Page 75 of Screwed (Dad Bod Contracting 4)
“Can I go back? I need to at least check on Jesse—the father.”
She hesitates, and then nods. “Just you.”
She indicates the door, comes around and swipes her card to let me through. It’s not hard to find Jesse—there are four burly security guards surrounding him, trying to reason with him, to keep him out of the operating room. I take one look at the scene and jog back to the doorway.
I open it, wave at James, and he trots over, follows me in. Jeanine is studiously looking the other way; smartly, too—Jesse is causing a god-awful ruckus, and James is probably the only one who might be able to get through to him.
James sees Jesse being restrained by the guards—Jesse is shouting, straining, fighting, and it’s taking all four guards to hold him back. James wades through the scrum, pushes the guards away.
“Jess, brother. It’s me.” He grabs Jesse’s wrists in his ham hock fists. “Take a breath, Jess. Cool off.”
“She’s in there!” Jesse wrestles against James’s hold. “I need—I need—”
“They’re doing everything they can, Jess. I promise you. There’s nothing you can do in there, brother. Nothing except get in the way.”
Jesse has tears in his eyes, on his cheeks. “Not her, too. Not her, too.”
James yanks Jesse forward into a rib-cracking, unbreakable bear hug. “I know, Jess. But it’s going to be okay. She’s going to be okay.”
“Not her, too,” Jesse repeats. “I can’t lose her, too.”
Renée was his sister. Now Imogen, his fiancé, the mother of his baby, is in a similar situation.
“I have to go in there. I have to see her.” Jesse struggles, but even he is no match for James, who holds on to him for dear life, keeping Jesse wrapped up in a hug.
“You can’t.”
“You were there, goddamn you,” Jesse rages. “You got to say goodbye.”
“No one is saying goodbye, Jess. Not today. She’s going to be okay.”
“You don’t fucking know that!”
“I do,” I say, catching the attention of both men. “She’s thirty weeks, Jesse. Early, but viable. They’re both going to be okay.”
“Promise me?” Jesse whispers, sagging in James’s arms. “Promise.”
The nurse in me knows better than to promise, but I meet his eyes and hold steady. “She’s going to be okay—they both will. Imogen and your baby will be okay.”
“Renée,” Jesse breathes. “The baby’s name is Renée.”
James grunts, and I realize it’s a barely restrained sob of his own.
The security guards are hovering close by. One of them meets James’s eyes while nodding at Jesse. “You got him?”
James nods. “We’re good.”
“No one’s going in there,” the security guard says, and his eyes go to me. “Not you either.”
I shake my head. “We’re staying here with him until we know what’s going on.”
The four guards cautiously leave, although I notice one of them surreptitiously takes up a spot in a corner down the hall.
Jesse has settled some, and I give him and James a little space. They lean back against the wall and murmur to each other in low tones—a private conversation, about Renée, I’m guessing.
How long we wait, it’s hard to tell. Time passes bizarrely in those narrow, fluorescent-lit, antiseptic hallways.
After a tense, awful, measureless amount of time, a doctor comes out, a facemask tugged down around his neck. He scans the hallway and sees us.
“Jesse O’Neill?” he asks, glancing from James to Jesse.
“Yeah,” Jesse grunts, steps forward. “How—how is she?”
The doctor smiles, and we all breathe—for the first time, it feels like. “She’s okay—they’re both okay.”
Jesse hesitates. “Both of them?”
The doctor nods. “Your wife lost a good bit of blood, so she’s weak, but she’ll recover in no time. Your daughter will be on oxygen for a while, but she’s looking well. She just needs a little extra help for a while, and then she’ll be breathing on her own.”
Jesse shakes, goes limp with relief, and James has to hold him up. “Thank god.” He lets James hold him up a moment, and then finds his feet. “I need to see them.”
The doctor nods. “Of course. You’ll need to scrub up, just as a precaution for your daughter’s health. This young, their immune systems aren’t up to par just yet, so we have to be a little extra cautious for a while.” He gestures at the doors he’s just exited from. “This way.”
Jesse nods, and follows the doctor, pausing in the door to look back at James—the look they exchange is beyond my ability to translate, but it’s deep, heavy, and significant.
James nods after a moment. “Go.”
Jesse’s eyes close briefly, and then open, and he nods at James before vanishing through the doorway.
Once he’s gone, James sags against the wall and covers his face with both hands. He breathes deeply, shoulders hunched. I go to him, stand in front of him, gather him toward me. He leans against me, sagging into me, buries his face in my hair. I run my hands in circles over his shoulders, holding him close.
