“Danny, trust me—”

Nope, wrong thing to say. Boom.

“Trust you! You? Oh, that’s rich. You run a bar, Sheila—a fucking bar filled with drunk assholes—and you let your female staff walk out to their cars at night alone?”

“Dan—”

“No,” Danny snapped, “I’ve heard it all before. Julie’s told me time and again. Your parking lot is well-lit, you have people buddy up when they can… how’d that buddy system work out for my wife tonight? How ‘bout my daughter?”

Sheila sat speechless, her mouth agape.

“Know you love, Julie, and that makes us friends, but I swear on my life, if something happens to that woman, I’m coming after you, your family, your bar, and everything you hold dear. That is not a threat, friend. It’s a promise.”

He stood and stalked to the large window. Hands splayed on the cool glass, Danny leaned forward to stare into the dark sky. Movement in the reflection caught his eye, and his gaze traveled to the image of Sheila, her shoulders trembling as quiet sobs racked her body. Still rain-soaked and most likely freezing, she wrapped her arms around herself and rocked in the chair. Shit, Julie would kill me if she knew how I treated her friend. Thinking about Julie in the operating room hurt, but knowing he was letting her down in the waiting room felt even worse. He couldn’t help her in there… he left the window and went back to the admissions window.

“Here” He placed a warm blanket around Sheila’s shoulders. The surprise in her eyes made him feel worse than the gratitude from her smile. “I’m scared, Sheel. Scared to fucking death. But I know my Julie. She’s stubborn as the day is long. She wanted to work, she would have. She wanted to walk to her car, she would have.”

Sheila pulled the blanket tighter and wiped the tears from her cheeks.

“Not gonna apologize for acting like a dick, but what happened…Christ, there are no words. But I’m sorry for taking it out on you, Sheel. You’ve been nothing but kind to her, to us. I’m…sorry.”

Chapter Thirteen

I’m Not Done Yet

“DR. BURKE?” DANNY left the vending machine, his coffee cup still under the drip, and hurried to the obstetrician’s side. After nearly three hours of waiting, Danny’s nerves were shot and his patience was worn thin. “How is she? When can I see her?”

The doctor slowly pulled the cap off her head. The eyes that had been filled with compassion hours before shone with a spark of satisfaction. “You’ve got yourself a fighter, Danny. It took nearly every trick in our box to get her bleeding under control. When everything else failed, we had to embolize, or in other words, block, the blood vessels that feed her uterus.”

The doctor may as well have been speaking a different language.

“What are you saying? Is she okay or not?” It wasn’t that Danny didn’t want the details; he just needed the bottom line first.

Sheila, who hadn’t left Danny’s side, walked over from the vending machine and asked the question Danny was too scared to even think. “Has she regained consciousness?”

The doctor nodded. “Yes, to both of your questions. Julie regained consciousness just before the anesthesiologist put her back under for the procedure, and now that the bleeding is under control, her stats are improving.”

“Thank God,” Danny sighed, his knees threatening to give out. “When can I see her?”

“Give us another half hour to get her situated, and I’ll have someone come and get you.”

The doctor turned to leave when panic struck Danny. “Doctor Burke…does she know?”

The doctor lifted a brow as if waiting for Danny to elaborate.

“She know about the baby?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No, it wasn’t something we wanted to tell her while she was unstable.” Compassion was back in the woman’s brown eyes. “But trust me, she knows. She may not admit it, not even to herself, but she knows.”

Danny swallowed hard and nodded, unsure of how to respond. But he didn’t need to, because the doctor’s next words hit home.

“What you guys experienced tonight was tragic, heartbreaking…but you still have each other. Don’t lose sight of that.”

He barely registered the doctor leaving, hardly noticed Sheila’s staring, because all he focused on was that he would never, could never, lose sight of Julie.

***

IT WAS COLD, unseasonably cold for mid-October. Julie could tell because people outside were bundled in coats with the collars pulled up around their ears. She watched them through the passenger window of Danny’s Ranger. She, however, felt nothing. Not the goose bumps that pebbled her skin, not the fact that her usually cool fingertips were freezing, not even the way her teeth chattered as her body shook. Nothing. She was numb, empty.

“Honey?” Danny’s voice held the careful tone it had had since the moment she woke up four days earlier. “How ‘bout I stop at a drive-through and get you some coffee? It’ll warm you up.” He looked at her quickly before he cranked up the heat and focused on the road.

“I’m not cold,” she whispered, her eyes glued to the window but her focus no longer on the present.

Memories of the look on her husband’s face when she opened her eyes after surgery swirled in her mind. Joy, gratitude, and love—raw and real—came with his tear-filled eyes and shallow breaths.

“Welcome back,” he’d said with an emotion-thickened voice. “Can’t tell you how happy I am to see your eyes, honey.”

She’d felt the same, relished the gentle kiss he’d placed on her mouth, but when she went to place her hand on his cheek, a plaster cast caught her attention. Flashes hit her all at once: the bar, the broom closet door, the rain…

“The baby?” she’d whimpered, inching her lips away from Danny’s. Deep in her heart, she had known before opening her eyes. She remembered the sounds of doctors’ voices, beeping machines, and instructions, but seeing the pain on her husband’s face, the tears filling his hazel orbs, was confirmation she didn’t want. “No…not our baby. Not our little girl.” Wails clawed from her lungs as Danny’s arms pulled her tight to his chest.

Julie fell apart that first day and had yet to locate even the first piece with which to put herself back together.

“Okay, baby, no coffee,” he relented.

Other than when she disclosed the events that had occurred at O’Brian’s the night of her accident—which sent Danny on a rampage of epic proportions, one so bad that he stopped screaming mid-rant and stormed from Julie’s room, Danny had been soft-spoken and reluctant to upset Julie in anyway.

As their house came into view, waves of nausea hit, accompanied by the hollowness Julie had felt since she woke up in the hospital. Their baby’s room…a labor of love she and Danny had worked on since the day they learned she was pregnant. A space they’d painted pink eight weeks before.

“Come on, honey, let me help you out. I’m sure your stomach is killing you.”

Danny’s arm threaded under her armpits as he gently assisted her down from the Ranger. Was her stomach hurting? They had performed abdominal surgery, yet she had no baby. Then again, she had no pain, just numbness.

Once she was on solid ground, Danny grabbed her bag from the back along with the assortment of get-well gifts and cards that had been sent to the hospital, while she gingerly walked to the front door. Dread crept up her spine as she entered their home and white-knuckled the banister. Pure adrenaline assisted her climb up the stairs.

She passed the first door on the left as if it were invisible, the first on the right… the same, but when she came to the second door on the left, she paused. The door was closed, but the room called to her.

“Julie…don’t,” Danny pled. His voice was barely a whisper from less than an inch behind her.