Page 2 of Storm's Embrace

Silence met his question and he stilled with his clothes in his free hand. “Hello? Are you still there?”

“Yes sir, I’m here.” Eli frowned when she paused again. “There’s been an incident in the ER.”

“An incident?” He blew out a harsh breath. “What kind of incident.” He dropped the clothes and paced across the room. “I want to speak with Josie.Now!”

“Dr. Storm… Your wife is in surgery. I—”

“Surgery… What…”

Josie’s was a normal pregnancy. She’d been overdoing it, sure, but nothing that should have…

“I need to fucking know what’s happening with my wife, and somebody had better tell me.”

“Your baby is being delivered by emergency Cesarean section as we speak,” she replied instead, her words almost bringing him to his knees.

He swallowed hard—barely able to breathe—his heart constricting. “Is Matthew…” He sank onto the bed and squeezed the phone tight. “Is Josie—”

“Dr. Storm, I can’t say any more. I don’t know all the details… But… Please, hurry.”

After quickly throwing on his clothes, he drove to the hospital on autopilot, repeating more times than he could count, “Josie’s fine. Matthew’s fine.”

It was the only thing keeping him sane.

He parked haphazardly alongside several police cars outside the emergency bay doors, jumped out of his SUV, and rushed to the entrance. One of the officers could give him a ticket if they wanted to. He didn’t give a damn.

The doors opened with a loud whoosh—made louder in the eerie silence meeting him when he entered the normally bustling ER. Eli’s steps faltered, but he refused to panic at the somber faces turning away from him—faces of friends and staff he’d known for years—as he hurried toward the main nurses’ station.

It was nothing. They were just concerned. They…

Bright yellow crime scene tape strung across a portion of the ER and one of the treatment areas stopped him short.

“Oh god,” he groaned. What had happened? He reluctantly let his gaze be drawn beyond the tape to the officers milling about and the careful steps they made around pools of blood.

“Josie—”

“Dr. Storm?” Startled, he turned toward the woman standing behind him.

“Wh-wh-wh-where’s my wife?” he whispered. He couldn’t think—didn’t know what to ask—while the pounding in his ears grew louder and his vision blurred.

The woman looking up at him smiled, though it didn't reach her sorrow-filled eyes. “Come with me.” She took his arm and led him down the hallway, though his steps dragged, to a private consultation room used for families in grief. Eli entered the room, denial rising up inside him when a disheveled Stan Ashton, one of the hospital administrators, stood from his seat.

Eli grabbed the closest chair and collapsed into it.

“No…”

Stan spoke in gentle tones while Eli tried to take it all in through a haze of denial.

“Distraught father…family died in wreck…gun…police…weapons drawn…Josie stepped in…too close…crossfire…I’m sorry.”

Eli remained trancelike once Stan had finished, shaking his head when the man asked, “Is there anyone I can call?”

It’s not real. It can’t be.

He broke from his stupor and glanced up when the door opened and a nurse walked in carrying a small bundle.

“Matthew,” he whispered. Their baby boy. The baby whose arrival he and Josie had anticipated with such joy.

The nurse carefully handed him his son wrapped up tight in a blue blanket with his head covered by one of those little knit caps. He took in a shuddering breath as his misting eyes traced over his son's still features.

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