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“I don’t care if we have to go to a vet, just—oh god! Get me somewhere, now.”
Faith dragged me toward the front door and I cursed as my toenails scraped across the hardwood floors. Hesitating, I grabbed the wall with my free arm. “Wait, shit, I need shoes.”
“Fuck shoes.”
“I can’t go to the hospital with no shoes. It’s February for god’s sake.”
She sighed. “Look, sister, you may be tiny, but I’m not hauling your ass upstairs for shoes. This is California. You won’t die of hypothermia. Now move.” Reaching the doorway, another pain hit and my knees buckled. A mumbled expletive exploded from her chest. “Damn it, breathe, Phoebe. I swear to god, you’re not having this baby right now. I don’t do blood, and I’d probably drop it on its head. Listen to me and breathe.”
She pulled me through the front door, my dead weight knocking over the clay pots on either side. Securing me in the passenger’s seat of her car, she slipped behind the wheel. With shaking hands, she peeled out of the driveway, toward the hospital.
***
Twenty minutes and five machines later, the only sound in the room came from the rhythmic swoosh of the baby’s heartbeat monitor. Faith sat in the chair next to me, her carefully applied mascara running down her face.
Frown lines formed parenthesis around her mouth as she took a deep breath. “What did the doctor say?” In the flurry of activity, needles, and wires, she’d been ushered out of the room. For the last ten minutes, neither one of us had said a word.
I winced as the IV needle in my hand shifted. “I’m still waiting for him.”
Cocking her head to the side, she squinted her eyes. “Is that sound the baby?”
I ran a hand down the length of my stomach and my palm snapped back with a kick. “Yeah, it’s the heartbeat—which is doing wonders for my nerves.”
“Phoebe, what the hell happened tonight?”
“I don’t know,” I lied.
Collapsing against her chair, she rubbed her temples. “Don’t hand me that bullshit. Spill it, Dalton.”
Dalton.
No one had called me that in over three years.
She’d been my roommate and best friend while we attended college at Dreighton University, but we’d lost touch when I withdrew three months into our freshman year.
I walked away from Phoebe Dalton after my father ignored the restraining order I’d filed and attacked me. The man who brought me into this world came within two millimeters of taking me out. After I’d recovered, I changed my name and turned recluse, hiding within the confines of my sister’s house.
I became Phoebe Ryan. As far as I was concerned, Phoebe Dalton died that night in 2013 behind my Chevy Malibu.
I narrowed my tired eyes in suspicion. “Why were you at my house?”
She busied herself deciphering the fetal heart monitor printout. “I think the real question is, what would you have done if I hadn’t been there? Where’s Julian? Have you been taking your meds? When was the last time you were really checked by a doctor?” Rolling my eyes, I faced the opposite wall, and her manicured fingernail jerked my chin back. “I can be just as much of a stubborn bitch as you. Remember, you’re responsible for another person now, and it’s counting on you to not be a self-righteous ass.” Smirking, she pulled her phone out of her pocket. “Or maybe you’d prefer to answer Julian instead?”
The second she hit the speaker button on the phone, I lunged. Cursing, I snatched it out of her hand, quickly disconnecting the call. “Jesus Christ, Faith! What happened to girl code?”
Retrieving her phone, she deposited it into her pocket. “It became null and void when you left me with a threat of having to stick my hand up your vag and deliver your kid.”
I laughed despite my annoyance. Glancing upward, my eyes followed the trail of tubes to a slow dripping IV bag. I hated hospitals. Every hospital I’d ever been in had been because someone had put me there.
My mother drove erratically trying to escape my abusive father and we were hit by a drunk driver. My father tried to end my life during what should’ve been one of the happiest times of self-discovery. Julian’s sociopathic female bandmate had such a delusional obsession with him that she tried to murder me—twice.
If I had my way, I’d have a home birth.
“Why were you in my house?” I repeated. “We just moved in. Only Ryker knew we were in town.”
Julian’s brother, Ryker, and the rest of the band had moved to the West Coast two weeks earlier. We stayed in Manhattan so Julian could tie up loose ends. I spent the time completing stacks of paperwork to sublet my apartment to a co-worker from my job at Vinyl magazine.
“You’ve already asked me that question,” Faith said, pursing her lips.
