Knight Takes Queen (16 page)

‘I’m bleeding.’

Kate’s whisper detonated like a bomb in Dominic’s brain, adrenaline instantly flooded his body and he came out of a dead sleep in a nanosecond. Rolling over at lightning speed, he hit the light switch, then rolled back, hoping – half asleep – that he’d misunderstood.

But Kate’s face was ashen, her eyes huge with fear.

‘Something’s wrong,’ she breathed, shoving the quilt aside.

Dominic looked down, and for a flashing moment the world came to a halt, his gasp stifled mid-utterance, his heart shuddered to a stop. The puddle of blood under Kate’s legs was dark and ominous, spreading before his eyes. It seemed like several years passed at a crawl, although only a second elapsed. ‘Don’t move, baby.’ His voice was deliberately calm and measured as he grabbed his phone from the bedside table. ‘Just stay right there.’ Punching in Jake’s number, he slid off the bed. ‘I’m calling for the car.’

Picking up his sweats from the floor, he shoved in one leg, then the other, jerked them up, swearing, ‘
Fuck, fuck, fuck
,’ under his breath as Jake’s phone rang, once, twice, three, four –
finally
. ‘I need the car out front
now
,’ Dominic said, his words, low, intense, rife with command despite his guarded tone in earshot of Kate. He didn’t wait for an answer, already shoving his phone into his pants pocket, bending to pick up his discarded T-shirt. Pulling his shirt on with a few quick jerks, he stepped into his black-and-white checkered vans and swiftly moved towards Kate. ‘Jake’ll be here in a minute.’ He spoke in a carefully modulated voice you’d use to placate a child’s nightmare. ‘So don’t worry. Jake’s a fucking race driver. We’ll be at the hospital in no time.’ Jerking the quilt from his side of the bed, he flipped his hair out of his eyes with a quick brush of his hand and began wrapping the comforter around Kate.

‘Hey, hey,
clothes
!’ She banged on his arm, every childhood warning about car accidents and clean underwear clawing through her fear like some Freudian attack dog. ‘I need clothes!’

Fuck that. There wasn’t time
. But after a quick glance at Kate’s horrified expression, Dominic muttered, ‘OK, OK,’ sprinted back and swept up her T-shirt and sweats from the carpet. A second later, he lifted her from the blood-soaked section of bed, set her down away from the stain, said, ‘I’ll do this,’ and swiftly dressed her. But blood almost immediately appeared on her sweats, the spot widening with alarming speed. ‘I’m going to grab a few towels,’ he said,
outwardly composed, fear twisting his gut. ‘I’ll be right back.’

Kate was trying equally hard to stay calm, forcing herself to focus on positive action –
get to the hospital, get to the hospital
– rather than totally losing it. But she’d seen the blood on the bed, could feel the continuing flow; something was terribly wrong. She should have eaten better, drunk less caffeine. She shouldn’t have worked such long hours those first months. She should have made better choices about – Christ, take your pick from a long list of her maternal inadequacies. Swamped with guilt, she thought of all the things she could have done better,
should
have done better; she beat herself up for not following the most fundamental rules everyone knew about rest and eating well, about vitamins – Jesus, she’d never even taken one.
This was all her fault
. Frantic, she promised whatever spirits were listening, to be a better mother from now on. She’d follow all the rules – every single one, she vowed; she’d write a list, Dominic could give her stickers like he’d threatened.
Just make the bleeding stop. Please, please, make it stop
. She was terrified of what was happening.

‘You have to tell me everything’s going to be OK,’ she said in a little forlorn voice when Dominic came back carrying an armload of towels. ‘Just say it.’

‘I would have anyway, baby.’ Bending down, he kissed her tenderly. ‘Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be fine. We’re going to take care of this. I promise.’ He knew what he had to say; he would have lied to God and the Devil and every
Brueghel demon in purgatory to make Katherine happy. Standing upright, he swallowed the
oh fuck
that almost escaped when he saw all the fresh blood and forced a smile instead. ‘I’m going to wrap you up like a mummy now, so don’t complain. I don’t have time for complaints. Check back with me in the morning when the complaints department opens.’

She laughed.

And for a flashing second he felt better – a relative term in the face of disaster. But he didn’t have time to waste on introspection; swiftly swaddling Kate’s lower body in several towels, he covered her in the quilt, picked her up in his arms and moments later was racing down the upstairs corridor. As he reached the top of the stairway and started running down the steps, for the first time since he’d bought the London house he was grateful for Martin’s insistence on a night porter. The man immediately came to his feet when he saw them. ‘Get hold of Max. Have him call St Mary’s Hospital and Doctor Fuller,’ Dominic said in a voice just loud enough to carry; if not fearful of upsetting Katherine he would have shouted. ‘The numbers are all on my desk phone. Tell the doctor to meet us at the hospital. Open the door now, then
run
.’

Regardless of Dominic’s tempered tone, the hall porter recognized manifest calamity with his employer racing down the stairs carrying Miss Hart. He rushed to open the front door, then turned and sprinted for Dominic’s study.

Dominic swept through the opened door, down the small
flight of steps, scanning the street for the car. Jake’s quarters were above the garage in the mews behind the house. Minutes away.
Where the fuck was he?
Tense, anxious, his nerves on edge, Dominic paced as they waited for the car, murmuring all the useless platitudes expressed at times like this when one’s world was collapsing and you had to pretend it wasn’t: ‘Jake’ll be here soon, baby, don’t worry; you’re doing fine; the doctor’s on her way; are you warm enough?, are you too hot?; when this is over we’ll go sleep on a beach somewhere for a week, how about that?’ But he was scared shitless. He knew how quickly a person could bleed out.

‘A beach sounds heavenly,’ Kate murmured. They were both trying to deal with the crisis responsibly. No visible panic or despair. But raised by a grandfather like hers, Kate
also
knew how quickly a person could bleed out. And when she asked, ‘How far is the hospital?’ her voice trembled despite her best intentions.

‘Not far, baby.’ Jesus, Katherine’s face was faintly sheened in sweat, her voice unsteady. Was she going into shock? ‘Jake can get us there faster than an ambulance,’ Dominic said as calmly as he could. ‘We’ll be there soon.’

‘Oh God,’ Kate blurted out as a palpable runnel of blood seeped from her body. ‘I’m really scared.’ She didn’t say she was afraid of losing the baby, as if voicing the words might tip the hand of fate. ‘Tell me this can be fixed, Dominic.’ She winced as her stomach clenched. ‘Tell me!’

He came to a stop at her sharp cry. ‘Everything’s going to be fine.’ He spoke with assurance, perjured himself without
a qualm. ‘I’ll make sure of it, OK?’ He understood what she wanted to hear because he wanted the same thing; their life back to normal – happy, content, fucking heaven-on-earth normal. ‘Dr Fuller will take care of you. She’s good. Everyone says she’s the best. She’ll know what to do,’ he murmured, saying whatever he had to say to soothe Katherine’s fears, lying through his teeth. ‘As soon as the car gets – Christ,
at last
– here’s Jake. We’re on our way, baby.’
Thank God
. Katherine was white as a sheet.

The car came to a screeching halt at the kerb. Jake leaped out, quickly buttoning the last button on his jeans, his shirt undone, his feet in flip-flops. Racing to open the car door, he said, breathlessly, ‘Where to?’

‘St Mary’s Hospital. Don’t stop for lights,’ Dominic said crisply as he slid into the back seat with Kate.

As the door slammed shut, Dominic adjusted Kate in his lap, watched Jake sprint around the front of the car and slide behind the wheel.

‘I must have done something wrong, oh hell, I did everything wrong.’ Kate’s voice was quivering, her best efforts at rationalization inadequate against her building hysteria, all her fearsome misgivings suddenly spilling out in a rush. ‘I should have taken better care of myself, gone to see a doctor earlier, not—’

‘Don’t, baby,’ Dominic whispered, as Jake rocketed away from the kerb. ‘Don’t blame yourself. You didn’t do anything wrong.’
He probably did. They shouldn’t have been fucking so much. He should have been more sensible
.

‘Are we going to lose the—’

‘We don’t know,’ he interrupted, not willing yet to acknowledge the possibility. Still holding out hope. ‘We’re clueless. Let’s wait for the doctor to tell us what’s going on, OK?’ But he was struggling with increasing dread. Katherine had bled through the towels and quilt; he could feel the blood saturating his sweats. The word, haemorrhage, was lighting up his brain. ‘Push it, Jake,’ he said, sharply. ‘Use the sidewalks if you have to.’

Jake punched the accelerator and the car shot forward.

‘I’m really sorry,’ Kate whispered.

‘Baby, it’s not your fault.’ Concern and sympathy shimmered in his gaze. ‘Don’t even think that. We’ll be there soon. Dr Fuller will take care of you.’

Fortunately, the city was quiet at that time of night. Jake drove full out, only slowing down marginally as he approached the busiest intersections, then leaning on the horn as he swept through the red lights, almost side swiping a dozen cars that didn’t get out of the way quickly enough. Seven endless minutes later, he careened into the emergency entrance on two wheels, slammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop.

‘I’ll get the door,’ Dominic snapped. ‘Run. Tell them we’re here.’ Thumbing the handle, he kicked open the door, swung his foot out on the sidewalk and came out of the back seat in a powerful surge. ‘You’re safe, baby. Look, help’s on its way.’

Max’s call had mobilized a medical crew that came
streaming out the door and escorted them into a cubicle where Dominic deposited Katherine on a stretcher. Turning to the doctor, who had a lean, runner’s body and thankfully didn’t look exhausted like doctors often did in the middle of the night, Dominic spoke in an undertone. ‘Katherine has lost a
considerable
amount of blood.’ His gaze flicked downward to his bloody sweats, then to the quilt to emphasize the full extent of the loss. ‘Is Dr Fuller here?’

‘On her way.’ The doctor turned to Kate. ‘We’re here to take care of you until she arrives. Just try to relax. We’ll handle this. Do you know your blood type?’

‘O negative.’

‘That’s mine too if you need any,’ Dominic said, tersely.

The doctor looked at Dominic. ‘We’ll see.’ Then he nodded at a nurse and turned back to Kate. ‘We’re going to set you up with an IV. Just a precaution. Nothing to worry about.’ He glanced at the blood pressure reading now that Kate’s arm had been cuffed, spoke to another attendant. ‘Tell Sarah to bring two.’ Then he addressed Kate. ‘When did this start?’

Wired to the max, Dominic answered first. ‘Katherine woke me ten, fifteen minutes ago. We don’t know. Do you have any idea, baby, when you started bleeding?’

She shook her head. ‘I thought I was dreaming at first.’

‘How far along is the pregnancy?’

‘Three months,’ Dominic said, wanting to hold Katherine’s hand but concerned he’d be in the way. ‘We just found out recently.’ Dominic stood at the foot of the stretcher instead, keeping his bloody clothes from Katherine’s line
of sight, feeling his pulse rate spike as Katherine’s blood pressure continued to drop on the heart monitor. ‘You can stop the bleeding, right?’ he said, curtly, his piercing blue eyes on the doctor.

The doctor took a moment too long to answer. ‘Stopping the blood shouldn’t be a problem.’

Dominic felt pure terror at that delayed response. His instinctive reaction was to hit the fucker, jar a better answer out of him, force the doctor and the world to yield to his authority. But he knew better than to resort to violence with Katherine’s life in jeopardy. So he reined in his explosive temper; only a faint tick along his jaw indicated the extent of his self-restraint. ‘Should we call in additional specialists? I have people who can do that.’ Each word was blunt with command, regardless of the softness of his tone. ‘My wife has to be taken care of appropriately and expeditiously. Do we understand each other?’

St Mary’s catered to the wealthy and titled, so it wasn’t as though the doctor hadn’t dealt with demanding patients before. But this man had a tough, ruthless quality to him quite different from the lordly arrogance of the plutocrats. Maybe it was the hard muscled body or the stone-cold look. Or the sense that he could flick a switch in a second and become dangerous. ‘Dr Fuller will be here soon. She’s the very best. In the meantime,’ the doctor said, neutrally, ‘I suggest we get the IV going.’

Dominic’s shoulders rose and fell on a deep breath, his slow raking stare fixed on the doctor for an overlong
moment. Then he gradually unclenched his jaw. ‘Forgive me,’ he said, gruffly. Returning his attention to Kate, Dominic suddenly felt the earth shift under his feet.
Christ
. She was even more deathly pale, her breathing so slight it was barely visible. All noise vanished, the people in the room disappeared, dread rose up like a black shroud and engulfed him.

‘Dominic.’

Kate’s faint whisper dragged him back; he blinked against the brilliant light. ‘I’m here, baby.’ Putting a smile on his face, he shouldered people out of his way and moved to Katherine’s side. ‘Hey,’ he whispered, sliding his strong fingers through hers. ‘How’s my girl?’

‘I need you,’ she whispered, her eyes enormous, glistening with unshed tears.

‘You have me – now and always.’ Dominic’s fingers closed over hers.
Even with this tragedy unfolding, he had Katherine to love. And she loved him back. He couldn’t ask for more
. ‘Now look at me, baby, here, squeeze my hand. They’re going to stick you.’

By the time Dr Fuller arrived shortly after, the IV was in place and Katherine’s colour and blood pressure had improved. But the bleeding hadn’t stopped.