Chapter Nineteen
SPIDER
I STOOD IN THE CORNER of the private hospital room, watching as a nurse changed out Willa’s IV fluids then checked her blood pressure again. Willa looked weak and pale, her worry not completely hidden by the small smile she gave the woman who had done nothing but poke and prod my girl all damn day.
Doc had admitted Willa the night before for observation and to run some tests to figure out what was going on with my female’s blood pressure. The nurse had come into the room at random times throughout the day to take countless vials of blood. A heart monitor had been put on Willa as soon as we had gotten to the room the night before, and her heart rate had varied between low and normal—or so Raven would tell me every time I texted her what the numbers on the screen said every few hours.
The nurse had given us no answers when I’d demanded to know if the blood test results were back. She said I would just have to wait for the doctor to come in. I called bullshit because I knew the nurse had to be aware of what was going on with my wife. She just wouldn’t fucking tell me.
The nurse was working on making Willa’s pillows more comfortable when Doc finally showed up.
“About fucking time,” I snarled at the man. He was wearing his white lab coat and carrying his damn iPad. He barely looked up from it when I growled at him. “Well?”
Doc turned to the nurse with a tired but commanding kind of smile. “Could you give me a moment alone with my patient and her husband, nurse?”
She grabbed her things and made a quick exit. While the door shut behind her, Doc moved to stand beside Willa. Taking the stethoscope from around his neck, he started listening to her heart and then her stomach. He was quiet for so long, I was beginning to lose what little bit of sanity I still held on to.
“For fuck’s sake, Doc. What the hell is wrong with her?” I wasn’t even sure I had meant to bellow the question, but I was at the end of my rope. If Willa was scared, it was nothing compared to how terrified I was right then. I wanted answers, damn it, and I wanted them now.
“James,” Willa started to scold me, but when our gazes met, she pressed her lips shut. She could see that I was seconds away from having a damn breakdown. This female was everything to me, and if anything happened to her, it would kill me.
Doc sighed and wrapped the stethoscope back around his shoulders. “Her labs are basically normal. Heart enzymes are perfect. Glucose levels within ranges that don’t worry me. She’s fairly healthy.”
“That doesn’t mean shit,” I snapped. “I want to know why she passed out last night. I want to know why her blood pressure hasn’t gone up, and I want to know what the hell we’re going to do to fix her.”
Doc scratched at the stubble on his chin, seeming to contemplate what he was about to say. Willa held out her hand, and I didn’t hesitate to cross to her and take it in mine. Her fingers trembled as we waited for Doc to speak.
“I said her labs were basically normal. I do know what is wrong with her, but I’ve been trying to find a way to tell you that won’t send you into a catatonic state, Spider.” He blew out a harsh breath and shook his head. “When I say basically normal, I mean normal for someone in her condition.”
“Just tell us,” Willa commanded, seemingly at the end of her own rope now. “Spit it out, Doc. I can take it.”
“You’re pregnant, Willa.”
My knees went weak with a mixture of relief and terror. Thankfully, the hard as fuck recliner I had slept in the night before was behind me, and I dropped down into it hard. She was fine, she was healthy and fine.
Pregnant.
Fuck.
Pregnant.
Ah, fuck.
No one word had ever scared the shit out of me more. My wife had life growing inside of her.
I was going to be a father.
“Pregnant?” Willa asked with awe in her voice. “Why couldn’t you just come out and say that in the first place, dammit? I was scared to death something was seriously wrong with me.”
“Your hormone levels suggest that you’re carrying more than one baby, Willa,” Doc explained. “And I figured your husband was going to freak when I told you about being pregnant, so I could only imagine his reaction when I mentioned the word multiples.”
“That’s crazy! He’s…” she started to chide the doctor. But then her gaze landed on me, and worry wrinkled her brow. “Babe? You look like you’re going to pass out.”
“I might,” I croaked out.
Multiples? More than one baby. Shit. Shit. Oh, fucking shit.
If the idea of one baby was scaring the living hell out of me, two was going to send me into an early grave.
“Um, so, are we talking twins?” Willa asked the doctor after watching me for a few more moments.
“At the least, yes.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” I roared.
Doc, used to my temper after years of dealing with the MC, didn’t even flinch. “It means we’re going to do an ultrasound so we can determine just how many babies Willa is carrying,” he informed me calmly.
“Okay, when can we do that?” Willa asked, her voice shaking with both excitement and apprehension.
“Let me get a wheelchair, and I’ll take you downstairs and do it myself,” he offered.
“Thanks, Doc.” Her smile was shaky, and as soon as he was out of the room, it fell.
Unable to have so much space between the two of us, I fell to my knees beside her bed and buried my face in her lap. Her fingers stroked over my bare head.
“How can I even be pregnant?” she grumbled to herself. “I’ve been on the pill for years now, and we haven’t had any issues.”
“What about when you had that bad ear infection a few months back?” I reminded her as I turned my head so that I could see her beautiful face. “You went through three different antibiotics before it got cleared up. Raven told you to be careful.”
Amusement darkened her eyes. “Yeah? Well, then I blame you.”
Seeing that look in her eyes had a bit of my tension easing. “So, this is my fault, is it?”
Her lips twisted into a sexy little smirk. “Yup. All your fault. You put these babies in me, and now look where we’re at.”
Lifting my head, I stroked my palm over her stomach. “This is scary shit, baby.”
One of her hands covered my own. “I know. But we’ve got this.”
“Do we?” I didn’t feel nearly as sure as she sounded.
“Why do you doubt it?”
I lifted one shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. “I will probably fuck this kid up.”
“Um, I’m guessing it’s going to be more than one kid, babe. But you’re not going to fuck up anything. You’re amazing with Lexa, and Max adores you.” She leaned forward and touched her lips to mine. “You’re going to kick ass as a daddy, James. Actually, I’d been thinking of babies lately. I wanted to wait until all the crap with those damn Italians was over before bringing it up, though.”
“Don’t worry about those motherfuckers, Willa. I’ll gut them all before I let anything happen to you and the kids.”
She kissed me again, then gave me a sly smile that had my cock jerking painfully against the zipper of my jeans. “I didn’t doubt it for a single second, babe.”
Doc came back a few minutes later with the wheelchair, and I followed them downstairs. The room he took us to was dark, with only a monitor on a large machine to see by. I helped Willa get onto the little exam table and get comfortable while Doc typed in all her information. A few minutes later, he pulled out a wand and put what looked like a condom over it.
“What the fuck do you think you’re gonna do with that, motherfucker?”
Willa giggled even as Doc tried to explain what he was going to do. Everything inside of me told me to knock his ass out and take Willa home. Whatever the fuck he was about to do could wait for when a female tech could perform this exam on my wife. I stood stone-still beside Willa’s head as Doc put the condom-covered wand inside of Willa and shifted it around.
She made a few noises of discomfort and reached for my hand. I took it and lifted it to my lips. “You’re okay,” I murmured, but I wasn’t sure I believed my own words.
“Ah,” Doc commented after a minute or two of making Willa squirm. “Here we go.”
Willa’s eyes went straight to the screen, but I only watched her face for a minute. She looked on in awe as Doc pointed at something, and I wondered if she had ever looked more beautiful.
“Oh my God, James!” she whispered emotionally and lifted wet eyes to me.
The sight of her tears was like a kick to the gut, and I snapped to attention. “What? What is it?”
Doc patiently pointed to the screen again. “Baby A is right there. This is Baby B. And here is Baby C.”
“Three?” I choked out.
All I could make out were three little dark blobs. If he hadn’t told me what I was looking at, I never would have thought they were babies. But as I watched Doc shift the pictures in front of me by moving the wand inside of Willa, my heart melted in my chest. Then the room filled with the sound of their heartbeats. Willa began to cry and laugh, and it was all I could do to hold back my own tears.
Three babies. Holy motherfucking shit. How was that even possible? Sure, people had twins all the time, but fucking triplets? I thought that only happened when the parents used IVF or some shit.
“Looks like you’re measuring at about ten weeks, Willa,” Doc told her with a grin. “And everything is looking great. I want to get you into a specialist as soon as possible, though. Someone who deals with multiples on a regular basis.”
“Can you tell if they’re identical or not?” She tossed it out there just as the thought floated through my own mind.
He shook his head. “I can’t determine that, but the specialist might be able to.”
“This… Whoa, this is just so crazy. I never imagined something like this could happen. Triplets… Twins don’t even run in either of our families, and here we are with three?”
Doc’s face suddenly became very serious. “I’m going to warn you now, Willa. There is a chance that all three babies may not make it to delivery. You’re still in the first trimester, even if you only have a few weeks left. You need to be aware that carrying multiples, no matter how healthy the mother, comes with some bigger risks than if you were just carrying one baby.”
“O-okay,” she whispered, but then she set her chin in that stubborn way that irritated the hell out of me but always made me fall a little more in love with her. This woman was strong, determined, and all mine. “But we’ll be okay. These little beasts will come out fighting no matter what happens over the next six months.” She lifted her gaze to mine, and I nearly fell to my knees beside her. “They’re too much like their daddy not to.”