The Brightest Stars ✨

Chapter 37

"We want to wean her off the sedation medication, her blood pressure is back to normal and she has no clinical presentations of preeclampsia." The specialist obstetrician was telling Gabe more than a week since Natalia had been admitted. He nodded. They had thrown so much medical information at him the last couple of days that he was at saturation point, like a leaky sponge.

"Natalia has so far remained stable during observations. The baby shows no signs of foetal distress or foetal restriction growth. We will continue to monitor her for the next 24 hours, but after that we will pursue what we call an aggressive expectant management plan. This means that Natalia may be discharged from the intensive care unit, and provided she remains in a stable condition may be discharged to be monitored at home until at least 34 weeks of pregnancy but we can give you more details on that later on."

Gabe breathed a sigh of relief. His whole body sagged into the chair, he had been holding that in for the past week. The toll of trying to remain positive, not pessimistically expecting the worst, for his and Natalia's world to come crashing down around them, and trying to remain strong for Natalia and his child had taken its toll. He barely had any words for the multidisciplinary team of healthcare professionals that had been taking care of Natalia. He was intensely grateful, the relief was clear as dawn on his face.

"When will she wake up?" he asked, finding his voice, a deep, overcome with emotion rasp.

"In a couple of hours," the doctor answered and he patted Gabe on the back in a rare slip in his professional demeanour. The attending was a specialist in cases like these, the treatment had been pretty experimental, they had thrown everything and the kitchen sink at making sure Natalia recovered.

"I heard that you made Lima cry," Ty said by way of greeting when he turned up in between shifts on the new gig he and Dan were working on. They had been doing so well they had hired 3 more operatives in the last month. Business was booming it seemed.

"Let me guess, the nurses told you too?" Gabriel sighed.

"Of course they did, I'm hot and I'm not an asshole like you are," Ty scoffed and then added in a stone cold sober tone, "Don't make my girl cry again."

Gabe raised an eyebrow. "You know about this business Lima's been involved in, I'm assuming?" It was easy to infer that it had taken place while Ty had been in Dubai. That had been around the same time Lima had started to be evasive.

Ty shrugged but didn't say anything. Gabe tried to get a read on his face. His dark blue eyes gave nothing away, they had been through the same interrogation evasion training after all. Nothing, not even torture could break that deadlock.

"You couldn't give me a heads up?" Gabe changed tactics, resorting to the bro-code.

Ty sighed, running a hand through his chin length hair, then picking at the hair tie around his sizable wrist to tie his hair into a knot at the back of his head. He was buying time, thinking of what to say and Gabe wondered how bad the situation was.

"Look, had I told you, you would have had to keep it from Natalia. I love your ole girl, she's pretty forgiving but this is one thing she would neither forgive nor forget. So..."

"Thank you for caring about my relationship, truly. I'm honored," Gabe said sarcastically.

"You know me, I do what I can," Ty bid an equally sarcastic smile to his face.

"Tell me this though, whatever it was, did you handle it?"

"You know I did," Ty said, his voice lowering and getting gritty with anger. Whatever it was, just the thought was triggering him.