Breathe Again (22 page)

“You what? You had an apnea monitor installed? She stopped breathing? Wait. What?”

Skylar was instantly awake. Maddy had stopped breathing. She didn't know which to deal with first. Maddy had stopped breathing or Nick's OCD when it came to taking care of her. But right now, that obsessive nature helped save her daughter's life.

“Is the ambulance on its way?” she asked.

He was already changed. “Yes. I got your clothes out. You don't have much time.”

There were so many things going on in her head. Had she not burped her properly? Was she responsible for this?

Doubt knocked her senses flat.

“We don't have time. I have to go back to Maddy. Will you be okay?” He stood at the door.

“Yes. I will. Go. Is she okay?” She climbed out of bed and pulled on her jeans.

Nick let his fingers run through his hair. “Yes. I have her connected to a Sats monitor as well. Everything looks stable.”

Was there anything he didn't have?

She was dressed, ready and at Maddy's side. The nursery had turned into a special care baby unit. Nick had all the conveniences one would find in a tertiary hospital.

She was surprised there was no ventilator and then as though he was reading her mind, he pointed to the small machine in the corner of the room.

His voice held that worried thread. “It's not a ventilator but a portable CPAP machine.”

She looked from the equipment to him. “Why?”

“I want to make sure that I had everything I needed to save her life, should anything happen.”

“We'll talk later.” She looked at Maddy, who had nasal prong oxygen. Her breathing was fast. Too fast for a baby. Skylar picked up the top she was wearing. Her chest was moving up and down so rapidly.

“She's working so hard.” She turned to Nick.

His gaze told her he was way ahead of her. “I need to get her to PICU and get a blood gas drawn.”

“Where's that damn ambulance?” Skylar looked out the window.

Nick had already paced the path and had returned to Maddy’s side. “They're outside. I heard them pull up. She is going to be okay.”

She wanted to believe him. “Why is this happening? It's the complication from the chicken pox. It was worse than we thought. It's her heart, right? Has to be.”

Nick put his hand on hers as they both held onto Maddy. “She's a fighter. Like her mum. It's been eight days since the delivery. The PDA in her heart has closed. Which means any other abnormality can show up.”

Damn. This couldn’t be happening. They had checked her out. She was fine. “But we asked them to look for abnormalities.”

Nick squeezed her hand. “Sometimes they don't see it that early.”

Hell. Her eyes closed from being scared of all of the ‘what ifs’. “If anything happens...”

He was so sure. “It won't.”

She hung onto those stone-sculpted words, because those were all she had as the medics came in. Within minutes, they transferred Maddy. Skylar was allowed to sit with her on the ride to the hospital, a ride that took five minutes but seem like an hour.

Nick had to follow them in the car. She didn’t want to think what was going on in his mind. He’d just found his girl a few days ago and now she might be taken away.

But Skye hung onto Nick’s words the entire time. As they rushed Maddy into the PICU, they intubated her. Skylar cried as they placed a breathing tube into Maddy and connected the tube to a ventilator so she could breathe.

She felt sick at the events now that she was on the other side of it. Not the nurse but the parent. So she had to watch, not do. She had to be the helpless one. Nick paced the room like a caged animal. He was so wired and in so much pain, Skye didn’t know how to help. So she sat there in from of Maddy and watched. Sat and prayed. Hoped.

They waited as Maddy had x-rays. They continued to wait, while the medical team had different discussions. They spoke with the pediatric surgeons and the neonatologists, then the cardiologists. Sometimes all of them.

“Transposition of the great arteries. TGA. How could we have not picked up that the arteries were switched the wrong way?”

Nick let her vent, but she could see he was a solid wall of something, working hard not to crumble.

“So give me the stats? What's the survival rate for this? Will my girl make it?” Nick's tone was matter-of-fact.

His words sliced through her. She felt his pain as strongly as hers. His hands whitened against hers.

The pediatric cardiologist looked at his colleagues and then spoke, “If we go in and fix the defect, your baby will go on to live a normal life.”

Nick’s hands relaxed slightly. “If we choose not to.”

The team agreed. “Then her life expectancy will be a couple of months.”

All the air was sucked out the room, and Skye couldn’t take the next breath. With her nightmare confirmed, the room was too small, there was no air to breathe. She had to leave. The truth was, when it came to doctors and her family, luck was never on her side.

The pagers of the men in the room went off to herald a sign of trouble, and Skylar felt sick all over again. Would it not stop?

Each of the men looked at their pagers and then at each other before excusing themselves and rushing out. “It's Maddy.” She followed them, clutching onto her aching tummy. Right now everything ached, even the Cesarean scar, but she didn't let that stop her. Nick was close behind.

His voice was next to her ear. “You need to take it easy.”

Despair was all she could manage. “I don’t think I can survive this.”

They entered the pediatric intensive care unit, and she went to Maddy's incubator. “Tell me what's going on?”

The cardiologist gave his orders to the nurses and then took Nick and Skylar aside. We have an infusion of prostaglandin running to keep the PDA open, but we need to do a balloon septostomy. That's where we—”

Skye looked at the man in front of her. “I know what it is. You're going to use a balloon to make a hole in her heart. She’s not getting oxygen to her brain and if you don’t do this, she will die.”

He paused and nodded. “Right now we need to get oxygen to the right place and without it…” He let the sentence trail.

The cardiologist looked from Nick to Skylar. “We can schedule the surgery as soon as possible.”

Pure filthy fear poured into her like sewer water.

Doctors had this certain way when they spoke and the chances weren’t too good. She knew of course. She could tell by the way he didn’t quite meet her gaze when he spoke his next words.

“We don't have much time. So I am going to go set up for the procedure. I'll get the anesthetist to discuss consent with you. I know you're both in the medical field. This is hard.”

“What would you do?” Nick looked at the cardiologist and then at Maddy. “If this was your girl and she was the most important person in the world.”

Hell, Nick. Make it that hard on him
. Skye turned away from both men.

“I would give her every chance. Then I would know I tried. It's all we can do as parents.”

“Doctor, do you have children?” The despair in Nick’s voice stabbed her heart.

He nodded. “Then prepare for surgery. As soon as you can.” Skylar leaned against Nick.

The days before the big surgery were the worst. There were days Maddy responded well to treatment, and then there were days she was so tired, they weren’t sure of what would happen.

Each of those days Skylar and Nick were there, by her side. Watching her. Hoping. Praying. But silent in their own grief. Their pain tangled in their need.

On the day of the operation, Skylar woke early and went down into the kitchen. Nick was already there, drinking coffee. Staring into space.

She poured herself a cup and sat next to him. What did one say at a time like this?
Hey, big day today.

They had spent hours with Maddy, but they were too scared to talk about the reality.

So many breakthroughs had been made in the past few weeks in their relationship, but it all seemed so unimportant when they had to deal with the mammoth task of saving their daughter’s life.

The coffee tasted weak. “Are you a religious man, Nick?'

He pursed his lips. “It's hard to be religious when you've had a life like mine. But the last few months have made me feel differently. These last few weeks—” His shoulders remained slumped.

Skye looked down at her fingers as they wrapped around the mug. “There's a reason for everything, right?”

His hands covered hers. “She's going to be okay. I won't accept anything less.”

Boy, did she love this man. This man with his efficient take on life.

And the right equipment
. She looked toward the stairs. “You never told me why you have all that equipment in the nursery.”

He turned his mug around and traced the design. “I was hoping we could change fate.”

Could they?

Two broken people who believed they didn’t deserve these chances. “Maddy is ours and she changed our fate. I know it may not seem like it right now but whatever happens, however it happens, I don’t regret it.”

Something in his gaze broke. “You don’t?”

She shook her head. “No. I don’t. I won’t change a thing. I’ve been alone since forever and I’ve believed having a man, having any man in my life would change that. You showed me different.”

“I’m not sure.” His voice was husky.

It was making sense, and she knew it. “I’m sure. You see, it was always you. Even when it wasn’t you, it was you that could fill my heart and feed my soul. Maddy was meant for us.”

“That story I was telling you, about when I was posted in Helmand—”

She grasped his hand. “You will tell me the story in time, but it’s not as important as you think. What’s important is you can change fate. Whatever you had planned for yourself, you changed it. You’re here. Now. So you changed it.”

Doubt shadowed his gaze. “But—”

Skye shook her head. “You didn’t leave. You stayed. You chose.”

His chin dropped. “What if I don’t deserve this?”

Skye put her hand on his. “Nick, I have never met anyone like you. You are someone who will walk into a blazing fire without thinking of yourself, as long as it means saving someone else. A heart like yours is rare. Courage like yours, that's a gift. You keep doing these things as if it’s repentance for something you’ve done wrong, but you need to stop.” She squeezed his hand. “We're going to bring Maddy back home, and she is going to grow up to be a beautiful young woman. Someone we are going to adore for the rest of our lives. Together. I love you. Completely. Passionately. With no hidden agenda. So tell me why you’re so scared something is going to happen to our child? Why do you think something will go wrong?”

Was he surprised that she’d read him that easily? The look in his eyes said he was.

“I have never had someone say those things to me. Never.”

She smiled. Her heart ached that it had taken this long for them to be honest. “I'll never get used to seeing you smile. Do it more often. I fall in love with you more every time you do.”

When he looked down shyly, she smiled. “It doesn't get you off the hook. Talk to me. What’s got you so scared?”

“What if something goes wrong? Things go wrong no matter how hard you try or want it to go right. I know that now. I saw it happen before my eyes, and I couldn’t help.”

Worry made her sit back. “What are you talking about?”

He fidgeted with his fingers. “I was never affected like that before. Not by anything, especially not a death.”

This was not the time for this. They had bigger things happening today. She bit her lip. “You ever thought the reason you were like that, was so you wouldn’t get emotionally involved. It was never because you couldn’t be involved, but it was a way for you to not get involved.”

He straightened. “I took a psychology class once too, you know.”

“This had to have happened in Australia. What happened, Nick?”