Page 33 of Healing Bonds

I stared up at the white ceiling in shock. My wife—my once healthy, normal wife—was lying on an operating table, and I was stuck here, confined to this cot.

A fucking drunk driver had taken so much from me. From us.

“Your wife was pregnant.”

I ran over the conversation with the doctor in my head for a third time. She had been pregnant… almost five months with alittle girl. And now, that life was taken away. I fisted the sheets at my sides, anger rolling off of me in waves. A life had been lost, and for what reason? Because some asshole couldn’t be responsible?

Amber was going to bedevastated.

Celine paced at the foot of my bed, her arms wrapped around her growing stomach. Dried, black tear streaks were illuminated on her cheeks under the harsh light. Ace sat in a chair next to me, watching Celine with worry. My parents were out of town, and right now, Amber’s whole family was waiting to board a plane to come here and see how I had failed to protect her.

“She’s been pregnant since before the wedding with my niece,” Celine muttered. Pausing, she threw her head back and looked at the ceiling, blinking furiously to keep back her tears. “Why did you do this to her?” she wailed, pure agonizing pain ripping from her throat.

Ace hurriedly stood and walked over to her. He planted himself behind her quaking form and wrapped his arms around her big, swollen belly. “She’s still alive, princess. Still breathing. That’s all we can ask for right now.” He glanced at me, blue eyes dark with sympathy.

I was confined to the bed with three broken ribs, a concussion, and a broken leg, while my wife had suffered a broken neck, broken right arm, and a piece of the car had been impaled into her uterus, killing our child, all because of a drunk driver.

“I need to see her.” The pair looked at me, so lost in grief for my child. “Ace, get me a wheelchair. I need to be there waiting.”

“The doctor said to wait, man. She’s in safe hands,” he reminded me, but I didn’t care. My wife fucking needed me.

“If it was Celine, nothing would stop you. Now, get me a fucking wheelchair and take me to see my fucking wife.” Celine sank down on the corner of my bed and wept, her bodytrembling with tears as Ace stormed out, slamming the door shut behind him.

“She’s going to be devastated, Ry… absolutely destroyed.” Looking at the woman my little sister turned into scared me sometimes. It was hard to believe she had experienced a miscarriage before, and now, my Amber, my spitfire, would know that same pain.

“We’ll try again,” I muttered, looking away from her.

“You don’t understand,” she sniffled. “She’s not going to be okay after this, Ryan. It almost ended mine and Ace’s marriage,” she confessed. My chest squeezed at the mere thought of losing Amber. Of her leaving me. It hurt so damn much, for a moment, I couldn’t force my lungs to work. “As a woman, you feel like a failure, like you couldn’t do something so mundane as keep your own child alive. Every day, I worry that I’m going to lose this little one. If I do, it’ll be the end of me, Ryan. I’ve lost too many.” I looked at her and saw a broken woman trying to keep glued together the pieces that were trying so desperately to peel away.

“How many, Cece?” She and Ace had been quiet about their personal affairs, never mentioning anything about a divorce and only one miscarriage.

“Four.” Ace’s deep voice filled the silence. He propped open the door with his foot and pushed the wheelchair in. “Once the shock wears off, and you know that she’s okay, you’ll feel it, too—the deep sense of failure. She won’t come to you either. She’ll turn away from you and keep everything to herself. But you can’t let her. If you do, she’ll self-destruct. You have to invade her space, remind her every hour that you love her.” He looked at my sister, pure love shining in his eyes. He settled a hand on her shoulder.

“I did fail her,” I muttered, looking at the two of them. “I vowed to keep her safe, and now, look where we are.”

“You didn’t fail her, Ryan.” Celine jumped from her spot and came to sit next to me. She leaned down to hug me and squashed me with her big belly. I bit back a grunt of pain. “God has a plan for you both. You just have to heal with each other first.”

“I just need to know she’s okay,” I said when she pulled back from me. “I need to see her.”

A nurse in bright pink scrubs came into the room then. “Mr. Wilson, I’ve been asked to give you the choice of being in the room for the stillbirth.” She didn’t meet my eyes, uncomfortably glancing around the room.

Stillbirth.

My stomach churned.

“Is she awake?” I choked on my words.

“No, sir. We had to operate on her to remove the piece in her abdomen. But we’ll be waking her shortly and giving her the option of holding the baby as protocol.”There was protocol for twisted shit like this?

“Go, Ryan.” I shook my head at Celine, suddenly overcome with sadness and pain and anger and guilt. I was a fucking mess.

“I can’t see this. I can’t see our child dead. What will she think of me?” I sank into the pillows, my heart racing at the thought. I had seen enough death. I didn’t need to see this, too. I would never recover.

“You’ll never forgive yourself if you don’t. Go. Hold her. Take a picture. Amber will need you.” Ace helped me into the wheelchair that the young nurse then pushed through the halls until we were in the maternity ward. She wheeled me through two big double doors labeled ‘Operating’. She paused outside the room to stand in front of me.

“This is going to be disturbing. You need to prepare yourself, Mr. Wilson. They will be in the process of waking your wife, and she’s going to find out now that she’s having a stillbirth to a child that she didn’t know about. Are you ready?”

As if anyone could ever be fucking ready for shit like that. I nodded, swallowing the lump in my throat as she wheeled me into a pink room, where my beautiful wife was lying on a bed, her red hair tucked beneath a blue cap on her head, her body covered by a sheet.

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