That Baby: A Small Town, Friends-to-Lovers Romance (That Boy Series Book 3)

Although it feels like forever, a few minutes later, Jadyn is being wheeled in on a gurney.

All I see is blood.

Why is there blood?

And whose blood is it?

Hers?

The baby’s?

Marcus said everything was fine. That her water just broke.

There shouldn’t be blood.

She sees me and reaches out for my hand.

“I’m sorry, Phillip,” she says, crying, before a contraction causes her to groan and clutch her stomach.

Everyone is moving quickly around us.

“Her water broke, but we’re seeing some blood, so there’s a possible placental abruption,” Marcus tells me.

The nurses rushing about haven’t said a word. They are focused on her.

Marcus squeezes JJ’s hand. “It’ll all be okay.”

“Remember what I told you,” she says to him.

“What did you tell him?” I ask, but she cries out in pain again.

Placental abruption. That’s bad. But I seem to remember that it could vary in severity.

I put my hand on her forehead, trying to keep her calm. Her eyes are big, and she looks scared to death.

And that scares the shit out of me.

“It’ll all be okay,” I tell her, praying that it will be.

“Jadyn, we’re going to do an emergency C-section,” someone says.

Jadyn nods, tears filling her eyes.

“Phillip,” she says in a panic, “I wrote it down, but you need to know, too. Make them save the baby. Not me. And please promise me that you’ll always remember what we talked about earlier. The love part.”

“What? Don’t even say that! Don’t even think that!” I yell, repeating the words she said to me when I was telling her about all the things that could go wrong during early pregnancy.

“Here’s the anesthesiologist,” someone says as they’re wheeling her into an operating room.

I’m following them, holding her hand, and so far, no one has said anything to me, but they are busy prepping her for surgery.

The nurse who scrubbed me in says, “You can be here for the birth, but they’re going to have to put your wife under.”

We’re in the operating room now, and everyone is moving quickly.

The anesthesiologist says, “Jadyn, I’m going to put this mask over your face. Just breathe normally, and you’ll be asleep quickly.”

I give Jadyn’s hand a squeeze, hold it tight, and mouth, I love you.

“I love you, too,” she says.

She doesn’t look as panicked now.

Instead, she has a faraway look in her eyes as the doctor puts the mask into place.

Her abdomen is draped, so I won’t see them make the incision. I don’t want to see that part.

Instead, I focus on her.

I gaze at her face and realize all the beautiful moments in my life have been with her by my side.

I try to focus on those moments.

Think positive thoughts.

She’s here at the hospital. She’ll be okay.

But her warning about saving the baby haunts me. Why would she say that? Does she know something we don’t? She looked scared when they brought her in, but I’m sure being in an accident and going into labor when you don’t expect it would be scary.

But it felt like more.

Then, I remember her dream.

The reason I got crazy and bought her the safest car I could buy.

Oh. My. God.

No.

Please, God, please let her and the baby be okay.

Mostly, let her be okay.

I need her.

My eyes fill with tears as I imagine a life without her.

Something I can’t even begin to fathom.

I shut my eyes tightly.

Stop thinking that way.

Positive thoughts. Positive.

Everything will be okay.

I look around the surgical room, wishing I could remember more about emergency C-sections from our birthing classes. All the details I thought I would remember so clearly have vanished from my brain, probably because I thought it would never happen to us.

Everything is happening quickly but methodically around us, the surgical team moving like a well-oiled machine. And that calms me. They are calm. That means things are going to be fine.

In a few minutes, they have her opened up.

“The abruption is much worse than we thought,” the doctor says while I’m trying to remember what I read.

What was the worst-case scenario for a placental abruption?

From somewhere in my brain come the words, While a small abruption can be tolerated, excessive blood loss can result in the death of both mother and child.

I tightly squeeze Jadyn’s hand, praying for the best and trying not to even consider the worst.

“Make them save the baby. Not me.”

She did know something. She knew something was wrong.

She knew.

Oh. My. God.

She can’t die.

Cannot die.

It’ll all be okay. It’ll all be okay. I keep trying to tell myself that.

But, now, all I can think about is losing her.

Of losing the baby.

And I know that I can’t agree with her wishes.

If there’s a choice to be made, I’ll pick her.

I could survive the loss of our child, but I couldn’t survive losing her.

I’m pretty sure I couldn’t exist without her.

I remember her coming home from one of Lori’s baby showers. Telling me how someone was telling them about a stillborn baby. How just retelling the story brought tears to her eyes. How she was clutching her growing baby bump like she was afraid to mention the word in front of our child.

The doctor pulls out the baby, who looks bluish, not red and angry like in the childbirth class photos.

My heart sinks.

And Jadyn’s hand goes limp in mine.

I turn to look at her, innately knowing that, even though she’s under anesthesia, she knows that our baby didn’t make it.

She’s going to be devastated.

A machine beeps.

Then, another.

“She’s crashing!” a nurse yells.

“She’s lost too much blood!”

My world spins out of control as I recognize the underlying panic in their once-calm voices.

“Her blood pressure is too low.”

“She’s coding.”

The mood in the room changes in a heartbeat.

Everyone is suddenly very serious.

Grim.

I hear an announcement over the hospital’s PA system, “Code blue.”

“Code blue?” I ask.

“Get him out of here!” someone yells.

“NO!” I scream. “I’m not going anywhere! Someone needs to tell me what’s happening!”

“Sir, you need to leave.” A male nurse tightly grabs my shoulder as tears of frustration and rage spill out of my eyes. “We need you to leave now.”

“I’m not leaving,” I tell him, still holding her hand but standing up taller, so he can take in my size.

No freaking way he’s making me leave.

But then two people have ahold of me.

I maneuver away from them, bend down next to Jadyn, and yell in her ear, “Stay with me, Princess! Don’t you leave me! Don’t you dare leave me! I need you!”

“I said, get him out of here!” the doctor’s voice booms.

They manage to get ahold of the back of my shirt and drag me away, forcing me to let go of her hand. But I still have my hand outstretched toward her. I can’t let go.

I can’t.

But, as I stare at her lifeless body, the fight is knocked out of me.

They drag me to the door, but I don’t want to go. An insurmountable amount of pain courses through me. This can’t be happening. This cannot be happening.

I cry out again, “Don’t you dare leave me, Princess! Don’t you dare!”

I’m thrust outside of the operating room and into the hall where a group of nurses is rushing toward me. I back against the wall to get out of their way but stop one who looks nice.

“What does code blue mean?” I ask as she’s opening the door.

“I’m sorry,” she says sympathetically, rushing inside and slamming the door on everything important in my world.

I drop to my knees and sob as visions of her dance through my head.

Hair that looks like sunshine blowing in the breeze as she swings upside down from a tree.

That same blonde hair under a veil as she floats down a staircase.

My heart swelling in my chest when she says, “I’m pregnant.”

The symphony of her laughter when I tell her that she’s always loved me.

Her lips on mine as she straddles me and says what I’ve been longing to hear.

Her hand squeezing mine seconds before she speaks at the funeral.

Taunting me with giggles when she catches her first fish before I do.

The sound of her voice in my ear every night.

Smooth, soft skin that smells like summer pressed against mine.

Screams as I save her from a garden snake.

Freckles covered with mud, a white T-shirt becoming transparent as we wash off the four-wheeler.

Standing cheek-to-cheek by the swings, her tears making my shirt damp.

A ring sliding on my finger as she recites, “For as long as I’m lucky enough to have you.”

Gratitude when she sees the angel wings tattoos on Danny and me.

A grin that completely undoes me.

Tossing her into a pool and then getting chased and letting her catch me.

Being rewarded with a kiss on the cheek as she tells me, “You acted like a prince today.”

Our lives are like single threads meticulously woven together—the result an exquisite tapestry of past, present, and future. Bound by unflappable trust, our hearts, our desires, her life woven into mine.

“Don’t pull on the thread of your sweater when it’s unraveling, Phillip. It will come undone.”

Her sly grin as she says, “Let’s pull it and see if it’s true.”

Stitch by stitch.

Row by row.

I’m slowly coming undone until there is nothing left of me.

My Princess—my life, my world—is dead.