- GAGE -
“Doesn’t anyone answer their fucking phones anymore?” I yelled when we hit LAX. I about threw my phone against the wall.
“If they’re at the hospital, they won’t have their phones on,” Odie said.
“Is it so hard to send an update?” The whole flight to L.A., my knee bounced, and I anticipated a slew of messages when we landed.
Nothing.
The flight attendants all thought I was a nervous flyer.
Even now, security gave me the stink eye, probably thinking I was some sort of terrorist with my erratic breathing and ball of nervous energy.
After trying both Garrett and Blair again, I changed tactic and called Reece.
“Gage?” she answered, her voice croaky.
“Shit, what time is it over there?” I had no idea what time zone I was in anymore.
“It’s the middle of the night.”
“Do you know what’s going on at the hospital?”
There was a pause.
“Reece—”
“What was the last you heard?”
“Pip was heading in for an emergency C-section because she had something called pre … something.”
“Pre-eclampsia. She was diagnosed about a month ago and put on bedrest.”
“A month?” I screeched in a voice that didn’t sound like my own. “They never said anything—wait, is that why Garrett and Blair moved in?”
“There was nothing to worry about then …”
“But there is now? Reece, just tell me what’s going on. I’m going crazy, and the guys aren’t answering their phones.”
“They’ve been awake for something like forty hours straight. Cut them some slack. They have a newborn in the NICU, and a … a, umm …”
“Reece,” I barked.
“There were complications. I don’t want to freak you out, but letting you wonder is probably worse than telling you the truth, right?”
Spencer’s deep voice came muffled through the phone. “Baby, don’t.”
“Don’t what?” Fuck, this sucked. I had no control over this situation, and I was about to lose my shit.
“She’s in an induced coma,” Reece said. “She had a seizure on the table …” Her words got drowned out by the hammering in my ears.
Words like induced coma and seizure repeated in my head over and over and over again.
“Gage? Did you hear me?” Reece asked. “Did the phone cut out?”
“W-what?”
“They say she’s going to be fine,” Reece said calmly. “She just needs rest so her body can heal. There’s nothing you can do from where you are, and even if you were here, there wouldn’t be any more for you to do but be by her side which is where Garrett and Blair have been for two days straight. I was there earlier, but they aren’t letting anyone else in to see her or the new bub because she was preemie. So, focus on getting home, and I’ll get one of the jackasses to call you when they get the chance.”
“I’m about to board a flight from L.A. I’ll be home in thirteen hours. More with customs and everything, but …” I took a deep breath and willed the tears away. “If she wakes up before I get there, tell her I’m trying, okay? I’ll be home soon.”
“She’s going to be fine,” Reece repeated.
I nodded even though she couldn’t see me.
“We’ll see you when you get back. Do you need a lift? I can pick you up.”
I let out a relieved breath. “Yes, please.”
“Text me your flight details, and I’ll be there.”
“Thanks, Reece.”
I ended the call, and all the anger was gone. All that was left was a shell of a person, and I suddenly found myself in Odie’s shoes. God, how was that man even standing?
As if on cue, my knees buckled, and I fell into a seat outside the departure gate.
“Any news?” Odie asked.
“She’s …” I sobbed.
“Holy shit. What happened?”
“Complications. Coma.”
“She going to be okay?”
“I don’t know. I can’t lose her. I can’t—”
Odie’s arm came around my shoulder. “I know. Trust me, I know. We’ll know more when we get there.”
I didn’t want to think about it, because that made me obsess, but I couldn’t get those words out of my head.
Complications.
Induced coma.
Baby in NICU.
It was too early. This wasn’t supposed to happen for another month. No, this wasn’t supposed to happen at all.
The future I’d envisioned with Pip was slipping through my fingers. Fuck, what if she didn’t even make it out of the coma?
“I’m sorry,” I said to Odie.
“What the ever-loving fuck for?”
I snorted through my tears. “For giving you a hard time about being depressed. Shit, Pip isn’t even …” I couldn’t say the words dead and Pip in the same sentence without losing it.
“She’ll get through this. She’s the toughest woman I know.”
“When she does, I’m going to ask her to marry me.”
Odie grinned. “She’ll say no if you’re only doing it because she almost died.”
“I know she will, but I’d already decided it. When I was at the store, I ran into Lucy.” I hadn’t had the chance to tell Odie about that yet.
Odie sucked in a sharp breath. “And you survived? After all these years, I was convinced you’d implode if you two were ever in the same room again.”
“Ha, ha.”
“Did you talk to her or run away?”
I smiled. “I talked to her. Almost yelled at her. Then I felt sorry for her. She pointed out that I looked happy, and for the first time since I was a teenager, I really am. The happiest times of my whole life have been with Pip. From goofing around when we were friends to being there for each other through everything shit in our lives.”
“Then as soon as Pip is recovered, you put a ring on her finger.” Odie reached into his bag. “This one should fit.” He pulled out a tiny ring box, and when I lifted the lid, I was confused by the giant diamond on the platinum band. Dad and Odie had plain gold bands, and Odie was still wearing his.
“Where—”
“I was going through your dad’s crap, and I found a box of old photos of your mother and of the three of you when you were a baby. The ring was in there. The photos are in my checked luggage. I was going to give all of it to you when we got to Australia, but I think you might need something to hold onto until we get there.”
I broke down and sobbed until I was a complete mess. I would not recommend bawling your eyes out in the middle of LAX as something to add to a bucket list. People were looking at me weird, but I couldn’t stop. I would’ve loved nothing more than to be invisible.
When we finally boarded the plane, I must’ve looked as shit as I felt, because the flight attendants asked if I was okay.
Odie explained my fiancée was in a coma and we were trying to get home to see her. Apparently, that was enough for them to bring me all the free alcohol I could drink. Paired with a pill Odie gave me, I crashed out on the flight and was woken up twelve hours later, right before we were due to land.
With that much sleep, I should have been rested, but it was the type of sleep where I kept reliving the same thing over again, and I couldn’t wake myself up.
In my dream, Pip was flatlining. I lost her time and time again. By the time the plane hit the tarmac, my limbs were shaking.
Odie didn’t say anything, but I saw the concern in his eyes. The sympathy. His look said we’d get through the same thing together if she didn’t make it, but that also meant he was ready to give up on Pip.
I would never give up.
A love like ours was all-consuming. She couldn’t leave me. I’d never survive it.
***
My feet took me to the ICU as if unattached from my body. I wasn’t ready to see Pip—not in a hospital bed. I needed her to be my Pip. My sarcastic sidekick. I took a deep breath and entered the unit. The glares I got from the nurses didn’t faze me, and once Garrett spotted me from a room to the side, he rushed to tell them who I was—Pip’s true family. I tried not to get teary over that, but being in the hospital when only a few months ago I was in a different one with Dad thinking it was the end, holding it together was impossible.
Garrett grabbed my arm and led me to Pip’s room. “Just in case you get any ideas in here, we have to be quiet, so you can’t punch me.”
“Why would I—oh. None of us could’ve known this was going to happen. I don’t blame you. She’s going to wake up, and she’s going to be fine.”
Garrett narrowed his eyes. “What drugs are you on, and where can I get some? I was expecting yelling and demanding to know what happened, and—”
“Oh, I still want to know what happened, but right now, I need to be with her.” I couldn’t believe my calm demeanour myself, but when everything I had was in a coma, the petty anger and need to blame someone wasn’t important. Pip was my only concern.
“Shit, sorry, of course.” He stepped aside.
When my gaze finally found her, the tension in my chest released in a loud breath. I hated seeing her like that, but she was right there within my grasp, and that was more than I’d had in months.
“They took her off the ventilator this morning, and she’s breathing on her own. It’s just a matter of time before she wakes up. They said it could take a while for the drugs to wear off.”
I took the chair by her bed and held her cold hand. “I’m here, baby.”
“I’ll, uh, go relieve Blair. He’s with Becks.”
My head swivelled faster than possible. “Fuck, I’m an idiot. Congrats on being a dad.” I stood and hugged him. “Sorry, kinda distracted with the whole—”
“I get it. The baby’s a tiny little thing, and we’re only allowed to hold her for short periods. I feel like I’m going to break her, so I’ve been with Pip.”
I cocked a brow. “And Becks? That’s her name?”
“I won that fight. Beckham Philippa Rhodes.”
“How did you get him to agree to Beckham?” I asked.
“I beat him at golf. First time ever.”
That was true love. “He so threw the game to make you happy.”
Garrett’s smile didn’t leave him as he said, “I know. And we came to a compromise. I get the baby name I wanted, and he gets last name rights. I’m in the middle of getting my last name changed over now.”
“Garrett Rhodes. Sounds less douche-like than Garrett Erikson, but maybe that’s because I knew of your Erikson reputation before I’d even met you.”
“Yeah, that guy was a douche. I’m not him anymore. Mostly.”
My eyes naturally gravitated back towards Pip.
Garrett squeezed my shoulder. “I’ll let you have some time with her. I think the doctor said he’d be back this afternoon. She’s been doing really well.”
I scoffed. “For someone in a coma?”
“Induced coma. There’s a difference.”
“If you see the doctor, can you get him to come in here?”
Garrett nodded. “Message me when she wakes up?”
“Will do.”
Garrett’s footsteps echoed on the slick, tiled floors, and now that I was alone with Pip again, the engagement ring Odie gave me burned a hole in my pocket.
A hospital was not the place to propose. Come to think of it, neither was asking while she was in a coma, but I was going to anyway. I needed that ring on her finger. I needed her to know how ready I was for this. She’d been right in saying I wasn’t months ago, even though I thought I was.
This was the reset button we needed. Not so much the coma, but now the baby was born, we had a new beginning. One with just us. We could do whatever we wanted with no restrictions.
My hand reached for hers again, but this time I slipped the ring on her finger. I wondered if that would cause her to go into shock when she woke up. Before I could second-guess myself and take it back, a doctor knocked on the glass wall partition of Pip’s room and let himself in.
He smiled warmly and reached to shake my hand. “I’m Doctor Rogers. You must be Gage.”
“I am. How—”
“Garrett and Blair warned me you’d be demanding and I’d better have answers ready when you got here.”
I tried to smile. “Well, they weren’t wrong.”
“Philippa had an undiagnosed infection when we went in for the C-section. On top of the pre-eclampsia, it caused her to seize on the operating table.” He went on to tell me what I already knew, which made me feel better hearing it first-hand. My friends could’ve told me until they were blue in the face that she was going to fine, but they didn’t medically know that was the case. “Her vitals are looking great, and now we’re just waiting for the meds to wear off. We expect her to make a full recovery, although she may have some side effects when she wakes up like confusion and memory loss of what happened.”
“Other than that, will she be okay?”
The doctor paused. “There was a lot of stress on her uterus …”
“Can … can she still have children?”
“It’s not recommended to try for the first twelve months after a caesarean anyway, but with Philippa’s trauma, I’d suggest waiting eighteen months to two years before even discussing it.”
Eighteen months to two years …
“And after that?” I had a feeling he wasn’t telling me everything. Maybe he wasn’t allowed to seeing as I wasn’t technically family, but I was all she had. My chest was hollow as I contemplated a future where we couldn’t have kids.
“We’ll know more once her body has had time to heal. With the complications of this pregnancy, you should know it might not be recommended that she try for more children. It could be too high-risk.”
“But this one wasn’t even hers.”
The doctor pursed his lips. “We won’t know more until she has her follow-up appointments.”
I nodded.
I thought the whole waking up process would be easy—like waking up from a nap. It was anything but. She came to for a bit, smiled and said I was pretty, and then fell back asleep.
The doctor assured it was normal to be groggy, and obviously delirious, but she’d wake up properly soon.
I sat there and held her hand and tried not to think about what the surrogacy had taken from us. What my parents and death had taken from us.
Months of grief, loss, and being there for others had come between us, but I wasn’t going to let it happen anymore.
Everything that got in our way kept trying to tell us we weren’t going to work. Our timing sucked, the transition to more than friends was weirder than I thought it would be, and in the last year, I’d been away from her more than I’d been with her. But it made my love for her grow stronger.
I’d do anything for the woman in front of me, even give up the chance of having kids if that was on the table. I always thought I’d be a dad—at least, until Lucy screwed me over—and ever since Pip got pregnant, all I’d wanted was for that kid to be mine. But if I thought about having to choose between Pip and future hypothetical kids, I’d pick Pip every time. We had enough honorary nieces and nephews to dote on.
When Pip finally arose for real, she was confused and sore.
“You’re in America.”
I smiled down at her. “No, baby. I’m here with you.”
Her eyes widened. “Baby.” Her hand went to her stomach.
“She’s fine. She’s safe. You did a good job.”
“It was too early, and …” Her forehead scrunched. “She’s really okay? Can I see her? And her? I was right?”
A chuckle escaped me. “You were right. And I’m not sure if you can see her. She’s in the NICU.”
Pip tried to sit up but winced.
I gently pushed her back down. “She’s fine. You’re not in a condition to get up yet.”
She looked down at her body. “Oh, God. You shouldn’t be here. You’ll never want to sleep with me again when I look like shit.” She lifted the covers. “And have a catheter.”
I laughed. “You’re still the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever seen.”
“I guess you have to get used to it for when we have our kids, right?”
I stiffened but tried to cover it up. “Right.”
“What is it?”
“Nothing.”
She knew I was lying. “You’re lying.” Yup, right on cue. “Did I freak you out about talking about the future? I figured you do it all the time, and—”
“Not freaking out. I just … We have a while before we talk about kids.”
“I thought … I mean, the way you talk about kids—”
“We have a wedding to plan first. We also need to talk about where we’re going to live. I don’t want to do long distance anymore, but I can’t leave Odie. I want to move back to Virginia. Even if it’s temporary. I can’t keep working for Tony remotely. It doesn’t work, and is probably costing him money. And—”
“Wait, wedding?”
I reached for her left hand and lifted it so she could see the ring. “I proposed while you were in a coma. You said yes, in case you were wondering.”
Her eyes widened. “We need to have a discussion about you doing shit without my knowledge. Like moving in.”
“Ah. Noticed that, huh?”
“Garrett and Blair did. They’ve been staying with me.”
“Because of the complications you didn’t want to tell me about.” I tried to keep the scowl from my face.
“Joel needed you. I didn’t. Garrett and Blair were here for me.”
“A lot of good that did. You ended up in a coma, Pip.”
“Had it been you here instead of them, it would’ve played out the same. I told them I had a headache, and they called the ambulance immediately. If I were on my own, I probably would’ve waited it out to see how I felt.”
I sighed. “I hate that I wasn’t here for you.”
“You are now. And we’re getting married apparently. Although, I think you need to ask again when there isn’t a bag of pee attached to me.”
“Hey, proposing to you while in a coma is romantic. Better than Garrett proposing at a funeral. Or Reece and Spence proposing to each other over a prenup.”
“True. Are you going to at least do the speech? There has to be a grand speech.”
“Umm … well, I kinda decided we were engaged and Beyonce’d you. I put a ring on it.”
“That’s not a proposal!” She laughed.
“Sure it is. And we can make it sound as romantic as we want. You heard the story of Chris and Maggie at work, right?”
She shook her head.
“You know how Maggie loves animals? Chris planned to propose at the zoo, but the day they went it was raining so he decided against it. When they got home, he couldn’t wait to do it because he loved her so much and wanted nothing more than to make it official. He couldn’t wait another minute without making her his forever. They were both dripping wet and freezing, so Maggie had a shower. Chris waited on bended knee for her to get out and towel off, and there, just outside the bathroom door, he proposed because he had to have her.”
“Aww. That’s romantic.”
“See, that’s how they tell it, but really think about that story. He’s dripping wet and cold, she’s wearing a towel, and they’re standing next to a toilet. A toilet. How is that romantic? Oooh, what if we tell everyone that when I asked you to marry me, it woke you from your coma? See awesome story.”
She laughed again. “You’re an idiot.”
“And you’re marrying me, so what does that say about you?”
“That you proposed when I was unable to say yes or no.”
“You wanna say no?” I asked. “Because it can happen. Just give the ring back, sweetheart.”
She clutched her hand to her chest. “No way.”
“Didn’t think so.”
“Where did you get the ring?”
“It was my mother’s.”
Her hand went out in front of her again as she examined it closer. Her eyes softened and she stared at the ring in awe. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”
I covered her hand with mine. “I decided before I even knew you were in the hospital. I … uh, ran into Lucy.”
Pip’s eyes widened. “Please tell me it wasn’t with a car.”
“I wish. But no. You were right. I needed … I don’t know what it was. I don’t want to call it closure, because that feels like a cop out. All I know is after I talked to her, all I wanted to do was come home and drag you back to the States with me.”
She stared down at our entwined hands. “Joel’s really that bad?”
“I can’t say I wouldn’t be the same if I was in his shoes. Hell, for the past”—I checked my watch—“forty or so hours, I was in his shoes. I didn’t know what was wrong with you, no one could tell me anything, and my phone was off for most of it while I was in the air. All I knew was I couldn’t lose you. Not when we’ve been through so much just to be together.”
Her thumb traced along my hand. “Tony’s going to kill us.”
“You’ll come with me? You do realise it could be months or even a year before we can come back?”
She nodded. “I don’t care. I just want to be with you. We might have to sell my place or—”
“We could rent it out. Have Garrett and Blair check in on it for us.”
Her face fell, and she pursed her lips. “I’m going to miss out on seeing the baby—”
“Becks. They named her Beckham.”
“Oh my God, I thought he was joking when Garrett said he wanted to name the kid that. You know it’s after David Beckham, right?”
“Yeah, she has no hope. She’s probably already wearing soccer cleats.”
Pip sighed. “I was kinda hoping to be the aunty who saved her from all that, but I guess I can’t be if I’ll be halfway around the world.”
“I’ll ask you again when you’re not so drugged up. It’s a big decision, I know that, but I can’t leave Odie right now. He’s been there for me my whole life and been through a lot for me. It’s time I pay that back. He’s getting better, and he keeps telling me to leave him alone, but I see it—his pain.”
“I’m definitely going with you. I hate being apart.”
“As soon as Odie is on his feet or decides to move here, we’ll be back.”
“So we’re really doing this?”
“This?”
“Getting married. Moving to a foreign country—”
“I think we need to step out of our version of normal for a while,” I said. “It feels like the universe is against us, and I can never get close enough to you. I hate that us finally getting together is clouded with everyone else’s shit like Dad and the surrogacy. I want a fresh start. Our forever deserves a great beginning.”
“How do you feel about moving back to Clarion for the foreseeable future?”
I smiled. “Those people can’t hurt me anymore. They’re always going to be dicks, and I can’t find any more fucks to give. It’s taken a long time for me to realise my dads were right. That town shouldn’t dictate my life, and Odie is more important to me than avoiding stupid rumours that aren’t true.”
“And… and how did you feel? Umm, seeing her.”
“Are you trying to ask me if I saw her and fell in love with Lucy all over again? Because the answer to that would be a hell no. Fuck no. Absofuckinglutely no.”
“I get it. I just wanted to make sure. I don’t think I could survive it.”
“I can’t survive living without you anymore.”
The smile that broke across her face reminded me of a million reasons why I loved her. “Garrett and I had a talk while you were gone,” she said.
“Oh?”
“I asked him when he knew it was time to come home from Sydney and commit to Blair. He said it was when he couldn’t live without him anymore.”
I leant in and kissed her forehead. “We’ll never be apart again.”
“Ever.”