The Cost Of Winning

FIANNA'S POV :

I'm buried in the bed covers, half-awake, when I hear "Wake up, babe. I made breakfast, so you can eat before we have to get ready for your appointment."

I turn my head and see Ash standing by the bed holding the bed tray, with a carafe of juice on the nightstand. I pull myself into a sitting position so he can put the tray down, and when he does, I see that he's made French toast. He got home three days ago, and he's basically been spoiling me rotten every since. He says, "Let me go grab my coffee, and I'll be right back, babe." I pick up the carafe and pour some juice, then drizzle some syrup on the toast. I have a bit of a headache, and I'm not terribly hungry, but after he went to all this effort, i'm going to make an effort to eat at least part of it.

As I start to pick up the fork, Ash comes back, with Bren and Carol behind him. Bren comes over to the bed and says, "Me is goin' wif Aunt Cawol to gets droceries when Daddy take yous to the dopter, and her say us cans go to Wendy's and has chickie nubbits fors wunch! Me needs tisses 'fore us goes, otay, Mommy?"

Ash holds onto the tray while Smidge crawls up on the bed and gets her hugs and kisses, before Carol calls her to come and get dressed, and she scampers out of the room, chattering about what she wants to wear. I pick up a forkful of toast, and look at Ash, asking, "Where's yours, love?"

"Bren woke up early this morning, and I had breakfast with her," he replies. "I thought I'd let you sleep in today, you need to rest as much as you can."

"It feels like that's all I do anymore, I'm starting to get a bit stir crazy here," I inform him, and he cups my cheek in his hand.

"I know it's frustrating, Fi, but you know it's necessary," he says. "I don't want to take any chances with your health or Ian's, you know that."

"Yeah, I do. And you know I'd never do anything that would put him at risk, but I'm so fucking bored doing nothing but sitting here that sometimes I almost want to cry."

He cuddles me to his chest for a couple of minutes, then takes the fork and decides to feed me a few bites of toast. I humor him and eat a bit, but then when he picks up another piece, I put up my hand and tell him, "No more, babe. I'm not very hungry this morning."

He puts it down and gives me sort of a concerned look, inquiring, "Are you feeling okay, Fi? And be totally honest with me, don't sugarcoat things because you don't want me to worry, because it won't work."

"I have a little bit of a headache, but I don't feel sick or anything, if that's what you mean."

He springs up off of the bed and grabs the monitor off of the dresser, bringing it back and fastening it around my arm. He pushes the button and watches it for a few seconds, then picks up his phone and dials a number. I'm a bit confused for a minute, but then when he starts talking, I figure out that he's calling my obstetrician, even though we're supposed to be at her office in just over an hour and a half. He reads the numbers off of the display to her, then listens for a couple of seconds, before saying, "Yeah, I've got it. We'll see you in a few."

He stands up, moves the tray off of the bed, and then holds out his hand and tells me, "Come on, Fi, we're gonna go now."

"But my appointment isn't for over an hour, and it only takes ten minutes to get there. Maybe fifteen, if you run into traffic."

He just looks at me, and I can see that he's having to actually make an effort to keep his composure, which kind of worries me. Then, in a deliberately calm voice, he announces, "We're not going to her office, hon. She wants us to meet her at the ER, because the monitor was bouncing around like fuckin' Tigger when I was trying to read it. It may be just a bad battery or something, but she was a bit concerned about your headache, so we're not taking any chances."

He helps me out of bed and out to the kitchen, heading for the door to the garage. I stop for a second, and say, "If you're taking me to the hospital, I need my bag."

Ash just keeps moving me toward the door, telling me, "Don't worry about it now. I'll get Miki or Karla or somebody to come by and get it later. We need to go now, Fianna." I put my hand on his arm, and his muscles are so tensed up it feels like I'm holding a bundle of wires, so I know he's seriously stressed. I don't want to worry him any more, so I just shut up and follow him to the car.

He drives us to the hospital as fast as he can without getting pulled over, whips into a parking spot, and helps me out of the car. When we get inside, he helps me into a chair and goes to talk to the desk clerk, who apparently calls Dr. Hildebrandt, because she's there almost immediately. She has Ash go to the desk to fill out paperwork, and gets an orderly to bring over a wheelchair and take me back to an exam room.

She comes back a couple of minutes later, with a nurse, who sticks a thermometer in my mouth and hooks me up to another monitor. They stand next to the table watching it, and I feel my breath kind of catch in my throat when I see her frown. She steps away with the nurse and talks to her for a minute, then walks back to the table, while the nurse leaves the room. Almost immediately, Ash comes through the door, and says, "Your nurse said you wanted to talk to me, doc. Is everything okay?"

She looks at both of us, and replies, "Not exactly. You were right to be concerned, Ashley, there was nothing wrong with your battery, Fianna's blood pressure has become alarmingly irregular. I was hoping we could progress a bit further than this, but that no longer appears to be an option. I've sent Janice to start prepping for a delivery, I don't feel that it's safe to wait any longer."

His eyebrows shoot up, and he sounds slightly panicked as he asks, "So does that mean that you're going to induce her?"

"No, we're going to have to perform a caesarian section. Having her attempt to actually deliver normally could be dangerous to both of them, so I don't even want to try it."

"Why do you think it's dangerous?" I inquire.

"Because, with the way your pressure is fluctuating right now, trying to get through several hours of labor could quite possibly send you into cardiac arrest, or cause a stroke. And either of these would be risky to the baby, as it could disrupt his blood or oxygen supply."

Ash and I just look at each other for a minute, then he wraps his arms around me and says, "Everything's gonna be fine, darlin'. I'll be right beside you when you wake up, and I'll call everybody while I'm waiting, so they'll know what's going on."

"Make sure you call Carol and Bill. And talk to Smidge yourself, okay? She'll feel better about everything if she hears it from you."

He assures me that he will, then Dr. Hildebrandt sends him back out of the room so the orderlies can get in with the gurney to wheel me down to the operating room on.The nurse comes back, and helps me change into a hospital gown, and then we start for the OR. When we get there, some guy puts a mask on me and tells me to count to twenty. I only remember getting to six.
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I open my eyes, and realize that I'm in an actual bed, and not on a table. I turn my head, see Ash in the chair next to me, with his arm on the bedrail, and I reach out and touch his arm. His head jerks up, and his face lights up with a smile. "Hey there, Sleeping Beauty. Probably a dumb question, but how do you feel?"

I take a second to consider the question, then answer, "My stomach hurts, and I still have a headache. But that doesn't matter. Where's Ian? Is he all right?"

"They have him in an incubator right now, because his lungs are slightly underdeveloped, but Dr. Hildebrandt thinks that he should be fine. I went to the nursery to see him as soon as they brought him down, and he's a bit small, but otherwise he's perfect. I think he's gonna look like you, he already has some kind of a blond Mohawk-sort of thing going. He's four pounds even, and something like seventeen inches long." He holds up his phone, and says, "I took a picture for you, since I knew that you wouldn't be able to go down there right away."

I take the phone and look at it, seeing a picture of a tiny baby in an incubator, with a fluff of sort of sandy-blond hair standing straight up from his head, looking toward the camera with what almost seems to be a bewildered expression on his little face. There's a little tag on the side of the incubator that reads: Purdy, Ian Caleb. 3/7/18, 12:02 PM. 4lb. 17" long. "He's absolutely gorgeous," I say, and I can feel tears starting to run down my face, because all I want to do is hold him, and I can't.

He sits on the edge of the bed and hugs me, letting me cry on him for a couple of minutes until Dr. Hildebrandt walks into the room. She checks me over, and we're all relieved when she says that my blood pressure is down close to normal, but then she sits down in the chair, and says, "Fianna, I have good news for you, but I also have some bad news."

Ash and I both just sit here, waiting for her to go on, and she explains, "The good news is that I've given Ian a comprehensive examination, and I firmly believe that he'll be just fine. He needs to stay in the incubator for a few days, until his lungs get a bit stronger, but everything else looks good."

We both let out a sigh of relief when she says this, but then Ash asks, "What's the bad news, then?"

She's quiet for a second, and then she responds with, "Fianna, your blood pressure spiked dangerously high during the surgery, even higher than it was earlier. For some reason, the stress of pregnancy has an adverse effect on your body, so I'm seriously recommending that you don't take the risk of trying for another child. It's not advisable for anyone to undergo more than two caesarians, and an actual delivery would have a great chance of being fatal to either you or the baby, possibly both. So my recommendation would be that one or both of you give serious consideration to surgical sterilization."

She leaves the room, and Ash looks at me and says, "No way in hell am I taking any chances with your safety, Fi. We have two kids now, and I'm good with that, so it's your choice. If you don't want to do it, I will."

"If it's that bad, I might as well be the one to do it," I tell him. "Even in the unlikely event that we ever split up, it's not like things would be any different with anybody else. So I'll talk to her in the morning, and see if I can just go ahead and do it while I'm here. That way I won't have to be away from you and the kids again later."

He puts his arms around me, and I snuggle into his chest. We sit here for a while, and I sort of whisper into his neck, "But I wish I didn't have to. I love Bren and Ian to bits, but I wouldn't mind more kids."

He tips my face up to look at them, and says, "I know, but what good would it do if you couldn't be here to see them grow up? So whaddya say that for right now, we just concentrate on the two that we have, and when they get a little bigger, if we still feel the same way, we can look into adopting. There are plenty of kids who don't have anybody to care about them, and maybe we could help one of them. How does that sound to you, love?"

"Yeah, I think I'd be good with that," I tell him. "So why don't you do me a favor, babe? Go see if you can find the doctor and get her back here, and I'll talk to her about getting this done now, and I also want her to figure out a way to get me down to the nursery to see my son. And when you get that done, you can call Bren so I can talk to her. I may not be able to be with Ian today, but I'll be damned if I can't at least speak to my daughter!"

He grins, gives me a kiss, and hops up from the bed, saying, "Your wish is my command, my love. You've given me the two best gifts I've ever gotten, so this is the least I can do." He pulls out his phone, dials the number, and says, "Hey, Aunt Carol, could you put Bren on? There's someone who wants to speak to her." He hands me the phone and heads out the door, looking for the doctor as I talk to my little girl, and get ready to tell her about the new man in our lives.

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