Chapter 7: Twin Flames in the Dark
The silence in the medical bay had become a living thing, thick and humming with the buzz of the bad light and the shallow, terrifying sound of Zara’s breathing. Dom counted each one. Five seconds in. A ragged pause. Three seconds out. He didn’t pray. He made deals with the universe, with God, with the devil—anyone listening. Take his hands, his eyes, his life. Just let her keep breathing.
Then, noise. The crash of the side door, running footsteps echoing in the cavernous warehouse, getting louder. Dom’s body coiled, shifting to cover Zara’s still form on the table, a low growl forming in his throat. But it was Brian who exploded into the room, his arms full.
“Move, move,” Brian panted, dumping his haul onto a rusty rolling cart. Two sealed plasma bags, chilled and sloshing. A box of IV tubing. And, of all things, a small, gunmetal-gray ultrasound machine, its screen dark, a wand attached by a coiled cord.
“The vet had this?” Dom asked, his voice gravel.
“His prize fighter was a pregnant Rottweiler. Don’t ask.” Brian’s hands were moving, tearing open packaging with his teeth. He was still wearing his street clothes, a dark smear of something that wasn’t blood on his jacket sleeve. “We need to know what we’re dealing with, Dom. The bleeding… it changes things.”
Dom understood. He looked at Zara’s pale face, then back at the machine. The thought of seeing inside, of getting an answer to the question she’d asked, filled him with a cold, nauseating hope. “Do it.”
Brian’s hands, usually so steady, fumbled with the conductive gel. He squeezed a cold, clear blob onto Zara’s lower abdomen, above the bandage. She didn’t stir. He powered on the machine. A low electronic whine filled the room, and the screen flickered to life, showing grainy, shifting static.
“This is gonna be cold,” Brian muttered, more to himself than anyone.
He pressed the transducer wand into the gel, moving it slowly. The static on the screen shifted, coalescing into amorphous gray shapes. Dom leaned in, his heart a hammer against his ribs. He saw nothing he could understand—just shadows and echoes.
“C’mon,” Brian whispered, adjusting the wand, his brow furrowed. He angled it. The image sharpened.
And there it was.
A small, dark, bean-shaped void. And within it, a tiny, frantic, flickering light. A heartbeat. It pulsed on the screen, a rapid, rhythmic blinking that seemed to sync with the sudden, dizzying rush in Dom’s own ears.
“There,” Brian said, his voice tight with relief. “Got one. Strong. Rate’s good.”
Dom let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. His knees felt weak. One hand found Zara’s, squeezing it. “You hear that, Z? Strong.”
But Brian hadn’t moved the wand. He was staring at the screen, his head tilted. He adjusted the angle again, slightly to the left. The image shifted, the grainy focus pulling to a different point.
A second dark void. A second, distinct, flickering light. Beating just as fast, just as insistently, a fraction of an inch away from the first.
The air left the room.
“Oh, hell,” Brian breathed, the color draining from his face.
Dom saw it. Two pulses. Two separate, tiny stars blinking in the gray universe on the screen. Twins. The relief that had flooded him crystallized instantly into a new, sharper terror. Twice the life. Twice the risk. The blood loss, the trauma—it wasn't for one, it was for two.
“Brian,” Dom said, the name a command and a plea.
“I see it.” Brian’s professional calm was cracking. He finally pulled the wand away, the screen freezing on the image of the two gestational sacs. He wiped the gel from Zara’s skin with a rough towel, his movements quick, anxious. “It changes the math, Dom. She’s lost blood volume for three people, not two. This plasma…” He grabbed a bag, ripping the plastic port cover off with his teeth. “This isn’t a choice anymore. It’s mandatory.”
He spiked the bag with the IV set, squeezed the drip chamber until it was half-full of the straw-colored fluid. Then he turned to Zara’s arm, searching for a vein. Her skin was pale, the veins collapsed and elusive. He tied a rubber tourniquet above her elbow, slapping the crook of her arm gently.
“C’mon, sweetheart, give me something,” he muttered.
Dom watched, helpless, as Brian’s fingers, slick with antiseptic wipe and leftover street grime, probed. The first attempt missed. A small bead of dark blood welled up under the skin. Brian cursed under his breath, a sharp, frustrated sound. He repositioned the needle.
The second try found its mark. A flash of blood in the catheter’s chamber. Brian’s shoulders dropped an inch in relief. He secured the line with tape, hung the bag from the old IV stand, and opened the roller clamp. The plasma began its slow, steady journey down the tube toward her arm.
“That’s one,” Brian said, his voice raw. He was already prepping the second bag. “We run these both wide open. Then we see.”
Dom nodded, his eyes locked on the drip, drip, drip in the chamber. Each drop felt like a second passing. He looked from the life-giving fluid to the frozen image still glowing on the ultrasound screen—the two tiny, blinking heartbeats. The ghost of their unborn child had just multiplied. The joy of it was buried under a mountain of sheer, physiological dread.
He leaned close to Zara’s ear, his voice a low, steady rumble meant to penetrate whatever darkness she was in. “You’re the strongest woman I know. You hear me? And you’re carrying our future in there. Two of them. So you fight. You fight for all three of you.”
On the table, Zara’s fingers twitched in his. A weak, almost imperceptible squeeze.
Outside, a car alarm whooped once in the distance and then went silent. In the heavy quiet that followed, the only sounds were the buzz of the light, the soft beep of the ultrasound machine still on standby, and the quiet, persistent drip of the plasma flowing into his wife’s vein. A fragile lifeline in the rusted dark, holding back a tide of consequences that was only just beginning to rise.