Sacred Vow (Angels Halo MC Next Gen #5) - Terri Anne Browning Page 0,27

slow down, I clung to Maverick. “N-no. We aren’t far enough away.”

“Shut up, River,” he growled, kissing the top of my head.

Moments later, Lyric braked hard, and Maverick threw the door open. Holding me against his chest, he ran into the emergency room and yelled for help. As he laid me on a gurney, another cramp hit me, knocking the air from my body, and I curled into the fetal position as the pain became too much to withstand. It was the worst pain of my entire life, so intense that the world began to go dark around the edges.

Vaguely, I heard someone asking questions, but I couldn’t answer as I tried to breathe.

“River Masterson,” Maverick was saying. “She’s my wife. Please…” His voice cracked, making my heart hurt even more than it already was. “Please, just help her.”

I felt the gurney moving, and then someone was stabbing a needle into my arm for an IV line. A doctor started examining me, but other than the feel of her ice-cold hands, I didn’t understand much of what was going on. This cramp was different from the others. It was lingering, making it hard to even think about anything outside the circle of agonizing pain.

They must have given me something for the pain through the IV, because suddenly, I felt as if I were floating. I blinked up at the ceiling a few times, the fluorescent lights glaring down at me as if judging me. Maverick was holding on to my hand so hard, my fingertips felt numb.

Then the lights went dim, and I felt something warm and gooey being squirted onto my belly.

“There’s the heartbeat,” someone said, unknowingly stabbing a knife into my heart. “And here…that’s the fallopian tube. It’s ruptured, by the looks of it. We need to get her into surgery. Now.”

“No!” I screamed at the doctor. “You can’t. Y-you just said that there was a heartbeat.”

She gave me a sympathetic grimace. “I’m sorry. There’s nothing we can do. Right now, your life is the one in danger. You’re losing too much blood.”

“No, no, no,” I whispered. “Maverick, tell them. Make them understand I don’t want surgery. I-I’ll be fine. Our baby still has a heartbeat. That’s all that matters. Tell them!”

I felt his free hand stroke down my cheek, but when he spoke, he broke my heart. “Do whatever you have to,” he told them. “Anything to protect her.”

Ten

Maverick

“No!”

River’s scream as they wheeled her away for surgery echoed in my head. It was full of grief and anger. But if there was a choice between her life and anyone else’s—anyone’s— I would pick hers every fucking time.

When she was gone, another nurse came up to me, telling me I needed to register River. Feeling like I was in a daze, I followed the woman. I gave them all of her information, but when they asked for her date of birth, I lied and told them she was born a year earlier than she actually was. The woman behind the desk asked about insurance, and again, I lied. Instead, I handed her my credit card and told her to charge everything to it.

I had some money saved, and there was plenty of it in my trust fund. I would dip into that if we needed to.

Once I’d signed all the paperwork, the woman gave me an sympathetic smile. “Hope your wife gets well soon.”

Nodding in thanks, I took my copies of the papers and then walked back out to the waiting room.

Lyric pushed away from the wall near the entrance as soon as he spotted me. “Well?”

I rubbed my free hand over my face. “The baby was in her fallopian tube. When it grew too big, the tube ruptured. She’s in surgery now.”

“Fuck, man. I’m so sorry.” He squeezed my shoulder. “Do you need anything?”

“All I need is for her to be okay,” I muttered.

“Yeah, man. I understand. If it were Mila—” He broke off, but he didn’t need to say anything else. I knew. Fuck, I was feeling it.

The nurse who had put the IV in River’s arm came over to us. “The doctor asked me to tell you to wait upstairs in the OR waiting room, and she will come speak to you once your wife is out of surgery.”

Upstairs, the waiting room was already pretty crowded with family members of patients also having surgery. Most of them had been scheduled, unlike River’s, which was an emergency. Lyric and I found two empty seats near a