Find Her, Keep Her (CFTM Sequel)

Chapter 2

Elias

When I walk into Mindy's ward, my mom's crying outside the delivery room alone. 

I kinda expected she would be, but something's wrong with her eyes when she looks at me. All the hope and anticipation I'd seen when I left her with Mindy last night is totally gone.

A bouquet of flowers with pink and silver balloons attached is lying next to her feet. Dirt's spilled all over the linoleum tiles and all over her. Dark marks stain the sterile hospital floor, and she's hardly noticed.

My mom notices everything.

She keeps her house immaculate, she likes things clean, but now she's standing outside of big white double doors with dirt all over her shoes.

I break into a sprint and blaze past the nurses' desk so fast I hardly hear them shouting at me to stop. I'm supposed to check in, show my bracelet, and jump through five hundred more hoops of hospital bullshit before entering the ward, but all I can focus on is my mom slowly sinking towards the floor.

I scoop her up in my arms as soon as I reach her. My heart's beating so fast my ribs feel bruised, but I try to hold it together 'cause I know she can't. She shuts her eyes and sobs silently, black lines of mascara stain her cheeks as her broken breaths fall against my t-shirt.

She's never cried in front of me like this.

Not when Dad cheated.

Not when Lacey died.

Not when she found out about Mindy.

She's always strong.

Always invincible.

But she's broken today.

And I don't know how to fix her.

I cradle her in my arms and kiss the top of her forehead.

"What's wrong, mama?" I ask.

Her voice hitches in her throat when she tries to answer me. The emptiness in her eyes sucks the air straight out of my lungs. I wanna ask her a million questions. I wanna know why she looks like a piece of her is missing, where Darius is, and why Caleigh and Tanner aren't here yet, but I don't.

I wait for her to answer while I try my hardest to act like the man she needs me to be.

"The baby," slips out of her lips quieter than a whisper.

My heart stops.

A single question hammers at the pit of my chest, rises in the back of my throat, and comes spattering out of my mouth before I can stop it.

"I-Is she okay?"

Mom breaks down into tears again, but this time a pink scrubbed nurse helps pull her to her feet. She hands my mom a glass of water and ushers her over to a row of chairs while two other nurses clean the spilled dirt off the floor behind us.

"Are you Mr. King?" She asks.

I nod like the gesture doesn't hurt, but my skull's on the verge of splitting open. She smooths a strand of blonde hair behind her ear and looks at me with something like pity scrawled across her face. My tongue turns to sandpaper in my mouth.

"Yes."

"Follow me please, your girlfriend's doctor would like to speak with you."

"Sure, but can you have someone stay with my mom? I don't want her to be alone right now."

The nurse waves over another member of staff to sit with my mom, while she leads me back towards the registration desk to sign in and scrub up. She hands me a hospital cap and gloves before taking me down the hallway and through the double doors into surgery.

The bright lights of the delivery room half-blind me the second I step inside. A short, stocky surgeon appears and intentionally blocks me from walking any further than he wants me to go. I stare past him at Mindy, who's sitting silently in her hospital bed with Darius at her side.

I step forward but the mini-doctor man places a hand on my chest to stop me--again. His tone is low and careful when he speaks to me, but my pulse is pounding so hard in my ears, I'm barely listening.

My eyes are focused on the little bundle in Mindy's arms across the room.

I wanna hold her, to see how beautiful she probably is, but not a single member of the hospital staff moves an inch to bring her to me, or me to her.

They freeze and stare at me over their dark green hospital masks instead.

My blood pressure spikes and before Mindy's surgeon is able to restrain me a third time, I push past him and bolt straight over to her bedside.

A thousand voices ask me to stop, but I keep moving until Darius gets up and steps between me and Mindy.

His face is twisted, confused, ashamed. Something like an apology leaves his lips, but it bounces off my ears and into the silence.

He moves aside, slowly, cautiously and waves off the gaggle of nurses trying to remove me from the delivery room.

My eyes find Mindy's and then dart down towards the little girl her arms.

She stares up at me, her tiny hands clutching the sides of her pale yellow blanket.

She's beautiful.

Just like I knew she'd be.

I smile at her like I've known her forever, like I recognize those eyes, and those lips, and that dark tuft of hair.

And for a split second, I lose my mind with pride like I'm looking at someone else.

Someone whose perfect little features are almost exactly like mine.

Like she's mine.

But then I blink, the illusion ends, and I stop seeing what I wanna see and realize that Darius's eyes are staring up at me.

Her nose is his.

Her skin is his.

Everything's his.

Everything's different.

Everything's wrong.

'Cause everything that's supposed to be mine, isn't anymore.