“Dice?” Daphne asked and placed her hand on my forehead. “You’re burning up.”
“Something’s wrong,” I repeated and grimaced in pain.
“What hurts?” she asked.
“Stomach,” I groaned.
“We’ll take that wheelchair,” Badger said.
Two people rushed over to where we were standing. Ink was using his body to keep me on my feet, so I basically fell into the wheelchair when he moved to the side. Somebody put one of those tiny little basins in my hands, and then we were moving.
“You two go check on Tawny,” Daphne said. “We’ll go down to the emergency room with him.”
I knew something serious was going on when we bypassed the waiting room and went straight to a patient room. The pain continued to get worse, and I threw up a few more times. The last thing I remembered was them giving me some medicine in an IV.
27
DAPHNE
Awoman in scrubs and a white coat knocked on the door as she entered the room. “Hi, I’m Dr. Allegrini,” she said. “Based on Mr. Fox’s symptoms and physical exam, I suspect he has appendicitis. I’m going to order a CT scan of his abdomen to check.”
“What happens if that is what he has?” I asked.
“He’ll likely need to have it surgically removed.”
“This can’t be happening,” I muttered and ran my hands through my hair.
“Let’s say he does need to have surgery,” Ink said calmly. “What kind of timeline are we looking at?”
“I can’t really give you a timeline. It will depend on the availability of the surgeon. The surgery itself doesn’t take long, but he has to go through pre-op and then recovery. It’s possible they’ll want to keep him overnight before allowing him to go home.”
“Oh, no. What are we going to do?” I asked Ink.
“Is there a problem?” Dr. Allegrini asked.
“We’re having a baby, and he’s going to miss it,” I said and couldn’t stop the tears that spilled from my eyes.
Ink handed me a wad of hospital paper towels. “Sit down and get it together, woman.” Then he turned to Dr. Allegrini. “These two are adopting a baby, and the birth mother went into labor a few hours ago. We flew in from out of town for the birth. So, there are two problems. One is that he’s likely going to miss the birth, but the bigger problem is that we’re from out of town. If he has surgery and is released today, we don’t have anywhere to take him. I’m sure Jacob would fly back to pick him up, but would he be able to fly so soon after surgery? It’s a helicopter, if that matters. Jacob landed on the roof when he dropped us off, so I assume that’s where he’d pick him up.”
“Hold on,” Dr. Allegrini said. “You’re from the group that just landed on the roof?”
“Yes,” Ink confirmed. “Like I said, we’re from out of town and our friend flew us here for the birth of their child. We thought he was just nervous about the baby, but that was clearly not the case when he almost collapsed upstairs. But back to my main question. Will he be able to fly after surgery? I’ll need to make sure something in the Marks’ fleet is available and touch base with Jacob so he can coordinate landing.”
“There isn’t much I can do about the timing of surgery and the birth of the baby, but I think we can arrange for him to have a room here in the hospital until the baby is ready to go home. Would that work better for everyone?”
“Oh, that would be perfect,” Ink said.
“Great. I’m going to call and have him moved to the front of the line for his CT. I’ll also see if we can tentatively reserve a place for him on the surgery schedule. I can’t make any promises, but I’ll do what I can to move things along so hopefully he’ll be out of surgery and in a room when his child is born.”
“Thank you so much,” Ink said sincerely. “I completely understand if it’s not possible, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask. Our hospital at home doesn’t let the babies leave the labor anddelivery floor for safety reasons. If that’s the case here, would it be possible for him to have a room on the labor and delivery floor so he can see his baby? The birth mother doesn’t want to see the baby after delivery, and I know he doesn’t want the baby to be in the nursery all alone.”
“Given your special circumstances, I don’t think that will be a problem, as long as they have rooms available,” she said.
“Thank you so much,” he said.
“You’re welcome. I’ll see what I can do and check on you soon.”
“Oh, you’re good,” I said once she was gone.