"Dinah," he repeated the woman that stood behind the desk. "Her name is Dinah."
"I apologize sir, but you aren't …"
Shayne ran his hands over his face as he felt Klara step up behind him. He met her gaze, his eyes expressing the desperation his body didn't have the ability to. He heard Klara's soft voice as she gently explained the situation.
"Shayne," Klara spoke softly after a moment. "She's in surgery. Her pressure was too high and they had to take the baby now. We have to wait to learn more." She gestured to the chairs that were lined up against the wall. "We can sit," she gently suggested.
"I can't sit," he breathed. "I can't do anything until I know she's okay. I didn't even know there was a baby. I had no idea. She left town and I didn't know where she was. I thought she was …" A lump of emotion grew in his throat as he remembered the day he'd received the phone call. "They told us she was gone, that she'd been killed in a plane crash, but she's not … she's here and she's alone and she probably thought that I had given up on her, but I never did. Ever."
"Somehow I'm sure she knows that," Klara assured him. "If she feels the same for you as you do for her."
He tried to find comfort in her words, but the guilt he felt was so incredibly overwhelming. There were still so many things about this entire situation that didn't make sense. Why had she been here alone? What had happened to Jeffrey and why hadn't she contacted him and told him about the baby? Nothing seemed to make sense.
It vaguely registered with him that Klara had stood and walked over to the two uniformed officers who stood on the other side of the room. When she returned, her face was more serious. "You said Dinah might be traveling with a man?"
"Yes, Jeffrey O'Neill. He's my mother's husband. He was supposedly on the same plane with her - the one we were told went down. They were never able to find the bodies though so we were never able to get any positive identification or confirmation that they …"
Klara nodded. "Those officers, they tell me that there was an accident earlier today. A man was brought in and apparently he passed on, but they didn't find any way to identify him. I'm terribly sorry to have to ask you this given the circumstances, but they need to try and …"
Shayne understood the request. "I can look and if it's him then …" If it was Jeffrey, what did that mean? That he had been keeping her here? That he had helped her stay away from Springfield, that he had kept the fact that Dinah was carrying his child away from him? How would he tell his mother something like that? His slow steps down the narrow, sterile hallway were marked by one unanswerable question after another.
"Right in here," a young technician said, her accent thick, but her intentions clear. She nodded to the glass and waited for the curtain to be pulled.
Shayne felt his breath catch as Klara's hand instantly touched his arm.
"I'm so sorry," she whispered. "I'll light a candle and say a special prayer for him."
"It's not … It's not Jeffrey," he corrected quickly. "But I know him. I know who this is. His name is Edmund Winslow." He turned to look at Klara, his eyes filled with a mix of anger and worry. "And trust me, he doesn't need a candle."
His eyes had barely left the clock on the wall. Two hours and twenty-nine minutes had passed since they'd taken her behind the doors at the end of the hall. He knew, from the brief updates he'd been given from the nurse, that an emergency C-section had been performed. He also knew the baby was early but how early was still unclear.
Klara walked over to him every few minutes, to offer a reassuring word or cup of coffee, but nothing could soothe him now. The woman he loved more than anything in the world and the child he didn't even know he had were behind those doors and he knew nothing about how they were doing.
Sensing Klara's presence again, he turned towards her. "Can you please see if they'll give you an update. I need to know something. I need to know they're okay. I can't just keep standing here and …"
Klara's hand rose, her hand pointing to the door that slowly opened.
The small, clear isolette that, to him, looked little larger than a shoebox, moved easily through the door. "Is that?" His eyes moved to the small identification sticker that bore the name Marler. His eyes were filled with tears as he turned back to look towards Klara, needing her assistance to ask the questions that screamed inside her head.
"Dinah Marler," she said quickly, "This is the baby that was delivered?"
"Yes," one of the women answered. "Beautiful baby girl, born twenty minutes ago, 1.29 kilograms, 38.2 centimeters."
"Is that?" Shayne looked up at her, his face confused and full of concern as he stared down at the tiny, but perfectly formed baby girl.
"She's very small, but we can help her breathe and get stronger. We have to run tests now."
Shayne nodded as he watched the tiny child begin to move from his reach once more. "Wait," he called out. "Dinah? What about Dinah?"
The woman turned around. "You can see her soon. They're moving her now."
Klara touched his back softly. "Your prayers were answered," she whispered. "You'll be with her soon."
"Dad. I know. I know, Dad. I don't really have any answers to any of that right now. That's why I didn't talk to Mom yet, but I wanted to call you so that …" He paused as he heard his father's voice break. "I know you are, Dad. None of that matters now. She's here and they say she's going to be okay and I have a daughter, so …" He felt the tears slide from his eyes without realizing it. "It's all so crazy."
His eyes moved over to the bed, where she still lay sleeping. The doctor had assured him there was nothing of concern in her test results. Her body needed time to recover from the surgery as well as the anesthesia. It hadn't been a lie when he'd told his father he'd called him to tell him the news, but he'd also called to try and occupy his mind. As he sat by her bed and stared down at her, he couldn't stop the feelings of guilt and shame that threatened to swallow him. The sound of her voice, the helpless plea that had echoed across the phone had provoked feelings he couldn't even begin to rectify. He had been so relieved to know that she was alive - that she was still with him, that he hadn't been crazy or hopeless to still believe in the connection he felt. But, in the same moment, he was filled with fury - not at her anymore, but at himself. He'd allowed his pride and his petulance to take over and it was that choice that had caused her to walk away. And now, to know what she'd been going through, to know that she'd been without him while carrying their child and while enduring God knows what at the hands of a man ….
His father's voice called out from somewhere that sounded far away.
"Son," Josh repeated. "Shayne, answer me. Are you still there?"
"Yeah, Dad, I'm here. I'm sorry. I just … I drifted off there for a second. I'm just sitting here in the room with her, waiting for her to wake up and part of me still feels like this is all some sort of dream."
Josh looked down at the picture on the computer screen as he held the phone to his ear. "This is no dream son. I'm looking at that little baby of yours right now and she's certainly real. You make sure you tell her that she's got a set of grandparents that can't wait to wrap their arms around her, okay?"
Shayne closed his eyes as he tried to envision the moment. He had to believe it would happen.
"Shayne." Josh knew what the silence meant. Over the past few months, he'd begun to learn his tells and whenever Shayne was quiet, his mind was going to the dark places, the places he tried to stay away from, the places that Dinah had always helped him avoid.
"It will happen, son," Josh reassured him. "That baby has way too much fight in her for this to end in any other way. A father like you and a mother like Dinah. She's gonna be unstoppable."
"Yeah." He could barely muster the word as he let his father's promise sink in. "Thanks, Dad. I'll call Mom soon, okay? I just know she's gonna ask about …"
"Right. Yeah, she will and I agree, it's probably not great that we tell her about this until you have some answers to give her."
"I'll ask Dinah as soon as I can. She's still sleeping right now and …"
It was as if she'd heard her name and he saw her eyes flutter slightly.
"I have to go, Dad," he said quickly. "I'll be in touch."
He tossed the phone onto the table and quickly stood his feet. "Hey," he said softly as he reached for her hand. "I'm right here. You're okay. Everything's okay now."
She blinked and winced at the brightness in the room as his face slowly came into focus. The words failed her for a moment as she pondered if she could be dreaming. "Sh - Sh- Shayne," she finally managed, her voice hoarse and barely audible.
"Yeah, yeah, it's me." He wiped the tear from her hand as it fell from his face and hit her skin. "My God, you have no idea how good it is to hear your voice, to see your eyes. I missed you so much."
"I mis-" Her brain felt sluggish as thoughts slowly began to process. "The ba, the ba-"
He heard the beep of the monitor and watched her chest begin to rise and fall quickly. "No, it's okay." He leaned forward, stroking her hair and pressing his lips against his forehead. "The baby's fine. She's tiny, but she's okay. I saw her and she's beautiful. I can show you." He moved to the table and grabbed his phone, scrolling for the photo before reaching for a cup and filling it with water. "Look," he whispered. "See, that's her. That's our little girl."
She swallowed a small sip of water as she stared at the screen, her fingertip lightly moving over the tiny features. "She's perfect," she breathed. "And she's okay? She's really okay?"
He nodded. "They said she's gonna need a little help to breathe for a while and she's not quite strong enough to eat on her own, but she's strong and she's doing great. She's got your fight. I wouldn't expect anything else."
There were so many things he wanted to say, so many questions he wanted to ask, but looking at her, she seemed so fragile, so exhausted. "I'm so sorry, baby," he whispered, the urge to wrap his arms around her too strong to ignore any longer.
He felt her body shake as he let his arms gently loop around her shoulders, careful to not to move her too much and cause her any pain. "You know that if I had known … if I had had any idea that you were …" The confusion in her eyes made his heart drop. "You don't know, do you?"
"I .. Everything was so … It all happened so fast that .."
"Shh .. it's alright. It's okay. I'll explain. I'll explain everything. A little while after you and Jeffrey took off, we got a call that there had been a plane crash."
She nodded slowly. "There was. Edmund, he … he did something to the plane and the landing gear didn't come down like it should, so we …"
"But you didn't … You both survived?"
"You thought we …" It was beginning to make more sense as she studied his face. "That's why you never tried to …"
"Don't you know that I would have never stopped looking for you? No matter what you did, no matter how angry I might have been, nothing and no one would have been enough to stop me from loving you. I would have walked the earth a million times over to find you." He squeezed her hand as realization hit. "But someone else did, didn't they? Edmund. Edmund was keeping you here?"
She nodded. "He found both of us and he kept us in this place for a while. At first he didn't know I was pregnant. I didn't even know, but I was so sick and eventually he didn't have a choice but to call a doctor. When he found it, it was like he saw this as some sort of karmic sign. He said that you had taken his daughter and that this was his chance to have a family again and to make you pay, so …"
"I …" He brought her hand to his lips, brushing them against each fingertip. "I can't imagine what you must have been going through. At least you had Jeffrey to help you. At least he could …" The tiny spark of light that had been in her eyes slowly began to dim and he felt the sinking reality in his gut. "What happened to him?" Shayne asked.
"He was trying to help me. He knew how much I missed you and after Edmund found out I was pregnant, Jeffrey knew there was no way he was ever going to let me go, so Jeffrey tried to rush him while the door was open one night." She swallowed hard as the memories came back. "We knew he had a gun, but we never thought he'd actually use it. He killed him." Tears welled up in her eyes and streamed down her face. She cried for so many things, for Jeffrey, for the memories and time they'd lost, for Reva, for her tiny daughter that now had to fight before she ever should. And then she felt the warmth of his body next to hers.
"You tell me if I'm hurting you, okay?" He slid onto the bed, his body flush beside hers as he wrapped his arms around her.
"You're not," she whispered. "You're the only thing that will ever be able to make this hurt go away."
5 weeks later
"When did you even have time to do all this?" She stepped into the living room and smiled as she watched the tiny baby squirm in the car seat.
Shayne shrugged. "It turns out you can hire someone to do pretty much anything and it helps when you've got in good with one of the local churches. Klara had some of the parishioners over here within a day of my signing the papers. I know it's just short term until we're sure she's stable enough for the trip home, but I wanted it to be ours. I wanted it to feel like a real home."
She felt the tears burn at her eyes and shook her head to banish them. She'd cried enough tears for two lifetimes already. She bent down to scoop the still small baby girl from the carrier before moving closer to him. His arm draped across the small of her back as he led them to the sofa by the window. The feeling of her body as she leaned back against him was better than anything he ever could have dreamed of and he smiled as a tiny sound of discontent came from the swaddled pink bundle.
"She's like her Mama," he grinned. "Never one to want to sit still for very long."
Dinah shifted, moving the baby girl onto a pillow so they could both look down at her. "I don't know how I got so lucky. There were days where I was so afraid that …"
He leaned in closer, his back pressing against hers as his neck craned around to gently bring his lips to hers. "That's all over now. I'm here and you're here." He traced the baby's pink cheek as she wriggled. "And she's here and that's never going to change. We're a family and soon enough we're going to go back to Springfield and we'll make our home."
Dinah shook her head as she closed her eyes tight. Why she deserved this life, she'd never know, but she'd never stop saying thank you. "No," she whispered. "We are home. Wherever we are - you, me, and Ember - that's home."
