Chapter 17: Birth & Broken Chains
The truck skidded to a halt under the harsh ER awning, lights bleaching the night into a stark, unreal tableau. Wade was already out, shouting for help, his voice raw against the hum of the generator. Robert sat frozen, the flask dangling from his fingers, his eyes glued to his daughter’s curled form in the bed of the truck.
Orderlies descended with a gurney, their movements efficient, their faces masking everything. “Her water broke, there’s blood, she’s early,” Wade barked, a hand on Cass’s ankle as they lifted her. Her fingers were claws in the tarp, her face a mask of pain and terror. “I’m here,” he said, the words meant only for her.
They whisked her through the automatic doors, the sterile cold of the corridor hitting her like a wall. Robert shuffled behind them, a silent, shambling ghost. A nurse blocked him. “Are you the father?”
“Yes,” Robert and Wade said in unison, their voices clashing. The nurse’s eyes flicked between them, taking in Wade’s protective stance, Robert’s disheveled, drunken state. She pointed at Wade. “You. With me.” She looked at Robert. “You wait here.”
Wade followed the gurney, his boots squeaking on the linoleum. Cass’s hand flailed, and he caught it, lacing his grimy, bruised fingers with hers. “Look at me,” he urged. “Just keep looking right at me.”
The delivery room was a cacophony of beeping and brisk voices. They transferred her to a narrow bed, strapped a monitor around her belly. A young doctor with tired eyes examined her, his expression tightening. “Placenta’s detaching. We need this baby out now.” He looked at Wade. “You staying?”
“I’m not moving.”
Contractions were a continuous earthquake, leaving no valley of relief between the peaks. Cass panted, sweat soaking her hairline. “It’s too fast,” she whimpered.
“It’s okay, it’s good, it’s right on time,” Wade lied smoothly, wiping her forehead with a cool cloth. His other hand never left hers. “You’re the strongest person I know. You can do this.”
“I can’t.”
“You already are.” He leaned close, his voice dropping so only she could hear. “You wrote a whole goddamn book while that bastard tried to break you. This is just one more page.”
A wild, sobbing laugh escaped her, morphing into a guttural groan as another wave seized her. The doctor positioned himself. “Okay, Cassidy, on this next one, I need you to push like you mean it. Like you’re pushing him right out of the room.”
It was Wade she locked onto, his hazel eyes fierce and unwavering. She pushed, a primal, tearing effort that consumed the universe. There was pressure, a burning, and then a sudden, shocking release.
A thin, indignant wail sliced through the air.
“She’s here,” the doctor announced, a smile in his voice.
A tiny, purple, squirming creature was laid on Cass’s chest, slick and perfect. The cry was robust, furious. Cass’s hands came up, trembling, to cradle the shuddering weight. “Oh,” she breathed, a sound of pure awe. “Oh, look.”
Wade’s face crumpled. He leaned down, his lips pressing to Cass’s sweat-damp temple. “She’s perfect,” he choked out, his tears falling into her hair.
From the doorway, a shadow moved. Robert stood there, having ignored the nurse, his face ashen. He stared at the scene—his daughter, the farmhand, the newborn—his jaw working. His eyes, glassy with drink and something else, fixed on the baby. A low mutter escaped him, almost lost under the infant’s cries. “Just like her mama.”
The words hung, a tarnished heirloom offered into the room. Cass flinched, holding June closer. Wade’s head snapped up, his body coiling, ready to interpose. But the moment shattered as the doctor’s voice turned urgent. “We’ve got more bleeding. The placenta isn’t delivering cleanly.”
The warmth of the baby on her skin was abruptly replaced by a nurse’s capable hands. “We need to take her just for a moment, get her cleaned up,” the nurse said, gently lifting June away. Cass’s arms felt instantly, horribly empty.
“Cassidy, look at me.” The doctor’s face was in her line of sight, grave and focused. “The placenta came apart. We need to go in and stop the bleeding. Now.”
A cold, deeper than any fear of childbirth, seeped into her bones. “Will I—”
“We’re going to take care of you.” He nodded to the anesthesiologist. “You’re going to sleep for a little while.”
Panic surged, white and hot. She scrabbled for Wade’s hand. “Wade. Don’t let her go. Don’t let him near her.” Her eyes darted toward the doorway where Robert stood, a statue of conflict.
Wade understood. He brought her knuckles to his lips, a hard, promised kiss. “I’ve got her. I won’t move an inch. I swear on my life.”
A mask descended over her face. The world softened at the edges, sounds blurring. The last thing she saw was Wade’s eyes, holding hers, a lighthouse in a swirling, chemical dark. Then nothing.
The hallway outside the operating room was a tomb of fluorescent light. Wade stood, his back against the wall, his entire being focused on the wooden door they’d wheeled her through. A different nurse approached, holding a tightly swaddled bundle. “Would you like to hold your daughter, sir?”
His arms came up, mechanically. She was placed in them, a negligible weight that anchored him to the planet. June had quieted, her face a rosebud of profound, sleeping peace. He stared, unable to process the delicate architecture of her eyelids, the tiny starfish hand resting against the blanket.
Footsteps approached, slow and unsteady. Robert stood three feet away, the smell of him sour in the clean hallway. He looked at the baby, his expression unreadable. “My wife bled out after my son was born,” he said, the words slurry but clear. “Did she ever tell you that?”
Wade said nothing, just tightened his hold.
Robert’s gaze lifted from the baby to Wade’s face. “You think I’m a monster.”
“I think you’re standing in the wrong hallway,” Wade said, his voice low and flat. “The waiting room’s back that way.”
A long silence stretched, broken only by the distant hospital page. Robert’s shoulders slumped, the fight leaching out of him, leaving only a hollowed-out man. “Is she going to die?”
The raw, unvarnished fear in the question was the most honest thing Robert had ever said to him. Wade met his eyes. “No,” he said, the word a vow. “She’s not.”
He turned, a solid wall of denim and resolve, and walked down the hall to a row of plastic chairs. He sat, cradling June, his entire world reduced to the rhythm of her breath and the silence behind the operating room door. He would wait. He would hold the line. Everything else was just noise.
Everything else was just noise. Robert stood there a moment longer, his breath rattling, before turning without a word. Wade watched his broad, slumped back retreat down the corridor, the older man pausing to speak in a low, intense murmur to a nurse at the station. Wade focused on the warm bundle in his arms, on the slow blink of the surgery light above the door. When he looked up again, Robert was gone.
Hours later, a surgeon in blue scrubs found him in the same chair, June still sleeping against his chest. “She’s out of surgery and stable,” the woman said, her eyes kind. “We had to work for it, but we stopped the bleeding. We saved her uterus. She’ll be able to have more children, if she wants.”
The relief was a physical unclenching in his gut, so profound it left him lightheaded. “Can I see her?”
“She’s in recovery. She’s very groggy. But yes.”
Cassidy was a pale sketch against white sheets, an IV taped to her hand. Her eyelids fluttered as he approached. “Hey,” he whispered, his voice gravel. He adjusted the blanket around June and carefully placed their daughter in the crook of Cass’s arm. “Look what we made.”
Cass’s fingers, weak and clumsy, found the edge of the swaddling blanket. She pulled it down just enough to see the sleeping face. A tear tracked from the corner of her eye into her hairline. “She’s real.”
“She’s healthy. She’s got lungs on her.” He leaned down, kissing her forehead, her salt-damp skin. “You did good. You scared the hell out of me, but you did so good.”
She was in the hospital for two days. Wade spent the first night in the rigid chair by her bed, June in a clear bassinet between them. He changed the first diapers there under the fluorescent lights, his big hands fumbling with the tiny tabs. He brought the baby to Cass for feedings, supporting June’s head with a terrifying tenderness. On the second morning, the pediatrician cleared June to go home. “She’s a few weeks early, but she’s perfect. Just keep her warm.”
Cass touched his wrist. “Take her. Get her out of this place. The crib is…” She swallowed, her eyes drifting closed from exhaustion. “It’s under the oak tree. Bring it inside.”
“Already done,” he lied. He would do it the moment he got back.
The farm was preternaturally quiet. He carried the car seat inside, setting it on the kitchen table while he rushed to dismantle the crib from under the tree. He hauled the pieces upstairs, his muscles protesting, and reconstructed it in their bedroom next to the bed. He lined it with the sheet Ellen had given them. Only then did he lift June from her seat, settling her into the pine frame he’d sanded smooth. She fit. She slept.
He was terrified. The silent, profound responsibility was a weight on his chest. He jumped at every snuffling sound she made, checking her breathing constantly. He heated formula with clumsy care when the first bottle was needed, testing the temperature on his wrist like he’d read. He felt like an imposter, a rough man playing house with a fragile, priceless thing.
He picked her up when she fussed, holding her awkwardly against his shoulder, pacing the creaking floorboards. “It’s okay,” he murmured, his voice a strange, soft register even he didn’t recognize. “Daddy’s here. It’s all gonna be weird for a while, but we’ll figure it out.” He said it as much for himself as for her.
When he brought Cass home, she moved slowly, a hand perpetually pressed to her tender abdomen. Her face softened the moment she saw June in the crib. She took over with a quiet, innate competence that left him in awe. She nursed the baby in the rocking chair he’d bought at a yard sale, her face tilted toward the window, a look of exhausted peace settling over her.
They moved forward in a bubble of fatigue and wonder. Days bled into nights and back again, marked by feedings and diaper changes and the slow, steady healing of Cass’s body. The world narrowed to the walls of their house, the garden outside, the sound of June’s cries. They didn’t talk about that night. They didn’t talk about Robert.
Two months passed. The royalties from Anchorless were a steady, surreal stream, allowing Wade to cut back on outside work. He started fixing the barn attic in earnest, framing in a real floor, arguing with Cass about where the windows should go. It was a good argument, a normal one.
The call came on a Tuesday afternoon. Cass was bouncing a fussy June on her hip, trying to stir a pot of soup with her free hand. “I’ll get it,” Wade said, wiping his hands on a towel. He listened for a moment, his face neutral. “It’s for you. It’s your mom.”
Cass’s body went still. She passed June to Wade, her movements deliberate. She took the cordless phone and walked onto the porch. He watched her through the screen door, her back to him, her free arm wrapped around her middle.
Her mother’s voice was thin, careful. “He’s in Lubbock, at a rehabilitation center. He went there after the hospital detoxed him. He’s been there eight weeks.”
Cass said nothing. The line hummed.
“He’s attending AA meetings daily, Cass. He has a sponsor. He’s… he’s talking about things. About your brother. About me.” A shaky breath. “About you.”
Cass closed her eyes against the hot rush of tears, not of sadness, but of a furious, confused hope she did not want to feel.
“He knows you may never forgive him. He doesn’t expect you to. But he hopes… one day, maybe, you could start over.” Her mother paused. “I just thought you should know.”
“Thank you for telling me,” Cass said, her voice surprisingly steady. She hung up without another word.
She stood on the porch for a long time, watching the light fade over the fields Wade had begun to fence properly with the new money. The ghostly gray of the farmhouse was slowly being touched up with fresh white paint. Inside, she could hear Wade’s low voice rumbling to their daughter, explaining something about the way the clouds were gathering.
She thought of the crib under the oak tree, of the blood on the floorboards, of the book with her name on the spine. She thought of her father teaching her to tie a fly, his hands steady and kind. A single, treacherous ember of possibility glowed in the ash of the past. It wasn’t forgiveness. It was just a fact.
She turned and went inside. Wade looked up, June asleep on his shoulder. He read her face, the storm in her eyes. He didn’t ask. He just shifted, making space for her on the couch. She sat beside him, leaning her head against his arm, and placed her hand on their daughter’s tiny, rising back.
The future was not a closed door. It was this room, this man, this child, the smell of soup on the stove and fresh lumber from the barn. It was a page, blank and terrifying and theirs.