Robert - Seven Months Later

“So as you can see, since the launch of the home security line, our profits have been up-”

“Robert. You have to come now.”

I looked over at James as he stood there, panting in the doorway of the room.

“Can this wait?” I asked. “I’m in a meeting with our investors.”

“It’s Joanna. She’s in labor.”

I tossed the controller for the slideshow to James. Joanna was in labor. It was finally happening. I rushed out of the room with my investors cheering me on as my legs carried me as fast as they could. I slammed my hand into the elevator button, cursing how slowly these fucking things moved.

Joanna was in labor.

I was about to be a father.

I rode the elevator to the parking garage and sped out in the SUV I had purchased for our family. The safest on the market and decked out with everything to make Joanna comfortable. I raced it all the way across town to the hospital, skidding as I parked the car at the front of the emergency entrance.

Joanna was being hauled out of the back an ambulance as I grabbed our bags.

“Robert! Robert, is that you?”

“It’s me. I’m right here, songbird.”

I reached out and took her hand as the nurses wheeled us into the hospital.

“Contractions are seven minutes apart. Oxygen levels are holding. Ma’am, are you going to want an epidural?”

“Drug me up,” Joanna said with a growl.

The nurses rolled us into an elevator before taking us up to the labor and delivery floor. I was insistent that Joanna have a room all to herself. I was breathing with her as tears streamed down her cheeks, her hand on her stomach as she writhed in pain.

“Is there something you can do for her?” I asked. “We were scheduled for a c-section. She wasn’t even supposed to be experiencing this.”

“Where’s my doctor!?” Joanna asked.

Her gripped my hand so tightly I thought she was going to break my fucking fingers.

“We’ve paged her doctor and he’s on the way. We have to get her prepared for surgery, though. She has to get in there as soon as possible.”

“Get me something now!” Joanna said.

I was shown the room we would eventually be in and I dropped our things off. I had us in a private operating room I had set up specifically for this moment. I didn’t want the best the hospital could give me, I wanted the best my money could buy.

And if that was a fucking new operating room built and opened specifically with Joanna as its first patient, then that was how it was going to be.

I could see the fear in Joanna’s eyes. They were setting I.V.s and she was in so much pain, and the horror was written all over her face. She was pressing against her side and elevating her hip, trying to find some sort of relief that her body would never naturally be able to provide.

“Come on, Mr. Cargill. You have to scrub in.”

“I’m not leaving Joanna,” I said.

“You have to come with me. The anesthesiologist has to get her prepared-”

“I said, I’m not leaving her.”

“Robert.”

Joanna’s voice was eerily calm for the screaming she had just been doing.

“Go. I’ll be okay. I’ll see you once they have me drugged up,” she said.

I reluctantly went with the nurse as she helped me prepare for the operating room. I scrubbed my arms and neck down before getting into what could only be described as clothing paper, then I burst into the operating room. There was Joanna, with tubes flowing from her body and her arms strapped down. There was a curtain separating her stomach from her chest, and I was offered a seat at the side of her head.

“Joanna, can you hear me?”

She turned her glassy eyes towards mine and I pressed a kiss to her lips.

“In a few minutes, this’ll all be over,” I said.

I placed kisses on her forehead as the doctor proceeded with the cesarian. Her body was cut open and manipulated and she was shaking violently. The doctor kept telling me it was a natural reaction to the drugs in her spinal fluid, but I was terrified. It killed me to see Joanna so vulnerable and cold, and me unable to fix it.

“Okay, you’re going to feel a pressure on your upper abdomen, but that’s it,” the doctor said.

“Then she’ll be here?” Joanna asked.

“Then our little Lonna will be here. I promise,” I said.

I kissed her tear trails away as the doctors removed my daughter from Joanna’s womb. I leaned my forehead against her cheek, waiting anxiously for that first cry. That one sound that would make all of the worry and the pain and the fear worth the seven months it had taken for us to adjust to this new life together.

To a life neither of us thought we would lead.

“You’ve been so strong these past few months,” I said. “Uprooting your life and moving in with me.”

“Why isn’t she crying?” Joanna asked.

“Focus on me. Focus on my voice,” I said. “Listen to my words. You moved in to make me feel better. To comfort me and fulfill my want to take care of you. You left everything behind and threw yourself into a life with a man you didn’t know. And after everything we went through, I didn’t know what true strength was until you came into my life.”

“Robert, why isn’t little Lonna crying?”

“Because I told you she’d be just like you. Stubborn and unwilling to do anything until she’s ready.”

And as if the heavens finally decided to have mercy on us, that piercing cry filled the room. Big and bold, starling every single doctor within her vicinity. I smiled as my eyes filled with tears and I could hear Joanna laughing. My two girls filling the operating room with their boisterous voices.

I gave Joanna one last kiss before leaving the operating room with Lonna. A nurse was with me the entire time as I gave our daughter our first bath. Fed our daughter her first meal. Put her in her first diaper and dressed her in her first little outfit.

The two of us waited until Joanna was wheeled into the room, and I could see her eyes searching.

“Where is she?” Joanna asked.

“She’s right here. Sleeping,” I said.

“Can I hold her?”

“Of course you can.”

I picked our sleeping daughter out of her bassinet and placed her into the arms of her mother. Joanna’s eyes held all the love in the world, and when she looked up at me her eyes sang the song of her heart. I watched instantaneous love pour over her features. I watched her fall in love in that very moment with our daughter.

“She looks just like you,” I said.

“But she’s got your stern brow. Look at it furrowing.”

I sat on the edge of the hospital bed as the creases in my daughter’s brow became prominent.

“Can’t win ‘em all, I suppose.”

“Stop that. She’s perfect,” Joanna said.

“Of course she is. She came from you.”

In the seven months Joanna had been living with me, I had grown to care for her. She had brought an unadulterated joy into my life I never could’ve imagined. I stuck my hand into my pocket and played with the ring, my eyes dancing between my daughter and the love of my life.

I knew I was making the right decision.

I knew it was time.

As Lonna slept soundly in her mother’s arms, I pulled the ring from my pocket. I brought it up into Joanna’s vision and her eyes slowly panned up to mine. Big and bold, reflecting my own gaze in her sea-colored abyss as I smiled down at her.

“Robert?” Joanna asked. “What is that?”

“When I first met you, you were a whim. A want. A selfish conquest a very empty man wanted to conquer. You came into my life by happenstance and turned into the woman I loved. And I went from wanting to protect you to wanting to provide for you a life that would make you happy. A life you could be proud of.”

I watched tears well in her eyes as her gaze fell to our stirring daughter.

“You changed me, inside and out. You showed me not only the emptiness of my life, but what it would take to fill that emptiness. Despite everything, you took a chance on me. For reasons I’ll never understand, you let me in. And if you’ll have me, Joanna Leone, I want to spend the rest of my life loving you. Because there’s no one else for me.”

I watched as little Lonna began to eat from the body of the woman I loved. I wrapped my arm around Joanna, holding my entire life against my body. She leaned into me, cradling our daughter in her arms as her eyes tilted back to meet mine. When I looked into Joanna’s eyes, I saw my future. I saw family vacations and sleepless nights. I saw passion and romance and little Lonna’s first date. I saw late-night arguments turning into late nights of love and little Lonna’s prom night.

And throughout all of it, I saw Jonna there. Standing at my side, strong enough for the both of us.

Strong enough for the three of us.

“Joanna Leone, will you marry me?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said breathlessly. “Oh my gosh, Robert. Yes.”

I bent down and kissed my fiance’s lips as I slipped the ring onto her finger. I pressed my cheek into the top of her head as I cradled the world against my body. There was nothing I wouldn't do to make sure they were happy and safe. Nothing I wouldn’t do to keep them laughing and smiling.

Because Joanna had pulled me from the shadows.

A debt I would gladly spend the rest of my life repaying.