Down To You (The Love On Edge Series) (5 page)

“Interesting to say the least,” said Brant, not ready to dive into the issue of the Hong Kong trip just yet. He looked at Holly with concern, she was a bit off-color.

“Are you feeling okay?” Brant asked with concern weighing heavy in his voice.

Holly put the casserole on the table and looked up at him with a smile.

“I feel fine,” Holly replied.

Brant called Tressa and Randy to the dinner table as the family settled in to the meal Holly prepared. Holly eyed Brant cautiously. She could tell he had something on his mind. In between bites, she addressed the issue.

“So, what is it that you have to tell me?” asked Holly with a wink.

Brant looked at her with shock clear on his face. She
really
knew how to read him well.

“Uh… well…” started Brant, the surprise clear in his voice. He continued, “Work is sending me to Hong Kong. They want to send me over for three weeks, but I told them I had to talk to you first.”

Brant couldn’t read the expression on Holly’s face at first, but then when she jumped out of her chair and squealed out of excitement, he knew it wouldn’t be a problem with her.

“Oh, my God! Brant! That is amazing!”

“I’m considering telling them no,” said Brant warily.

“Why?! It’s an amazing opportunity.”

“Why? Because you’re pregnant, and we have three kids at home.”

“I’ve done this before, and you’ll only be gone a few weeks.”

“I don’t feel right going…”

“You’ll get over it. Bring me back a souvenir,” Holly said as she smiled widely at her reluctant husband.

Brant left for Hong Kong on the following Monday. Holly wasn’t feeling well on the day that Brant left, so she kissed him before he left the house instead of accompanying him to the airport. He took a flight from Philadelphia International to Detroit, and from Detroit he took the red eye straight to Hong Kong. It felt weird being off U.S. soil without his family.

Something just didn’t feel right.

*****

Holly woke up out of a sound sleep as a gasp escaped from her mouth. Her hands grabbed her lower stomach which was clenching and unclenching and causing her great distress. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so much pain in her life. She took a deep breath as she waited for the pain to subside, and breathing seemed to help. She sat up in her bed and looked at the clock. It was only 8:30 P.M. She had gone to lay down since her dad had taken the kids to the movies and out to dinner. He spoiled them rotten and made no apologies for it.

Holly reached to turn on the light that sat on her bed stand, and suddenly the pain returned, even worse than before. She clasped her side, as she grimaced through the pain. With each second her pain level increased until she was writhing in pain on the edge of the bed. Her vision went black as she felt her body go limp and she crashed upon the floor with a bang.

*****

“C’mon kids… Let’s get in the house. It’s cold out here! Be quiet, though, I think your mother is sleeping. So
, what did we learn from the movie?”

“That adults as just as confused as kids are when it comes to love,” said Tressa observantly.

“How true that is, little lass,” Marv agreed. “What about you, Randy? What did you learn from the movie?”

“That women shouldn’t drive angry…” answered Randy. Marv laughed.

“Excellent observation! Okay guys, here we are. Let’s take off your coats and hats and hang them up…” said Marv to his grandchildren.

“Muffin…. Oh, Muffin!” Marv called for Holly’s pet Pomeranian. Marv whistled for the pint-sized pooch.

What a ridiculous name for a dog

“Does Muffin want a treat?!” Marv had snagged a doggy bag for Muffin, and he knew how excited the dog would be. He called and called but Muffin didn’t come.

“Hey… Where’s Muffin?” Marv asked as he approached the staircase. He heard a whimpering sound coming from upstairs. Marv climbed the staircase gingerly, trying to see where Muffin had gotten off to.

When Marv reached the second floor landing he found Muffin at the door of Holly and Brant’s room. The dog scratched at the wood frantically, hoping that someone would open the door for him.

“What’s wrong, Muffin? Did Mommy lock you out?” asked Marv.

He opened the door to let mini-mutt
into Holly’s bedroom when his chest began to sear with pain. Holly was laying unconscious on the floor. Her face was contorted in a pained expression, and her arms still clenched her stomach.

“Holly!” Marv yelled, as he began to shake his daughter. When she wouldn’t stir he grabbed the phone on the bed side table and called 9-1-1.

*****

After what seemed like an endless flight, Brant finally landed in Hong Kong. He took a cab across town and settled into his room at the Landmark Mandarin Oriental hotel. Brant looked at his watch as he tried to determine what time it was back home so that he could call Holly and the kids, just to let them know that he made it. He looked at the silver watch that she had just given him for Christmas. It was 3:30 P.M. back home – the perfect time to talk to Holly and the kids. They would all be home from school. Brant picked up his hotel phone and dialed the house phone number. He waited, expecting Holly to pick up after the third ring, like usual, but it kept ringing. Finally, the voicemail picked up:

“Hi! You’ve reach Brant and Holly! Leave a message after the beep. If we like you, we
might
just call you back!”

Beep.

Brant was perplexed. She was always home by 3:30. Maybe she decided to take the kids out for a treat after school. Brant dialed the digits to Holly’s cell phone. It went straight to voicemail.

Something was wrong. He knew it. An uneasy feeling crept over Brant, and in the pit of his stomach there was a feeling of sickness.

He dialed Marv’s home phone.

He better pick up. I’m about to have a coronary.

One ring.
Two rings. Five rings. Ten rings. On the seventeenth ring Marv finally picked up the phone. He sounded out of breath.

“Hello?!” he yelled into the receiver.

“Marv, its Brant.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ. Thank God. I’ve been calling your cell phone but it’s turned off.”

“Yeah, I was on the plane. What’s wrong? I tried calling Holly but no one is picking up…”

Marv took a breath before he spoke.

“Brant, its Holly. She’s in the hospital.”

“The hospital?!” said Brant in an urgent tone.

There was a pause that caused the hair on Brant’s neck to stand on edge.

“She lost the baby. I’m sorry…”

The blood in Brant’s veins went cold.

“I’m coming home. Tell her I’m coming home.”

“I will. She is being kept at St. Mercy overnight, maybe longer. The kids are fine with me. We ordered ice cream sundaes!” said Marv, trying to keep the conversation light.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Brant said as he hung up the phone. In panic mode, Brant threw the clothes he had just put in his hotel dresser back into his suitcase and grabbed the phone again.

He dialed the number to Senticore hoping to get Max on the line. Surprisingly, Max picked up the line on the second ring.

“Good Afternoon, this is Max.”

“Max, this is Brant,” he said nervously.

“The man of the hour! How was your flight?!”

“Fine. Listen there has been an emergency.”

“What kind of emergency? With the injectable? Is there a problem with the funding?”

“No. At home. There has been an emergency and I need to go to my family.”

Max actually sounded relieved that it did not relate to the injectable.

“Well, Brant, I can certainly appreciate that you would want to be at your family’s side for whatever emergency there may be, but we need you to stick it out. We just spent $13,000 sending you over there.”

Brant was shocked.

“My wife just had a miscarriage. I need to go home.”

This didn’t seem to faze Max.

“Look, we’ll fly you home, but this puts your position with
Senticore in serious jeopardy.”

“I don’t care! Just fly me home!”

“You know what? I don’t like your attitude. Fly back tonight, collect your things out of your office. I think our partnership is null and void.”

Brant slammed the phone down on the receiver. He was just fired, but he didn’t care. He had to get home to Holly. He felt absolutely horrible being on the other side of the world when she was going through something so horrible and painful. He should have never come. It was a mistake. A huge mistake.

If the flight to Hong Kong was long, the flight back to the U.S. seemed to last a lifetime. The following morning, after leaving the airport, Brant hailed a cab and went straight to St. Mercy’s where a nurse escorted him to Holly’s room.

She was laying in her hospital bed looking very weak and pale. As he watched her sleep, his guilt morphed into something deeper, something darker. He felt the feelings of failure start to burgeon from his core.

He had let her down.

Brant touched her hand ever so gently, and she stirred from her nap.

“Oh, Brant…”

“I’m here…”

“How though? You’re supposed to be in Hong Kong.”

“You’re more important.”

Holly smiled weakly as she nodded back to sleep. Behind Brant a doctor came in the room with a clipboard.

“Are you Mr. Edgemont?”

“Yes,” replied Brant.

“I’m Dr. Carter. Your wife suffered a miscarriage, but I’m afraid it’s a little worse than that. We tried to stop the bleeding, but she is hemorrhaging. We need to perform a partial hysterectomy. There’s no time. We need to get her into surgery.”

The depression that had taken over Brant moments earlier had now gripped hold of his soul. Holly would not be able to have any more children. Brant whole-heartedly believed that he could have prevented this if he had payed more attention to his wife. She was
so
excited for another baby, too. The news broke his heart.

“Do whatever you have to do to save her,” Brant told the doctor as tears began to pool in his eyes.

“After the operation, I will keep her for a few days for observation.”

Brant reached out for the doctor’s hand, and he shook it, barely able to hold his composure together. After the doctor left, Brant fell into the arm chair that sat beside Holly’s hospital bed until the orderlies wheeled her out to surgery. As his head fell into his hands, he could get no lower. He had reached the depths of his despair.

Holly returned home seven days after she was initially rushed to the hospital when Marv found her unconscious and hemorrhaging. Brant hadn’t said much to her, and she was concerned. He had an unhealthy look about him. He wasn’t sleeping, barely eating, and he hadn’t been to work since returning home from Hong Kong. She was still weak, but she was not stupid. She saw him combing the wanted ads every day. She didn’t want to say anything, because she had a feeling that it would only add to his stress.