Finally

Part 30: Vigilence

I couldn't stop shaking.

From my knees up my torso and hands and all the way to my head.

Shaking.

I felt as though slow motion took over everyone's speed.

The air had been sucked out of my lungs and the blood drained from my entire body.

One moment she was telling me no and the next...

The next she was on a gurney strapped down to the floor of an ambulance- her heart overworking itself, while her low blood pressure kept her unconscious.

It was as though God was spiting me.

Or Georgia was testing me to see if I will be different.

When we arrived at the Dam it was almost as if no one wanted to touch her.

Lauren froze in her tracks.

Layla and the others as well were immobilized. The once loud ED became horribly silent.

It wasn't until Mark Walsh slapped Lauren's arm that she came around and kicked everyone into overdrive.

Yet my drive was gone.

I couldn't possibly be apart of this again.

I couldn't possibly be involved.

In the back of my mind all I could see was a tunneled vision Hell of what took place in my apartment barely two years ago.

Where blood pooled onto the carpet I had picked out- my only contribution to the bedroom.

Where labored breathing went silent.

And where my baby girl took her first breath.

It was Lauren who gave her that.

And it was Helen who gave my wife a bit more time.

*

"Do you want to hold him? Max?" Blinking a few times, I look up at Adrian holding the small brown sugared skin child in his arms- the size of it barely stretching the length of his forearm.

"I....I can't." I quietly stammer and keep my hands gripped on the arms of the chair all so no one sees them shaking.

"Max, you should hold him. Give him some love. If not for him...then for her." His voice is somber and slightly hollow as he tries to hand me the baby.

"No. No...And you shouldn't either." I say sharply and his eyebrows narrow inward and form wrinkles in the small space between them.

"Max, he needs love."

"He needs his mother! The only person who should be holding him right now! Forming the first bond! Not you!" I raise my voice slightly and stand- glaring down at him.

"Max..."

"Put him down. Now."

"You're being irrational. Helen would want..."

"You don't know what she would want! Adrian! Because you don't know Helen! You don't! You're just some stupid kid, who stepped into somebody else's shoes by chance!" Growling at him, I'm nearly face to face with him, and his drops, his eyes leaving mine and staring more at my chest- blankly and speechless. "This is all you're fault. If you would have monitored her better and kept an eye out for anything abnormal- we wouldn't be here—like this!"

"You're...you're seriously blaming me." He asks genuinely hurt and confused.

"Yes!! You were her doctor!"