Söbriety • Mötley Crüe •

34. Medical Technology

Nikki's POV

"Wait, slow down. In English, please. I'm not a doctor, I don't know your words." I sound like a total dick, but the fact that doctors automatically assume you know their big medical words pisses me the fuck off.

"Your wife has gestational diabetes. Pregnancy hormones can cause glucose, uh-sugar, to build up in the mother's system and your wife isn't producing enough insulin to regulate it. She has too much sugar in her body, and it's making her sick."

His use of the word 'wife' makes my heart break even more, knowing I might never get to call her that. I don't correct him just so I can pretend for a little bit longer.

"So, what, she just needs to stop eating sugar?"

"For starters, yes. But she has what we call class A2 gestational diabetes, which means she's going to need medication to help on top of changing her diet. Her blood sugar level was twice what it should be, which is why she passed out. If we don't get this controlled, it can cause some serious problems for your baby."

"What kind of problems?" Sharise asks quietly. I squint my eyes at her for butting into the conversation and she shrugs her shoulders as she bites her fingernail.

"It can cause a stillbirth." My heart drops out of my chest into my stomach, Sharise taking a step back with a hand over her mouth to hold in her sob. "But that's only if we don't get it controlled, and we're going to get it controlled."

"Okay." I breathe out, trying to keep my cool. "How do we get it under control?"

"We're going to give her a medication she takes twice a day, and she needs to make some changes to her diet. Does she eat a lot of sugar?"

"Not really." Sharise slaps my shoulder with a dirty look on her face.

"Yes. She lives off of pizza and ice cream." She corrects me.

Since when has pizza and ice cream harmed anyone?

"That has to stop. She needs full rounded meals, protein, vitamins, vegetables. Stay away from processed sugar as much as you can. I'm going to give you a pamphlet on what she should and shouldn't eat, but just be smart. Look at the nutritional fact labels on things before she eats them, it'll tell you most of what you need to know. You can go in and see her, she should be feeling better after the medication we gave her. I'll come back and check on her before we release her in a couple hours."

Ryan is going to pitch a fit when she hears all of this.

"Is this something her doctor should've caught? She's been feeling bad for a couple weeks but she wouldn't talk to her doctor about it, she thought it was just normal pregnancy misery." Sharise stops the doctor from walking down the hallway and he doesn't seem impressed with her question.

Guilt hits me like a ton of bricks, I should've known that she wasn't feeling well. If I had just sat down and talked to her about our fight and the letters I found, she would've told me how she was feeling and we could've avoided this.

"We normally catch it between week 24 and 28. She's a little on the late side, but if her doctor thought she felt fine, they might not have tested for it. We normally only test if the patient is high risk for it."

"She was high risk for it. When she found out she was pregnant she was on steroids for an injury for weeks, months even."

I don't know why I'm here, Sharise seems to be doing a better job at being Ryan's partner than me. But I guess that's my own fault. I kick myself mentally for the hundredth time tonight.

"Well then, yeah. In theory, her doctor should've caught it, but I'm not going to assume to know the circumstances of why they didn't."

"Okay, thank you." Sharise nods her head at the doctor and he gives her a weak smile, turning to go back down the hall. "I'm going to kill her fucking doctor." I nod in agreement when she curls her lip in anger.