Never Giving Up (Never #3)(58)
And it was.
I couldn’t argue with their looks, couldn’t even put on a brave smile. There was no bravery left in me. All I had to hold onto was hope. And even that was slipping away.
For the second time, I found myself racing toward the hospital on the hill. Much like the first trip, when Ella had been taken there after Jason Ramie shot her, I was panicked. The feelings of not being in control, not being informed, took over and I found it difficult to stay calm. My heart pounded, my chest ached, and my hands shook.
The difference this time was, even though I felt uninformed and lost, a new feeling came over me: terror. I was frantic when Ella was in the hospital, afraid I’d lost her before I’d ever even really had her. But I had Mattie. She was mine. The very thought of losing her, of her light being taken away from me, caused me to lose the air in my lungs.
My whole body shook with sobs. I cried harder than I ever had before. One hand on the steering wheel, one hand covering my mouth or wiping tears from my face—I was a mess. I didn’t know what was wrong with Mattie, but if she was being taken by ambulance, I could only imagine that it was serious, and the unknown was the scariest and darkest place to be. My mind was full of images that were shredding me from the inside out. I imagined myself getting there too late, that she’d already be gone by the time I got there. Another sob racked my body as I imagined Ella having to deal with this all on her own. I prayed she wasn’t alone, but I also harbored really hateful feelings towards anyone who was with Mattie and Ella right now as I was stuck in this godforsaken truck, alone, on the freeway.
My mind continued to torture me until I suddenly found myself parked at the hospital. I blinked, surprised that I hardly remembered the drive. I climbed out of the truck and walked into the emergency room. I stopped at the first desk I saw.
“My daughter was brought here by ambulance. Where can I find her? Mattie Masters.”
“How old is your daughter?”
“Three weeks.”
“Ok, she would have been taken to the pediatric ER.” The woman gave me directions and I was off. I found the entrance and picked up the phone to get admittance. I told the person on the phone who I was, and who I was looking for. She told me the room number Mattie was in and the door next to me made a buzzing noise. I hung up and pushed through the door.
The hallway I entered was lit brightly with florescent lights and smelled exactly like a hospital should: stale, clean, and like chemicals. My eyes darted to the numbers next to the doors on each side of the hallway. I kept walking, forever it seemed, until I finally found the room I was looking for. I pushed the door open and what I saw nearly broke me.
My eyes first found Mattie, so small and so pale, cradled in Susan’s lap. She had two sensors on her chest, wires coming from them connecting them to a machine that beeped rapidly. Her tiny, fragile hand was wrapped with something blue, and through it I could see another tube coming from her, and an I.V. that was attached to a bag of fluids. She was sleeping, but she looked different. She looked sick.
The next thing my eyes took in was Ella, standing in the corner of the room, facing the window, looking out over the river and the Portland skyline.
“Baby,” I tried to say, but it came out a strangled whisper. She heard me and her head whipped around to find me and then we both lost our composure. She ran across the room to me, crying the instant her head met my chest. I cradled her against me, gripping her so tightly to my body, thankful to be together in this moment. “I got here as soon as I could,” I said against the top of her head, my lips moving against her hair, my tears dropping into the blonde locks.
“Trust me,” she said, still crying against me. “You didn’t want to be around for what happened earlier.” My body steeled at her words, fury raged through me, worried that she’d had to endure something terrible while I wasn’t with them to help or to comfort. I held her, my hands rubbing up and down her back, trying to offer her anything I could, even though I knew in this moment there wasn’t anything that could take away the fear I felt, which I was sure she felt deeper than even I did.
I loved Mattie, with everything that I was, but I could also concede that Ella loved Mattie in a way I could never understand. Ella’s love for our baby wasn’t better or worse than mine, it didn’t take anything away from how I felt about my child, but the connection I witnessed between Ella and our daughter was inarguably the deepest tie I’d ever seen two people have to each other. It made me love Ella that much more.
After a few minutes of crying with each other, I pulled away and used my thumbs to wipe the tears away from Ella’s face.
“What do we know? What’s wrong with her?”
Ella shook her head. “They don’t know yet. They think it’s some sort of infection. They said babies her age don’t get fevers unless it’s an infection. They tried to take her blood at the clinic . . .” Her words cut off and new tears sprung from her eyes. “They couldn’t get a vein, and Mattie was just crying, and I wasn’t in the room.” She leaned into me again. “I could hear her crying from down the hall. They took her from me and I wasn’t with her.” Hearing her words, feeling her body shaking against mine, broke my heart all over again. I knew it didn’t compare, but if someone had tried to keep me away from Ella in the same position, I wouldn’t have stood for it and I would have been just as broken as she sounded.