Authors: Casey Clipper
"We'll take care of them, Boss," Carl said short. Fury radiated from his own body.
All of his men loved his wife. Who wouldn't? She was everything a man could want or desire in a partner. Loving, supportive, beautiful and never asked a single question.
Ten minutes later Carl pulled up to the emergency room. Darren jumped from the car before it had come to a complete stop. The ambulance arrived two minutes before they
had and the staff was already working on his wife. Not permitted past the waiting area, instead Darren was forced to fill out fucking paperwork he didn't give a shit about.
Twenty minutes later an older male doctor came out to the waiting area. "Mr. Murphy?"
Darren rushed him. "My wife."
"We have to take her up to surgery, Mr. Murphy. She has internal bleeding," the doctor bluntly
explained.
"What?" he gasped.
"Her blood pressure spiked too high. There was too much strain on her and the baby. We are trying to stop the labor and find out where the bleeding is coming from," the doctor said. "The surgical waiting area is on the third floor. We'll come out to you when we have news."
The doctor briskly turned and left Darren standing alone in complete shock and horror. His mind went blank with his worst possibly nightmare come to life.
***
Four hours since the doctor had informed Darren his wife needed emergency surgery
and not one word from the hospital staff updating her condition. Four fucking hours. Even though the waiting area was filled with Darren's staff along with his brother, parents, Courtney's parents, and Diane it remained silent, saturated with anxiety. Darren's and Courtney's parents went to the hospital chapel to pray for Courtney and the baby. Derrick mutely stared out the hospital window in his own bout of despair, not able to console his brother. Diane sobbed in the corner but tried to do it quietly, not wanting to upset her brothers, who marginally clung to their sanity. Darren refused to leave the waiting area. He couldn't. Yet, he couldn't pace, couldn't stand, couldn't do anything except pray in the grungy hospital chair he was seated that his wife wouldn't be taken from him. He could
not
live without her. What a fucking nightmare.
The waiting room
remained eerily silent for hours with occasional whispers from Darren's men, who discussed plans to get their hands on the two agents, who obviously used Courtney to try to destroy Darren. At the fifth hour a doctor and nurse entered the waiting area.
"Mr. Murphy?" the doctor asked, glancing around the full room.
"Yes." Darren stood and rushed across the room.
Derrick went to rush to his brother's side, but their father stopped him and shook his head at oldest son. "That's your brother's wife."
Derrick shot his father a menacing glare. Little did the family know how close Derrick and Courtney truly were.
"Courtney?" Darren asked, desperation and panic streaming through his tone.
"I need you to follow us so we can speak privately, Mr. Murphy," the doctor said. He turned and strode through the double doors to a private office not far from the waiting area. The nurse followed behind.
"Have a seat." The doctor pointed to a chair at a small, round table surrounded by four chairs.
"I need to know about my wife," Darren insisted, scarcely holding his composure.
The doctor and nurse sat across from him. T
heir solemn looks suggested the conversation wasn't going to be what he needed to hear.
"Mr. Murphy, we weren't able to stop the labor. Your wife gave birth to a boy forty-five minutes ago," the doctor said delicately.
He gasped. "But...but... the baby isn't ready."
"No, no he's not."
"He," Darren repeated. "A son. Courtney gave me a son?"
"Mr. Murphy, the baby won't make it through the night,” the doctor said. "He's too premature and underdeveloped.
Some babies are able to survive when born this early, but we've found the baby hadn't developed where he should have at this stage. We are trying everything we can to stop the bleeding with your wife. What we need to know, is that if we can't stop the hemorrhaging, are you willing to sign off on a hysterectomy?"
"What?" he asked. What the hell was happening? "Is she dying?"
"We're trying to save her, Mr. Murphy. We don't want you to lose your son
and
your wife," the doctor stressed. "If she has the hysterectomy, she will no longer be able to have children. Every vital organ she needs to carry a child will be gone but she will be alive."
Stunned, horrified, and terrified. Those were the best terms to describe his state. He couldn't lose his Courtney. The thought of never having her in his life...well, was unthinkable. But
he desperately wanted children. Specifically children that were part her and part him. Tears Darren didn't know had formed in his eyes, slid down his cheeks onto his designer suit pants. His head fell into his hands.
"Dear
, God," he whispered.
"We don't have much time for you to decide, Mr. Murphy."
He'd always considered himself a rational man. Most of the time. Except when it came to his Courtney, all rationale was thrown out the window. He understood the medical staff needed an immediate answer but of all the choices in his life he must make, why this one? Why the hell was this happening?
Those fucking agents. Anger boiled in his stomach and crawled over his skin
. He could feel his body temperature rise. Pissed for his wife, for himself, and for his son, who had been born too soon and would leave the world before given the opportunity to grow and flourish. His resolve to salvage something out of his nightmare took hold.
"Save my wife," he answered, sure of his decision. His wife was a fighter, something she rarely showed, but was there simmering below the surface. She'd proven
time and time again. Darren might be the mob boss but his gorgeous wife was the one to be reckoned with when furious.
"All right. We'll show you to your son, Mr. Murphy. We'll let you know about your wife, hopefully soon," the doctor said.
They stood from their seats, but before departing, Darren gave the doctor a deadly warning, "Do everything you can to save her without taking away her ability to have children. If nothing else can be done, then save her."
"Of course, Mr. Murphy."
***
Darren's tiny son didn't seem real in his oversized
palms. Transparent skin, patches covering his underdeveloped eyes, a tube in his nose, and less than two pounds, his son's lifespan was limited to minutes not days. A heart monitor sounded every few minutes and a nurse stayed by their side for the moment the newborn would take his last breath.
Two hours Darren h
eld his son. Two of the longest but also shortest hours of his life. He cooed to his baby. Stroked the too soft skin. Kissed him as much as a man could in a short span. And vowed to meet up with him again in the future.
At two and a half hours the baby boy took his final breath. Darren had given the hospital staff a DNR order after discussing the damage the baby would go through for the rest of his life
if
he survived the next few months. Those odds were slim to none. Darren couldn't imagine putting the tiny creature through such torture, and he knew Courtney would feel the same.
Silently sobbing
, Darren gently handed the nurse his baby boy, wiped his eyes and left the NICU to wait for any news on his wife.
Darren
"We managed to stop the bleeding without taking away the ability for her to have children in the future,” the doctor said. He walked alongside Darren into the ICU to explain Courtney’s condition. "We got her blood pressure down. We believe there won’t be any
long-term effects because she is young and relatively healthy. Everything looks good, Mr. Murphy."
Taking in the information, he felt somewhat relieved but needed to see his Courtney. He had to see with his own eyes that sh
e was all right. Disbelief coursed through him of all that his wife medically suffered. How could his healthy, vibrant, beautiful wife have her own body attack itself in such a horrendous manner? What he wouldn't give to switch places with her and take the burden.
He followed the
doctor through the ICU. All the rooms were filled with patients that seemed to be in dire straights. Machines attached to the patients filled every space. Dread washed over him. Please let his Courtney be all right.
Please.
They stopped
at a room towards the end of the unit. The doctor slipped through the closed curtain. Numbly, Darren stepped behind him but stopped and gasped in horror at the sight before him.
His Courtney laid
unconscious on a large bed that engulfed her small frame. Tubes, wires, and machines surrounded her, drowning out the stilled silence. A nurse stood on the right of the bed scribbling in a chart while the sound of a machine binged. His wife wasn't recognizable. Her skin looked grey, face sunken in with no life to her. The single sign that she was indeed alive was the heart monitor beeping.
“Oh,
God,” Darren whispered. His wife. His perfect wife looked like something he couldn't even comprehend. A piece of him hoped the doctor had brought him to the wrong room.
“Her heart rate is good, Mr. Murphy,” the doctor said.
Nope, it was his Courtney. It was her room.
The older nurse looked up from the chart and gave him a warm smile. “Come over and see her.”
She pulled up a stool for him to sit next to his wife. Without hesitation he took the seat and grabbed Courtney's left hand. He brushed his lips over her bare knuckles. Silent tears streamed down his cheeks. Tears he didn’t realize formed in his eyes. Again. Courtney was the one person on the earth who could turn him into a weeping fool or bring him to his knees.
“Courtney, honey…” he whispered, but stopped,
unable to form words, afraid of subconsciously upsetting her again. Instead he clamped his mouth shut. When she had blacked out, she had been infuriated with him. Justifiably so. He would never take her anger away from her and would spend the rest of his atoning for his mistake. He vowed to do whatever it took.
When the doctor and nurse left the room, Darren laid his head on Courtney’s lifeless hand and outright sobbed. He sobbed so hard and for so long he had no idea if he would ever stop. He couldn’t lose everything at one time. Losing the baby was hard eno
ugh, but to lose his wife, who was his everything, would outright destroy him. She was the air he breathed. His sun, his life, his world. She changed him the moment he had laid eyes on her. He'd spent years revolving his world around her, going out of his way to protect from the business he created. All to sustain her innocence. He spent years loving and courting her, showing his devotion to her. The moment Courtney entered his life, other women turned into a grey history. He treated her as the most precious commodity a man would or could ever have. She deserved better than this.
“Please, please, please, Courtney. Please come back to me,” Darren
quietly pleaded. He prayed somewhere in her unconscious state she might hear him and want to return.
***
Over the next week Darren, his parents, Courtney’s parents, Derrick, and Diane spent vigil by Courtney’s bedside. Still unconscious, the doctors explained her body needed an enormous amount of healing to do and might take her a while to come around. Most of the machines she'd been weaned off of except for a couple monitors. All the specialists voiced how they were pleased with her progress. They even went so far as to say they could try for children again when she was cleared to do so in a few months.
C
hildren weren't close to one of his major concerns at that moment. He needed his wife to wake up first.
Courtney’s parents questioned Darren
about what happened. He remained vague, telling Mr. and Mrs. Millen that they fought and he hadn’t been able to calm her down. Darren could tell her retired military father wasn’t sold on the story but her mother shook her head in exasperation. “Courtney has always had a temper. Once she goes off about something it's always difficult to calm her down.”
“She is stubborn,”
Mr. Millen roughly agreed.
Darren held his wife's hand, gently brushing her
knuckles with his thumb. “She is," Darren agreed. "One of the countless reasons I love her so.”
He lifted her hand to kiss the back of it.
“Open your eyes, Courtney,” he whispered and kissed her cheek.
***
Placed in the step-down unit in the hospital, Courtney's health continued to speedily improve. Her room remained under constant guard by Darren's men, who created a menacing presence. The hospital found they were extra diligent when it came to Mrs. Murphy's care.