Flash.
A clunk and crunch as the baler wrapped up in stalks.
Flash.
Red and blue lights around me. Sirens loud inside me.
Flash.
Intruders, questions, the swish and sway of reckless driving.
Flash.
Wheels screeching, oxygen flowing, a sharp prick in my arm.
Flash.
Della’s screaming, strangers shouting, a world in utter disarray.
Something dragged me down, something heavy and warm and thick. I wanted to go with it, to give in, but the awful, awful sound of the one person I’d promised to protect every day of my goddamn life wrenched me through the fog.
I clung to her voice, clawing to her, crawling to her, fighting mud and sludge and pain.
My eyes opened.
I was no longer in the field.
I was no longer dressed from the waist up.
I was no longer a farmer but a patient.
“Oh, thank God!” Della grabbed my hand, her fingernails digging in. “Ren. I thought…” She shook her head. “You wouldn’t wake up.”
The outside world had been replaced with the insides of a hospital.
An emergency room with traffic and trauma and triage.
My throat was raw and lungs seared.
I’d been in pain lately.
The backache.
The chest ache.
But I had things to do.
Life to conquer.
A future to pave.
Della bowed over me, pressing her forehead to my cheek. “Please, please don’t scare me like that again.”
My arm came up from where I lay on a narrow bed, hugging her head, kissing her hard. “I’m sorry, Ribbon.” I coughed, and she flinched.
Her eyes widened, then she buckled over me, digging her face into the crutch of my shoulder, her lips spread in a guttural scream.
My weakness?
My confusion?
None of it fucking mattered.
Jack-knifing upward, I tore at wires stuck to my chest and ripped an oxygen tube from my nose. “Della.”
“Hey, Mr. Wild. You need—”
“Stop!” I roared, clutching onto Della as she stumbled by my bedside. “What the hell is wrong with my wife?”
“She refused to leave,” a skinny nurse with mousy blonde hair snipped. “She’s in labour. Apart from physically manhandling her, we couldn’t do anything about it.”
“Goddammit.” I swung my legs off the narrow bed, dislodging yet more medical equipment. My lungs burned. Chest throbbed. Heart palpitated in an uneven rhythm.
But I didn’t care about any of it.
“Get back into bed, sir,” someone commanded.
I grimaced as my world flipped upside down. My feet found a ground that rocked. My mind found a world that sloshed and greyed. I swam in light-headedness, scooping Della into my arms, and laying her pregnant weight on the very same bed I’d just vacated.
“Sir, she needs to be in maternity.”
“She’s in pain, can’t you see? Help her instead of spouting bullshit!”
Della screamed as yet another contraction worked through her. Her legs spread wide and dirty shoes dug into sterilized white. “Oh, fuucckk. God, it hurts.” Her hand found mine, squeezing me to the point of metacarpals crunching.
“Someone get her something!” I yelled. “What the hell good are you, huh? Do your goddamn jobs and help her!”
My lungs wheezed, and a ribcage-splintering cough found me, bending me in half.
“Sir, you need to calm down.”
Coughing, coughing, always fucking coughing, my anger spilled like magma. When I could breathe, I roared, “And you need to fucking help her! Now!”
Della groaned, adding another layer to the mayhem.
“Sir—”
“What the hell is going on here?!” A doctor with a shaved head and goatee marched forward, waving his arms as if he could part the sea of medical staff like the messiah.
Grabbing a clipboard that hung on the end of the bed, he scanned the notes, then pointed in my face. “You. Seeing as you’re awake. Oncology. Now. You need some tests.” Spinning to face the skinny nurse loitering around Della, he ordered, “You, go get the midwife assigned to Mrs Wild.”
His eyes fell on another staff member. “You, go tell those people demanding answers that he’s woken up and she’s about to have a baby. We need silence, not anarchy.”
When his bossy gaze met mine again and found I hadn’t left Della’s side, he bared his teeth. “Get. Oncology. Now.”
“I’m not leaving.” I stepped closer to the bed, partly to touch Della’s face and partly because I needed to lean against something. Coughs rattled and wheezed, not appreciating I fought their desire to make me bend over again.
I refused to cough.
I wasn’t the one in need of treatment, Della was.
“My wife is having a baby. If someone doesn’t look after her—”
“Threats now?” The doctor rolled his eyes. “Leave before I have you committed.”
“I’m not leaving until I know my wife is okay.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” the doctor grumbled. “If you collapse, you’ll be strapped in the psych ward just to teach you a lesson.”
“I’m not going to collapse.” My needs faded every time in lieu of Della’s. I could be on death’s door and tell the devil to wait until I knew Della was safe.
My jaw locked together as I fought another wave of coughing. “So, are you going to do something?”
“You’re in a hospital, Mr Wild. Of course, we’re going to do something.”
Della moaned and writhed as another nurse dashed toward us. With efficient jerks, she pulled a curtain around us, cutting us off from the emergency room mania.
Once private, she pushed Della’s dress up her legs, pulled her underwear down, and laid a green cloth over her lap. With calm hands, she manhandled Della’s feet, placing them as close to the side of the bed as possible.
No one mentioned she wasn’t in a hospital gown or tried to remove her shoes.
It was too late for any of that.
“The midwife is on the way,” the nurse said. “We don’t have anywhere else for you to go on such short notice, and you’re too far along to be moved. You’ll deliver here and then be transferred to maternity.”
Della grimaced, her skin blotchy with pain. “Okay.”
It wasn’t okay.
None of this was okay.
I’d woken to the worst kind of horror.
The goatee, bald-headed doctor nodded brusquely. “Glad order has been restored. They’ll look after you from here. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” Sweeping out from the curtain-created room, his voice barked more commands outside.
I coughed again, fighting it from turning into a fit. “You all right?” I asked Della, pressing my fist into her pillow for stability.
She bit her lip, nodding in agony. Her face shone with sweat, scrunched and red.
I’d done this to her.
I was the monster responsible for such torture.
“I’m so sorry, Della.”
For five months—since we found out she was pregnant—I’d been fucking petrified of losing her.
I wasn’t a happy, expectant father.
I was surly and snappy and scared shitless of losing her.
So many things tore me into knots, and as the days marched onward, and she grew fatter and more cumbersome, I’d had nightmares of losing her.
At least she hadn’t struggled with this pregnancy as she had with her first.
But that didn’t make me worry any less.
And now, my wife had gone into premature labour. Only by a couple of weeks but enough to make her every grunt and groan rip my broken lungs into ribbons.
I was so selfish to want a kid with her.
So self-centred to expect her to go through this purgatory.
I didn’t know how much time passed.
I didn’t know how long the gates of Hell could stay open.
I felt weak and useless and begged time to hurry.
All I could offer was my hand as she bore down and started to push.
The midwife arrived and spoke soothing and calm.
The noise from outside our curtain faded.
The fear that Della would die in childbirth continued to terrorize me.
On and on Della struggled, until finally, she gave one last scream, and something tiny with the wail of something huge arrived.
He sounded pissed off, insulted, and angry.