The St. Francis emergency room entrance and parking lot were just as she remembered. Which shouldn’t have surprised her, but did. Then again, she felt like she had last been to the facility fifty years ago, with Not-Danny DeVito.
And a man who would change her life for all kinds of bad reasons.
She glanced down at her stomach. Well, and one reason she already loved with every fiber of her being.
Pulling into the closest space she could find, she got out and dragged herself toward the revolving doors. On the far side, she wobbled over to the reception desk and waited until the woman looked up at her over a pair of reading glasses.
“Hi, may I help you—”
“Dr. Robert Bluff. I’m here to see Dr. Bluff.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. This isn’t a doctor’s office where you can ask for a specific provider. This is the emergency room—”
“I know where I am. I want you to page him, right now. And if he’s not on shift, you’re going to call him at home. And if he’s on vacation, you’re going to bring him back from wherever he is. He’s the only one who’s going to deliver my baby.”
The pushback was immediate, but also unperturbed, as if lots of weird demands had been tossed over the receptionist’s proverbial transom. “Ma’am, I’m not sure I was clear enough. You can’t just—”
“Page him, right now. Or I’m having this baby in front of you and all the nice people in those chairs over there.”
The woman hesitated. But as Anne just stared her right in the eye, her hand reached out to the phone. After a couple of buttons were pushed, the receptionist said, “Dr. Bluff, you have a…”
“Patient,” Anne said.
“A patient at the front desk. Paging Dr. Bluff, please come to reception.”
As another contraction hit, Anne held on to the desk’s edge and swayed. Just as she was about to have to go sit down, the sharp, burning sensation eased, thank God—
The sudden rushing feeling that hit her next was not unexpected, she supposed. But as the insides of her legs ran with a hot fall of liquid, she guessed it was better for her water to break here than in her car—
Dr. Robert Bluff marched out of the double doors of the treatment area, his face annoyed as if some protocol had been breached. But the instant he saw her, he did a double take.
Anne lifted her hand. “My water broke. Sorry—”
“That’s not water,” he said as he rushed forward. Over his shoulder, he shouted, “I need a wheelchair, right now!”
With a sense of dread, Anne looked down at herself—and what she saw was incomprehensible. Her inner thighs were bathed with blood, so much of it that a brilliant red pool was forming at her feet.
Throwing out a hand to the doctor, she grabbed on to his sleeve. In a low, urgent voice, she said, “You remember me, from before. I was here with one of your kind. You know what I’m talking about.”
The man’s—vampire’s—eyes bugged out.
“It’s his,” she said softly. “The man—male—I was with. This is his baby, and you’re the only one who can do this.”
Dr. Bluff glanced around. Then he whispered, “I’ll take care of everything.”
The wheelchair arrived in the nick of time. Right as her knees gave out, she collapsed back into the seat, and she was grateful that Dr. Bluff insisted on pushing her out of the waiting area himself—and it was just as well she left. The patients and families who were in line to be seen were all looking over at her in horror, and as she was swept through the double doors, she was willing to bet the jogging orderly with the rolling bucket and the mop had been called on account of her.
The next thing she knew, she was being transferred onto a gurney in a room that had four solid walls and a lot of equipment.
Trauma bay, she thought. She was in a trauma bay.
Dr. Bluff worked fast with his nurses: IVs were started, questions about allergies and medicines were asked, basic assessments were taken. And when he pressed a stethoscope to her belly and listened, she prayed for a—
“The baby’s alive,” he said grimly. “I have a heartbeat.”
Anne’s relief was part of the complicated tangle of emotions she had been stewing in ever since she’d missed her period and learned she was carrying Darius’s child. She had no idea what she was bringing into the world. But it was hers, and she’d made peace with that.
It was the only thing she’d made peace with.
“Nurses, step out, please. I need a moment.”
The women in uniform seemed a little surprised by the order, but they did as the doctor demanded. And then Dr. Bluff was looming over Anne, his face drawn in tight lines.
“You’re bleeding profusely. I believe you probably have a placenta previa, something that is very common for pregnancies that are—that are complicated in the way yours is. Here’s the problem. If I give you human blood, and the young is a half-breed, as you say? It will kill the fetus immediately, although the transfusion may save your life.”
A strange coldness came over her. “And what if you don’t give me blood.”
“You’re going to die.”
As she heard the words, her mind refused to process them. “I’m going to…”
“It’s your life or the young’s—and if you pick the latter, I can’t promise it’s going to survive anyway. But I will promise you will not make it.”
Time slowed to a crawl, and Anne was grateful for the distortion as her mind seemed to be refusing to process anything. Think, think, think…
The image that came to her, the memory, was so sharp, so clear, it was as if it had been implanted in her mind by some other force: She was back in the rear of a car, cradled against something warm and vital, her body sprawled against…
“Darius,” she said weakly.
“Would you like me to call him?” Dr. Bluff asked.
Anne shifted her eyes to the chandelier above her. The light was bright and she blinked in the glare.
As a strange, prevailing coldness began to seep into her body, she felt herself start to tremble.
“Would you like me to call him?” Dr. Bluff repeated. “It has to be now, if you want him here… we’re already out of time.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
When Darius finally got the call he’d been waiting for, praying for… it came in no form he had ever expected and definitely one he didn’t want. Instead of Anne’s voice, reaching out to him, it was that of a male whose face he could only vaguely recall. And instead of his female breaking her rightful silence and somehow forgiving him…
“You need to come immediately,” the doctor from a lifetime ago was saying in a hushed, urgent tone. “St. Francis emergency room. I’m losing her. You don’t have a lot of time.”
Darius’s hearing went in and out. “Anne?”
“Your mate. She’s in labor, and she’s losing a lot of blood. If you have anything you want to say to her, you better get here right now.”
Click.
The line went dead.
Darius took the phone away from his ear and looked at it.
“Sire?”