They were about the finest words he’d ever heard.
“Becca’s never suffered from migraines before, but pregnancy can bring them on like this. The high blood pressure didn’t help.”
Leaning against the wall, weak now that the immediate danger had passed, Will asked, “How high was it?” He’d seen Becca an hour and a half before she’d called. She’d seemed fine then. There’d been no signs….
“Not alarmingly so, but enough to complicate things if a migraine was present, anyway.”
“And the numbness? A migraine causes that, too?”
“It can, yes,” Dr. Anderson said, rising. “We’re running the tests just to make sure.”
Will wouldn’t let the doctor go. “So you think she’s going to be all right,” he said.
She smiled at him, laid a hand on his arm. “I do—as long as she gets enough rest.” Holding open the door of the examining room, she motioned Will through. “You can wait right out here for her,” she said. “There’s coffee and a vending machine down the hall. She shouldn’t be long.”
Panic set in as he watched the doctor’s disappearing back.
“Dr. Anderson?” he called, chasing after her.
“Yes?” She turned, her eyes warm with reassurance.
“How long until we know for sure?”
“I’ve called in a radiologist,” she said. “We’ll know before you leave here today.”
SHE WAS GOING to be fine. Becca was perfectly all right. Normal. The baby was normal. Everything was fine.
Will repeated the words to himself over and over as he drove his car back to Shelter Valley, his wife asleep in the passenger seat. They’d given her something for the headache, a prescription for blood-pressure medication and told him she’d probably sleep most of the day.
But as Will saw her so lifeless on the seat beside him, he couldn’t shake the fear that had been strangling him since her phone call that morning.
What in hell had he been thinking, encouraging her, a woman of forty-two, to put her body through the trauma of childbirth? Had he been mad? Today it was a migraine. And there’d been her high blood pressure. Something that, in itself, could create life-threatening problems in the future. Not that Dr. Anderson thought they had to worry, but it could happen.
They’d checked her kidney function in the bloodwork they’d done
, too. Everything was fine there, as well, but the fact that they were checking at all frightened him. It meant the possibility existed that something could have been wrong.
As Will slowed for the Shelter Valley exit, Becca stirred, but settled back down without waking. She looked so vulnerable there beside him, not at all the strong vivacious woman he knew her to be.
That thought raised the vision of how he’d seen her in the parking lot, huddled over her console, limp and racked with pain.
And he knew that if anything happened to her, if something did indeed go more wrong than it had today, it was going to be his fault. He should have listened to her when she’d talked about terminating her pregnancy. He’d been so shocked, so staggered to find that the woman he’d always considered the consummate mother no longer wanted to be one, that he hadn’t heard everything else she’d told him. He should have examined the option more closely.
Consumed by guilt, he carried his sleeping wife into their house.
THE NEXT MORNING Becca was relieved to wake up feeling her old self again. She’d slept a little later than usual, due, no doubt, to the medication she’d taken the day before. But the headache was gone and, other than the discomfort of wearing another skirt that was too tight, she was raring to go. Will, thankfully, had already left for the university. If he’d been home, she was sure he’d have nagged her to take the day off.
Becca couldn’t afford to lose another day if she didn’t have to.
Swallowing her new blood-pressure pills along with her vitamins, just as Dr. Anderson had instructed, and promising herself a nap before her business dinner—the rescheduled traffic-light meeting—she left the house with a list of things to do.
And had to face at least half-a-dozen expressions of concern and good wishes—from her neighbors, from various people as she walked across campus—before she reached her first destination. Because of the crowd in the mayor’s parking lot, Will had made a few calls the night before, letting people know how she was. Rose had taken care of the rest.
She found Randi in her office in the Women’s Athletic Department at the university. Just in from a meeting with the soccer coach, she was dressed in a pair of athletic shorts and a cutoff T-shirt. She looked gorgeous, with her tanned skin and long legs that seemed to go on forever.
“Hey, sis!” She jumped up from her chair full of energy as always. “How’re you feeling? Have a seat,” she said, guiding Becca to a chair.
“I’m feeling fine,” Becca told her, resisting the urge to stand back up. “I’m not an invalid!” she said with a laugh.