by Shelly Crane
I gave her all that a man could give her in a hospital bed with wires coming out of every limb. And she gave it to me right back.
Somewhere in the middle of all those tugs and moans and kisses, that was the most killer make-out session I'd ever had, she said, "I fell in love with you a little the first time you let your thumb drift down my nose in that bar." I demonstrated since I loved doing it so much. "And I fell in love with you a little bit every day since then." She smiled and put my hand over her heart. "It's so full, it hurts."
The nurse was mighty upset to find us a few seconds after that statement on the bed that way. I secretly thanked her, for she may have been the only thing keeping Marley's virtue intact on that hospital bed.
I knew the promise of what was to come was going to be incredible.
She sat back in the chair and let the nurse do her job, but flat refused to relinquish my hand. The nurse said that only family was allowed in during exams and after hours.
"She is my family," I said sternly and looked at Marley's blue eyes with nothing but love for her.
I knew hospitals were bad for someone on the run, but if Marley brought me here and was calm about it, then all must be right in the world again. I didn't freak out. I trusted her and just welcomed the being alive part.
Marley was in green scrubs. She said she had showered there and everything. Not just because she had nowhere to go, but because she wouldn't leave my side. They tried to make her leave several times, but she just ignored them and they eventually left, she said. I smiled at her, my fierce girl.
Later, Marley finally brought it all up and told me that the police had arrested every person that left up the stairs that day that they could find based on witness testimony and the fact that all those women and children were trapped by them. Oh, and arson as well.
The suit was one of them.
She said the news said that evidence would have helped and not all charges would stick without it, but at least the company was toast and the murderers in custody.
I sagged in relief. She told me that it was going to be a big stink, the media was involved, and no one in the company was safe, not even the New York office that claimed to know nothing.
The BioGene stock plummeted.
I'd been in the hospital for only two days when I woke up. After I hoisted her up to the fireman, she said she threatened to dismember him if he didn't help me. So when he called down to me and got no answer, he hoisted Marley back down into the window and she wrapped a harness around me. They pulled me out and then sent the harness down for Marley, too. The access vent we escaped from had been located over the loading dock, an alcove dipped into the ground two stories below. Not seven minutes after the ladder was lowered and everyone was being cared for, the building collapsed.
I hated that we'd lost all that evidence. And the stuff about her mom and mine. I…wait.
"Where's my clothes?"
"Uh…" She looked around. "Under here." She pulled the Personal Belongings bag from under the bed and set it on my stomach. I used the button to sit up and dug through the bag to my pants pocket.
I grinned as I pulled the USB memory stick out. "Looky, looky."
She gasped. "Is that…"
"Yep. I copied everything that looked important from the computer for a rainy day. And I think it's pouring."
She laughed and kissed me. I sighed, feeling lighter than ever. "I'm so…happy right now. I just wish we could have gotten to at least look through our moms' files and stuff. But it's all gone." I twisted my lips. "All burned up."
She bit into her lip. "Well, I have a bag of my own." She plopped a bag that matched mine on my lap and pulled out the folders that I'd given her to keep.
My mouth fell open.
"They were in the back of my pants waistband the whole time, safe and sound."
Wow…a piece of my mom was right there in front of me. A piece of her history and her life, even though it was those bastard's notes…it was my mom.
We spent the entire night going through it all. We laughed, we cried—yes, we cried—and we got a slice of the closure we so desperately wanted. No, we couldn't bring them back, but we could remember them the way they were meant.
It didn't say exactly why they'd gone into the program, but from what we could gather it was some kind of vitamin they offered them and free medical care for them while they were pregnant. But the catch was they had to stay at the facility and be monitored during the pregnancy. It didn't take them all that long to figure out something was screwy when they didn't let them leave the room and began drawing blood every day.
Every. Daggum. Day.
The notes told us what they asked them, what they talked about, how many days they cried versus how many days they were silent. It talked about how the vitamins made the male growing in patient C bigger and the patient experienced no morning sickness. The female growing inside patient F had a stronger heartbeat than the rest and she kicked more often, and also caused no morning sickness for the patient.
My mom was passionate in her anger where Marley's was more reserved and just didn't understand why they picked her. My mom demanded to be released and had to be strapped to her bed on several occasions because she kept attacking the doctors. Marley's mom got to a point where she flat refused to acknowledge them when they came into her room. They both rebelled in their own way.
The notes just stopped for them both after a while. No explanation as to why except one word—rogue. Their termination date was the last thing listed.
In my mom's file was a disc. There wasn't one in Marley's and I could tell she was disappointed. I wasn't so sure. We had no idea what was on it. It might be something that we didn't even want to see. We got one of the nurses to let us borrow her laptop to put it in and see what was on it. I expected files of tests they performed, since there was no label on the disc, but when we put it in, a video popped up. I pressed play and there she was. I couldn't stop my gasp as I watched my mom sit on her bed, her belly pregnant with me, and she always kept her hand atop it, as if to protect me.
It was weeks of footage, but only an hour a day. It was random. Sometimes there would be a doctor asking questions in the room, sometimes she would be alone and the hour would pass with her sleeping. Sometimes she mumbled or whispered. I fast-forwarded it when her lips weren't moving to when they were. I heard her tell a doctor that she was starting to have Braxton Hicks contractions. Marley explained that meant practice contractions. Her body was preparing to have me.
The doctor left. She covered her belly with both of her hands and started to cry. I covered my mouth with my palm and started to turn it off, unable to watch my mother suffer anymore, when she started to whisper again. I turned it up as far as it would go, and we heard my mother's whispered promises to me, her unborn son that she had already named Jude.
She had been talking to me all those times she'd been mumbling. She said them so softly, like these words were just for me and not for them if they had been listening.
"Jude, your momma loves you already. I'm so sorry that I brought you here. I didn't know that men could be so cruel. I should have known that when someone offers you something that sounds too good to be true at just the time you need it, then it is. Your father was a good man. We got married young and pregnant right after that, but I loved that man. He was in the Army and was killed in Desert Storm. His parents offered to help me, but they didn't have any more money than I did. I was applying for jobs when I got a visit from a man. He said he worked for a company, a medical facility, and they made drugs for pregnant women. The drugs were safe and they would offer me a place to stay, food, all the free medical care I needed, and promised that I would owe them nothing when it was all over. All I had to do was take their vitamins and let them monitor me. A drug trial." She sniffed, pulling her knees up as far as her belly would allow. I'd never seen my mom so vulnerable before. "I did it because I thought I was helping you. I had no insurance, no way to pay for all the medical bills tha
t were about to pile up, so I said yes. I knew something was off pretty quickly when they wouldn't let me call your father's parents and let them know how I was doing. And when they did the first of many amniocentesis," she rubbed her belly harder, "which is a test where they stick a needle through my belly, I knew that something awful was going on. I'm so sorry I brought you here, baby boy. I'm so sorry."
The video cut out after a few minutes of silence and the next one started. She was sleeping. The next one started and my breath caught. She wasn't pregnant anymore. She paced the room angrily, stomping and hitting the door with her foot with each pass. Finally, the door opened and a woman held a baby in her arms. Mom took him from her and gripped him to her, cooing and crying that it was all right. The woman left and Mom laid me on the bed. She lifted my little shirt and gasped at seeing the IV port there in my skin. Even from that distance, my skin looked red and angry and I cried until she picked me back up.
Mom prowled the room for a few long minutes before she stopped. She slowly looked toward the closet, her back straightening with determination. She opened the closet and pretended to look for something, but her eyes never left the panel in the ceiling. Marley gripped my arm tighter as we realized the same thing.
"That's how she escaped," Marley said in awe. "We escaped the same way as your mom."
I didn't know how that was possible, or how she got down with me, but it happened somehow.
Mom spoke clearly, for all to hear, but only we would understand the true meaning of her words. "Even your death is better than your torture."
We watched her as she rocked and fed me for hours more on the video. Finally, she fell asleep, but she didn't let go of me. She woke and held me all the while, kissing my head over and over, as she sang the same song she always sang to me. "Hey, Jude…"
The video ended and there was no more after that. I knew why. She had escaped. We had escaped. She and I. I just stared at the screen until I felt Marley's hand on my cheek. She bit her lip and used her thumb to wipe under my eye. I wasn't embarrassed at the wetness she found there. The woman who had sang to me gave me everything, even her own life, the least I owed her was a few tears.
Marley took the laptop away and crawled into bed with me, wrapping her arms around me and letting me wallow in her warmth as I was finally able to mourn my mom. She ran her fingers through my hair as much as she could, but I felt with my fingers a large bandage on my head. I rested my head on her chest and we didn't say a word.
We didn't need to.
Marley cries were soft and when they became harder, I knew her sadness had switched from my mom to hers. I sat up and wrapped her tightly in my arms that were never, ever letting her go. She spent all night by my side on the bed with me. Her tears eventually dried up, the guilt for the way she blamed and hated her mother was wiped away by the pages in that file.
The pregnant women, mothers, and a few of the children came to see me the next day. Even the city came and gave me a plaque saying how I'd expressed exceptional heroism in the face of danger and risked my life to save others. Marley cried some more, but it was all happiness this time. They took a couple of pictures and the mayor said he was honored to be pictured with a real-life hero.
I wasn't a hero; I was just a guy with an opportunity to be heroic. Marley's mom? And my mom? They were the real heroes. For they not only gave their lives for us, they sacrificed it willingly so that we could live.
So that we could fall in love.
So that fate could bring us to each other.
So that we could smash into each other.
So that we could live happily…ever after.
EIGHTEEN
"I don't see any abnormalities. I ran every test I could think of. You both have a higher white blood cell count, but that's not going to cause any problems. Other than that, you're both perfectly healthy."
"What does that mean, exactly?" I asked him.
"It means you probably don't get as sick as other people. Other than that…" I looked over at Marley. I'd never been sick a day in my life. Her face suggested the same for her.
I nodded and took Marley's hand as we left, slowly for my benefit. "Thanks, Doc. We appreciate it."
My leg was still not right. The skin and look of it would never be the same, they told me. It hurt to walk on, the jiggle of my muscle with each step sent shooting pain through it, but for the most part, I was pretty normal again.
When we stepped out of his office, Marley sighed loudly. "Oh, my gosh. Thank you, thank you," she said with her eyes closed.
"We can relax now." I squeezed her fingers as I opened her door. "Everything is all right and it's going to be fine."
She squealed happily and threw her arms around my neck before kissing my cheek and leaning back to hop in. I laughed as I went to the driver's side of the beautiful old Chevy truck we still possessed.
We went back to Alabama so Marley could finish her classes. And I could finish my Spanish credit. Yay…
The police were mighty happy to get the USB flash stick and the files we had. They said it was a miracle we had taken it. We copied everything of our moms' to keep and passed everything else over. They said it was a sure-fire open-closed case now, thanks to us. Honestly, I didn't even want to follow it and see what happened. I just knew things were going to work out, but we did have to go in just once for our testimony. Man, that sucked. Watching Marley get up there and try to hold it together sucked so badly. Once it was done, we walked away and never looked back.
They offered to put us into some kind of witness protection or something, but with Biloxi gone and everyone else in prison or jobless or…whatever, everyone decided we didn't need that. Besides, if we did that, Marley's credits for college would go away and I didn't have the heart to make her start over from scratch. So, we said no thanks and decided to start a new life. One where running wasn't a requirement.
I started working full-time. When we got back to town, I went and explained everything to Pepe. I told him that was why I wanted to be under the radar, why I asked him to pay me under the table, all of it. He met Marley and told me to watch out for beautiful woman. Then he blew my mind by offering me a general manager position since he fired his ex-wife and the position was available. I accepted and, not even a few weeks later, Pepe decided he wanted to branch out, open a few chain stores in the state, and gave me one to run since he trusted me.
A pretty nice little raise came with that and I couldn't believe it had happened to me. We were moving to Georgia and Marley was transferring her credits to UGA. She got some assistance with the tuition and we would come up with the rest. It was what she wanted and somehow, some way I was going to see it to fruition.
We had been staying in my crappy apartment for the past five weeks since we'd been back. And we started preparing to move into a bigger crappy apartment in Athens that wasn't in the college district and was on the quiet edge of town. The party scene, the college life…wasn't who I was anymore.
Boxes lined my wall, not many mind you since we didn't have much of anything, but what we had was ready to go. I couldn't wait to move.
My past was catching up to me in this town. I'd run into more than one girl who wanted to rehash or relive a time we'd spent together. On more than one occasion, Marley had been with me either walking around campus or out for groceries or dinner. The fact that they treated her as if she were invisible pissed me off royally.
Catty, petty girls.
So as Marley got her last day stuff settled at school, I was busy cleaning up and getting all the trash taken care of in the apartment.
When there was a knock on the door, I wasn't surprised. I knew exactly who it was. There was only one girl who I had been avoiding that hadn't managed to catch me yet. And only one girl that would show up at my house even knowing about Marley.
I pulled a shirt on real quick and opened the door. "Hey, Kate," I said evenly.
She bit her lip, chewing on it really. "Hey."
She heard about
Marley. She wasn't herself. She wanted me to tell her it was just rumors. "I'm leaving. We're moving to Georgia. We leave tomorrow."
"We," she said wryly. "Jude Jackson has an official 'we' with someone?"
I paused to keep calm and then nodded. "Yeah."
"How come that couldn't have been me?" she asked and stepped noticeably closer. "Can I come in?"
I really didn't want to let her. She'd only ever been there twice before and we didn't spend the time talking. Gah…I pressed my palms into my eyes. "No, Kate." I came out and shut the door, coaxing her to sit on the steps with me. "I'd rather sit out here."
"You're not even going to give me a chance to convince you that I'm better for you, are you?" She hadn't sat down yet.
I looked up at her. "No. I don't need convincing that I'm in love with the girl that lives here with me."
She sat with a huff. "I would've done anything for you."
I sighed. I had been such a bastard. But this girl was an idiot in her own right. "Kate, I know that. And that was your first mistake."
She parted her lips in surprise and huffed. "What?"
"I'm saying this…as your friend. I was an ass. I never called you unless I wanted something from you. Never took you on a date, or even just to get some food. Never asked you how classes were going. I treated you horribly-"
"The sex was great though, wasn't it?" she asked, forgetting everything I just said. Her eyes were hopeful.
"Yeah," I admitted, resigned. "The sex was great. But sex doesn't equal love, Kate." She visibly deflated. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for being such a jerk. You need to find someone who wants more than sex. If he doesn’t call you and see how you're doing or see if you wanna catch a movie or take you to your favorite restaurant or just talk and laugh at stupid things, then he's not the guy for you."
She was angry, understandably, but didn't seem as broken up as before. I relaxed a little. "Do you do all those things for that girl?"