Treasure Of Dragons, Royal Dragons Book 1 Chapter 56

Cole

Fuck, I can’t believe that just happened. I never thought the Senator would word vomit all of that all over Ria while she was out in the garden with the kids. We actually hadn’t known about Ria’s foster mom or we would have told her to avoid the situation we’d found ourselves in the night she found out about her foster siblings. 

We are walking down the hall with the Senator back toward Drago’s office when Dragori comes running up behind us. He stops at me and lowers to whisper in my ear.

“Ria fainted in the garden. Isobel is with the children as they were extremely upset when their mother collapsed. I had some members of my staff take her down to the clinic room.” He saw the panic on my face.

“Cinder, do you think you could assist me, I’m afraid we have a slight situation I need to take care of immediately Senator, please excuse me.” I nodded to him and ran to the clinic downstairs.

“What’s up, Cole?” Cinder was right behind me.

“Ria collapsed in the garden after finding out about her foster mom. The kids are really upset. Could you go help Isobel with them and help soothe them about Ria?” He didn’t even say anything just ran in the direction of the stairs to head to the nursery.

As soon as I reach the clinic room I start hooking up Ria to the equipment so I can check her blood pressure and pulse. I start stroking her face, “Ria baby, can you hear me?” 

I see her eyes flutter and she opens her eyes, then her eyes get huge and she grasps her stomach, “Pain, Cole, Pain, make it stop, it’s too early.” 

Now I’m panicked, we had a small issue with Brand when Ria was pregnant and she was so upset about us allowing people to hold the children in the cafe, but we got the contractions stopped and nothing else happened. 

I call Dr. Surenka immediately so I have help with this. I start mixing the medications to stop her contractions and fix up an IV, we had made sure we had plenty of these drugs in stock when we had the problem last time. I get the IV inserted, then get some pain medication to help. 

I can see Ria is trying to breathe through the pain and stay relaxed, I am watching to see if the pain medication is even helping, but so far it doesn’t seem much like it. 

“Is there any relief from the pain with what I gave you baby?” She just shakes her head, which also worries me, because last time it helped. 

Dr. Surenka arrived, and I was surprised she got here so quickly, “I was in town at the Cafe, so I sped all the way here.” 

“The pain medication isn’t helping this time, so we need to try something stronger.” She nods and goes to our medicine cabinet and removes a vial.

She shows it to me, “This should still be okay with the babies, and be stronger relief, we’ll try this for now.” She administers the medication as I remove Ria’s clothes and get her into a gown so I can do an ultrasound of the little ones. 

She seems to relax a bit more with the 2nd medication, but I can tell she’s still in pain. “Ria is that doing better?” 

She nods but doesn’t say anything, still looking like she’s attempting to relax. I wheel the ultrasound over to the bed, squirt the gel on her abdomen, and then flip the machine on. As soon as I get the paddle against her skin we start hearing the fast heartbeats of the babies. The picture shows that nothing is wrong with them at the moment. 

I clean her abdomen off and then hook up a fetal and contraction monitor across her stomach so we can keep track of how her contractions are doing and keep tabs on the babies, to make sure they don’t get too stressed. 

The kids are all calm and playing so Cinder comes down to see how Ria is doing. I tell him the contractions are still going, but haven’t gotten stronger or closer together, so at the moment we are still on a wait-and-see. 

Dr. Surenka and I are putting our heads together about what we should do if the contractions don’t stop. I’m not sure how long we could keep her going on medication to keep full labor from progressing, or how she and the babies would actually handle that. 

“Cole, you and I both know if we can’t get the labor stopped, those babies are not big enough to survive if she gives birth right now.” Dr. Surenka watches my face.

“I know Mirea, but if that happens, we’ll handle it. Let’s just keep her calm and try to see if the medication will help.” She nods at me.

“If we can get them under control I am going to recommend bed rest at least for a week and then we can reevaluate. If she has any more trouble with contractions, we will need to have the bedrest be the rest of the pregnancy. We have to get her to at least 20 weeks, so that’s in 8 weeks.” I just nod at her as I have already been thinking about all of this. 

I go sit by Ria and just hold her hand, she actually opens her eyes and looks at me for a moment, and I can see she’s trying to relax but her poor heart is breaking at what she learned this afternoon. 

“We didn’t know Ria. If we had we would have told you and it would not have been just all of a sudden, surrounded by the kids, out in the garden of all places. So, I’m so sorry, I know all this is rough, but just try to relax for a bit, baby. I’ll help all I can, but we just have to see if the medicine will help. Let us know if the contractions or babies' movements change.” She just nodded and a lone tear streaked down her face. I brushed it away, leaned over her, and kissed her on her temple, then just leaned my head against hers for a moment. I hope she feels my love and support. 

The Senator has finally left with his entourage so Drago and Ash come down to sit with the rest of us as we keep monitoring the situation. There’s not much we can say, so it’s pretty quiet, the sound of the beeps from the monitors echoing through the room. 

Suddenly Ria opens her eyes and she places her hand on her abdomen. Just then, I hear the fetal monitor sound an alarm. I jump up and check, it looks like one of the babies’ heart rates is dropping. It must be in distress from all of the contractions and the medication we are pumping into Ria.

She looks at me “Something’s wrong Cole, what’s happening?” 

“One of the babies’ heart rates is dropping. It looks like they are in distress.”