Page 92 of Expecting an Argument
His face softened. His lips parted to say something, but then the helicopter door slid open.
“Come on, mama!” Chuck called from outside the door. “Let’s see those babies!”
Beau’s arms quickly slid under me and picked me up.
I huffed out a breath as he pushed me into his chest. “We landed already?”
“I told you it would be a smooth flight,” Beau said as he stepped out of the helicopter.
I blinked in the bright lights—we had landed on top of the hospital. Four nurses and a gurney waited for us just outside the helipad. Beau gently set me down on top of the rolling bed and then all I could see was a blur of bodies and hands.
The bed rolled into the brightly-lit hospital. I confirmed my date of birth with a nurse before she stuck a hospital bracelet around my wrist. A little plastic clamp on my fingertip measured my oxygen. Fuzzy pink and blue bands encircled my belly and tracked two heartbeats.
“How far along are you?” a nurse asked.
“Um…thirty-five weeks and a day,” I responded, rolling my head against my pillow as I looked around the triage room. “Or…two days. Is it after midnight? Beau, what time is it? Beau?”
I looked down, trying to find him, and got a glimpse of my body. All I could see were wires and monitors and tubes. My fist gripped the black leather straps of my purse that was wedged between my hip and the side of the bed. I hadn’t even remembered grabbing it.
Beau’s blonde head popped up amongst the crowd of nurses. “I’m here, sugar. It’s a little after 2 a.m.” His head turned toward the screen of one of the monitors. “The twins have good heart rates, and it looks like you’re about to have another contraction—”
I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth, trying my damn best to breathe through the contraction like Tyson had told me. When I opened my eyes, I found Dr. Ornelas at the foot of my bed, examining me. She said something inaudible to a nurse beforeshe quickly left the room.
Two nurses held my arms as they stuck IV ports in the back of my left hand and the crook of my right elbow.
“What’s happening?” I shakily whispered.
“We’re going to the OR,” a nurse replied without taking her eyes off my arm. “Ready to meet your babies?”
My heart seized. I had a feeling this would happen, but I wasn’t ready. Not at all.
The bed rolled out of the room. I gripped the bedrail and tried to swivel my head around. “Wait, Beau has to come with me. He’s the father!”
“No time,” the nurse at my right responded. “You have to go under general anesthesia. He’ll be waiting for you when you wake up.”
“No!” I cried. My hands started to shake. The bed was rolling much too fast. “He’s been with me this whole time, I can’t finish this without him. I need him to—”
“Olivia, I’m here,” Beau said.
I turned to my left. My star quarterback had caught up with us and was keeping pace at my bedside.
I strained to lift my purse a couple of inches. If Beau couldn’t go into the operating room with me, they wouldn’t let Mom in either.
“Here—take Mom,” I said.
Without question, Beau took the purse from me and held it with both hands.
“Anything else?” he asked.
Tears lined my eyes that I couldn’t blink away. My chest shook with every breath. “T-tell me I can do hard things.”
“You can do hard things,” Beau said with a smile. “You’re a badass. You’ve toughed it out through worse. All you have to do now is take a little rest and then we get to snuggle our babies, OK?”
It sounded simple enough, but I couldn’t do it. I shook my head over and over.
Beau grabbed my hand. “You beat Herringbone and you can beat this surgery.” His eyes shone like glass marbles and he swallowed. “You win—that’s just what you do. I love you, Olivia Adams.”
The end of the bed pushed open the doors to the operating room and my hand slipped out of Beau’s hold. I rolled my head back onto my pillow, tracking his face as long as I could before the white doors swung shut.
