POV: Colt
The door closed and I counted. One minute, two, three — the hallway was plastic chairs and fluorescent light and the smell of floor cleaner that hospitals use because it kills everything on contact.
Kameron stood against the opposite wall with his jaw locked, his body vibrating with the energy of a man whose every instinct was to move and the problem was behind a door he couldn't open.
He pushed off the wall, walked to the end of the hallway, turned, walked back.
"Sit down, Kameron." He didn't look at me, didn't slow down.
"I can't sit down — sitting down means waiting, and waiting means I can't do anything, and I can't do nothing right now, Colt."
He turned at the end of the hall and came back. "You're just sitting there and I don't understand how you're just sitting there."
"I'm holding still because one of us has to." I kept my voice level, my hands flat on my thighs. "If we both fall apart in this hallway, there's no one standing when that door opens."
"Falling apart and pacing are two different things." His boots hit the linoleum in a steady rhythm.
"Pacing is the only thing keeping me from putting my fist through that wall, so let me pace."
I called Ryan at minute six. "Ivory's in emergency surgery — cesarean. BP spiked to 185 over 115 and the baby's heart rate dropped. Dr. Chen is operating, Marysville General, third floor."
"I'm already in the truck." His voice was tight and controlled. "How long has she been in?"
"Six minutes — and Kameron's about to wear a trench in the floor, so if you could get here before he breaks something I'd appreciate it." I hung up and watched Kameron pass again, his hands opening and closing at his sides.
Ryan arrived in twelve minutes, still in uniform. He walked straight to the nurses' station. "My sister is in emergency surgery with Dr. Chen — can you tell me what's happening?"
"Surgery is in progress, no complications reported." The nurse checked her screen. "Neonatal team is on standby."
"Blood type's on file?" Ryan looked at me, and I nodded from the chair.
"Everything's on file — I confirmed it all before they took her in." Ryan positioned himself at the counter with his hands flat on the surface, and I knew he wouldn't move from that spot until someone came through the surgical door.
Kameron passed on the fifth lap. "How long now?" he said without stopping, and Ryan checked the clock on the wall.
"Eighteen minutes. Cesarean takes forty-five to sixty, faster if there are no complications." Ryan's voice was steady. "Keep pacing if you need to — just don't break anything."
"And if there are complications?" Kameron's voice was raw, stripped down to the fear underneath. "What happens if there are complications, Ryan?"
"Then it takes longer, and we wait longer, and she's still in the best hands in this hospital." Ryan met his eyes. "Ivory's tough, and Chen is good. That's what we're working with."
Jolene arrived at minute twenty-nine. She'd left the triplets with Marisol at the café, and she read the hallway in one glance — Kameron wearing a path in the linoleum, Ryan stationed at the nurses' desk, me in the plastic chair not moving. She sat beside me without a word.
"The kids are fine," she said after a full minute of silence. "Marisol has cookies and crayons and the lunch instructions. Lily asked if the baby was here yet, and Luke wanted to know if it was a boy or a girl."
"What did you tell them?" My voice sounded pressed flat, foreign to my own ears.
"I told them we'd call as soon as we knew, and that their mama was with the best doctor in the county." Her hand rested on my arm — light, steady. "You don't have to thank me, Colt. You just have to breathe."
Kameron passed on the next lap, and his route shifted closer to where we sat. He glanced at Jolene, and something moved across his face before he looked away and kept walking.
Minute thirty-five. Thirty-eight. Forty. "How long now?" Kameron's voice from the end of the hall, rougher than before.
"Forty minutes — that's inside the window." I said it for his benefit, because the numbers were all I had to offer. "Forty-five to sixty is normal."
"Nothing about this is normal, Colt." He stopped in the middle of the hallway and stood there with his hands at his sides, staring at the surgical door, and I recognized the expression — a man who'd run out of motion and landed in the place motion was supposed to protect him from.
"No, it's not." I pressed my palms flat on my thighs. "But she's in there, and she told us to wait, so we wait."
Forty-two. Forty-three. Forty-seven. The door opened, and a nurse came through — scrubs, mask pulled down — and I stood so fast the chair scraped the floor behind me.
"Mom and baby are stable." Five words, and behind me Ryan sat down hard — two hundred pounds of uniformed composure dropping into a plastic chair.
He put his face in his hands, and I'd never seen him do that before and understood it immediately.
"Stable." Kameron's voice came out broken, and his hand went to the wall beside him. "They're both stable?"
"Both stable," the nurse confirmed. "Baby is five pounds two ounces, breathing on her own, and Mom's blood pressure is coming down — she's in recovery."
"Breathing on her own." Kameron repeated it with his weight against the wall, and the nurse's voice softened at the repetition.
"She's breathing on her own, and she's perfect." The nurse looked at Ryan, still in the chair with his face in his hands, then at Kameron against the wall, then at me standing motionless with my jaw locked. "Would you like to meet your daughter?"
Jolene's hand tightened on my arm, and I let it stay because the compression that had held me for forty-seven minutes was releasing, and her hand was the only thing keeping the release from becoming something I couldn't control in a hospital hallway.
My eyes were wet and my throat was closed and my legs were shaking, and Jolene's hand held steady through all of it.
"Yes," I said, and my voice cracked on the word. "We'd like to meet our daughter."