Chapter 12: Emergency
The drive was a blur of potholes and pain. The gray morning light glared off the snowbanks, turning the world into a hostile, monochromatic smear. Every sharp turn made Sarah groan, her knuckles white where she gripped the seat beneath her. Dom’s hand was a constant, heavy pressure over hers on her stomach, as if he could keep everything inside by sheer force of will. His jaw worked, a muscle ticking furiously.
He’d driven on pure instinct, bypassing closer towns he decided were too small, pressing on until the signs for Ridgeview General, a decent-sized county hospital, appeared. When they hit the outskirts, the bustling reality of it—cars in a Tim Hortons drive-thru, a school bus picking up kids—made Sarah’s skin prickle. They were out. They were visible.
The emergency room entrance was a flat-roofed awning of yellow brick. Dom pulled the truck right up onto the curb by the sliding glass doors, ignoring the signs. He killed the engine and was at her door before she could move.
“Don’t walk,” he said, his voice brooking no argument. He unhooked her seatbelt and lifted her out as easily as he’d moved the mattress by the fire. She clung to his neck, her face buried against his worn leather jacket. The smell of pine and gasoline and him was a familiar anchor against the sterile shock waiting inside.
The doors hissed open.
The triage nurse, a woman with glasses on a beaded chain, looked up from a computer. Her bored expression vanished instantly, replaced with clinical efficiency.
Dom’s boots thumped on the speckled linoleum. “She’s eight weeks pregnant,” he said, the words loud in the hushed, antiseptic space. He wasn’t yelling, but his voice carried a vibration that cut through the ambient beep of monitors and muffled coughing. “She’s bleeding.”
A younger nurse at the desk stood. The first nurse’s eyes scanned Sarah’s pale, pinched face, the unnatural way Dom held her, the blood now visibly staining the inner thighs of Sarah’s borrowed sweatpants—Mia’s sweatpants.
“Trauma One,” the older nurse snapped.
“Sir, we need you to put her on the gurney.” A male orderly appeared, pushing a rattling bed.
Dom ignored him. He carried Sarah into the curtained cubicle and only lowered her onto the paper-covered bed when the nursing staff physically parted around him. His arms were rigid as steel bars. They didn’t want to touch him. One of them gingerly reached for Sarah’s arm to guide her, but Dom didn’t let go.
“Sir, we need to examine her. You have to wait outside.”
His eyes were wild, tracking every move. A doctor pushed through the curtain, a woman in her forties with kind, tired eyes and a hurried stride. She took one look at the scene and her manner softened, but it remained firm.
“I’m Dr.Sharma. I need you to let go so I can help your wife,” she said, her voice calm but carrying authority.Wife. The word hung there. Dom flinched. His hand finally unclenched from Sarah’s. He took a step back, but it was more like a retreat, his body coiled tight against the curtain. His arms were flecked with dark spots where Sarah’s blood had seeped through her clothes onto his skin. He stared at them.
A nurse began cutting away Sarah’s sweatpants with a pair of shears. The sound was appallingly intimate. Sarah cried out, more from violation than pain.
“Sir, I’m going to need some information from you. Please, come with me to the desk.” The orderly tried again, gesturing to the curtain.
Dom shook his head, a single violent jerk. “I’m not leaving.” He rasped.Dr. Sharma was hooking Sarah up to a monitor, pressing a probe to her belly. A rapid, whooshing sound filled the cubicle—a heartbeat, too fast, frantic. Sarah’s eyes flew to Dom’s. The whooshing filled the space.The compass. For a second, hope clawed through the terror.Dr. Sharma’s face gave nothing away. She moved the probe slightly. The sound doubled. Two heartbeats.
Sarah’s breath stopped.
“I need a stat ultrasound,” Dr. Sharma said to a nurse, her voice clipped. She looked from Sarah to Dom. “Sir, I need to know if there was any trauma. A fall? A blow?”
Dom’s eyes went flat and cold. “No.”
“Any drugs or alcohol?”
“No.”
“Her history. Any miscarriages? Bleeding disorders?”
“She was in jail for eighteen months,” Dom said, the words dropping like stones. “Got out yesterday. Nothing before that.” He gave the date of her intake, her date of release, his recall perfect. He gave her age. He didn’t know her blood type, her family history. His ignorance was a physical thing, a hollowness in his chest.
The doctor processed this with a quick nod, her professionalism absolute. “Okay. Ultrasound is coming. We’re going to do everything we can.” She focused on Sarah, taking her hand. “Sarah? We’re going to take you for a quick scan to see what’s happening. Your husband can wait right here.”
They moved then, transferring Sarah to a different bed, wheeling her out. The last thing she saw was Dom rooted to the center of the empty cubicle, surrounded by the bloody scraps of her clothes, his tattoos stark under the fluorescent lights, his hands opening and closing at his sides. The curtain swung shut.
The ultrasound room was dark and warm. The tech was quiet, her touch gentle. She smeared cold gel on Sarah’s belly. On the screen, a grainy, black-and-white universe swirled. Sarah, who had never seen a sonogram, understood nothing. She searched the static for a shape, for the bird, for anything. The tech took measurements, her face a careful blank. She didn’t say “Look, there’s the baby.” She didn’t say anything.
When they wheeled her back, Dom was no longer in the trauma bay. A sudden, nauseating fear gripped her. Had they taken him? Had he run? But as they pushed her into a small private room, he was there, leaning against the wall by the window, his arms crossed. He’d washed his hands and forearms in the sink; the water had beaded on his skin but he hadn’t dried them. A single, damp paper towel was crumpled on the floor by his feet. The sleeves of his jacket were rolled up, exposing the dark ink. He looked like a visitor from another, harder planet.
Dr. Sharma came in holding a tablet. She closed the door softly.
“The bleeding is what we call a subchorionic hematoma,” she began, her voice measured. “It’s a blood clot between the gestational sac and the uterine wall. It’s not uncommon. Often, the body reabsorbs it. Sometimes it leads to miscarriage.” She paused, letting the word sit. Sarah felt it land in her gut.
“But you heard the heartbeat,” Dom said. It wasn’t a question.
“We heard heartbeats,” Dr. Sharma corrected gently. She turned the tablet. On the screen was a clearer image. Two small, bean-shaped shadows, side-by-side in a dark pool. “You’re carrying twins, Sarah.”
The world tilted. Sarah stared. Twins. The scale tipped violently, overwhelmingly. She couldn’t process it. The math of it—two futures, two risks, two heartbeats.
“And?” Dom pushed. He wasn’t looking at the screen. He was looking at the doctor’s eyes, reading the caveat she hadn’t spoken.
“And both are measuring at eight weeks, which is good. Both have strong cardiac activity. Which is very good.” She tapped the screen, circling an area of gray near one of the beans. “This is the hematoma. It’s significant. It’s causing the bleeding and the cramping. There is a very real risk of losing one, or both, especially given the stress and the…” she hesitated, “…circumstances of the last twenty-four hours.”
Sarah found her voice. It was tiny. “What do we do?”
“Bed rest. Absolute pelvic rest. No lifting, no straining. We keep you overnight for observation. If the bleeding tapers off, you can go home—but home means in bed. We’ll follow up with scans frequently. It’s a watch-and-wait situation. Every day you stay pregnant is a victory.” She looked at them both, her gaze lingering on Dom. “She needs calm. She needs to not be moving. No long car rides, no running.”
The unspoken accusation hung there: Whatever you were doing, you have to stop.
Dom’s face was a stone mask. He gave a single, sharp nod.
After the doctor left, silence flooded the room, thick and heavy. Sarah lay back on the stiff pillows, her hands resting on her flat, quiet stomach. Two. The cramps had subsided to a dull ache. The bleeding, they said, was slowing.
Dom hadn’t moved from the wall. He was staring out the window at the parking lot, at their stolen truck sitting blatantly on the curb. They hadn’t asked for ID. They hadn’t called security. The crisis had granted them a temporary, fragile shield. It wouldn’t last.
“Dominic.”
He turned his head. She rarely used his full name.
“They’re okay,” she whispered. “For now.”
He pushed off the wall and walked to the bed. He didn’t sit. He stood over her, looking down, his expression unreadable. He reached out, his hand hovering over her stomach for a long moment before he finally placed it there, his palm covering nearly her entire lower abdomen. His touch was warm, impossibly gentle.
“Two,” he finally said, the word a low exhalation. The weight of it, the terrifying odds, the crushing responsibility, were all in that single syllable.
Then his eyes met hers, and the ice in them cracked. Raw, undisguised fear shone through, but beneath it was something else, a ferocious, burning determination that she recognized from the cell, from the escape. It was the look he got when the debt was too high, when the only way out was through.
“Alright,” he said, his voice grounding itself, finding its core. “Alright.” He slowly removed his hand.“You rest. I’ve got things to do.”
“Dom, what things?”
He leaned down, his lips brushing her forehead in a gesture so quick and tender it stole her breath. “Brian,” he murmured against her skin. “Mia. A plan. You heard the doctor. No more running.” He straightened. “We stop running. We dig in. Right here.”
He pulled the cheap hospital chair over to the door, positioning it so he could see the hallway and her. He sat, his body blocking the entrance. He took the burner phone from his pocket, powered it on, and began to type. The blue glow lit the hard lines of his face.
Sarah watched him. The prison had been about endurance. The escape was about flight. This was different. This was about creating a perimeter, a fortress, around this room, this bed, these two flickering heartbeats. He wasn't just a protector anymore. He was a settler. And the war for their survival had just changed terrain completely.
He stared at the phone screen, the contact list short and dangerous. His thumb hovered over Mia's number. The plastic chair groaned under his weight as he shifted, a sharp sound in the sterile quiet. He glanced at Sarah, her eyes closed, one hand still resting protectively over her stomach.
He stood and moved to the far corner of the room, near the empty sink. The faint, sweet smell of antiseptic couldn't mask the lingering coppery scent of blood on his jacket. He dialed.
It rang twice."Status?" Mia's voice was all business, a compressed burst of static.
"It's bad," Dom said, keeping his voice low. He turned his back to Sarah, his body a dark wall. "We're at Ridgeview General. Emergency room."
A beat of stunned silence. He could almost hear her brain recalculating everything. "Is she—"
"She's stable. For now." He squeezed the bridge of his nose, the pressure behind his eyes building. "Mia, she was bleeding.Bad. Cramping."
"Holy fuck, Dom. Is it…?"
"It's not gone." He swallowed. The words felt like glass in his throat. He forced them out. "It's twins."
The silence on the other end changed. The calculation stopped. It just went hollow. "Jesus," Mia breathed, the word soft and full of a terrible understanding. "Both?"
"Both have heartbeats. Strong ones." He recited the doctor's terms like a foreign language, the clinical words a shield. "Sub-something hematoma.A clot. Bed rest. Absolute.No moving."
"Which means you can't move." Her tone sharpened, returning to the practical. "You're pinned."
"We're pinned.Yes." He stared at a crack in the off-white wall tile. "They're keeping her overnight. Maybe longer. The truck is on the curb. It's visible. We used no IDs, but…"
"They'll run plates eventually if it's flagged. Or a bored cop walks by." Mia let out a long, controlled breath."Okay. New plan. You plant. You become a rock. Brian just left me. I'll turn him around. He'll be your eyes outside. I'll get you a new vehicle, something clean, by morning. You need supplies?Clothes? Food?"
"Everything," Dom said, the list suddenly endless. "She needs… women things. For the bleeding. Soft clothes. Food she can keep down." He felt profoundly, uselessly male. "The cabin had supplies. Can Brian—"
"I'll handle the cabin. He'll handle you. Sit tight. Be the worried husband."She paused. Her voice softened, just a fraction. "How is she?"
His gaze went to Sarah’s still form on the bed. The papery hospital blanket rose and fell with her breathing. She looked younger, stripped of all the toughness she'd carved for herself in prison. She looked like what she was: a scared kid carrying too much weight. "She's strong," he said, because it was the truest thing.
"Must be, to carry two." Mia’s line clicked, a final, decisive sound. "Brian will call your burner when he’s in position. Don’t do anything stupid until then."
He ended the call. The silence in the room was heavier now, loaded with the new reality. Twins. The risk had just geometrically expanded. The debt was no longer to the past, or to the crew. It was to these two unseen, fragile possibilities beating a frantic rhythm inside Sarah. The compass wasn't pointing north anymore. It was pointing right here, at this chipped tile floor.
He walked back to the chair by the door but didn't sit. He watched the hall. A nurse pushed a cart. An orderly laughed softly with a colleague. Normal life, moving past their sealed-off crisis. He felt the prison paranoia stir, the instinct to know every exit, every face. But the doctor’s order was a new kind of cell. His sentence was stillness.
Sarah’s voice was a murmur from the bed. “What did she say?”
“We dig in.” He didn’t turn. “Brian’s coming back. They’re getting us a new car. We stay until you’re stable enough to move to a safer place. Not the cabin. Somewhere else.”
“A place with walls and a door that locks.” Her words were flat, exhausted. “No more wilderness.”
“No more running,” he confirmed, finally looking at her. “We fight from here.”
“We fight from here.”
He saw the words register in her eyes, watched the helpless fear solidify into something grittier. It was the look she’d get in the yard when sizing up a threat. The last piece of fruit on her commissary tray she’d fight for.Good. He needed her to fight.
He settled back into the plastic chair. The silence stretched. Ticking of the wall clock. Drip of the sink faucet he hadn’t fully closed. The distant mechanical hiss of air through a vent.Safe-house quiet was pines and wind.This quiet was potential energy, humming.
She shifted, a wince betraying a cramp. Her hand went to her stomach again.She let out a small, frustrated breath. “So we just… sit.”
“We just sit.” He pulled his knife from its ankle sheath, a worn, non-descript folding blade, and began meticulously cleaning under his nails. The routine, pointless action calmed him.“For now.”
“I’m already bored.” It was a tiny, perfect spark of her old self.
“Be bored quietly.”
She managed a flicker of a smile. “Yes, sir.”
An hour crawled by. He knew it was an hour because a different nurse, younger, with auburn hair in a practical ponytail, came in to check vitals. Her nametag read Janice. She avoided looking directly at Dom, her focus entirely on Sarah, but he saw the slight tension in her shoulders. She noted his presence like a locked door.
"Your husband is very dedicated," she said to Sarah, fixing the blood pressure cuff.
Sarah met Dom’s eyes over the nurse’s bent head. A secret passed between them. "He doesn't like to leave things unfinished."
"The ultrasound team will come for another check around seven," Janice said, stripping off her gloves. "Doctor will round before shift change. Try to rest."
After she left, Dom repositioned his chair against the wall beside the door instead of in front of it. Less obvious. More of a shadow. He heard the low, rolling conversation of two orderlies passing. A cart rattled. A child cried three rooms down, a sharp, piercing sound that made Sarah flinch.
"You ever think about what you'd name them?" he asked suddenly. The question surprised him as much as her. He didn’t do this. He didn't talk about futures he couldn't guarantee with his own hands.
Sarah’s eyes went wide. She stared at the ceiling tiles. “No.” She paused. “Not one, let alone two.” She turned her head on the pillow, looking at him. “A bird name would be stupid, right?”
“Sparrow works.”
“For a girl, maybe.” She drifted again, her expression turning inward. She’d retreated like this in the cell, gone somewhere he couldn’t follow. Then, like she was dragging the words up from a well, she said, “Before. I wanted to call a kid something that sounded solid. Like a stone you could hold. A river. Something that lasts.”
He thought of his own middle name, Hector, chosen by a mother long gone. It felt heavy as an anvil now. “Solid is good,” was all he managed.
A soft knock. The door creaked open. It was the doctor again, Dr. Sharma, her white coat slightly wrinkled, her tablet under her arm. She closed the door carefully behind her.
“The follow-up blood work looks stable, which is a positive sign,” she said, moving to the foot of Sarah’s bed. “No signs of infection. Your hCG levels are strong, much stronger than I’d see for a singleton, which confirms our little stowaways are still producing their signals.”
Relief, bright and sharp, flashed through Dom. He uncrossed his arms, let his hands hang loose.
Dr. Sharma's focus shifted to him. Her gaze was clinical but not unkind. “I don’t need to know the particulars of your situation, sir.” She paused. “The police make routine checks with admissions after any overnight gunshot wounds, major accidents. They haven’t been by. But they might. Your truck on the curb… a staff member might mention it to a deputy boyfriend over dinner.”
Dom went very still. The knife was back in his hand, a cold comfort against his palm.
The doc took a slow breath. “I’m telling you this not to scare you, but because my patient requires sustained, uninterrupted rest for the foreseeable weeks. Jails, fugitive status… that isn’t rest. That’s cortisol.” She looked him square in the eye. “This is a county hospital. People talk. I can move her to a quieter wing, put a generic alias on the door. But that’s the limit of what I can ethically do. You need a better exit plan than the one that got you here.”
The floor felt like it tilted. A routine check. A deputy boyfriend. This wasn't an attack; it was atmospheric pressure, slow and inevitable.
Sarah spoke, her voice thin but clear. “The blood on his jacket. When he carried me in. They have cameras.”
Dr. Sharma nodded once. “They do.”
“That’s logged,” Sarah continued, a terrifying clarity in her eyes. The planner, the one who’d stolen cigarettes under the guards' noses. “They can see him. They can see you carried me in from a dark Ford pickup with Oregon plates you didn’t park properly.”
“They can,” the doctor confirmed. She wasn’t judging. She was stating logistics.
Dom felt the plan, the new, brittle plan to dig in, crack like lake ice underfoot.They were already exposed.They had minutes, maybe hours, not days.Dr. Sharma checked her watch. “I have another patient. Think about what I said.” At the door, she hesitated. “That strong heart activity is a gift. Protect it.”
She left. The click of the latch was deafening.
The room’s air changed. It tasted of risk. Dom stood, the plastic chair scraping loudly. He walked to the window. The Ford was still there, a glaring black anomaly on the pale concrete. An old man in a robe shuffled by it, smoking a cigarette, paying no mind. But someone else might.
“Mia said a new car by morning,” Sarah said.
“Morning might be too late.”
“So what do we do? I can’t walk out of here.” She gestured at the IV in her arm, the monitor leads snaking from under her gown.
“You don’t walk.” He grabbed the duffel bag he’d brought from the truck, started pulling out the contents. Water bottles thudded on the floor. Blankets. The sweatshirt Mia had given her. He shoved the supplies back in. It was noise, motion, a poor substitute for a real plan.He stopped. Looked at her.Really looked. At the gray circles under her eyes, the hospital gown gaping at her neck, the tremble she was trying to hide in her hands.Dr. Sharma’s words echoed. Cortisol.
His phone buzzed. He snatched it up. Brian’s name. He swiped open. “Talk.”
“Yo. What’s the room number?” Brian’s voice was calm, laced with its usual humor.
Dom’s entire body went rigid with relief. “Two-twelve.”
“Look out your window. Service road, east side, by the big dumpsters.”
Dom moved fast. Past Sarah’s bed to the other window, yanking the blinds apart. Below, a narrow asphalt lane ran behind the hospital's kitchens. Two large green dumpsters. A nondescript gray sedan, a Toyota Corolla at least ten years old, sat idling, its exhaust making little plumes in the cold air. The driver's door opened.
Brian got out.
He wore an orange safety vest over his hoodie and carried a clipboard. He looked directly up at the window. He gave a lazy wave, then leaned against the car, glancing at his watch as if waiting for a delivery. He looked like part of the furniture.
“He’s here,” Dom said into the phone.
“New plan,” Brian said, his tone shifting to serious. “Car’s clean, registered to a shell. Keys are in it. Mia’s scrambling for a closer bolthole. Can’t wait till morning. You gotta bounce now.”
Dom looked back at Sarah, at the IV. “She’s hooked to a monitor.”
“So? She’s not the first patient who ripped out an IV.”
“The doctor—”
“—gives medical advice. We’re giving survival advice. Which one has more immediate teeth?”
Dom ended the call. He turned to Sarah. “We go. Now.” It was a command, but his voice was thick. He’d have to carry the weight of this choice, the risk to the heartbeats, alone.
Sarah’s eyes were wide with a fresh fear. Not of capture. Of him making the wrong call. “Dom…”
“We fight from here,” he said, repeating his own words. “But they burned the ground. This ‘here’ is gone.” He moved to her side, his fingers finding the IV tape. “It’s going to hurt.”
She nodded, once. A sharp jerk of her chin. She bit her lip, bracing. He tore the tape back. He slid the plastic catheter out of the back of her hand. A bead of bright blood welled up. He pressed his thumb over it, holding pressure, his other hand already pulling the sweatshirt over her head.
“Arms,” he murmured. She complied, wincing as she lifted them, a cramp seizing her. He dressed her with swift efficiency, pulling the soft leggings Mia had given her over her trembling legs. Every wasted second was a drumbeat.
He scooped her up, blankets and all. Cradled her against his chest. The duffel was over his shoulder. He paused at the door, listening. The hall was clear. The shift change was likely happening, the chaotic handover window.
He stepped out. He walked, pace steady, face a mask of controlled urgency. The grimy, worried husband, taking his fragile wife... somewhere. Maybe for a test, maybe to a different room. A nurse pushing a cart glanced at them. Dom met her gaze. My wife is sick. Don't get in my way. She looked down, kept moving.
He took the stairwell at the hall's end, not the elevators. The heavy door sighed shut behind them. Concrete echoed. Down one flight. The door to the service level. He shouldered it open. Cold, greasy air smelling of french fries and bleach. The gray Corolla was there. Passenger door already open.
Brian straightened as they approached. His eyes scanned Sarah, pale and wrapped, then the streaks of Dom's bloodstained jacket. He just nodded. He tossed a thin windbreaker at Dom. "Lose the leather. Too memorable."
Dom hesitated, lowering Sarah into the car's warm interior. He shrugged off his jacket, leaving it in a heap by the dumpster. The windbreaker was thin, flimsy protection. He slid into the driver's seat as Brian slammed Sarah's door.
"Go left out of the lot, second light right. Head north. Mia's sending coordinates in fifteen," Brian said, slapping the roof. He was already walking away, clipboard in hand, vanishing into the service entrance. Gone.
Dom started the engine. It was quiet. He looked at Sarah. She had her eyes closed, both hands splayed over her lower belly, a silent vigil. He pulled away slowly, blending with the sparse evening traffic. They left the hospital's fluorescent glow behind, swallowed by the town's ordinary darkness.
She opened her eyes. She watched the passing streetlights paint stripes across his face. "Do you think they're okay?" she whispered, her fear too big for the car. The strangers inside her.
"We're moving. You're not bleeding." The mantras of the moment. They weren't answers. They were steps. "When we stop, I'll get you that milkshake."
He felt, rather than saw, her small, sideways smile in the dark.
The phone on the seat buzzed. A text from Mia.Coordinates. An address. A town name he didn't recognize, deeper into the mountains. A farmhouse, rented for cash, isolated.
A new 'here' to fight for. Their stolen car, a blank gray ghost, slipped into the steady river of headlights flowing north. The seconds stretched, brittle and precious, each one taking them deeper into an unknown terrain where survival was measured not in miles, but in the stubborn, echoing percussion of two fragile, hidden hearts.
Rival gang watches Brian silently enters through the service door. He clocks the car’s description, its direction. A few minutes later a call is placed to the same police lieutenant who wanted Sarah’s recapture sabotaged. The message relays a possible sighting. The lieutenant ends the call and stands up at this terminal and starts to check traffic cameras along the county route leading north from the hospital.