He remembered Callie as he’d seen her at Black Gold, trying to get comfortable in her chair. “One of my closest friends is having her baby.”
“Everything should be okay,” Lourdes said, obviously reading the expression on his face for the concern that it was. “Granted, a baby who comes four weeks early isn’t in an ideal situation, but has an excellent chance of surviving.”
He experienced such an upwelling of emotion it almost brought tears to his eyes. His mother had died in childbirth, and she’d gone into the delivery room with no known health problems. “I’m not worried about the baby,” he said. “At least...not as worried as I am about the mother.”
“You said yourself that...embolism thing doesn’t happen often.”
“It doesn’t. But Callie nearly died when her liver failed a few years ago,” he explained. “At the last minute, they were able to find her a donor and do a transplant, and she’s been doing well since. But she’s on a lot of immunosuppressant drugs, which makes her more susceptible to infection and illness. Having a baby when her health is already so precarious is...tempting fate, in my opinion. If she was my wife, I never would’ve agreed to it.”
Lourdes moved the last of the dishes to the sink. “I’m sorry she’s had it so rough. What caused her liver to fail?”
“She had nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. And don’t ask me what causes that, because no one seems to know.”
“Was the pregnancy an accident, then? Unexpected?”
“No. Her doctor told her that a planned pregnancy for someone in her situation was relatively common. There are added risks, of course, but she was willing to take those risks so she and Levi could start a family.” He found his coat.
She moved her guitar and sat down on the couch. She hadn’t played it since she’d come to his house, but he noticed that she always kept it close. “There’s always adoption.”
“He says he was open to that. She wanted at least one natural child.”
“So maybe he had to go along with it, to keep her happy. I could see a guy doing that for a woman who’s been through so much.”
The memory of when he’d been at the hospital, waiting to learn if Callie would survive the transplant, was indelibly etched on Kyle’s mind as one of the longest, most nerve-racking days of his life. “But he could lose her. We all could.”
She pulled her guitar into her lap and rested her arm over it. “I hope it doesn’t go that way.”
“So do I.” Kyle searched for his keys and discovered them on the counter. “I’ve got to go to the hospital. Will you be okay here alone?” She’d been planning to stay alone while she was in Whiskey Creek anyway, but it still felt odd to be rushing off and leaving her behind, in his house, when they’d been about to spend the evening together.
“Of course.”
He was already dialing Dylan and Cheyenne, to begin the process of alerting everyone else in their group, when she caught him at the door.
“Will you text me?” she asked. “Let me know how it’s going? That may seem like an odd request, since Callie’s a total stranger to me, but I can’t help being concerned.”
Dylan had answered Kyle’s call by then, so Kyle merely nodded and hurried out.
*
Hour after hour dragged by. The updates Lourdes received from Kyle were few and far between, since he had to step outside the hospital to get his message to go through. But he didn’t have much to report, anyway. Lourdes knew Callie wasn’t having a Cesarean. The doctors felt she’d have a better chance delivering naturally. But that was the extent of her information.