1985
“It hurts! Aghhh, Tommy, even with the shots, it hurts!” Ginny writhed on the hospital bed. “It’s my back. Can you please rub it some more? I feel like I’m being turned inside out!”
Tommy had never felt so helpless in his entire life. There in the delivery room, he pleaded with the nurse who’d just brought in some ice chips. “Isn’t there anything that can be done here? She’s been in labor for almost twenty-four hours!”
The nurse looked at him kindly. “She hasn’t fully dilated. She can’t push until then. The baby’s vitals are good and the doctor has allowed just enough pain medication to take the edge off. I’m sorry. It’s a waiting game now.” She looked at her watch and patted his arm. “He’ll be in to see her shortly.”
“It’s no longer taking the edge off, it’s—” He was interrupted by a loud wail as the nurse slipped out.
“Grizz! Tommy, I need Grizz. I can’t do this without him. I don’t want to do this without him!”
She started sobbing then and for the first time since he married her, Tommy thought that he might’ve been in over his head. What had he been thinking when Grizz had asked him to marry her? That she would instantly fall in love with him and they would live happily ever after? That she’d be able to remove Grizz from her heart and let another man replace him? She wanted Grizz, not him. He was officially married to her and he was going to be here when the baby, a little girl, was born, but it wasn’t his baby. It was Grizz’s baby.
He was just the replacement husband.
Tommy absently fingered the tie around his neck. The one he’d loosened after he’d arrived at the hospital. Carter had called him, told him Ginny’s water had broken. He’d been at work and dropped everything to rush there at once. She was about three weeks early, but that wasn’t so bad.
When he’d arrived at the hospital, he’d called the jail and told Grizz. Grizz made him promise to keep him updated. He’d been calling every couple of hours from the phone in the empty hospital room next to theirs. But a woman in labor had been admitted an hour ago and he couldn’t use that phone any more. He didn’t want Ginny to know he was contacting Grizz.
He scratched at his chin, feeling the stubble that had started to form. It was time to make another call. He’d have to find another phone.
“Ginny, I need to use the bathroom. I’ll send one of the girls in, okay?”
She looked at him with a dazed expression in her eyes, exhausted. She gave a weak little nod.
He left the hospital room, but instead of making a left to go to the waiting room where her friends were gathered, he made a right. It was almost four in the morning and there was only one nurse who looked up questioningly at him.
“Is there an exit here?”
She nodded her head toward the right. “Second hallway on the left will take you to a stairway. No elevator, though.”
He thanked her and headed back the way he had come, going through the doors that led to the small waiting area. Sarah Jo, Carter and Casey were there along with three other people. A man was using the only pay phone. That was okay. He wouldn’t have used that phone, anyway.
They all looked up when he entered. He shook his head. “No baby yet, and they said she can’t even start pushing. I get the feeling that pushing would make her feel better, but she can’t.”
Sarah Jo, the only mother in the group, nodded in agreement.
Tommy motioned toward the bathrooms. “I have to use the can. Can one of you go in and rub her back? She’s in agony.”
Casey jumped up. “My turn!” She headed through the doors that Tommy had just come through. Sarah Jo went back to her magazine. Carter stood up and stretched as she watched Tommy walk away. Right past the restroom and into the stairwell.
He found a pay phone one floor down. He dialed a number and waited while someone went to get Grizz.
“Is Kit okay?” was the first thing Grizz asked when he got to the phone. Before Tommy could answer him, “Is the baby okay?”
“I don’t know. She hasn’t had the baby yet.”
“What? Are you fucking kidding me? What do you mean she hasn’t had it?”
“That’s why I’m calling. The baby hasn’t come yet. She can’t push because she’s not fully dilated, and before you ask, it means her cervix isn’t open enough to let the baby safely come through. She’s in a lot of pain and screaming for you.” Grunt gritted his teeth. “I don’t know how you’d do it, but I think you should be here.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone. It seemed like a long time before Grizz replied. “Tell me where to meet you. Give me fifteen minutes. I can see the fucking hospital from the jail yard, so I can make it on foot if I need to. Where can you meet me?”
“She’s on the fifth floor.” Grunt spoke softly and quickly. “The cafeteria is on the second floor and I know there’s a service elevator from the back. I saw it when I was there earlier. I’ll take it down and bring you up that way and then sneak you into the maternity area by going up some back stairs I found. We’ll have to avoid the waiting room where her friends are. There should be a door on the east side of the hospital. I’m going down now to wait for you.”
There was a pause before Tommy added, “And Grizz, just don’t kill any guards to get here, okay? Pay them off or use whatever you got, but don’t kill anybody. She wouldn’t want that.”
“What are they gonna do, arrest me for murder?” Grizz asked before hanging up.
Tommy made his way to the back of the building.
Twenty minutes later, Grizz stood in the back stairway that led to the maternity ward. Tommy left him with orders to stay put, then made his way back to the waiting area. He told Carter and Sarah Jo he would go back in to relieve Casey. He knew he couldn’t let Grizz inside until he’d sent Casey away.
When he arrived back in Ginny’s room, Casey looked relieved, stepping aside as a nurse began to take Ginny’s vitals again.
“They’re getting her ready for surgery,” she whispered to Tommy as she opened the door to leave. “They need to do a C-section. The doctor said the baby’s monitor is registering fetal distress. You got back just in time.”
Right then, Ginny grabbed Tommy’s hand, squeezing hard. “It’s the baby, Tommy! The baby’s in danger.” She choked back a sob. “I want Grizz. Oh God, I want Grizz, Tommy. How could this be happening? How could I be having our baby without him?”
He didn’t know what to say. He took her hand and brought it to his lips, softly kissing it. He had tears in his eyes and was ready to tell her Grizz was here when she let out another scream so loud it scared him. Pain was all over her face. He wondered if it was even close to the pain in his heart.
Another nurse slipped into the room and then a third. “We need to get her into surgery now,” one of them told Tommy, her brown eyes full of sympathy and concern. “The delivery team is waiting. You’ll need to put scrubs on before you can come in. I’ll show you where they are.”
The other nurses started to wheel Ginny out. She was quiet now, her breaths coming in great heaving gulps that were somehow worse than the screams.
Tommy followed them out and watched as they took Ginny down the hall and into another room. Then he backtracked to the stairwell for Grizz and directed him to the right door.
Tommy rejoined Ginny’s friends in the waiting area. “She’s been taken in for the C-section. They told me I have to wait out here.”
In the room, Ginny was terrified. Where was Tommy? Why couldn’t Grizz be there? Was the baby okay?
“Mrs. Dillon, we’re going to put this over your mouth and nose and ask you to count backward from a hundred,” a nurse with a distinct Boston accent told her firmly but not unkindly. “Okay? When you wake up, you’ll have a baby.”
Ginny nodded slightly as she tried to catch sight of Tommy in her peripheral vision. Where was he? Didn’t he tell her he was coming in here with her?
They had just placed the mask over her face when there was a commotion in the delivery room.
“Who are you?” She heard someone ask.
“I’m her husband.”
Grizz. It sounded like Grizz! She shook herself through the pain; she knew she was imagining Grizz’s voice. There was more conversation, but it was muddled and she couldn’t make sense of it. She thought she heard the doctor say, “You need to get scrubs on. I’m performing a surgery.”
The nurse with the Boston accent piped up, “We don’t have any big enough to fit him, doctor.”
She didn’t hear the rest. She was fading. The drugs were already in her system and working fast. Right before she closed her eyes, she looked up and met bright green ones. His eyes. Her Grizz.
“I’m here, Kitten,” he said, smiling down at her. “I’m here, baby.”
She slipped from consciousness and dreamed the best dream her subconscious could muster: that Grizz had been there with her for the birth of their child.