He looks utterly lost. “Where should I go? Who should I be with?”
“Go with the twins,” I tell him. “Bellamy will hand you your ass if you don’t. I’ll stay with her, and the moment she opens her eyes, I’ll text you.”
Sebastian gives me a brief hug, slams his fist into my back, then leaves with the twins, a hand on each of their incubators.
I’m back at the window when the door practically opens in my face. I stumble back a step, and the nurse apologizes profusely.
“It’s fine. How’s my sister-in-law? How’s the queen?”
“Her placenta tore away from her uterine wall, and she lost a lot of blood. Part of her condition thinned it, so we had to give her a transfusion, and she’ll also get platelets to help.”
“All right. But she’s okay?”
“Yes, Your Highness. We’re moving her to the PACU, and she’ll be groggy and in some pain when she wakes up, but she should be just fine.”
Relief as I’ve never known shakes through me. “Can I see her?”
“Of course. I’ll bring you to her. They’re moving her now.”
I follow the nurse but send Althea a text letting her know where I am and what’s going on. My phone informs me it’s three in the morning, so I don’t expect her to reply, even though she doesn’t have her do-not-disturb on. I also text Gabe, asking him not to kill me for leaving on my own. I need to talk to him more about Marcella. I haven’t done that because she felt like mine to look into and no one else’s, but that was the possessive caveman in me talking.
Javier never found anything on Ella, and he knows the situation because he put the tracking on her face. Everyone has held back because of me, but no more.
The PACU is blindly white and startlingly empty. Nurses and aides curtsy as I pass, but I can’t remove my eyes from Bellamy. She’s as white as the walls, her chestnut hair sweaty and tangled around her, and she has deep purple bruises beneath her eyes, along with a nasal cannula in her nose.
I snap a picture of her that I’ll no doubt get hell for later from her and send it to Sebastian, letting him know what thenurse told me about her condition. She has a blanket over her lower half, her belly still large and protruding, but empty now.
I lower my forehead to the side of her bed and close my eyes.
She’s still here, and the twins are fighting.
“Your Majesty, you’re fierce,” I murmur to her.
“And you look like shit,” she whispers in English. The sound of her gravelly voice has me sitting up, laughing.
“Ilook like shit?” I parrot in English.
She blinks at me, her pretty blue eyes glazed, her expression sober. “Where are they?”
“Upstairs in the NICU with Sebastian.”
She starts to cry, and I run my hand over her cheek. “Don’t cry, Your Majesty. They’re doing okay. That’s what the doctor told us. They’re just over one point five kilos and?—”
“Kilos? Rowan, my brain can only comprehend English right now. What is that in pounds?”
I do some quick mental math. “Somewhere above three pounds, I think.”
“So small.”
“But mighty. Like their mother.”
More tears fall. I can’t tell if she’s in pain. I imagine they gave her something for that in the OR before they cut, but I have no clue.
“I want to see them.”
“I don’t think you can yet. Let me ring your nurse—” Before the words are fully out, the curtain is drawn back, and two nurses are there. They kick me out so they can examine her, and I text Sebastian. He tells me to come to the NICU so we can swap places, and I head upstairs. I’m handed a gown and mask to wear and told to scrub my hands, which I vigorously do.
Sebastian is standing over the twins, who are side by side with each other.