Page 94 of Grave Curse

Today I might lose my wife and sons.

Agony ripped through me, a kind I had never felt before. There were no wounds that I could see, but the pain of it went so deep I couldn’t breathe. My soul was being savaged into bloody little pieces and all I could do was fuckingsitthere and do nothing. I couldn’t fight this enemy and make them pay. There was no enemy. There was only this sick and terrible dread chewing up my insides, coupled with a self-directed rage that I hadn’t forced Ginger to check in to the hospital yesterday. That had been a mistake.Mygoddamn mistake.

Some protector I was.

If I’d done my job right, none of this would be happening now. I’d let her down because at the time I’d wanted her to be happy. I was such a fucking moron, thinking about happiness instead of life and death, and if I lost them now I wouldn’t be able to survive it. I wouldn’t want to. Ginger and I belonged together, I’ve known that since she was five. I couldn’t be without my Gingersnap, I just couldn’t—

“Tyr.”

I looked up. Ashtray headed my way, his uneven gait slow but steady as he made his way to me on his crutches. Mabel was just behind him, and she veered off to the receptionist area while her man settled in beside me.

“I called Romeo and the others to let them all know you weren’t going to come into work today,” Ash said before his beefy hand clamped down on my shoulder. “How’re you holding up?”

“If I lose my woman, I’m not going to survive her by five goddamn minutes and I don’t give a shit who knows it. We weremade to be together, whether it’s in life or in death, so if she goes, I go.”

“Hey now, don’t talk like that, brother. What, you’re just going to orphan your little baby boys? They’d grow up hard, thinking that their own father didn’t love them, because you left them to fend for themselves in this great, big world. You wouldn’t do that to your own sons, would you?”

Oh, God. My babies. My boys. “I might lose them, too.”

“Yeah, but you might not. No matter who survives this, you have the responsibility to keep on going for them, no matter how much you might want to just lie down and die.”

I could only shake my head as the despair took vicious, bloody bites out of that thing I called a soul. “You don’t understand what this is like, Ash.”

“Oh, I understand. I might not have lived this exact same scenario, but I know this moment that you’re living through right now. Every man has a breaking point, Tyr. And if they’re lucky, they’ll live their whole life without ever discovering what their breaking point is. Yours is right now. Mine… well.” Ashtray sighed heavily, and suddenly he seemed to age ten years as he looked off into the distance. “I wanted to die when I woke up after being shot in the back and I couldn’t feel anything past my waist. Weirdest fucking sensation. Then came the panic because I was paralyzed, and then came the claustrophobia, because I was trapped in my own body and I couldn’t move. And then… then came the grief. Oh God, the grief. My legs had died out from under me, and all I could do was grieve for the life I’d had just hours earlier, when I was a whole man. That was the moment I wanted to just up and die. I’ll never forget lying there, helpless, as I grieved for the life that I thought had been lost forever.”

I had trouble making my throat work after hearing my friend’s hidden pain. “But it wasn’t forever, Ash.”

“I didn’t know that at the time. Nobody did. And you know what? You don’t know that, either. You never know what life is gonna throw at you, Tyr. The trick is to keep hanging on long enough to catch whatever it throws. And don’t forget, at the end of today—this shitty nightmare of a day—you still don’t know what’s waiting down the road for you. Whether it’s the family you’ve been dreaming of for nine months, or the family you’ve already built in us Gravediggers, all that family is counting on you to be there. Just as you can count on all of us to be there for you. I mean, you were all there for me when I needed you the most. Let us be here for you now.”

I hadn’t expected anyone to have words to reach me, much less Ashtray, but he was right. I had family. Ginger and our babies had become the nucleus of that family, but they weren’t all that I had. Now more than ever, I had to keep that in mind if I had any hope of having a life after today.

Time became the enemy. Minutes felt like hours as people began to trickle in. Loki came in soon after Ashtray and Mabel, and proceeded to drive me crazy asking me every few minutes if he could get me anything. Romeo and Shiloh came in after that, immediately followed by Misty and Lasso. When I asked her who was minding the store, she said she’d put a sign in the front window stating, “FAMILY EMERGENCY” and locked everything up tight.

It was an emergency, and Misty saw us as her family. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cried, but damn, that got my throat knotted up like nothing else.

One hour crawled into two, then three. Twice a nurse came in to keep me updated. At first she’d tried to pull me to a private area, but one look around the room made me assure her that we were all Ginger’s family. That seemed to knock the nurse a bit off her stride, but she rallied enough to tell us that Ginger had been stabilized. An audible sigh of relief went up even asshe explained they now needed to do emergency surgery to stop the hemorrhaging, and they would be taking the triplets via C-section at that time.

By degrees it hit me. Today was the day I became a father.

The next time the nurse came in, it was with a beaming smile and pictures on her phone that she’d taken of each baby as they were removed from Ginger’s womb. The nurse was happy to report that all three of my sons were doing great, each over five pounds, and currently known as Colgrave One, Colgrave Two and Colgrave Three. Recalling how much blood had been on the kitchen floor, all I could think was that it was a miracle they’d survived.

Now it was Ginger’s turn to pull through.

“If anyone can do it, it’s our Ginger,” Mabel announced while the whole ER waiting room cheered. Swear to Christ, there were even people who’d come in with their own personal emergencies who were cheering us on.

The Name Game began. I didn’t tell them that the name of our firstborn was destined to be Oliver, after the gentle-hearted aunt he would never know. It was a family name, a name of profound honor, and I needed my firstborn to carry on with it so that a part of Olive would carry on into the future. The second and third names were also decided—Augustus, or Gus, and Magnus—but I kept them to myself, since everyone was preoccupied with finding what they believed was just the right name for my boys. All I cared about now was holding them in my arms for the first time, and watching Ginger’s face as she cradled them as well.

She just had to live to be able to do that.

That’s all you have to do, baby girl. Just live. Please, just live.

“Tyr Colgrave?”

I shot to my feet like I’d been launched off the chair when a male voice carried across the waiting room. An older African-American man in scrubs waited at the heavy automated doors. Our eyes met and when he beamed at me, I felt the weight of the world lift from my heart.

“I take it you’re Mr. Colgrave?” All smiles, the man moved forward, large hand outstretched. “I’m Dr. Haddon, I performed the surgery on your wife. Everything went great, with all three of your boys coming through like champions. We also handled the hemorrhaging that took place when the placenta tore from the uterine wall. At this time, we’re hopeful that no permanent damage was done to her uterus, so once she heals completely—I’d give it six months to a year, though her OB/GYN will probably be able to guide your timetable on this better than I would—you should be able to try for another pregnancy, if that’s what you and your partner choose to do.”

To know that she was alive and that there would be no permanent damage was beyond the best news. Nothing else mattered. “Thank you so much, Doc,” I said, my voice as rough as I felt. “Is there any way that I can see her? I won’t disturb her, I just want to put eyes on her to know she’s still here with me.”

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