Page 113 of Ruck Me

Chapter37

EOIN

“Hey, baby!”Aoife called as I entered the apartment and set my bag on the built-in shelf we’d had installed a couple of weeks ago so we wouldn’t keep tripping over my equipment every time we walked out the door. “Good practice?”

I rolled my shoulders as I made my way to her, a little stiff from the lifting I’d done that afternoon. “It was good, but I’m going to need a long, hot bath tonight.”

“Wish I could join you,” she answered mournfully, pressing the heel of her palms into the curve of her lower spine. Aoife had been having severe bad back pain the past few days, and her doctor had warned against hot taking baths to ease the discomfort.

“Want me to give you another massage?” I asked, dropping a kiss on her forehead.

She smiled and waved me off. “It can wait. You stink,” she laughed, crinkling her nose and pushing meaway.

Forty minutes later, I stepped out of our bedroom, clad in a pair of flannel pajama bottoms, rubbing a towel over my hair to dry it. “I was going to make us some spaghetti,” I said before tossing it in the basket in the cupboard near the washer. “Aoife?”

I looked around the small space—an open plan living/dining/kitchen combo that wasn’t very large—but didn’t see her. Which was impossible since I could scan the entire fucking space in less than two seconds.

“Over here,” she called out, her voice small and full offear.

The hair all over my body stood on end as I raced across the room and dropped to her side. Aoife was sitting on the floor, her back against the sofa, a wet spot growing between her thighs. “Something’s wrong,” she whispered, her tiny hands clenched over her hard, round belly.

I bolted up and grabbed my phone. Dialing 999, I explained to the dispatcher that the baby wasn’t due for weeks, but it looked like Aoife’s water had already broken.

“I’m scared, Eoin,” she cried, tears streaming down herface.

“It’ll be okay,” I promised while I prayed to God to make my words true. “Emergency services are on their way. Everything will beokay.”

I had no idea if that was true, but I couldn’t entertain the alternative. I laid my hands on Aoife's belly and spoke to my son. “Hey, little man. I need you to be a good little lad and go easy on yer ma.” I looked up into her shining eyes. “Everything’s going to be okay, baby.”

“You can’t know that,” she answered at the same moment we heard the sound of sirens approaching in the distance.

“I’m going to go open the door. Don’tmove.”

She laughed, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “No question of that,” she answered, and then her eyes screwed shut in pain as she let out a long guttural moan. “Eoin …”

I stood in the middle of the room, halfway between the front door and the love of my existence, her middle clutched in agony. I jolted to the door, threw the lock, and raced back to her side. “Hang on baby, just a few more minutes.” The next few minutes were a blur of panic and relief as a team of medics rushed through the door and began assessing Aoife.

As they were loading her onto a gurney, Declan and Sophie came runningin.

“What’s going on?” he hollered, rushing to Aoife’s side and pushing me out of the way. Grabbing his sister’s hand, he started barking questions at the medics.

“Sir, we need you to step out of the way,” one of them said as they tried to wheel the gurney out the door, their path blocked by the cabinet. They'd been able to get it into the apartment by sheer brute force, but with Aoife resting atop it, they needed to be much more careful. They tried a few more times to squeeze through, but we’d had the thing built too damn large, and now the door couldn’t open wide enough for the gurney tofit.

While Declan argued about taking care of his sister, I tore that damn thing apart with my bare hands, throwing pieces of broken wood out of the way so they’d be able to get Aoife into the ambulance before her situation deteriorated any further. As it was, she was in worse pain than she’d been even a few minutes before, and from the look of things, she was starting to fade in and out of consciousness. They had a mask over her face to help with her breathing, but her head was lolling to the side in a way that made me want to rip the whole fucking housedown.

“Declan, help him!” Sophie screamed, pointing at me down on my knees, tearing the clunky piece of furniture from the wall with bare, bloody hands. Declan turned to me, his head flashing between the gurney and the door, and dropped down next to me. Between the two of us, we managed to get it ripped from the wall in a fraction of the time it had taken Cian Kelly to buildit.

As they loaded Aoife into the back of the van, Declan tried to jump in beside her, but I grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him out. “I don’t think so,” I said, climbingin.

“That’s my sister in there!” he hollered, his finger pointed at Aoife.

“And she’s my woman, and he's my baby,” I answered, the door closing on his face as the final medic climbed inside next tome.

A short time later, Aoife was being wheeled through the hospital corridors while I ran behind, answering the doctor’s questions. They pushed her through a set of double doors, and as I went to follow, a nurse stopped me. “I’m sorry sir, but you can’t go in there.”

“Like fuck I can’t,” I barked, attempting to step around her, but she was fast, and she was determined—more determined than any defender I’d played against this season. I wasn’t getting through unless she decided Iwas.

“Sir, your wife has been taken to a sterile environment. You can’t go in without scrubs. And you need to washup.”

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