What the hell were they doing in there?
Rosa’s panicked call—’Angelina…the baby’—had told him everything he’d needed to know. He’d swept out of the office like a cyclone, not knowing what was wrong, desperate to be there, learning along the way they’d taken her straight to Emergency.
And he still didn’t understand what was happening, not beyond what Rosa had told him. She’d collapsed in the kitchen and there’d been blood. A haemorrhage, the paramedics had apparently radioed ahead. A haemorrhage could not be good. A haemorrhage sounded bad.
He stopped pacing, clawed his fingers through his hair and saw Rosa huddled on a chair with her eyes closed in an ashen face, her fingers interwoven, her lips moving silently.
Praying for Angelina.
Praying for the unborn baby.
And a tsunami of terror washed over him, drenching him in a fear like no other. Rosa had been there. Rosa had seen it happen. Rosa had seen the blood.
Surely it wouldn’t come to that?
Surely he couldn’t lose them?
Not now.
He sat alongside Rosa, her face now still, and pulled her against him. She went willingly, as if she needed his support, and he wished he’d thought to hold her earlier, to share her pain. But how could you think when something like this happened? How could you survive?
A woman appeared, still wearing scrubs, fresh from Theatre, and they both jumped to their feet, still holding on. ‘Mr Pirelli? You have a beautiful baby daughter. She’s going to be fine. We’ll let you see her soon.’
He closed his eyes. Uttered up his own small prayer of thanks. It was something. Some measure of relief. Good news. But it wasn’t anywhere near enough.
‘And Angelina? What about Angelina?’
‘The surgeons are still with her. She’s had a rough time.’ She gave an apologetic smile. ‘We’ll let you know the moment we know anything more.’
He sat back down, Rosa following, still clinging to his hand. ‘A baby girl,’ she sniffed with tear-filled eyes. ‘That’s wonderful,’ before her tears became a torrent and he pulled her against him.
‘She’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘Angelina will be all right. She’s a fighter. She’s strong. Nothing can happen to her.’ And he willed himself to believe it, to be strong himself, to not think about losing the woman he loved.
He raised his eyes to the ceiling. Oh, my God. She was the light at the end of a long day. She was his every night time fantasy. She was the woman who had found him and grounded him and brought him back to life. She was the woman who had risked her very life to bear his child. Why had it taken something like this to make him see?
Of course he loved her.
And he could not lose her now.
The minutes ticked away—minutes where regret loomed large. She would come home, he told himself, and he would take care of her. He would love her and cherish her. And maybe, one day, she might love him and the baby too. Maybe.
But he would do whatever he could to make it happen.
A door opened. The nurse appeared again, this time pushing a nursery trolley. ‘Here is your baby, Mr Pirelli, if you’d like to say hello and get acquainted.’
He looked down at the tiny infant, red-faced and squirming, with a shock of black hair and a mouth testing the air.
‘Would you like to hold your daughter?’
He wasn’t sure. She was so tiny, so very fragile. And right now, with the tangle of emotions inside him, he wasn’t even sure he wanted to. Angelina was still in Theatre, fighting for her life because of this tiny scrap. But before he could place his big hands under her tiny body and lift her to his chest, a doctor arrived, his brow sheened with sweat, his mask pulled below his chin and a smile on his lips.
‘Mrs Cameron is going to be all right. She’s in Recovery now.’
His head sagged in relief, tension drained from his bones, and the baby chose that moment to open her eyes and look up at him, frowning, as night sky met night sky.
Mine, he thought with a surge of pride. The baby and Angelina. Both mine.
The next morning he stood at the door to her room. They hadn’t let him visit last night, no more than a glance he’d got on his way out and then she’d been hooked up to so many machines he wasn’t sure he could have stayed. This morning there were fewer machines and he could cope. Besides, he had something important to tell her.