Chapter 8 - The Storm Arrives
"Emily!" Dante lunged forward, catching her shoulders as she doubled over in the bed.
Her face contorted in sheer agony. Her knuckles turned stark white as she gripped his forearms, her nails digging directly into his flesh through his shirt. Dante didn't flinch; he held her tightly, supporting her weight.
"The doctor! Get Miller!" Dante roared toward the door.
Within seconds, the door burst open. Dr. Miller and a team of four trauma nurses rushed into the room, their faces pale with urgency.
Miller took one look at the fetal monitor, which was rapidly dropping into the danger zone—the galloping heartbeats slowing down to alarming thumps.
"Her water broke!" a nurse shouted, throwing back the blankets. "There’s heavy meconium and bleeding! The placenta is detaching completely!"
"We’re losing the fetal heart tones on Baby B!" another nurse called out, her voice shrill. "Eighty beats per minute and dropping!"
Dr. Miller locked eyes with Dante. "We have to do an emergency Cesarean right now, Mr. Russo. If we don't get these babies out in the next five minutes, neither of them will survive. And we could lose Emily to blood loss."
"Do it!" Dante shouted, his mind spinning into sheer terror. "Save them! Save all of them!"
"Prep OR Three!" Miller barked, unlocking the bed wheels. "Move, move, move!"
The hospital bed was shoved out into the hallway at a dead sprint. Dante ran alongside it, never letting go of Emily’s trembling hand.
Emily was crying out, tears streaming down her pale temples, her breathing ragged and shallow. Through the blinding haze of pain, her eyes searched for his.
"Dante..." she sobbed, terror lacing her voice. "The babies... don't let them die... please, don't let my babies die..."
"They aren't going to die, Emily! Look at me!" Dante yelled over the chaotic sounds of shouting doctors and screeching wheels, leaning down until his eyes were inches from hers. "Look at my eyes! I swear to you, I will not let anything happen to them! I am right here! I’m not leaving you! Never again!"
They reached the double doors of the sterile surgical theater.
"Stop! You can't come in yet, Mr. Russo!" two surgical nurses blocked Dante’s path, pushing against his broad chest. "You need to scrub in! You have to wait!"
"That is my wife!" Dante bellowed, but the heavy doors swung shut in his face, cutting him off from the woman he loved.
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Dante was left standing in the brightly lit hallway, his chest heaving, his hands covered in Emily’s cold sweat and traces of blood.
He fell against the wall, sliding down until his knees hit the hard floor. He buried his face in his hands and prayed—prayed with a desperation he had never known in his violent life, begging God, his ancestors, anyone listening in the vast universe to spare the lives behind those doors.
