Ch 36 – Three Kings (3)
Tony blinked rapidly, trying to clear the fog.
"Angela?!" He looked over to see her fumbling to unbuckle her seatbelt.
"Tony? What happened?"
"Are you okay?"
"I think so. I don't know," she said, her words punctuated by rapid, shuddering breaths.
"There were kids … What the fuck."
Tony touched his head and stared at the blood on his fingers. A gust of wind blew raindrops into his face, and he realized that half of the windshield was gone. Little shards of glass were strewn all over the dashboard.
Outside, people were running around. A man came up to the driver side door of the van, gesticulating. The window was cracked, but not broken, making it hard to see through.
Tony tried to open the door. It didn't budge. He looked back over at Angela.
"Can you get out on your side!?"
"The door is jammed," she said, an edge of panic in her voice.
The man outside Tony's door started yanking on it and finally got it to open. More rain drifted into the van.
"Hey, man! Are you okay?"
Tony nodded. "Yeah, yeah."
"Paramedics are on their way. It's a big pile-up."
"Yeah," Tony said again, mechanically, not really listening. His priority was Angela. Always Angela.
"Sweetheart, can you climb over here?"
She looked at him, wide-eyed, one hand up near her collarbone, the other one in her lap.
"Yes."
"Okay. I'll go first and then I'm gonna help you, okay? Don't cut yourself."
When Tony began to move his legs, the funny feeling in his right knee was back. He ignored it. They had to get out of the van, and he needed to get Angela to a doctor.
The man outside his door helped Tony climb down. He tried to put weight on his right foot, but couldn't quite manage, his knee wasn't cooperating.
Using his good leg, he hobbled a couple of steps and leaned against the side of the van. He looked towards the man, who had a grey mustache and seemed to be in his fifties.
"I- my leg. Can you please help my wife?"
The slip of the tongue came naturally, in the backwash of a sickening sense of helplessness, the most visceral memory of the darkest days of his life.
The man leaned across the driver's seat. "Give me your hands, okay?" he said to Angela, and Tony watched as he helped her out of the van. In the stark street lighting, she looked white as a sheet.
"Come here," Tony said and reached for her, taking her gently by the shoulders. "Ange, look at me. Does anything hurt? Your head? Your neck? Your stomach?"
Angela shook her head, but one of her hands was clutching her left side while the other one was still pressed to her abdomen. "No. I don't know … Tony, your head."
"That doesn't matter," he said. "First we're gonna make sure you're okay."
Angela exhaled shakily. "You're bleeding," she said and made to touch his left eyebrow.
"Paramedics are on their way," the man said again.
"I'll be fine." Tony ignored him and took Angela's hand in his. "We need to get you checked out. Are you sure you're not in any pain?"
Angela lowered her gaze. "It hurts when I breathe," she said quietly, only to Tony, and he could tell that she was trying not to cry. "And my stomach. From the seatbelt."
Hearing her words, Tony thought he would lose his mind. "Hey!" he called, nonsensically and to no one in particular. "Can we get some help here!"
"They're on their way." A woman had appeared next to Angela.
Angela nodded, and then sobbed abruptly, "I'm pregnant."
"Hey!" Tony shouted again, fear pricking at his neck.
The woman stepped closer to Angela. "Try to stay calm, okay? Breathe. Think of your baby."
Angela nodded again and sucked in an unsteady breath. Tony made another attempt to stand on his right leg, but quickly realized that it wasn't a good idea.
He looked around, trying to understand the chaos. As far as he could tell, this whole mess involved at least eight or nine other cars in two lanes on their side, and another handful in the opposite direction. People were standing next to their cars, some were sitting or lying on the ground, being tended to by passers-by or other drivers. Somewhere a child was crying. Horns were honking in the distance, and was that she sound of sirens?
"We're gonna be okay." It was a pathetic attempt to reassure himself as much as Angela.
"I'm going to be sick," she mumbled and took a couple of steps away from the van towards the median.
"Angela!" Unable to walk, Tony had to watch as the woman rushed after Angela and stayed next to her while she vomited onto the glittery asphalt.
The man still hovered nearby. "Damn kids," he said. "Did you see them? Running into the street like that."
Tony didn't care about what exactly had happened, he didn't care about his knee or his head, his eyes were glued to Angela.
The woman was talking to her now and stroking her back. Eventually, Angela stood upright again, holding her side and wiping her mouth on the sleeve of her coat. Then the woman led her slowly back towards Tony.
"Baby, I'm so sorry," he blurted out when she leaned against the van gingerly, pain and fear written all over her face. For a second, Tony thought that he was going to start crying, too.
"Don't be," she whispered, "this isn't your fault." She was right. But Tony almost wished it were.
ooooooooo ... ooooooooo
For the first time since her dad had given it to her, Sam was truly, 100 percent glad for her ridiculous yellow banana boat tank of a car.
Crawling along the streets of Fairfield at a snail's pace and still sliding all over the place, she and the girls had at least felt reasonably safe, knowing that there were generous crumple zones around them.
Now that she had dropped everybody off at home and had made it back to Oak Hills Drive in one piece, and without hitting any lamp posts or parked cars along the way, Sam breathed a sigh of relief. Feeling proud of herself for having managed under these extreme weather conditions, she put on the parking brake and killed the engine with a flourish.
In the kitchen, she poured herself a tall glass of milk, squeezed in a generous amount of chocolate syrup, and pushed through the swinging door.
There was Jonathan, in front of the television, playing Nintendo. It seemed that he hardly did anything else these days.
"Aren't you the saddest boy who ever lived?" she said, in the mood for a little fight.
Strewn across the sofa and the coffee table where bags of chips and popcorn, candy wrappers, and empty soda cans.
"You're gonna get real fat real fast if you keep this up." Sam picked up an empty bag of something, balled it up in her hand, and threw it at Jonathan's head.
"Shut up, I need to focus." He didn't take his eyes off the television for one second.
"Where did you get this stuff, anyway? Dad doesn't buy any of that for the house."
"What do you care?"
"Sor-ry," she said exaggeratedly. "What are you playing?" She always pretended not to be interested in the Nintendo, but truth be told, it looked kind of fun.
"Super Mario."
Sam perched on the armrest of the couch. "Are you Mario?"
"No, can't you tell? I'm Luigi. He can jump the highest."
"Hm. Have you won the game yet?"
"You mean did I beat it?"
"Whatever."
"No. I keep dying in the quicksand world."
"Can I watch?"
"Only if you don't distract me."
Sam let herself slide fully onto the couch, careful not to spill any of her chocolate milk, and watched as Jonathan's Luigi ran and jumped through a world that looked like somebody's LSD nightmare.
"That music would drive me insane."
Jonathan shrugged. "I like it. You get into it after a while."
"Are Dad and Angela back yet?" Sam asked, only to realize that she hadn't seen the van in the driveway.
"Like I'd be down here if they were?"
"Good point." It was past ten, and by this time the TV usually belonged to her dad and Angela. "Poor Dad and Angela. Mrs. Rossini probably invited half of Brooklyn over so they could hear the news from them in person, and now they're stuck there because of the roads."
"Boy, am I glad I didn't have to watch that," Jonathan said and let Luigi knock out some kind of egg-spewing dinosaur with a beet.
"I think they're cute."
"Ugh."
"What? You're the one who wanted them to get married when you were eight."
Jonathan groaned. "It's fine that they're getting married. But all that lovey-dovey stuff … it's so annoying."
"You don't have any idea what you're talking about."
"Oh no?"
"No. Or have you ever been in love?"
Sam remembered the feeling of never wanting to be without Jesse, of wanting to keep kissing and holding on to him until … well, until curfew, in their case. And even if Jesse had turned out to be a major hypocrite, they had been happy once, for seven months, two weeks, and four days.
"That's none of your business," Jonathan said, sounding defensive.
Now this was getting interesting. "Oh?"
"Shut up."
"Your ears are turning red!" Was she onto something here?
"They are not."
"They are too, slimeball." She knocked him upside the head with her flat hand.
"Hey! I missed that potion because of you!" Jonathan paused the video game and lunged at her, knocking the chocolate milk out of her hand. What didn't land on Sam's clothes seeped right into the couch cushions.
"Look what you did, you dweeb!"
ooooooooo ... ooooooooo
It was still raining, and by the time the paramedics finally got to them, Angela was shivering violently, both from the cold and from shock, Tony suspected. He didn't feel quite like himself, either.
The paramedics were kind and professional and assessed their injuries at the scene, concluding that immediate transfer to a hospital was advisable. Tony was of no mind to allow them to get separated, and because there were many more casualties than emergency vehicles, it didn't take much convincing for the paramedics to agree to take them in the same ambulance.
Angela didn't resist when they strapped her to the gurney. A paramedic helped Tony onto the jump seat, which was the most comfortable way for him to ride, anyway, because he still couldn't straighten his leg.
Pressing a cold compress to the gash on his eyebrow and ignoring the paramedic who was fastening some kind of brace and a cooling pack to his knee, Tony watched as the other paramedic carefully palpated Angela's stomach. He caught a glimpse of the dark-red bruises that were forming where the seatbelt had been fastened across her hips, stomach, and chest. He had to look away.
Angela was still deathly pale and shaking like a leaf. Their eyes met, and Tony tried to think of something – anything – to say to make this better.
"Sweetheart, remember what we talked about the other night? Whatever happens, we got each other."
Angela nodded, tears trickling down the sides of her face and into her collar.
ooooooooo ... ooooooooo
After they arrived at the hospital, doctors and nurses took over from the paramedics.
With what looked like an orthopedic injury and a laceration to his brow, Tony was deemed a less urgent case and sent to a large waiting area. Everybody was in a much greater hurry with Angela, wheeling her off through a set of double doors.
She heard Tony trying to convince an orderly to let him through, but the doors fell closed behind her, and he never came.
The shakes had stopped on the way to the hospital, and she was feeling warmer and a little steadier. But the pain in her abdomen and in her side persisted, the latter taking her breath away if she inhaled too deeply.
First a young doctor performed an abdominal ultrasound to rule out any internal injuries and bleeding. He squeezed a cold gel all over her stomach and moved the transducer around with quick efficiency.
A nurse held Angela's hand, and she closed her eyes and did as the woman on the street had told her to. She thought of the color photos in Lennart Nilsson's book, of the soft white Baby Bird onesie in the top drawer of her wardrobe, of Tony's hands on her belly in bed late at night.
Her worries, her hesitancy to tell other people (her own family!) about the pregnancy – had all of that been some kind of premonition? Had they brought this upon themselves by prematurely sharing the news with Carrie and Mrs. Rossini? If only they hadn't fought on the way to the van. They would have left earlier and would have been long past the site of the accident by the time those kids ran into traffic.
"Can you check on my baby, too?" Angela asked when the doctor had looked at everything else, and his calm demeanor told her that he hadn't found anything of concern.
"We're short-staffed tonight, but we already paged Gynecology & Obstetrics. Someone is going to come down soon."
"But couldn't you-" she tried to argue, wishing that Tony was here to take over for her.
"I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to tell you anything definitive. You're not cramping, and there is no bleeding, so for now we have no reason to assume that your pregnancy isn't intact," the doctor said, citing what the paramedics had noted on a crumpled piece of paper that was now fastened to a clipboard.
All that registered with Angela was 'for now'.
She watched in a detached state as the nurse wiped the clear gel off her stomach. Then she helped her sit up, and the doctor carefully examined her spine and the bruises along her ribcage before shining a flashlight into her eyes, getting her to turn her head and torso this way and that, and finally listening to her heart and lungs.
"Cervical and thoracic spine and chest X-rays," he said to the nurse.
"What?" Angela asked between shallow breaths. "Do I have to get X-rays?"
The doctor scribbled something onto her chart before handing it to the nurse. "There's no way around it. We don't want a broken rib puncturing anything," he said rather bluntly.
"A lot of the time, these seatbelt bruises look much worse than they really are." The nurse said to Angela and inclined her head towards the red and purple marks on her chest and stomach.
ooooooooo ... ooooooooo
Sam and Jonathan were trying to blot the milk out of the sofa cushions with dishtowels soaked in detergent when the phone rang.
"That's Bonnie!" Sam said quickly, happy to escape to the kitchen.
"Hey! I'm not cleaning this up by myself!"
"Bonnie?!" she said breathlessly into the receiver.
"Sam?" It wasn't Bonnie.
"Dad? What's up? Are the roads bad in Brooklyn?"
"Sam, listen. I don't want you to worry."
"About what? Is something wrong? You sound strange." Sam felt goosebumps rising on her forearms.
"Angela and I, we were in an accident."
"What!?" she squeaked. A big hole opened up where her stomach used to be. "What kind of accident, Dad?"
"A car accident, on the way home. We're at Brooklyn Hospital."
"What happened? Are you hurt? Is Angela hurt?"
"We're … we're waiting to find out."
"Dad, you're scaring me. Is it bad?"
Sam thought that she heard him swallow. "We're going to be okay. I busted my knee, and Angela … She says hi and not to worry. Try not to scare Jonathan, and check if Mona is there and tell her too, okay? I'm gonna call again when I know more. I don't think we're gonna come home tonight."
"Dad-"
"Sam, I gotta go. I love you, baby."
"I love you too, Dad," she managed to say before the line went dead.
Sam hung up the phone and tried to comprehend what she had just heard.
A busted knee didn't sound like fun, it was probably painful and impractical, but manageable. They had made it through worse, when her dad had sprained his ankle and broken his leg at the same time.
What about Angela, though? Her dad hadn't given any details, which was never good. What if something bad had happened to her – and to the baby?
Sam walked back into the living room in a daze.
"Hey, Jonathan?"
"What!" be barked. "This is never going to come out."
"Leave the stupid couch."
ooooooooo ... ooooooooo
"You're pregnant, is that correct?" the radiology nurse asked with a sympathetic smile after she had taken a look at Angela' chart.
"Eight weeks."
"I know this is scary," she said while she helped Angela take off the remainder of her own clothes and put on a hospital gown.
The nurse knew what she was doing, but Angela still had to stifle little groans. The pain on the left side of her ribcage was almost out of this world.
"We're using a minimal dose, and your baby won't catch any of it. It's safe, I promise."
Angela swallowed thickly. If only Tony could be here to tell her everything would be okay.
The nurse went on to explain where and how Angela had to stand for the X-rays. When she had assumed the first position, she carried over a heavy lead apron that she fastened around Angela's waist, making sure twice that it was in the right position.
The weight around her hips pulled painfully on Angela's injured ribs, but at the same time it felt strangely comforting. She thought of the family album Tony had made for them, and the empty pages waiting to be filled.
"You're all set," the nurse said and gave Angela an encouraging nod. "This only takes a few seconds. Remember to hold your breath when the light goes off."
"Okay," Angela whispered.
ooooooooo ... ooooooooo
"Here we are," Mona said and set a tray with mugs of hot chocolate and marshmallows down on the kitchen table.
Normally, she avoided kitchen work like the plague. But the current circumstances were not for the squeamish. It was past midnight, and they hadn't heard from Tony and Angela again. This situation called for comfort food.
"Thanks, Grandma."
"Yeah, thank you, Mona."
Samantha and Jonathan each reached for a mug, and Mona took the third one.
For almost two hours, the mournful expressions on the kids' faces had been chipping away at her own optimistic façade.
"Come on, you guys, this is a good sign! If they have to wait a really long time, that means it's not so bad. Thank God for the American healthcare system." She popped a marshmallow into her mouth.
Sam and Jonathan didn't seem convinced.
"What if they're too hurt to call again?" Jonathan asked and stuffed one more marshmallow into his overflowing mug.
"Dad said he hurt his knee, I'm sure he could call." Sam shot Mona a look.
Mona pursed her lips. Of course she was just as worried about Angela and the baby. But from the moment Jonathan and Samantha had knocked on her door, rousing her from the sofa where she was spending a rare Friday evening alone, delighting in a smutty romance novel, she had been determined not to give in and let fear win.
"Then what if Mom-"
"Enough!" Mona said firmly, sounding only a little bit shrill to her own ears. "We're not helping Tony and Angela one bit by imagining worst case scenarios."
"Then what are we supposed to do?" Jonathan asked.
"Tony said he didn't want us to worry, right? So we won't. We wait, and we think good thoughts," she declared. "And we drink hot chocolate."
ooooooooo ... ooooooooo
When the X-rays were done, a nurse brought Angela to a room with a gynecological chair and what looked like an ultrasound machine.
"The OB-GYN will be right down."
Angela looked around the room and tried not to panic. Where was Tony? Under no circumstances could she be alone for this.
"Nurse?" she said loudly, pain from her ribs radiating through her chest, "Could you please try to find my f- my husband? He was in the accident with me, he hurt his knee."
"I'm afraid I-"
"Please? I can't-" Angela looked at the chair. The rest of what she wanted to say got stuck in her throat.
The nurse considered Angela for a little while, and her expression softened. "What's his name?"
"Micelli. Tony Micelli."
"Micelli. I'll see what I can do."
"Thank you." When she was gone, Angela allowed herself to cry. It made the pain close to unbearable, but she couldn't hold back anymore.
She was wiping tears off her cheeks with a corner of her gown when the door swung open and a middle-aged woman in light blue scrubs and a white lab coat came in.
"Good evening. I'm Dr. Fisher," she introduced herself and reached for Angela's chart. "You were in a car accident, Ms. … Bower?" She skimmed over the notes. "Looks like you had quite a scare tonight."
Angela nodded. Dr. Fisher exuded a sense of calm that was like a balm on Angela's raw nerves. She liked her immediately.
"Eight weeks," Dr. Fisher said. "Have you had a dating scan with your regular doctor yet?"
Angela shook her head. "That's not until next Wednesday. I found out really early, and he said it wouldn't make sense before now."
"Any bleeding or cramping since the accident or ever before?"
"No. My stomach hurts, from the seatbelt, but it doesn't feel like cramps."
"Okay then," Dr. Fisher said with a small smile and gestured at the chair. "Do you need any help?"
"Maybe. I broke two ribs."
"I can lower this for you." Dr. Fisher pushed a pedal on the floor.
With a hand from Dr. Fisher, Angela managed to get up on the chair with minimal pain, but she hesitated to put her legs into the stirrups.
"Could we possibly wait for my husband? A nurse was going to get him. I don't want to be alone for this." Angela did everything she could to hold back a sob.
She didn't know what she would do if she got bad news and Tony wasn't here. At the same time, she felt a pang of guilt for asking this of the doctor. It was late, and she probably had a long shift behind her already.
Dr. Fisher briefly took Angela's hand. "I would like to examine you sooner rather than later, but we'll try to wait for him with the ultrasound, okay?"
Angela nodded reluctantly. "Okay."
"Good. Now, can you lie back and try to relax? I know that's always easier said than done."
Angela inhaled as deeply as her ribs allowed, then let that breath go, and closed her eyes.
ooooooooo ... ooooooooo
"You're pretty lucky," the doctor said.
He was the rugged type, Tony thought, someone who easily could have been a surgeon in Vietnam.
"We hardly ever see contusions like this without any torn ligaments or fractures. And no signs of concussion on top of that." He clicked his tongue almost appreciatively.
Tony contemplated this. He didn't feel very lucky and would have traded places with Angela in a heartbeat. But the doctor couldn't know that, and so he decided to humor him.
"Yeah, I guess so. I tore everything possible in my shoulder years ago. Maybe this is some kind of cosmic justice."
The doctor wrinkled his brow, clearly not into esoteric explanations. Neither was Tony, usually, but ever since Marie, hospitals gave him weird ideas.
"This is still serious, though," the doctor added. "You need to stay off this knee for at least six weeks. We're going to get you a set of crutches. You know how to use them?"
"Oh, yeah." Tony nodded, remembering many a minor baseball injury and a certain three-legged race with Angela. Angela, who was somewhere in this hospital with injuries that looked way worse than his. "Thanks, doc. I mean doctor."
The doctor nodded and handed Tony's chart to a nurse.
"I'll be right back with those crutches," she said, and they left Tony alone with the dull, throbbing pain above and below his kneecap. Now that the adrenaline had subsided, he felt more of his body again, and it didn't feel great.
He looked at his watch. It was close to one in the morning. Immediately after the accident, he had been in a state of wild panic. By now, it had morphed into something like dogged determination.
They had given him X-rays, stapled his headwound, and now that his knee was taken care of, he was going to move Heaven and Earth to find Angela. From this day on, he would do whatever it took to be the best possible partner and father-to-be. That is, if that was still …
In the waiting room, he had heard her voice in his head, repeating over and over again what he had apparently said to her on the night of Sam's date. 'We had a hell of a week'.
It wasn't like Angela had tricked him into this pregnancy. It had been a surprise for her as much as for him, and he was ashamed of himself for having been such a whiny little-
Just then, a new nurse popped her head into the room.
"Are you Tony Micelli?"
ooooooooo ... ooooooooo
"Alright," Dr. Fisher said, and Angela heard the clatter of instruments on the little table next to the chair. The doctor snapped off her gloves and looked up.
"Your cervix is closed, that's a good sign. Of course the ultrasound will tell us-"
She was interrupted by a knock at the door. Dr. Fisher got up and pulled the curtain closed around Angela.
"I've got the husband," a voice said, and the next thing Angela knew, the curtain parted, and there was Tony. On a pair of underarm crutches, with a brace around his injured knee and two staples in the gash above his eyebrow.
"Sweetheart, thank God," he said, looking concerned and relieved, but completely unfazed by the stirrups.
For the first time, Angela wondered what this was like for him after what he had gone through with Marie. She had never really thought about that aspect of his history before. There must have been countless hospital stays, difficult conversations with doctors, surgeries, and so much more. It had to be painful for him to be back in this environment. But if it was, he didn't let it show.
Tony came up to her and put away one of the crutches so he could take her hand.
"Like I said to your wife, everything looks good so far. The cervix is closed, there is no cramping or bleeding."
Tony squeezed Angela's hand. It felt so good to be close to him again.
"Are you ready for us to take a look?" Dr. Fisher asked.
Angela nodded and sought out Tony's gaze anxiously.
"Remember, whatever happens," he said quietly, and their eyes remained locked for a moment.
"Thank you for letting me be here," he said next, to fill a lull while Dr. Fisher got the ultrasound wand ready.
"Of course," she smiled. Then she looked at Angela. "This may feel a little uncomfortable. Try to relax again, okay? You did great before."
Angela exhaled. It did feel uncomfortable, but she tried to focus on the sensation of Tony's fingers slowly stroking her knuckles.
"Okay, very good," Dr. Fisher said and looked intently at the screen that was facing away from Tony and Angela.
Her expression was unreadable, as Angela imagined it needed to be. Years of experience had probably taught the doctor not to let anything show. She changed the angle of the wand, and Angela's breath hitched.
"I'm sorry, I know this is a lot of pressure," Dr. Fisher said. She peered at the screen and pushed a couple of keys on the keyboard.
"Alright," she said after half an eternity. Angela's heart was beating in her throat, and Tony's hand felt sweaty in hers.
"Everything looks just like we want it at eight weeks."
Angela almost didn't believe her ears. "What?"
"Oh, baby," Tony whispered next to her and raised their joined hands to his lips.
Dr. Fisher turned the monitor by 90 degrees so they could see it too.
She pointed at the screen. "Here is your uterus, this is the amniotic sac, and the little bean in there, that's your baby. Measuring right on track. The head is on the left, and those are arm and leg buds."
"Oh God," Angela gasped, overwhelmed.
"Look at the flickering over here." Dr. Fisher pointed again.
"Is that-"
"Your baby's heartbeat, yes."
"Tony, do you see that?" Angela was crying tears of utter relief, the pain in her chest momentarily forgotten.
"So … the baby is healthy?" Tony asked.
"Everything looks completely normal. At eight weeks, the uterus is still inside the bony pelvis, that makes for good protection. But I will suggest that you stay overnight for observation, just to be on the safe side."
"Okay," Angela said, trying to regain control of herself.
Dr. Fisher gave both of them a warm smile. Then she flipped a switch on the machine and raised her index finger. "Listen to this."
A fast, regular thumping sound filled the little exam room.
"That's the baby?" Tony asked, incredulous.
Angela couldn't say anything.
Dr. Fisher smiled. "It's normal for the heartbeat to be this fast. In fact, it's right in the range that we want."
"Did you hear that?" Tony asked, not making any effort to hide the tears in his voice.
"Yeah," Angela breathed and continued to stare at the little shape on the screen.
She was still trying to take it all in. This was their baby, hers and Tony's. Jonathan and Sam's little brother or sister, her mother's new grandchild. Tiny, perfect, and strong. And most importantly: safe inside of her.
A/N: I'm not a doctor, but I watched a lot of ER and similar fare when I was younger, so I hope this was mostly believable. Also, in case anybody is interested: Jonathan is playing Super Mario Bros. 2 on the Nintendo.