Thick Love (Thin Love, #2)(98)

There wasn’t much room in the ICU—a small bed elevated, holding her as that damn tube worked to keep her breathing steady. She was out, completely, her face still swollen from the dangers of the pregnancy and her already fair complexion hollowed by the blood loss.

“This is a serious condition, Mr. Hale.” The doctor had kept his voice calm, his expression impassive and I’d caught the way he stayed several feet from my father, as though he half expected another alpha protest like the one in the delivery room. “Amniotic fluid embolism.” My father and I both frowned at the man and he held up his hand as though he knew questions were coming. “It’s extremely rare and so little is known about the condition that we really aren’t certain how to prevent it. But we can treat it. You got her here in time, that’s the most important thing.”

“I don’t understand what this means. Please, tell me,” Dad said, ignoring the doctor’s attempt at making him feel better.

The man had an easy face, looked friendly, compassionate, even the way he’d stood, arms crossed and a chart between his fingers gave him a relaxed but professional vibe. “It happens when the amniotic fluid or other fetal materials enters the mother’s bloodstream. That fluid can cause clotting issues with the lungs and blood vessels. It may be possible that the preeclampsia put Keira at a greater risk, but the important thing is that we’re treating her. The oxygen and the cycle of meds we’ve got her on will get her back to fighting shape, but you both need to understand Keira will be very weak for a while; we’ll need to keep her here for some time.”

“How long?” I asked.

“Weeks, possibly a month, it will all depend on how she responds to treatment.” The doctor watched my father as he nodded, and I caught the way the man’s eye shifted from Dad’s face to mom lying on the bed and then back again. “Mr. Hale,” he said, clearing his throat and Dad straightened his shoulders as the doctor glanced at the floor. “I can’t be sure until Keira’s recovered but, in my professional opinion it would highly ill-advised for Keira to get pregnant again.”

There was the smallest moment, a little flash that he tried to cover with a shrug, and I knew the news had disappointed him. Family was everything. Ohana wasn’t just some catchphrase in a Disney movie. It was real to him, to all of us.

“Doc,” he said, grabbing the man’s shoulder, “you take care of my Wildcat and my baby girl. That is all I care about right now.” He’d squeezed the doctor’s shoulder. “You get my girls healthy so I can take them home.”

We’d only seen the baby for a few minutes in the NICU; her breathing was labored and she was being monitored. It was probably nothing but they weren’t taking any chances. That baby was perfect and beautiful and I had to force Dad away from that incubator before he’d caused another scene. Between the waiting game of both Mom and my little sister being out of reach, Dad and I got little sleep.

The hours went by slowly as we waited next to Mom’s bed, watching her, avoiding anything that resembled a conversation because on that bed, between me and father, lay the fear that hung in the room like humidity. We couldn’t look at each other, make comments about football or practice or any damn thing because we were the same. We were so similar and neither of us was good at hiding what we felt. Not when it came to Mom. Not when it came to loss.

Dad did nothing but stare at her, practically lying on the bed next to her with his hand covering hers and his thumb rubbing along her knuckles. He touched her, kissed her as though he expected her to wake up and apologize for worrying him so much.

“One time,” he said, that deep, sleep-deprived voice made him sound sick, “when we were in college, she broke up with me.” He kept his eyes moving over her face. The right side of his mouth moved as something came to him and then he shook his head. “She was always trying to do that.” I let him talk, didn’t remind him that I knew that. They’d spent the past three years filling me in on their destructive, desperate relationship when they were kids and I’d never quite understood if they thought the stories were funny or if they told them to me to scare me. “God, we were young. We were…” one long blink and my father swallowed, “we were addicted to each other and there she was mad at me because I did something else that was stupid, I kept doing things that were stupid and the whole time I was away from her, I thought ‘How can I fix this?’ ‘How can I make this right?’ because I knew…I knew…” Then he went quiet, seeming too distracted by the small bones in her face and the smooth skin that covered them. Dad leaned on his elbow, pulling her hand against his chest.

“What did you know, Dad?”

He glanced at me like he’d almost forgotten I was there. “I knew my love was so thick, that what I felt for her then was something I didn’t just want, but something I needed. Even when I pushed her away, even when I was so scared of what she did to me, even when I spent years laying in bed at night wondering if that feeling would ever go away, I knew no one would give me that. There was only ever her. No one does love like Keira.”

“Thick love?” I said when he let the room go still again and the silence was too much for me to take.

He smiled and for the first time since we’d been here watching her, waiting for her, my father’s eyes relaxed. “‘Thin love ain’t love at all.’”