1
Quinn
I don’t know what hurts worse: my wrist or my stomach. The pain there is more concerning, and my wrist could be broken in two and my mind would still be on my baby. I know it takes a lot to hurt a baby this early in the pregnancy, but that doesn’t stop me from worrying. I flatten my hand over my stomach, looking at the spot where the guy was just standing. I’m shocked, scared, and unable to figure out why he looked so familiar.
Sam takes off after the guy, and I stand there, rooted to the spot for a moment before I shake myself and get my phone from the floor. The screen has blacked out, and I hold it up, unlocking it with facial recognition, and call 911.
“911. What is the location of your emergency?” the dispatcher asks.
“I, uh, I don’t know,” I breathe, heart still racing. Am I imagining it, or is the pain in my stomach turning into dull cramps? “I’m at my boyfriend’s house,” I rush out, realizing that’s not helping my case. “And I don’t know his address. I’m visiting from out of town. Sorry.”
“It’s all right, we can attempt to track your location. What is your emergency?”
“Some guy was pounding on the door and then burst in,” I say and pull the phone away from my ear, putting it on speaker, and go to Maps so I can see where I am. “He hit me with the door and I think he’s on drugs.”
“Is he there with you now?”
“No. He left.” I drop a pin at my location and give the dispatcher the address.
“Keep your door locked. An officer is on his way.”
“Thank you.”
I hang up, still shaken, and completely ignore the dispatcher’s advice. Sam is out there, and I need to make sure he’s okay. Almost tripping over the entry rug again, I step over it and into the hall. Sam rounds the corner, jogging back toward me. He’s not black and blue or bleeding at least.
“Fucker ran out into the street. I lost him.”
Nodding, I step back inside and lock the door as soon as Sam is inside. “I called the cops. Someone will be here soon.”
“Good. Are you okay?” He plows a hand through his blonde hair.
I bring my hands to my stomach and look down. Getting hit with the knob hurt, and the base of the door also whacked my feet. I just didn’t realize it until now when I see a broken and bleeding toenail. My left wrist aches something terrible, and it’s a little hard to move.
“I’m not sure.”
“How far along are you?”
“Eight weeks.”
Sam lets out a sigh of relief. “Your uterus is still low in your pelvis. You should be okay. But your wrist…” He gently takes my arm and I wince. “It’s starting to swell.”
“It hurts. I have carpal tunnel in that one.”
“It wouldn’t make it suddenly swell like this. Can you move your fingers?”
I carefully bend all five fingers in toward my palm.
“What about move your wrist?”
“Oww,” I say when I try to bend my wrist up.
“It’s either a sprain of a fracture.”
“Great,” I mumble.
“Sit and try to relax. I’ll get you ice.”
Moving to the couch, I bring my right hand to the spot where the doorknob hit. It’s right below my belly button, and even though I know the baby is nestled deep inside my uterus, it’s hard to imagine it not being right there, feeling the shock wave of getting hit so hard I fell over.
“Are you okay in there?” I whisper, tears filling my eyes. This baby wasn’t planned. Archer and I weren’t even dating at the time of conception. Knowing I’m having a baby has turned my life upside down. But not having this baby would catapult my life into darkness.
Sam comes back into the living room carrying an ice pack.
“Archer got called in for surgery,” I say as he sits on the couch next to me.
“I know. He called on his way to make sure I’d look out for you. I’m doing a bang-up job.”
“It’s not your fault. Do you have any idea who that was?”
“Not at all.” Sam puts pillows under my arm, elevating my wrist and then carefully arranging the ice pack. “If the swelling gets worse, you should go in for an X-ray. Sometimes scaphoid fractures can be confused for sprains.”
My right hand is still on my stomach. “I can’t get an X-ray.”
“You’ll be well protected, and it’s just your wrist. Not your abdomen.”
I’m still being exposed to unnecessary radiation, which makes me feel guilty even though I didn’t do anything wrong. I fell. More than just fell, actually. I got knocked over.
“The guy knew Archer.”
“Maybe he was an old patient or something?” Sam gets up and goes to the window, looking down at the street that runs along the building.
“Are there cameras on the traffic lights?” I ask, moving the ice pack a bit. It’s getting cold already.
“I’m not sure.”
“If there are, I can hack in and see if I can find anything.”
Sam turns, eyebrow raised. “Hack in? You can do that?”
“I can. But I won’t.” I sigh. “I just need something to do to calm my nerves.”
“And hacking into the city’s traffic cams will calm your nerves?”
“Most definitely,” I say and then laugh. Sam laughs too, shaking his head. “Archer said you are good with computers.”
“It’s my thing.”
Sam goes to the door and looks through the p
eephole before moving back to the couch. “Have you really hacked into things?”
“Nothing that could get me arrested. Well, I did once, but I was helping the police catch a guy who’d racked up thousands on stolen credit cards. My brother is a cop in a small town,” I explain. “Their tech department isn’t the best.”
“That’s pretty damn cool.” He turns away from the door and comes back to the couch. He’s on edge, and not being able to catch and beat up this Bobby guy is bothering him.
“Should I try calling Archer?”
Sam checks the time. “He’s still in the OR. I’ll call the hospital and have him notified as soon as he’s out.”
“Thanks, Sam.”
A minute later, the cops arrive, and we give our statements. As much as I try to root for the law, the two officers who showed up don’t seem too concerned. They don’t seem to really care at all, actually. The guy just opened the door hard. He didn’t break and enter. He didn’t actually touch me. They say they’ll keep an eye out, and leave.
Locking the door after them, I debate on calling Weston and asking for advice on the subject. The guy creeped me out because of the way he looked at me, and the way he saw me in this shirt and knew it had something to do with Archer. I guess that’s not technically illegal, but I still feel like something more should be done.
Walking back to the couch, I bend over to pick my phone up from the coffee table. A sharp, stabbing pain hits me right in the stomach, and I freeze, waiting for it to go away.
But it doesn’t, and the sharp pain turns into a deep cramp.
2
Archer
“You’re needed in the ER.”
I give the medical assistant a quizzical look. “The ER? Are you sure?”
She’s sitting behind a desk in the PACU and just got off the phone. Her eyes dart to it and she nods. “That’s what they said. I asked twice since it’s not your area, but you’re being requested by Dr. Harris.”
Sam is in the ER asking for me? He’s off today and he’s never in the emergency room. Why would he—oh shit.
Quinn.
My phone battery was low, so I plugged it in and left it with my clothes when I changed into surgical scrubs. I rush through the recovery area to get it and see I have missed texts from both Quinn and Sam. The most recent one is from Sam, and I have to read it twice because my brain refuses to believe what I’m seeing.
Someone tried to break in and Quinn got hurt. We’re at the ER. I’ll have you paged.
I scroll up, reading as I run down the hall, stopping only to get into an elevator. None of his other texts give me information, and neither do Quinn’s. I get into the elevator and call Quinn, but I don’t have service in here.
My heart starts to race. Sweat breaks out along my back. Someone tried to break in? Quinn must have been fucking terrified. I curl my fingers into a fist, rage surging through me. Quinn got hurt. Bad enough to come to the ER. If anything happened to the baby…nope. I can’t think like that.
The baby is fine. Quinn is fine.
They have to be.
They’re my life. My family. I knew I wanted the baby from the moment I saw those bold, black words on the pregnancy test, but the thought of having it taken away from me makes my heart ache, making me realize just how bad I want this. The timing might be all wrong, and we might be doing things a bit out of order, but I’m ready.
I want Quinn to have my baby and for us to be together, living happily ever after for the rest of our lives. I want to marry her when the time is right and add another baby or two, hell, maybe even three, to our family. We’ll be loud and crazy, and things will be hectic and chaotic, but it’ll be perfect.
The elevator stops one floor down and an elderly couple takes their sweet ass time getting in with their walkers. I do my best not to glower at them and repeatedly push the button taking me to the main floor.
My heart beats faster with each passing second. Sometimes you don’t realize how much something means to you until it’s taken away. Nothing’s been taken—not really—but the thoughts of what if are bad enough.
I move to the front of the elevator and ask what floor the old folks are going to. Thankfully, it’s the same one, and we start the descent down. It only takes thirty seconds, but it feels like an eternity. I run down the hall, and when people see doctors running, they usually get out of the way, assuming I’m responding to an emergency.
I push through the swinging ER doors and look around for a nurse or attendant to tell me which room Quinn is in. They’ll be able to tell me faster than I could look it up myself. Then I see Sam standing near the nurses’ station, talking with a pretty redhead. He doesn’t look overly concerned, which has to be a good sign.
“Where’s Quinn?” I ask as soon as he sees me. “Is she okay?”
“She’s fine, I’ll take you back.”
“If she’s fine, why is she here?”
We start walking through the hall. “I was able to get an ultrasound faster in the ER.”
I stop dead in my tracks. “If she’s okay, why does she need an ultrasound?”
“To give her peace of mind,” he says and keeps walking.
“That’s not giving me peace of mind. What happened?”
He slows when we get to the room Quinn is in and lowers his voice. “Some guy was banging on the door asking for you. Quinn unlocked it to let him in, and the guy shoved the door open. The knob got her right in the stomach, but she’s so early in the pregnancy you know she’s most likely fine. She’s bruised and scared, so I made a call and got her in to get an ultrasound, and Dr. Taylor is coming down from delivery when she gets a moment.”
“Thanks, man.” I let out a breath.
“Of course. It’s the least I could do. Quinn’s pretty freaked out. And she hurt her wrist. It’s swelling up, and I told her it might be fractured, but she refused an X-ray.”
I blink, taking all that in. “Someone was asking for me?”
“Yeah. He looked fucked up on something.”
My phone is still in my hand, and I look down to unlock it. I go to my pictures only to remember I don’t have a single photo of Bobby. Logging onto Facebook instead, I madly scroll through my mom’s profile until I find a picture of him.
“Is that the guy?”
Sam narrows his eyes, inspecting the photo. Bobby isn’t tweaked out in it, and the filter my mom used makes him look almost healthy.
“Yeah. Why do you—oh fuck. Is that your brother?”
“It is.” I bring my hand to the back of my neck. Bobby was at the apartment. Looking for me. I haven’t even seen him in years, and I didn’t know he had my address. “Why the fuck is he—it doesn’t matter. She’s in here?”
Sam nods and I go in without knocking or seeing if another physician is in there. I need to get to Quinn. As soon as her eyes meet mine, I know she needs me too.
“Archer.” She pushes up off the bed, reaching for me. She’s wearing pajama shorts and my Duke University shirt. Her hair is messy, and her eyes are watery.
“I’m so sorry, babe.” I sit on the bed next to her and take her in my arms. She’s shaking.
“The nurse was just in here,” she squeaks out, voice tightening. “She tried to find the heartbeat with a doppler and couldn’t. I wasn’t really worried before. Sam thought it’d be reassuring to come in and see that everything is okay. But now I’m freaking out more.”
Her words send a jolt of panic through me. All I hear is there was no heartbeat, and I have to force myself to think about things objectively in order to remember dopplers don’t always pick up heartbeats this early.
“That doesn’t mean something happened to the baby.”
“But what if it did?”
“This early on, the baby is well protected in the womb. It takes a lot of force to cause damage.” Keeping my cool and not getting overwhelmed with emotions is part of what makes me a good surgeon. I feel for every one of my patients, I really do. But I don’t let it get in th
e way of taking the best possible care of them. I have to do the same for Quinn.
She nods and lays back. Goosebumps break out over her flesh, and I get up, going to the cabinet above the sink, and pulling out a white sheet. Shaking it out, I drape it over Quinn and sit back down next to her, squeezing in as much as I can on the small hospital bed.
“Sam said you hurt your wrist.”
She winces as she lifts it up. The swelling isn’t as bad as I anticipated, but she’s obviously hurt.
“It twisted when I fell.”
I close my eyes, gently taking her wrist in my hand, and feel a seething hatred for Bobby rise from deep inside of me. Over the years, there have been many times I’ve wanted to beat the shit out of him. I’ve held back for various reasons: not wanting to upset my mother, risk getting charged with assault, or damage my hands when I need them for surgery.
But now I don’t care. The next time I see him, I’m hitting him as hard as I fucking can.
“Do you think it’s broken?” she asks. “I really don’t want to do an X-ray. The baby is so little and developing major organs right now.”
I carefully examine her wrist, hating seeing her in pain. “No. I think it’s sprained.”
“Thank God. Wait. Sprains take longer to heal, right?”