Rock Bottom (Tristan & Danika #2) (32 page)

It knocked the breath out of me, the hard metal ridges that formed the tracks of the shower stall cutting sharply into me.
 

I huddled back into the tub, rubbing my belly, tears stinging my eyes at my clumsy carelessness.
 

I was thoroughly shaken.
 

It took me so long to dry off and get dressed, sitting down to slide on every piece of clothing, that I was nearly an hour late to my study group.
 

But I seemed to be fine after that, and I moved forward with my day, the more time that seemed to pass without any worrisome developments giving me confidence that the fall had done no lasting harm.
 

It was around five p.m. that I began to cramp.
 
They were not severe cramps, but I called the doctor’s office anyway.
 
I had a brief word with the nurse on call.
 
She sounded bored, and impatient, and I explained my problem in a halting tone.
 
I hated to even talk about it aloud, as though acknowledging a possible problem with my baby was allowing that problem to gain more substance.
 
I did not want this fear of mine to become tangible.

I heard gum smack in my ear before the bored female voice quoted an explanation about braxton hicks contractions, and the things I should look for before I jumped the gun, and hauled off to labor and delivery.
 

I said a numb goodbye right before the phone went dead at my ear.
 
I’d apparently used up my allotted nurse on-call time.
     

I called Tristan next, desperate to talk to someone, and he was certainly the only one I could talk to about
this
.
 
There was no answer.
 

No answer at five or at six.
 
Or at seven.
 

At eight, I began to spot.
 
I never called the nurse back, thinking that I’d rather go to labor and delivery than deal with her bored tone again, and none of my symptoms were quite severe enough for that.
 

I went to his apartment, the cramps getting worse, though not severe.
 

He wasn’t there.
 
Not even Dean was there.
 

At ten o’clock, I was doubled over by a shooting pain, and the spotting hadn’t stopped.
 

I didn’t know who to call.
 
I didn’t want to tell anyone how irresponsible I’d been, getting pregnant by a man that didn’t show up when he said he would, who wasn’t even taking my calls anymore.
 

I knew I wasn’t supposed to be bleeding this much, but then again, didn’t you hear all the time about pregnant women spotting?
   

I didn’t know what to do.
 
Should I call an ambulance?
 
The hospital was not that far away, and besides that, after calling Tristan, texting him, over and over for the last five hours, my phone had died.
 
Dean and Tristan had never bothered to get a home phone.
 
Who did, nowadays, when everyone had a cell?
 
But neither of them were here now, and I didn’t have my charger on me.
 

I didn’t panic.
 
I felt too tired, too lethargic to panic.
 
Panic took energy.
 

The blood was not so very much, I told myself.
 

I laid down and found a towel, pressing it against me, hoping to stop the flow if I held very, very still.
 
Was it getting worse all of a sudden?
 
Could it even be called spotting anymore?
 
It had become a steady, worrisome flow.
 

I rubbed my slightly rounded belly, closing my eyes.
 

I want this baby,
I thought.
 
It was the closest I’d ever come to a prayer.
 

Please, let me keep this baby
.
 

I had never wanted anything more, not even Tristan’s love.
 

TRISTAN

Kenny dropped me off at the curb in front of my apartment building.
 
I was fucked up in the extreme.
 
I knew I’d be catching hell for it later, but at just that moment, I felt no pain, and getting a bit of grief seemed a small price to pay for blessed numbness.

I knew I’d missed some texts from Danika, but she was pissed at me again, our last conversation beginning and ending with her bitching at me for being unreliable, and that was more than I wanted to deal with at the moment.

It took me way too long to fish the keys to my apartment out of my pocket and fumble the lock open.
 
I stumbled more than walked to my bedroom.
 
I had just begun to unbutton my jeans, my eyes on the bed in the darkened room, when I realized that I wasn’t alone.
 

“Danika,” I called softly, not wanting to wake her if she was asleep.
 
I didn’t want her to see me like this again, if I could help it.
 

I lay down beside her, still fully clothed, reaching a tentative hand out to find hers.
 

Her fingers were limp, her palm cold as I linked our fingers.
 
I moved closer.
 
Even shit-faced, my first instinct was to warm her up.
 

I slipped under the covers, hugging her to me.
 
She was so deeply asleep that she didn’t so much as twitch.
 

Forgetting entirely that I’d been meaning not to wake her, I slipped my hand up her shirt, then ran it over her body, starting at one cool, rounded breast, over her belly, meeting resistance in the form of bunched up cloth as I tried to delve between her legs.

Impatient, I dug deeper into the swaths of fabric.

I tensed as I my seeking fingers touched something wet and cold.
 

My heart started pounding.

It was the loudest sound in that still as death room.
 

I stumbled back, sobering instantly, but becoming no less clumsy as I fumbled along the wall for the light switch, sheer panic setting in.
 

I’d taken the covers off her with my rough attentions, and so the first thing I saw was the blood.

So much blood.
 

My breath stuttered in my lungs as I moved back to her, my fingers trembling as I put them to her neck.
 
My eyes closed in relief as I made out her faint pulse.
 

I swallowed hard as I glanced again at her lower body.
 

So much blood.
 

A thick towel bunched between her legs was soaked through with it.
 
Underneath her, the bed was soaked with it.
 

So
much blood.
 
Too much blood.
 

I fumbled in my pocket, fishing out my phone.
 
I didn’t remember dialing 911, or even speaking, and I didn’t know how long I held the phone to my ear even after it went dead.
 

I was terrified to move her, and so I huddled over her, trying to warm her up, pulling her baggy T-shirt down to cover as much of her lower body as I could manage.
 

I stroked her hair, and murmured reassurances in her ear.
 
They were for my benefit alone, since she didn’t stir, didn’t so much as twitch under my reverent, soothing hands.
 

I’d never been so scared, abject terror making my limbs numb.
 
I could hear my teeth chattering with it, tapping out a click-click-click noise that seemed to fill up the room.
 

Click-click-click.
 

I pulled the blanket up to her neck.
 
I checked her pulse again.
 

Click-click-click.
 

Time slowed down, until it felt like I’d been waiting hours, and still she didn’t rouse.

Finally, the sound of the ambulance approaching, a fairly common sound in Vegas, and one I’d never been so relieved to hear before in my life, got me moving.
 

I made sure the front door was unlocked, reconsidered, and just left it open.

I was hovering over her when the paramedics came in.
 
They were loud but efficient.
 

My eyes stayed glued to Danika, desperate for any sign of life from her.
 

She stirred as they moved her from the bed to a stretcher, her hands shifting over her taut belly.
 

My gut clenched.
 
It could have been the state I’d been in walking in the door, or just plain shock, but it only occurred to me then that the baby was in danger.
 
I’d been too singularly focused on the peril Danika was in to even consider it before.
 

No
.
 
My mind shied away from it, from either possibility.
 
I couldn’t take that, not on top of everything else.
 

I’d been a flake lately, just letting too many things go, but this, this was too much.
 
I couldn’t bear the thought.
 

I wanted our little family,
needed
it.
 

Danika roused in the ambulance.
 
She cried and screamed and cursed as that little life bled out of her, but in the end, she was as helpless as I was.
 

Hours later, utterly defeated, she finally rested, with the help of some much needed painkillers.
 

I spent the longest night of my life in the St. Rose Dominican hospital, where we lost our baby.
 

I hadn’t thought that life would hand me another thing that could break me like Jared’s death had, but this did.

Jared’s loss had left a small hole in my heart that had been seeping slowly and steadily since his death, but this, this was a
hemorrhage
.
 

My mind focused, with morbid determination, on the things I could have done differently.
 

I sat in that hospital room, moving as close to a sleeping Danika as I could get, and went through every call I’d missed, every message I’d ignored.
 
For hours, she’d reached out to me, but I hadn’t been there, and look what had happened.
 
No woman should have to go through something like that alone.
 
Her phone had died, I’d heard her mumbling to the paramedics earlier.
 
She’d been stranded there, no help in sight.
 

No matter which way I turned that over in my brain, I was to blame.
 

I kept vigil over her prone figure through that long night and
hated
myself.
 
It was a poison, that hate, and once it got in my bloodstream, it stayed there.
           

The abject horror of finding her the way I had, not knowing if she would live or die, the horror turning into pain at our loss, and finally, that pain turning into a quiet resolve.
 

What was I doing?
 
What was I thinking?
 
Did I have a right to keep this woman, this beautiful creature with her bright future, in my twisted disaster of a life?
 
Was I strong enough to let her go?
 

I had no answers.
 
Or at least none that I was willing to acknowledge just then.
 
I had lost too much already.
   

When she finally woke, she barely looked at me.
 
When I asked her how she was doing, she only closed her eyes, tears seeping out of her lowered lids.
 

Did she hate me now, too?
 
I didn’t have the courage to ask.
 

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” I told her, clutching her hand and crying with her.

I was driving her home before she delivered the final blow, her whisper ragged with grief.
 

“It was a boy.”
 

I pulled the car over, my shoulders shaking.
 
Her hand touched my arm, and I turned to her, sobbing into her neck.
   

“Jared Jeremiah Vega,” she said, her voice devastated.
 

Broken.
 

“Jeremiah for Jerry?” I finally found the strength to ask.
 

I felt her nodding against my cheek.
 

“It was the perfect name, Danika.”

She’d been crying silently, but now she began to sob.
 
It came out of her in a great, heaving flood.
 

“This is all my fault,” she told me.
 
“I fell down in the shower that morning, then just went on with my day, thinking everything would be fine.
 
I should have gone straight to the hospital.
 
Then none of this would have happened.
 
We’d still be having our baby boy.”
 

I couldn’t stand it, couldn’t take that she was blaming herself for an accident.
 
“No, no, no,” I whispered tenderly into her hair.
 
“It’s not your fault.
 
Don’t ever say that.
 
I can’t bear it.
 
It’s my fault.
 
I should have been there.”
 

She protested, telling me it wasn’t, and I didn’t know if it was her tone or my conscience, but I didn’t believe her.
   

Tragedy never took its full chunk out of you right away.
 
It always took a while to hit you head on, and sink in and for something substantial, some hint of the real feeling, the real reaction, to come to the surface, and this loss was not done taking its toll on us.