Page 76 of Reclaiming Adelaide

The nurse tucked her hand into her shirt pocket and handed me a sonogram image. I blinked back my listless vision and stared at a small blob mixed in a sea of gray and black.

“I kept it for you so you could see when you woke up,” she said as I studied the seven and a half week-old baby growing inside of me.

I shook my head and gave it back to her, my hands trembling. “Take it back. I don’t want it.”

Her brows furrowed. “I’m sorry, I thought you’d want to—”

“I do,” I said. “I just don’t have a place to put it, and he…” I glanced towards Jake, who stirred. “He doesn’t know yet, does he?”

The nurse shook her head and stuffed the picture back into her pocket. “I understand.” She smiled and finished recording my vitals. “The doctor didn’t tell him if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Yeah, I’m not sure if a surprise party is something he’d appreciate now.Or ever. The last thing I had in my mind was setting down a pee stick in front of him and saying, ‘surprise, you’re going to be a daddy. Now we can live happily ever after.’

That’ll go down well.

“Thank you,” I said, the exchange taking too much out of me.

Maddy laid her hand on my arm. “Is there anything I can get you?”

I shook my head, my lids doused with weights too heavy for me to lift.

“Get some rest. You’ve had a hard couple of days.”

Days?

Baby?

My body sank into the bed until it swallowed me up in the darkness of dreams with veritable nightmares.

23

Jakesatonthecouch as he talked on the phone, his rugged appearance a meager example of the hell he must’ve gone through in the last few days. “I need you to make sure she arrives,” he said as I caught bits and pieces of his conversation with someone about Becca, who’d he sent home.

I’d ruined their visitation to their family’s graves, leaving Becca to mourn their death alone while Jake sat by my side, making sure they took care of me when he should be with his sister, consoling her—a consequence of my selfish actions I hadn’t thought through.

A nurse sporting gray scrubs and purple clogs walked in. “I think it’s time to get you dressed.” She rubbed the sanitizer she’d gotten at the door all over her hands. “How does that sound?”

I shook my head and whimpered as Jake stood from the couch and pocketed his phone. “I’ll help her with that.”

The headache assaulting my brain from it nearly frying had begun to wear off, but that didn’t mean I could tolerate the loud noises.

One of the many doctors I’d gotten to know, Doctor Jennings, explained how my body would feel as though I’d bar hopped all night without drinking an ounce of water, but so long as blood work kept improving, it wouldn’t last long. That was over twenty-four hours ago, and it had barely started waning.

He’d also promised Jake that if my neurologist signed off on the cognitive test I’d taken, and my blood work looked great, I could go home today. Which had me champing at the bit and begging for Tylenol.

I glanced back and forth between them. Would this be another thing Jake insisted on doing? Like when the nurse came in to give me a sponge bath the night, I’d first gained consciousness two days ago.

He was so close to being removed from the hospital until I’d stopped the argument, and he calmed down.

“It’s okay. I can do it on my own,” I said, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed and touching my socked feet to the floor.

I’d been able to get up and use the restroom all on my own, but that didn’t stop Jake from walking around the bedside and gripping my elbow for support.

I wasn’t weak or unable to stand. In fact, I felt almost normal, aside from the body aches and headache. Not to mention the massive bruise inside my thigh from the catheter they’d used to cool my blood. There was also the slight twinge of nausea, but now that I knew I was pregnant, I didn’t expect that to go away anytime soon.

“Thank you,” I said, glancing up at Jake. His tall, massive frame dwarfed the woman standing behind him.

“At least let me disconnect the IVs first,” she said, coming around to his side with a tender smile that would disarm even the grumpiest of men.

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