Chapter 158: Chapter 158: Beyond the Seventy-Two Hours
*Runze’s POV*
"...Our... baby?"
The words scraped painfully against my throat, and my chest tightened the moment they left my mouth, like saying it out loud made the possibility of an answer I didn’t want to hear suddenly real in a way it hadn’t been a second before.
Bael didn’t answer.
His face changed, but not into fear. Into something worse, something uncertain, the kind of expression a person wears when they genuinely don’t know what to say and aren’t willing to lie just to fill the silence.
A cold wave rushed through me.
The monitor beside my bed answered before anyone else did.
*Beep.*
*Beep.*
*Beep-beep-beep.*
My heart was racing, and I could hear it happening before I could feel it, the machine translating my own panic back at me faster than I could process it.
No. No, please, not that, anything but that.
I tried to push myself upright, some instinct telling my body to do something, anything, even though I had no idea what that something could possibly be. A sharp dizziness slammed into me immediately, the room tilting, and I had to grab at the sheets just to anchor myself.
"Runze." Bael’s hand was suddenly on my shoulder, firm but careful. "Don’t. Please don’t move like that."
"...Tell me." My voice sounded broken even to my own ears. "...Please..."
Before he could speak, the door opened.
A doctor stepped in first, followed closely by two nurses, their movements quick but practiced, none of the urgency reading as panic, just efficiency. The doctor glanced once at the monitor, his expression assessing rather than alarmed.
"What happened?"
"He asked about the pregnancy." Bael’s voice came out tight, almost flat, stripped of the warmth it had carried minutes earlier. "I don’t have an answer for him."
Something in the way he said it made me look at him properly for the first time since I’d asked the question. He wasn’t just worried for me. He looked like a man bracing for something himself, something he’d apparently been bracing for a while now.
The doctor’s eyes moved to me, calm and direct.
"I know you’re frightened, and that’s completely understandable given everything you’ve been through. But I need you to slow your breathing for me first, before we talk about anything else. Can you try that for me?"
I hadn’t realized how fast I was breathing until he said it, my chest rising and falling in short, shallow bursts that weren’t doing anything except making the dizziness worse.
One of the nurses adjusted the blood pressure cuff around my arm while the other kept her eyes fixed on the monitor, watching the numbers the way someone watches a pot they’re afraid might boil over.
"Slow breath in," the doctor said.
I tried. It came out shaky, uneven, more gasp than breath.
"Again. Slower this time."
This one was a little better, just barely, but enough that the rapid beeping gradually started to even out, the frantic rhythm settling into something less violent.
The doctor checked something on the chart in his hand, took his time with it, then looked back at me with the kind of patience that made the wait feel almost unbearable even though it probably only lasted a few seconds.
"All right. I’ve reviewed your latest scan from this morning, along with the overnight monitoring."
My fingers clenched the blanket so hard my knuckles ached.
"The fetal heartbeat is present, and it’s steady."
Everything inside me stopped, just for a moment, like my whole body needed to pause and make sure it had heard correctly before allowing itself to feel anything at all.
"...Alive?"
"Yes. Alive."
The single word emptied something heavy from my chest, so suddenly and so completely that it almost hurt worse than the fear had, the kind of relief that arrives too fast for the body to know what to do with it.
I closed my eyes.
For one long second I couldn’t hear anything except my own breathing, ragged and uneven, finally beginning to slow on its own without anyone telling me to.
Then the doctor kept going, his voice steady, careful not to let the good news pull him into letting his guard down on the rest of it.
"That doesn’t mean we’re in the clear, and I want to be honest with you about that rather than let you believe something that isn’t fully true yet. You suffered serious trauma in the accident, and there was bleeding around the placenta when you were brought in. That’s the reason we’ve kept you under such close watch since the surgery. The first seventy-two hours after an injury like this are the period we watch most closely because the risk is highest then, and you’ve just made it beyond that window."
My heart started climbing again, slower this time, but still climbing, the fear refusing to let go entirely even with the good news sitting right there in front of it.
"...Could I still lose it?"
The doctor didn’t look away from me, didn’t soften his expression into something falsely reassuring.
"I can’t promise you it won’t happen. I won’t tell you that, because it wouldn’t be true, and I’d rather you trust everything else I do tell you. What I can tell you is that this morning’s results were good. The bleeding we saw after the accident has remained stable on repeated examinations. The heartbeat is strong and consistent. That’s a real sign, not a guarantee, but it’s a real one, and it matters."
He glanced down at the chart once more before continuing.
"From here, the most important thing we can do isn’t another procedure. It’s keeping you calm, and keeping you as still as possible. No stress, as much as that’s realistically achievable given everything. No straining yourself physically, no pushing through discomfort to prove you’re fine. Your body is already working hard enough without you adding to the load."
My hand drifted beneath the blanket, slow and clumsy, my fingers fumbling slightly before finally settling low against my stomach.
Still there.
Still together.
The doctor’s eyes followed the small movement for a moment before he turned his attention to Bael, his tone shifting into something more direct, the kind of instruction meant to be followed without negotiation.
"Keep him calm. Short conversations for now, nothing heavy, nothing that requires him to relive anything difficult. If his heart rate spikes like that again, call us immediately, don’t wait to see if it settles on its own."
"I will," Bael said, and there was no hesitation in it at all.
The nurses finished their checks, exchanging a brief glance with the doctor before filing out behind him. The door clicked shut, and the room settled back into quiet, the kind that felt different now than it had only minutes earlier, lighter somehow, even though nothing had actually been resolved.
I turned my head toward him.
Bael hadn’t moved from where he was standing, his hand still resting near my shoulder from when he’d stopped me from sitting up. He was looking at me, and for a long moment neither of us said anything.
"..So it’s been three days?" My eyes were already struggling to stay open, the words slow, spaced out. "Since the accident. You didn’t know... If the baby was... safe, for three days?"
He didn’t answer right away.
"Bael."
"Nobody could tell me anything definite," he said finally, his voice low and rough. "Not until today."
I stared at him, trying to picture it, the shape of it too big to hold properly right now, the way my own thoughts kept sliding off the edges of it.
"...Three days," I murmured again, like saying it twice might make it settle somewhere.
"It’s alright now," Bael said. "We know now. That’s what matters." His hand tightened gently around mine. "You need to rest, Runze."
I didn’t have the strength to push further, the exhaustion already winning, dragging everything down into something soft and unfocused.
"...Mm."
He lowered himself slowly into the chair beside the bed, fingers closing around mine with the same careful pressure as before.
His hand was still trembling, just slightly, smaller than before, but not entirely gone.
"Sleep," he said quietly.
I wanted to ask him something else. I couldn’t remember what.
My eyes were already closing, the heaviness from before returning, the same pull I’d felt right before the question about the baby had cut through it. Nothing like the cold dark. Just ordinary tiredness, finally allowed to win.
"...Later," I murmured, the word barely shaped at all.
"Later," Bael said.
The last thing I felt before sleep pulled me under again was his hand, still wrapped around mine, not quite steady yet, but holding on regardless.
Somewhere far off, I thought I felt his thumb move once across my knuckles, slow and careful, like he was the one trying to convince himself I was actually still here.
I didn’t have the strength to hold onto the thought.
It slipped away with everything else, sinking quietly into the dark, and this time the dark didn’t feel cold at all.
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