“Mel, are you …” Damion doesn’t finish his sentence, but the soft touch of his fingers against my face jolts my skin as he wipes the tear from my cheek. Oh, how I love this man.
“I love you too.” He laughs, tears now filling his green eyes. Wow, I managed to say that out loud?
“You fucking better love me after all the shit you put me through.” I put him through shit? I would say it’s the other way around.
“Water,” I whimper – my throat dry like toilet paper. He grabs a bottle from the nightstand and opens it.
I try to get up but quickly realize that it probably wasn’t the most intelligent thing to do, cause it only shoots the excruciating pain in my head down to my stomach, tearing it apart.
I feel warm liquid running between my legs, wetness coating the sheets.
Shit, did I just pee from pain? Damion drops the bottle; I hear his frantic shouts as the sandman pulls me back into my narcotic blackout state. My head is groggy, and the blinding white light slowly disperses, while my eyes shut all by themselves, leaving the pain to consume me.
“She’s fucking bleeding. What’s going on?”
Bleeding? Why would I be bleeding? Plus side – at least I didn’t wet the bed. Dignity restored.
“It’s the baby. I need you to step away.” The voices are in a bubble again, or maybe I’m just imagining it because of the lingering pain.
Beep-beep! Beep-beep! Beep-beep!
The sound is twice as fast; twice as irritating. I can feel something bad is happening, something really bad, and I try to line up my thoughts in a methodical order, so I can get to the logic behind everything. But nothing makes sense. I can’t think clearly. I try to shout at Damion.
I love you. But I know he can’t hear me, this time it’s just in my head.
“This will numb the pain while we figure out what’s wrong.” I’m not sure to whom the female voice belongs, but she must be a doctor I suppose. No offense, but there’s no numbing this pain … I definitely feel it, I’m being torn from the inside.
“What’s going on?” It sounds like Jackson, but I could be wrong.
“She has abdominal bleeding … could be a subchorionic hematoma,” the woman speaks quickly, not that I know what she’s saying.
“Is the baby going to be okay?” That voice is definitely Damion, that I’m sure of. Funny how I can distinguish him from all the rest.
“We’ll do our best to save the little bean, but it might be a miscarriage,” the doctor answers and shouts orders around. “Give her some progesterone and get those blood bags going. I need an ultrasound. Come on people.”
“Doctor you need to fucking safe them!” Damion sounds like a lost boy.
A coldness hits my stomach skin, sending a shiver through my heated body.
Beep! Blob! Beep! Blob! Beep!
Another sound accompanies the irritating noise, mirroring it almost exactly, and it generates a calmness over me as I instinctively know it’s my baby’s heartbeat. But then the ‘blob’ disappears and only the ‘beep’ remains.
“We’re losing her.” The way she speaks sounds frantic, almost panic-stricken, “We need more blood.”
No! No! I open my eyes, twitching them against that bright light again. This time I see the silhouette of a woman hovering over me.
“We have the same blood type… take mine,” I know it’s one of my brothers … Jackson I think. Logan maybe.
“Get a needle in his arm … come on people … ” the woman shouts frantically.
“Mel! Can you hear me?” I blink a few times and the silhouette becomes clearer, turning into Dr. Burden. Her face is inches from mine, her eyes worried.
“Yes.” I try to move my arms, to fold them, to protect my baby, but one is heavy, burdened by a cast, the other layered with needles and tubes.
Beep! Beep! Beep-beep! Beep-beep!
I’m shaken, body and soul, physically and mentally an overload of emotions and pain crashing my reserves. I can’t do this. I just can’t. I think I’ve reached my breaking point.
“You need to keep still,” the doctor commands, but like a floodgate that bursts, tears stream down my face and I sob uncontrollably. My body shakes like a 9, 3 earthquake and I’m pretty sure the screams that fill the room are coming from my mouth.
“Damion you need to calm her down!” the doctor yells and then he’s there … my demonic angel. An ugly ribbed sob snaps the tip of the iceberg and he rushes to my side, his face tired, engraved with pain, and eyes a battle of conflicting emotions. He holds onto me as if he needs it more than I do.
His fingers move in my hair and he mumbles, the words don’t penetrate my mind, but they soothe the pain, and replace the fear with hope. I can smell his skin and it calms me down.
“The bleeding stopped, but she lost a lot of blood. Keep pumping the brother.” I move my eyes … it is Jackson … I was right.
“I need to check if the fetus is still there.” She puts the gel on my tummy, and her hand moves the inducer from side to side, slowly, stopping every now and then.
I just can’t look at the screen, so I look at Dr. Burden instead. A single tear slowly makes its way down my doctor’s cheek while she bites her lower lip. I’m praying to hear just a single ‘blob’ somewhere but the sonar machine is eery silent and my heart rate increases, at double speed.
Beep-beep! Beep-beep! Beep-beep!
Date = 14 February
Place = San Francisco (graveyard)
POV – Melaena
I shift my legs into a more comfortable position where I sit on the freshly-planted green grass covering the small heap of the grave site, and then I place the red flowers against the newly erected marble tombstone. A few tears roll down my cheek and I wipe them away anxiously with my hand. I didn’t know it was possible to feel so devastatingly sad losing someone you didn’t even truly know. Fudge jackets, it’s so unfair.
Hatred for Harry, for Darren, for Lucinda … for the whole fudge-upped Brown family … boils through me. But most of all I hate my grandfather. How can one person be so cruel? Even after Alejandro explained that Alexander must have been a psychopath, someone without any feelings, I still can’t comprehend it totally.
I put my hand against the cold stone that’s now the only indication of the life that was lost and buried deep in the earth underneath. And for what? Revenge? Money? Power?
And in the end, Harry and his family ended up in graves themselves. What a loss of lives. All the bloodshed and suffering were for nothing. It just caused more pain.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive them for everything they’ve taken from me. Maybe if it was only about revenge and hate … but it was more about greed. Why didn’t he try to get his kids the help they needed … rather than using them to accomplish his own stupid dream? Ruling The Circle. Power … greed … hate … not good emotions.