnant, yes.
Likely the child…our child…that she carried was no longer alive.
Not with a sword through her belly.
When the silence continued too long, July misread my concern, and responded accordingly.
“Don’t you dare take this baby from me,” she whispered fiercely to him. “If you take her from me, I’ll never forgive you. Promise me you won’t take her.”
Agonized, I looked down at the sword impaling her body.
A fucking sword.
Straight through her stomach.
I was scared for her. For the baby.
But there was no way our child was living inside of her at that moment.
Placing my hand to her belly, careful not to move her or jostle her in any way, misery poured through me.
I couldn’t feel a kick. I couldn’t feel any movement whatsoever.
Not one damn twitch.
The worst had already happened. The baby had already been taken.
“Move over,” my best friend ordered.
I looked over almost out of habit to see the room filling with firefighters and paramedics.
Able was at my side, pushing me none too gently away, and I went back on my ass.
I was in shock.
Nobody could survive the injuries that July had sustained.
They’d crucified her.
Each place, where a major artery ran through her body, they’d driven a knife through her delicate skin, straight into the wall behind her hands.
They’d even gone so far as to tie her hair in a knot, and then attached it to a nail above her, so her head couldn’t fall completely to her chest in exhaustion.
My mouth was dry, and tears were coursing down my cheeks.
Somebody’s arms threaded under my armpits, and I turned to find Luke at my back, picking me up and dragging me away.
I got my feet under me and stood on shaky legs, then pulled out of Luke’s arms.
“Don’t,” Luke ordered. “You can’t get in there and get in the way. They need freedom to work, and they don’t need to be worried about you freaking out with her in such a precarious position.”
“They take those knives out, she’s going to bleed to death,” I whispered. “She’s going to die.”
“They know that,” Luke said gently. “They’re ready.”
Paramedics, two of them, came into the room with a gurney and a go-bag.
They were ready.
As ready as two paramedics could be when faced with something as momentous as this.
I watched as they worked on her. Got every single knife removed from the wall behind her, and then struggled with what to do with her limbs as they started on the sword that was through her stomach.
My belly rolled as I saw a drop of blood roll down her naked belly, and down her left thigh.
I saw red.
***
Hours later, in a hospital located in Kilgore, Texas.
“They delivered your daughter via cesarean at 0203 and immediately took her to the NICU where she’s been set up on a machine that’s breathing for her,” the nurse informed me. “From what we can tell, no damage at all had been done to the child, except one single cut from her temple to her ear.”
She showed me a picture of our baby, and I took the Polaroid out of her hand. Dammit, she was tiny.
Her head was the size of whichever nurse’s hands she was resting in—so fucking small.
The rest of her wasn’t much bigger.
“The baby is doing very well for twenty-seven weeks—or at least that’s what she’s measuring at. She tried to breathe on her own when she was delivered, came out crying, but quickly lost her breath and we immediately got her on oxygen,” the nurse continued. “She weighed in at two pounds, thirteen ounces.”
My stomach clenched. Hearing she was alive at all was a special kind of agony. Something I didn’t think would happen. Not after seeing that sword going through July’s abdomen.
I’d had my suspicions about July being pregnant for about a week before I’d told her to go buy a pregnancy test.
I knew she’d been religious about getting her shots. Hell, I’d gone with her while she’d had the last one done. So this baby surviving all of that—a conception despite birth control and then what she and July had been through not only a few hours ago, but over the last three months—told me that this baby was meant to be.
“They expect that you’ll be able to visit with her in the morning when visiting hours start,” the nurse finished. “Is there anything else I can answer for you?”
“No.” I rasped.
She held her hand out, and I offered her mine in return.
But she didn’t take my hand to shake it, she took it to attach a hospital bracelet to my wrist.