“I do, Jo. I believe you.” I bend down to kiss her head, fury burning the ridges across my back.
“I felt him. I feel him,” she sobs. “I feel him everywhere.”
I push my arms around her waist and hold her to my chest. I’m going to give her a chance at revenge. I don’t care what it takes. Her hands curl around my neck, and I bury my nose in her hair, hating that she feels like she’s fighting this alone.
“I’ll go update Reaper in church. You stay here with her. I’ll tell him where you are,” Badge says.
“Thanks,” I say quietly, watching him squeeze the rail in support as he walks away.
“Glad all that bellowing is over,” Moretti says with venom.
I slide the curtain over, open the medicine cabinet, and grab a sedative. I retrieve a syringe and the glass vial. I inject the syringe into the vial and pull the medicine to the syringe. Having to deal with him makes me have to let go of Jo. “Don’t you know the last thing you need to do is piss off your doctor?” I stab him in the neck with the sedative and his mouth opens, gaping at me in surprise. “This isn’t Vegas Memorial Hospital, Moretti. You’re in my house. Piss me off, I’ll make sure you never wake up again.” I yank the needle from his vein, and slowly his eyes fall shut, finally giving me peace and quiet.
I turn around to check on Jo, and she’s staring at the ceiling, almost catatonic. “Jo?”
“I’m sorry,” she apologizes, unable to look at me. “That … that I feel him.”
“Hey, what he did to you wasn’t okay. Your mind reminded you for a reason. What he did can’t truly be forgotten. You want to know something?” I ask her while moving the ultrasound machine closer to me. I lift the shirt she’s wearing so I can see her flat belly. I apply some clear jelly on her stomach, then take her hand and lay it on my chest. “I feel you everywhere. I hope one day, you can feel me too. One day.” I flip the switch on the device as it boots up.
“I do,” she whispers, laying still as I place the wand on her stomach. “I wish I only felt you.”
“You will,” I say, moving the wand around to see if I can find the heartbeat. “Do you know what we’re doing?”
She nods without saying anything and bites her bottom lip.
“If we don’t find a heartbeat, I want you to know I’m here, and you aren’t alone. I love you.” I bend over to place a kiss on her forehead. A whoosh fills the air, and I smile against her head when I hear it, relieved.
“Oh my God,” she cries. “Do you hear it?” She lays her hand next to where the wand is on her belly and grins. It’s the first time I’ve seen her happy about the pregnancy. “He’s alive.” She covers her face, and her shoulders shake.
More tears.
I don’t know how she has any left.
“It’s so different to hear the heartbeat. Is he okay? Is he healthy?” she asks and clutches my shirt. “What if he’s going to die? What do I do? How do I take care of a baby, Eric? Oh my God, he sounds so beautiful.” This time the cries are loud and heart wrenching, yet … happy?
I think.
I’m not sure if she wants comfort, or if she’s finally accepted everything.
“You think it’s a boy, huh?”
“I don’t know… I know he isn’t an ‘it’; that sounds so rude,” she huffs.
I pull the wand away, but she snags my wrist to put the wand back in place. “I don’t want to stop hearing him. Not yet? Please?”
“Yeah, we can listen to him more.” I lay next to her, and she leans her head against my chest. The heartbeat whooshes, and another relieved breath leaves my lungs when I hear him. Or her. All I know is that it’s a miracle this baby is still alive. She struggled with the idea of a baby, but I think she would’ve been depressed if something happened to him or her.
I’m not saying I know because I don’t.
I don’t know anything about her decisions or about how she truly feels, but right now, as she smiles and laughs with every whoosh of his heart, I know she’s fully accepted him in her heart. If she hadn’t, I would have loved her anyway.
I’m not going to judge someone to make the hardest decision of their life because they were raped. There is physical trauma, mental and emotional trauma, and I can’t act like I know what she’s going through.
Our traumas are different.
Our reasons for what we do and how we think are different.
But our hearts are the same.
“He sounds good, right?” she says sleepily.
“He sounds healthy,” I reassure her. “More testing needs to be done, but I’m glad there is a heartbeat.”
She wraps her hand around mine where I’m holding the wand, and she sighs, on her way to falling asleep. “Me too, Eric. Thank you for saving me.”
“I’ll always save you,” I promise.
“Mmm.” Her head lulls to the side as the morphine takes over.
“Congrats, Doc,” Skirt says from across the way. “Ain’t nothing like it, I’m telling ye.” He holds his little girl in his hands, never once letting anyone else try to hold her; not even Sarah. He’s smitten. That cute potato has him wrapped around her tiny potato finger.
“Thanks, Skirt.”
Da-dum da- dum da-dum.
The whoosh is too astonishing to hear. I can’t seem to put the wand down either, but I have to get up. I have a few other patients to check on.
I can’t seem to move. I don’t want to. I want to lay here with her until the end of fucking time and this baby is born.
I’m so attached, and I have no idea why.
I listen to the whoosh a bit longer before I get up, clean off her stomach, and hang the portable ultrasound on the bed so it’s always there when I need it. I lay my palm across her stomach, bend down, and kiss her belly.
I’m attached because I love her.
And loving her means loving this child.
“Doc?” a feminine voice calls out for me from another bed, and when I look over my shoulder, I see Melissa finally waking up. Her eyes are closed, and she groans in pain.
“Holy shit, is Poodle going to be glad to see you. You scared us. Church is happening right now. It’s why he isn’t here, but he hasn’t left your side.”
“I know, I heard him talking to me.” She grins as if she’s thinking about all the things he said to her when she was unconscious. “He’s still so dirty, even when I’m sleeping.”
“You’re in good spirits for someone who’s been unconscious for days. You feeling okay?” I ask, peeling her lids back to check for pupil dilation. They are perfect.
“My head kind of hurts.”
“That’s normal, considering…” I joke. “Want me to go get him?” I wrap the stethoscope around my neck after I finish listening to her heart.
“Nah, keep him wondering.”
I make a face and pucker my lips, shaping them in an O. “Ouch, that’s just mean.”
“That’s what he gets for saying…” She blushes bright red. “Never mind.”
Dirty seems to run in Ruthless King blood. We’ll do anything to win our women over, even if it means penetrating their dreams with the filthy things they love most.