Loving Hart (34 page)

I jumped up from the bed too, glaring at her.  “That’s bullshit Delilah
,
and you know it!  You know what this tells me?  You never planned to marry me no matter what happened
,
because you know I’m not good enough for you!  Apparently I’m good enough to fuck, but not to marry.  Why did you even bother telling me at all if you cared so little about what I’d want?”

She stared at me like I was speaking a foreign language, her expression one of utter confusion.  “Is that what you think I’m saying Spencer?  That I never wanted to marry you, that I think you’re not good enough?  That’s not what I’m saying
at all
.  I’ve wanted to be Delilah Cross since I was five years old
,
you idiot.  I’m head over heels in love with you, the same way I have been for the last decade.  LISTEN to me.  I can’t want to marry you when it isn’t what you want, and I am NOT marrying you in Las Vegas.  IF we ever get married, we’re having a real wedding.  Didn’t it occur to you that perhaps you should have tried
asking
me instead of
telling
me?  The way you’re going about it makes me feel like shit, like a burden.”

Before I could edit myself I shouted, “Because you know that to me, your baby IS a fucking burden!  Not you, it.  I’m not fucking doing cartwheels
,
because I’m horrified. I’ll deal with it because that’s what you need me to do, but don’t expect me to pretend everything is okay.  I told you I didn’t want children and I wasn’t kidding.  Just remember that when you can’t stand me because I’m shit as a parent.”

I knew as the words were coming out of my mouth that I was fucking up, but I was scared, freaked out
,
and stupid.  Her eyes were huge in her face as she gaped at me, holding her stomach like I’d punched her.  Turning her back on me, she went to her
bureau and grabbed a t-shirt and a pair of underwear.

When she was covered, she faced me again.  The tone of her voice when she spoke was arctic.  “Get dressed and get
out
.”

It was like I couldn’t control myself, like my brain was taking a vacation.  I dressed in under a minute as she glared at me
, and seeing her disappointment, something in me snapped
.  “Fuck it.  I shouldn’t be near that
damn
baby anyway.”

She was across the room in a flash, slapping me across the face so hard that I wondered if I’d have a bruise.  “Don’t
you
ever
t
alk about our
baby that way
. GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!”

I
needed
to escape
, to put as much distance between the baby she was carrying and me
.  Stomping into the living room, I flung the door open and ran out, slamming the door behind me.  I’d just gotten to the bottom of the stairs when she came out after me.

Standing at the top of the stairs, she glared down at me.  “You forgot your folder
,
asshole
.”
  It was as she went to throw the folder at me that she lost her balance, and I watched in hor
ror as s
he fell down the stairs like a R
a
ggedy Ann doll.  I ra
n forward
to
catch her but I didn’t make it, and she landed in a lifeless heap at my feet.

I yelled,
or maybe
screamed, as I dropped to the ground in front of her.  She was out cold
,
and her forehead was gushing blood.  Suddenly there were concerned neighbo
rs everywhere
,
and somebody
shouted that they were calling 911.  I held her, begging her to wake up, but she wasn’t coming around.  What I felt like in that moment, the terror that took me, eclipsed any other feeling I’d ever had. 

I realized later that at some point I started
shouting, “She’s pregnant, help her please, she
can’t lose
our
baby
” over and over again.

I sat straight up from a dead sleep knowing something was wrong.  I tried to calm myself down for a moment, tried to convince myself that I was having some form of anxiety that must have started with a dream I
must
have been having.  I tried to convince myself, but I knew that wasn’t true.  Turning on the light next to the bed, I shook Tally to wake her up.  “Honey, get up.  Wake up.”

Struggling, she opened her eyes and looked around.  Apparently
,
the look on my face told its own story, because she popped up next to me and grabbed my head.  “Nik, what’s wrong?”

I shook my head.  “I don’t know exactly what, but something’s wrong with my sister.  I can feel it.  Get dressed while I try to get her on the phone.  We need to go over there.”

We both threw clothes on while I called Delilah’s cell and her house phone, neither getting me anything.  With every passing second, I knew for sure that she was in trouble.  Turning to Tally I cried out, “She’s hurt.  I know she’s hurt.”

We ran to my car, and Tally climbed behind the wheel, driving us toward Delilah’s as I kept trying and trying to get ahold of her by phone.  We only lived a few blocks away from each other, so we were turning down her street just five minutes after I’d woken up. 

When we made the turn, I saw an ambulance and police cars
,
and I knew it was bad.  I
heard a terrifying sound that wasn’t quite human, and I was shocked to realize it was coming from me.
 

I told Tally to call Damien, Mama San and Spencer, and before she even really had time to stop the car I was out and running toward the EMTs that I could see at the base of my sister’s apartment stairs.

There wasn’t an ounce of control in me, and I pushed forward to see her.  They had her strapped to a gurney with her neck immobilized.  Her face and her shirt were covered in blood and her eyes were closed.  “That’s my sister,” I sobbed.  “Please, please tell me what’s wrong.”

Before anyone could tell me, Spencer came from nowhere and grabbed me to him.  He was hysterically crying, barely making any sense.  “She fell.
I saw her as it was happening, tried to run toward her but it happened so fast.
She fell down the stairs and she won’t wake up.”

I cried and shook as they loaded her into the ambulance, absolutely terrified and helpless.  Normally
,
Spencer would have been someone I’d turn to in crisis, but he was in worse shape than I was.  Tally appeared next to us, dragging us both to the car.  “We need to follow the ambulance.”

Once we got in the car, she told me she’d gotten ahold of Mama San and that she’d be meeting us at the hospital, and that Damien and Brooke were in Laguna Beach and would get there as soon as they could.

Thank god for Tally, because she drove and kept as calm as she could while I shook and tried not to vomit and Spencer sobbed in the backseat. 

When we got to the hospital we ran into the emergency room, and Tally took care of talking to the intake people, telling them who we were there for.  A few minutes later Mama San came flying through the sliding doors, white as a sheet and crying.  “Where’s my little girl?”

I shook my head at her, told her
everything we knew and explained that
we hadn’t talked to any doctors yet.  Her phone rang and she picked it up, quietly crying as she filled Damien in. 

The entire time, Spencer said nothing.  He just sat crying, absolutely incoherent.  We all tried to talk to him, but he was totally gone. 
Even when I told him that I felt like Delilah was going to be okay, he said nothing.  I wondered if he was going catatonic on me, and it scared the shit out of me.  I’d never seen him like that, so broken I wasn’t positive he could make his way back.

It took
over an hour
for a doctor to come see us, and when he did we all breathed a sigh of relief.  He came to all of us but spoke directly to Mama San.  “Your daughter is going to be fine, but we need to keep her for observation for
the next forty
-eight hours.  S
he hit her head on the way down, and that’s why she was unconscious.  It’s also the reason she was bleeding.  That took six stitches.  Not huge by any means, but that’s where all of the blood came from.  Facial bleeding tends to look more extreme than it actually is.
  She’ll definitely have some bruising on her body, but all things considered, she got very lucky.
”

The doctor paused for a moment, and in that time Spencer
snapped out of it and jumped up.  He
stepped forward to frantically say, “The baby… is our baby okay?”

I realized that she'd told him she was pregnant
,
and I was relieved.  He deserved to know, and I was happy to hear that he referred to the baby as being theirs.  He cared, and I felt stupid for ever even considering that he wouldn't.

We all
held our collective breaths as we waited for the doctor to answer.  Facing Spencer, he smiled
. “Your baby is fine, but Miss Hart’s pregnancy is part of the reason w
e want to observe her
. It’s a precaution, but we like to be sure.”

I saw Spencer sag in relief, and my heart broke
for him.  He had been so terrified for the two of them that he'd scared all of us
.  “
Thank god our
baby
is
going to be
okay
,” he said.  With that, he fainted dead away.

My already frayed nerves went haywire, but thankfully the doctor was right there to keep us calm.  He called for smelling salts
,
and within a few minutes Spencer was sitting on a gurney drinking a fruit punch
while we all hovered around him to make sure that he was alright
.

Normally he would have been embarrassed, but he was far too worried about Delilah to care about himself.  Once we had Spencer settled, the doctor told us that one of us would be able to go check on Delilah, while the rest of us would have to wait until morning.

Turning to Spencer he said, “Normally we’d let the father of the baby go, but since you aren’t married, you need to work it out with her mother.”

Spencer
deferred to Sandra immediately, never even telling the doctor that she wasn’t actually Delilah’s mom,
but
Sandra
surprised us all by saying no.  “
Spencer, it’s lovely for you to offer, but you just fainted because you’re freaking out.  You need to see her.” 

Turning to Tally and I she explained
, “
She’
ll want Spencer
and we all know it.  I want to see my baby girl, but I know she’d rather have
him
than anyone else
. I just want her to be happy
.”

I’m not sure if I was the only one that noticed that he grimaced when she said that, and when he got off the gurney to follow the doctor, he didn’t look too confident.

I hurt e
verywhere and my head was
pounding.  I’d woken up in a room full of people taking my vital signs and asking me questions, and at first I couldn’t remember what happened.  A few minutes later it came back to me like a tidal wave, and I remembered seeing Spencer’s face freeze into a mask of pure terror as I lost my balance and started to fall down the stairs.

Most of the
doctors and nurses had talked at me and not to me, and everyone insisted that I take it easy and relax.  “You were out for almost
twen
ty minutes,”
one of the
doctor
s finally
told me.  “There was a lot of blood, but that’s normal with these things.  We cleaned you up and in time you’ll be good as new.”

The agony I felt in that moment gutted me.  I’d lost our baby.  I knew Spencer wouldn’t be sad, but I was devastated.  When the doctor left the room, I turned my head into the pillow to quietly cry.  For one beautiful moment I’d been full of life, but now
Spencer and I were done
and I had nothing.

Sometime later I heard the door open.  The shift in the air told me that it was Spencer, and my heart broke.  We’d ne
ver fought before, not ever, but
I didn’t see how we could get back from this
.  I could forgive him, but I’d never be able to look at him without knowing that he was relieved that the baby was gone.
  I'd never get over the fact that I'd been so filled with love and he'd been so filled with… not love.

He came and pulled up the lone chair in the room to the side of the bed and grabbed my hand like it was a lifeline. “Delilah, baby.  I’m so sorry.
This was
my fault.  I’ll never forgive myself for getting you so upset that you fell down the stairs
,
but
I promise that I’m going to try to be everything you need me to be
from here on out
.”