Somewhere Out There(97)

Now, Brooke made her way into the dining room to join the rest of the staff at a table so the chef could describe and let them taste the specials they would be serving that evening. A little while later, she took her first table of the night, a six-top that immediately ordered several cocktails, then asked to speak to the sommelier for assistance with picking out wines to accompany their meal. After putting in the order for their appetizers, Brooke found herself wondering if Natalie had already gone to meet their mother in Mt. Vernon; she imagined the two of them sitting together, clucking about how unfortunate it was that Brooke was too dysfunctional to forgive them both. The thought of this made her feel a little bit dizzy. In fact, she had to grab the edge of the counter by the pass to the kitchen to keep from stumbling.

“You okay?” another server, named Frank, asked. He was a bit older than Brooke, had been working at Sea to Shore for over ten years, and was responsible for training new employees like her.

“Yeah,” she said, trying to shake off the feeling. She wondered if she hadn’t eaten enough that day. She grabbed a roll from the warmer under the counter and took a bite. “Just hungry, I think,” she said to Frank, who nodded, lifted his diners’ plates from the window, and carried them out to the floor.

Brooke washed down the roll with a glass of water just as the hostess approached her and said that she had seated two more tables in her section. “Going to be a busy night,” the younger woman added. “Two hundred reservations on the books.”

“Wow,” Brooke said, still waiting for the food she’d eaten to make her feel better. As she made her way out to her section, she walked as straight as she could. She couldn’t get sick now, she thought. She needed to show Nick that he could count on her, no matter what.

She smiled at her new customers as best she could as she welcomed them and took their cocktail orders. Weaving her way through the tables back to the servers’ station, she quickly punched in their drinks and then grabbed her first table’s drink orders from the bar and set them on a large tray. She hiked it up on her right shoulder and carried a tray jack in her left hand, carefully balancing both. Beads of sweat popped out on her forehead, but with her hands full, she couldn’t wipe them away.

She was halfway across the restaurant, back toward the six-top, when a sharp spike of pain shot through her abdomen and down her leg, causing her knees to buckle. She fell hard onto the wood floor, and the tray she carried went flying. Luckily, there were no customers seated nearby.

“Oh, god,” she grunted as her muscles continued to spasm. A second later, she felt a rush of something liquid between her legs. Was her water breaking? Brooke thought in a panic. Was the baby coming early? She curled fetal on the floor, bringing her knees up to her chest, waiting for the pain to pass.

“Brooke!” she heard Nick say. “Are you all right? What happened?”

She shook her head, too scared to speak. The pain was excruciating, shooting through her belly into her hips. She was terrified to move, for fear of making things worse.

“Did you trip?” he asked, and again she shook her head, then spoke, her voice wound tight.

“I’m pregnant,” she gasped. “Something is wrong.”

“Call 911,” Nick directed, though to whom, Brooke didn’t know. She couldn’t open her eyes. All she could think about was her baby.

Nick rested a hand on her back. “It’s going to be okay,” he said. “Just stay still. Help is on its way.”

She nodded as the pain in her uterus squeezed again, and she felt as though she might be sick. She wanted to know if she was bleeding or if her water had broken, but she was in too much agony to check. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to Nick. “I meant to tell you . . .”

“Hey,” Nick said. “It’s okay. I thought you might be, but I didn’t want to be the * who asks and gets punched in the face for being wrong.” He paused. “Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be fine.”

Brooke finally managed to crack open her eyes, only to see a circle of employees and customers with concerned looks on their faces. But she didn’t have time to be embarrassed, with only a few words running through her head: Please, God. Let my baby be okay.

The paramedics came ten minutes later, pushing all the other people away. Before Brooke knew it, they had lifted her onto the gurney and she was wheeled out of the building and slid into the back of an ambulance. They checked her vitals, and she told them how far along she was. “I think I might be bleeding,” she said, unable to fight back her tears. “Or my water broke. I’m not sure.”

“Okay,” the medic who had stayed in the back with her said. She was a blond woman who looked to be in her late twenties. “I’m going to check on that, then. Is that all right?”

Brooke’s jaw and bottom lip quivered, but she bobbed her head. The medic lifted the blanket they’d placed over her in the restaurant and gently pushed Brooke’s thighs apart. When she returned her brown eyes to Brooke’s, they were unreadable. “There’s some blood,” the medic said.

“Oh, god!” Brooke cried out, rolling her head to one side, unable to look at the medic a moment longer. She was losing this baby . . . just like she’d lost everyone else. Her tears came in earnest then, and painful, heavy sobs took her over. The ache in her uterus hadn’t gone away.