GOLDWING (ing version)

chapter 35

VICTORIA'S POV

Noises, agonized voices, babies' cries. Welcome to the maternity.

Dami crossed the road with me on his lap, trying to protect me from the rain. I could tell his anxiety by the trembling in his hands, his rapid breathing, and his speech. We both knew that this could mean everything, or nothing, that it could just be a false alarm. But after everything I've been through, I expected anything. I mean, I thought I could expect anything.

With each passing second, I felt myself in more pain, more sweat, more everything. I was admitted to the waiting room minutes later, wearing a small bracelet with a scratch-made with an orange marker. According to the giant poster on the entrance door, the orange color indicated emergency level 4, out of 5. The environment was neutral, with light-colored walls and promotional posters romanticizing motherhood. All around me were women waiting to be attended to, accompanied by their partners, who merely provided emotional support to them, who were feeling perhaps the worst pain of their lives, mothers with their small newborns, and others who were in a worse situation, like me.

The 20 minutes I sat in that chair seemed like the longest of my life. And when care came, I was in the throes of my pain. I was quickly put in a wheelchair, taken away from Dami, and taken to a large room in another area. A doctor in a light pink uniform came in, accompanied by other trainees. They asked me the classic questions, "Have you recently been hospitalized?", or "Do you regularly take any medication?", "Do you have any alcohol habits?", "Do you have any allergies?". When they got my background, I sensed some novice doctors talking very low among the others in French. I didn't know what they were saying, but I knew they would be puzzled. With the pain already more controlled by some medication, they did me an ultrasound. At that moment my hand felt so empty without anyone to hold it but myself. When I looked at the doctors around me, they were all apprehensive, staring at the screen of the machine, and one of the doctors gave me his hand. And the moment they tried to feel my heartbeat, it was very slow, irregular. Then my heart froze. And at that moment, Damiano walked into the room. With swollen eyes, wet eyelashes.

"Miss, your little princess is in fetal distress. We have to deliver her now. I know it's scary, but it has to be, anyway. "

"Will she survive? Will I survive?"

" It's a routine procedure, Victoria. I'm required by law to make you aware of the risks. So..."

For me, the sentence ended there.

My eyes opened again 8 hours later, my. body on a gurney, wearing hospital scrubs, with a small device helping me to breathe and in the corridors of the hospital, heading for the OR. Dami was leaning against the wall, his hand on my hand, while the other had the paperwork.

"Vic, just rest. It'll be alright with you, with us, you can get through this, we decided surgery was the better option than, well..." he said. "Thomas, Leo, and Ethan are here. Your sister is on a plane right now, and so is the rest of your family. My mum won't stop praying, and neither will my dad. It's going to be okay, Angel."

Angel. That was the last word I heard from him before I entered the OR. One of my favorite words.

For slight seconds, I placed my hands on my stomach, to feel her, for the last time. A tear slid horizontally from my eye to my ear, and I felt the anesthesyologist caressing my head. "A bocca a lupo," my doctor said. Then they put the devices on me, and I blacked out.

DAMIANO'S POV

From one moment to the other, I went from being on a fully-realized stage to sitting in a nearly empty waiting room in a maternity ward. I hate waiting rooms because they're called waiting rooms, meaning there's no chance of not waiting. They are built and designed with that intention. And I didn't want to wait nobody likes to wait.

For 4 hours, I was taken away from Vic, after she passed out on the ultrasound table. And then, I saw her again, after she became conscious again, waiting for the necessary fasting time for the surgery. Again, in hospital scrubs, oxygen, and constantly with medication, she still had that sweet look and a small smile. Sometimes this all seemed like a simulation, but it wasn't. She was there, getting ready to give birth to my daughter. Vic, having a child, with me. No one had ever thought of that before.

After a few phone calls, Leo, Ethan, and Thomas arrived at the hospital and accompanied me. My parents, my brother, her sister, and her family were coming from Rome and Copenhagen to Paris on the fastest flight they could find. But despite all the support, prayers, and faith, I felt alone in my thoughts, lonely in my world. Because I felt like I was being pulled to the extreme, suffering too much. I guess that's how we feel when we see someone we love taken from us out of the blue, multiple times. Because no, there is no greater pain than that.

It had been 1, 2 hours. What was supposed to last less than an hour, took even longer? It was supposed to took 45 minutesm. The news that the baby was born had just arrived when I saw Nica at the distance, still with an travel bag and a teddy bear. At 09:48 on February 18, weighing 500 grams, my little one, my daughter, was in this world. The happiness didn't fit in my chest, but the anxiety was greater. I confess that I had never understood Vic when she said that she only remembers being in one place and then another when she blacks out, that day I understood her.

I confess that I was perhaps a very annoying patient to treat. Because besides almost refusing treatment, I didn't rest, and I stayed on my mobile phone as long as I could calling our families and asking for information about Vic. It was almost eleven in the morning, and I did not receive any news from Vic. I was sleep deprived. Of how she was, where she was. The medication was strong enough to make me dizzy, make me drowsy. Still, I forced my eyes to stay open and kept fighting. But it's like I used to tell Victoria: life isn't about being strong all the time.

Minutes later, my mother, Vic's father, and my brother had just arrived at the airport. After Leo picked them up, they all went to my room, worried of course. The tranquilizers started to take effect, and I started to finally become calmer. The new updates arrived when it had been 1 hour since our families had arrived, and we were all a little more relaxed. One of Vitto's surgeons, accompanied by another doctor, came through my room door.

"Does anyone here have O- blood? There has been a hemorrhage... a serious hemorrhage. But please anyone here who has type O-negative blood come with me. It's urgent."

Everyone in that room was O negative. My parents were, so my brother and I were compatible, and so were Vic's sister and father. But I'd had tattoos less than 4 months ago, my mum had had a minor procedure not long ago, and Vic's dad had a beer when he was at the airport. The only people left free were my brother and Nica, who went from the nurses and a few minutes later came back, having already donated blood.

We were all scared to death, not knowing what was going to happen. The baby had been in the NICU since the second minute she was born, trying to be stabilized, because it is very difficult for a baby that small to live. We didn't get an update on Vic, even when we asked.

That day I learned that the worst kind of crying is the silent one. The one that comes when no one is around. The one you feel in your throat, and your eyes get blurry from the tears. The one you just want to scream. You have to hold your breath to stay still. The one you can't breathe anymore. The one that comes when you realize that the person who meant the most to you is no longer with you.