Page 78 of Devil's Own: Roughneck

“Here’s the deal,” I tell them. “I came in here to tell you they’re prepping Dusty for surgery. The babies are headed to the NICU as soon as they’re born.”

“Is Jake going in with her?”Mrs.Dr. Brand asks. Jake is Reaper’s given name. None of us call him that, not even Dusty. I don’t want to tell her the truth because she knows what it means. But this is what I said I’d do. So I do it.

“No. They won’t let him in there.”

A chill spreads around the room. Dusty’s mom stifles a sob, shaking uncontrollably. She’s not a doctor at this moment. She’s a mother. Dr. Brand pulls his wife into him, holding her as she cries.

“I’m going to see what I can find out,” Caitlin, Dr. Brennan-Ellis, says and she powers past me out into the hallway. Dusty and Caitlin are close, too. As Dusty’s a physician’s assistant and not an MD, she has to work under the license of a certified MD or DO. She’d been working under her father’s license since she started practicing, but her father had a real problem with Dusty hooking up with Reaper and used his license to try to break them up. Rather than give up the man she loved, Dusty contacted Caitlin. Given that she’s married to Duke, the president of the Brimstone Lords, she holds no prejudices against biker romances.

Reaper and Gia walk into the waiting room with us and he drops down onto a chair next to Aja. Gee sits on his other side, pressing her hand to his back for support.

“She wanted the girls,” he says. “I’d have been happy with just the two of us for the rest of my life. But she wanted to be a mom. All the women having babies…” He turns to Aja. “Little Freya is so damn cute. She wanted what you and Cut have.”

“I know,” Aja whispers.

Then he looks up at Dusty’s parents. “I know you’ll turn this on me. If I wouldn’t have knocked her up—she wanted to be a mom.Fuck!” he screams. “What do I do without her? I can’t… Ican’t…”

Dusty’s mom pushes up from her seat and walks to Reaper. Aja moves over a chair to allow the woman to drop down next to him, and she gathers Reaper in her arms. They both cry. I fucking hate this.

While we await news, Waite walks in with Vlad and Nic, who stopped in the cafeteria to grab trays of coffee before joining us. They both look gutted. Nic is quite close with Dusty, too. As time passes, more brothers and their old ladies show up. It’s taking an awful long time. Don’t C-sections go faster than this?Shit.Maybe I don’t want kids with Gee. I don’t know that I could handle this.

Finally, aftera million-fucking-years,a doctor comes in to update us. “Mr. Carr,” she says, and Reap stands. “The babies have been transferred to the NICU. I’ll get you an update as soon as I can.”

“My wife?” he asks.

The doctor’s face turns sad. “They’re still working with her.”

“Still?” he barks.

“She had another seizure on the table, and while they were dealing with that, more complications arose.”

Reaper’s face drops as he grips the back of his neck, and he looks about ready to puke. “What kind of complications?”

“She began losing a lot of blood. They had to infuse her. In the end, to save her life, they took her uterus.”

“They took her uterus?” Dusty’s mom asks. “But they’re still working on her?”

“Her blood pressure,” the doctor explains. “I haven’t been in on the surgery, so I don’t know more. I was asked to relay this information to you. We'll let you know as soon as we find out more.”

“When can I see my girls?” Reaper asks.

“Let me check on that. I’ll get you in to see them. Given the circumstances, you deserve at least that.” Then the doctor spins, striding out the door.

“Congratulations, man,” I say. “You’re a father now.” He shoots me a half-hearted smile.

“Ridley and Riordan. Dus picked the names. Ridley Jane and Riordan Elizabeth,” he says. Dusty’s mom sucks in a breath. “She named them after each of our moms.”

How does this happen to a healthy woman? She welcomed us into her life when she didn’t have to. We sought her out to help Nic. Then, we asked her to be the club doctor. She could’ve turned us down. Hell, everyone else had. Then she and Reap hooked up, andshit—she’s been a part of our club as long as Nic. I run my hands over my face. How do we go on without Dusty? My eyes move to my wife, still sitting beside Reap, holding his hand. And it hits me right now, like a brick between my fucking eyes—it’s the women. When I joined this club, I thought a good life meant drinking, getting laid, and living on the edge alongside my brothers. But I was wrong. That wasn’t a good life. That was an easy life. Here, we’re facing one of our biggest challenges, and we’re all keeping it together because of them. We started as a brotherhood, but the women made us afamily. And we’ll get throughthis as a family.

Eventually, the doctor who gave us the update comes back in. “Sorry it took me so long. I got called to help a patient. If you follow me, Mr. Carr, I’ll get you in to see your little girls now.”

Reaper shoots up from his seat, following the doctor out.

After another couple of hours, a nurse walks in to the still-packed-to-capacity waiting room. “You’re all here for Dusty Brand-Carr?”

Her parents stand. “Yes. We’re all her family.”

The nurse goes on. “Dr. Brennan-Ellis is with Dusty right now. She’s being transferred from recovery to a spot in the ICU.”

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