In Dark Woods (Signal Bend Series #4.5) (5 page)

Seeing the evidence, his
worthless fury deflated. As he watched her check for pieces of glass, then wash the wounds with alcohol, and then coat them in antibiotic ointment, he said, “If you can’t deal with me like this, then go. I get it. But I won’t let you ruin us chasing a fucking fantasy of what I used to be.”

She jerked her face up, and he saw that she was crying. “You are such an arrogant bastard, Isaac. You don’t even see. Jesus! I would have been
ready to live out my days with you when you were bolted into a goddamn bed! I don’t care. It’s you! You collapse in on yourself the minute you hit a setback, the minute you’re alone for any time at all. You have a couple of weeks when you plateau, and you automatically think you’ve made all the progress you ever will.
You’re
the one who needs your body back. I’m trying to help you get it so I don’t fucking lose you! I didn’t tell you about the money because I knew
this
”—she waved around the room—“would happen. The center was the only place giving you hope so you’d keep fighting!”

She sat back on her heels and sobbed. Isaac wanted to hold her, but he couldn’t reach her. She’d been out of his reach for almost two weeks, and he was going crazy.
He needed them to be what they had been. What they were supposed to be. Not this cold bitterness between them.

After a couple of minutes, she pulled herself together and looked back up at him. “
You always say ‘ride or die.’ It doesn’t mean the same thing to me that it does to you, I guess. You say it like it means if you can’t ride, you might as well die. I think it means you’re up for any fight, no matter what, that you never fucking quit.”

She sighed. “If you’re okay as you are, then okay.
I love you, and I’m not going anywhere. But I can’t be the only one fighting, Isaac. I’m exhausted. I’m just exhausted. I can’t do it for you on my own.”

She taped gauze
over his thigh and packed up the first aid kit. He watched her pack it with military precision, every item with its own particular place. So Lilli. It was a capacious kit. He lived a life where he often needed more than a garden variety Band-Aid.

He had lived that life, at least.

He had to stop that shit, constantly comparing what had been with what was. She was right.

When she was about to stand, he said, “Sport, wait. I’m sorry. I needed to leave the center. I can’t bankrupt us. I can’t. But you’re right. I need my legs if I can have them, but if not, I need to figure out how to get right with that.
This whole thing has fucked my head up, but I’ve been leaning too hard on you. I’ll fight. I’ll make what I can of what they do for me at County, and I’ll do what I can on my own. I’m gonna need you, but either way, I’ll fight. Until they tell me there’s no chance, I’ll fight.”

She leaned forward and laid her head on his left thigh, and he put his hands in her hair. He could reach her again at last.

SEVEN

Lilli put the lid down on the toilet and sat, staring at the stick in her hand. From the time she’d felt Isaac’s semen running down her thigh two months ago, she’d known this was a possibility. Her periods hadn’t been
remotely regular since Ellis and everything that had happened at Gia’s birth, and Isaac had pulled his bullshit ending his treatment shortly after Christmas, so she’d lost track of time, not sure when she should bother with a test. She wasn’t feeling sick or anything. But she’d never gone more than two months without at least spotting. So she’d gone ahead and peed on a stick.

Yep.

Five months ago, she would have been ecstatic. Five months ago, though, there would have been no way in hell she could have gotten pregnant, not without roofie-ing Isaac. He’d all but superglued a condom to his cock after Gia, refusing to even consider another child. She loved being a mother and wanted more. But even after Dr. Andrews had explained patiently to him that while, yes, the risk of hemorrhage would be greater with another pregnancy, and that yes, the consequences should one happen could be dire, there were plenty of precautions they could take to bring the odds back to something approaching normal, Isaac wouldn’t even talk about it.

They’d
had some really spectacular fights about it, and then she’d acquiesced. It had been Show who’d made her see beyond the fights and their mutual stubbornness to what they’d really been fighting about. Isaac had nearly lost her time and time again in the first year they were together. After that, he couldn’t tolerate any avoidable risk. And if something did happen, she’d be leaving him alone to raise their family.

So, she
’d stopped fighting and focused on what she had: her perfect little girl and her amazing old man. A good life, just as it was.

But that was before. Before this new life they were living. She couldn’t see Isaac being any happier about the risk she’d undertake to carry and deliver a baby now, while he was in a wheelchair. Quite the opposite.
And she didn’t want to do anything to derail him.

The night he’d come home from the center—that still pissed her off, but she’d mostly set it aside—he’d promised he would fight, really fight, and not rely on her for every inch of will. And he’d been as good as his word.
Noah, his fantastic chief therapist at the center, called to check in on him a few days after he was home and gave him a bunch of things they could do at home to augment what was clearly inferior therapy at County. But Isaac went every session and worked, and then they did what they could at home. And he kept his spirits up a lot better.

He hadn’t yet had much progress, but he was fighting, on his own, for himself. Finally.

She didn’t know if he could handle the worry he’d have with her pregnancy. And she didn’t know if she could handle being pregnant, and then caring for a newborn, while also caring for a very demanding toddler and a husband in a wheelchair.

She didn’t know. What she did know was that it looked like she was going to find out. Because there was no way in hell she was going to do anything but let this pregnancy take its course.

Isaac had had a few more erections—three, all in the past month, since he’d been home—but none of them as established as the one he’d had that night. His first since the shooting. On their second anniversary. The only time he’d been hard enough for penetration. The only time he’d ejaculated. And she’d caught pregnant.

Lilli had been raised Catholic but had stopped going to church after her
grandmother died, and she’d given up on God completely after her father died. But she felt like something bigger than her or Isaac must have been at work—whether it was God, or Shiva, or the alignment of the cosmos, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster—and she felt a superstitious need to see it through, no matter what. They’d been given a gift.

She had to figure out how to tell Isaac, though.
For now, until she could work that through in her head, she took the stick into the bedroom and tucked it in the back of her underwear drawer.

~oOo~

One morning about a week later, Lilli woke before dawn, feeling inexplicably tense. She looked over to check on Isaac. He was awake, the head of his bed raised so that he was sitting, staring at his feet.

“You okay, love? You need something?”

He turned his head slowly toward her. His expression was enigmatic, to say the least, and Lilli was worried. “Isaac. What’s wrong?”

“I think…I don’t know, but maybe…Lilli, I think I feel something. I think my foot itches.”

“What?”

“It stops when I concentrate, so I’m probably just fuckin’ hallucinating. Can you—will you—?”

She was already up, hurrying to the end of his bed. Pulling the blankets aside, she asked, “Which foot?”

“The right.”

She wrapped her hand around his right foot, still as pale and cool as it ever was anymore. “Do you feel me?”

He shook his head.

Drawing the nail of her thumb down his arch, she asked, “How about this?”

“No. Fuck.” He dropped his head back against the bed. “FUCK.”

“Easy, love. It’s still something new. We should call the doctor. I’ll call the after-hours exchange.”

“No. No. Forget it.”

“Fuck that, Isaac. We need to check it out.”

They stared at each other, and then he nodded. “But I don’t want to deal with just whoever’s on call. Wait until they open, talk to Kendrick.”

“Okay. Can I get you anything?”

He shook his head, and she turned to go back to bed. Not that she’d be doing any more sleeping.

“Lilli, wait. Come up here with me?” He pushed a button, and the head of his bed lowered.

She
climbed up into Isaac’s hospital bed, and they lay together until the sun rose and Gia woke up.

~oOo~

“I hate this fuckin’ shit. Why’d they have us haul ass in here just to take up space in the goddamn waiting room?”

If
Isaac could have been pacing, he would have been. As it was, he was rolling his chair back and forth, three feet forward, three feet back, driving Lilli insane. But she understood why he was amped up, so she bit her tongue.

When
they were finally called back, a nurse helped him get into a hospital gown and set up on an examination table—which help Isaac accepted with surprising good grace. Then they had another wait. He was flushed and furious before Dr. Kendrick finally came into the room. But he managed to maintain.

Lilli stood and went to his side, taking his hand.
She’d grown used to holding his hand while he was wearing the fingerless leather gloves he now wore all day. As calloused as his hands normally were, pushing the wheels of his chair had still torn them up at first, and she’d bought him the gloves. They were becoming something she identified with him. He’d never put his leather cuffs back on, or any ring but his wedding band. All of that he associated with the Horde. Of the jewelry he wore daily before the shooting, he now only wore his wedding band—and Mjölnir. Thor’s hammer, around his neck.

After the required pleasantries, Kendrick sat on his stool and said, “So tell me what you
experienced this morning.”

Isaac explained the sensation he was still feeling intermittently, an itch that eluded his concentration.

“Any notable reaction to direct stimuli?”

Lilli grinned when Isaac rolled and then closed his eyes. He hated the way doctors talked.

“No. Just the itch.”

Kendrick stood and took his pin-prick thing out of his pocket. “Okay, well, let’s do a couple of quick tests and see where we are.”

Apparently feeling a need to be cruel, he lifted Isaac’s hospital gown and began the pinpricks at his waist, rather than his feet. And so began the long, torturous slog downward, Isaac glowering at the ceiling, while Kendrick pricked and asked, “That?” And Isaac said, “No.”

Sometimes, the doctor would not prick and then ask, “That?” And Isaac would say, “No.”

Other times, he would prick and not ask.

Over his lower abdomen, down his hips, his thighs, and on, with nothing different from the dozens, scores of times this simple, horrible test had been performed.

All the way to his feet, no change. Over the top of his right foot. His right heel. By that time, Isaac was just shaking his head, his eyes closed; he’d given up bothering with the word ‘no.’

Lilli saw the shadows massing around him and knew that he’d been far more hopeful about that itch than he’d let on. She bent down and kissed his creased forehead.
“We’re okay, love. Whatever. We’re okay.”

Then his eyes flew open. “Do that again. Yes. Fuck. Yes!” Lilli looked down at Isaac’s feet. The doctor poked again, and she saw his right foot move—just a
tiny spasm, subtle but unmistakable.

~oOo~

After a couple more tests, Isaac was dressed again and in his chair, and they were sitting in Kendrick’s office. The air was dense with tension.

The doctor cleared his throat. “I tell you what. I’m going to go out and have one of the girls get the scans scheduled for this afternoon, and you two can
talk in here for a few minutes. It would be best to make a decision today.” He got up from his commodious leather chair and left the room.

When they were alone, Isaac reached out and put a gloved hand on her knee. Feeling desperate and angry, she glared down at it.
“Lilli, the financial situation is the same, so the problem is the same.”

He had some limited feeling, and some reflexive response, in both feet. Even Kendrick, who was usually reluctant to offer much hope, had been encouraged by the development. He wanted Isaac to check into rehab immediately for intensive therapy. He now thought there was a chance, slim but measurable, that Isaac could someday walk again.
With intensive therapy.

But Isaac wouldn’t go back to the center. He said they couldn’t afford it. He was right, but Lilli could not have cared less.

“No. The problem is totally different. There’s a legitimate chance that you could walk. Isaac, hear me when I tell you that I will not bring you home. I will not. You have to check in. You
have
to. You can’t turn your back on this chance.”

“Please, Sport. You hear
me
. There’s more to think about than this. We can’t make a decision about our whole family’s future based just on my legs. We have to—”

“—Isaac, I’m pregnant.” She hadn’t yet found the time or the way to tell him; she guessed now worked as well as any.

His face went completely blank, like she’d uttered that sentence in Farsi rather than English. “What?”

“I’m pregnant. About ten weeks, I guess, the way the doctor will time it.”

His brows drew together. “Ten weeks? What? How?”

“That night at the center. Our anniversary.”

“That wasn’t ten weeks ago, Sport.” There was a dark rumble in his voice. Jesus—he was—Jesus.

“No, Isaac. The doctor will count the weeks from my last period. It happened on our anniversary. That’s the only time it could have. I haven’t been fucking anybody else,
and fuck you for even thinking it.”

The smile that moved up his face was real and wholehearted, and he took her hand.
“We made a baby that night?”

Considering that he was much calmer about the news than she’d anticipated, she decided not to hold that brief doubt against him.
“Yep.”

But then
his smile faded. “Wait. You can’t—you can’t be pregnant. You can’t have a baby. No.”

“Yeah, I can. I am. We are. We will. We’ll take care. I’ll take care, and it’ll be fine. But it would be cool if you could get back on your feet and help me out with everything. If that’s possible, it would be cool.”

Again he shook his head. She wanted to beat him, but she didn’t suppose it was good form to slug a guy in a wheelchair. Even an obstreperous, vexatious, infuriating guy.

“Isaac, don’t start your shit. I’m pregnant. That fight is over. It’s done. We’re having another baby.”

“I can’t lose you, Lilli. Jesus, don’t you see that?”

“You won’t. Dr. Andrews told us that there are precautions. They’ll monitor things, and I’ll have a C-section, and we’ll bring a baby sibling home for Gia to terrorize.” She smiled, thinking of their precocious, willful daughter. “Pip will appreciate the break.”

Isaac was quiet, staring at their linked hands. Lilli watched him, trying to follow his thoughts as they moved over his face. She saw the ghost of a smile. Finally, he looked up at her again. “We need to be careful with money even more than ever, then, Sport.”

Oh, Jesus. He really needed a slap. But Lilli took a breath, found patience, and spoke calmly, trying reason and logic out.
“The wine bar is starting to turn a little bit of a profit. The B&B is moving into its busiest season, and Shannon has weddings booked now through fall. We still have some savings left, too. We’ll be okay. If we need to, we can mortgage the house.” He opened his mouth to protest, and she put her hand up. She was going to win this fucking battle. “Fight, Isaac. Fight. Please. You can’t give this chance away. Not over money. Fuck, not over that.”