Eirik: A Time Travel Romance (Mists of Albion Book 1)

by Joanna Bell

  And there it is, I realize. That's her problem. She thinks I'm making her look bad. She hasn't been able to get to the bottom of my disappearance, and her ego can't deal with that. After all, I'm just some attention-seeking college student to the doctor. And now it's all starting to look bad, because as hard as some people in the press – and even one or two police officers, if reports are to be believed – try to establish that I have, in fact, faked everything, they don't seem to be able to find any evidence of it.

  It gets more explicit as time passes. Dr. Lawson begins to openly hint that if I just tell her what really happened, I'll be allowed to give birth and take my baby home right away. It's a lie, I can tell. I respond to it the way I respond to everything else she says to me now – with silence.

  I haven't given up – not even close. It's just that there's nothing else to do on a locked psych ward, if one is sane, except work at proving one's sanity. My father comes to visit me as often as he's allowed – which is about twice a week after Dr. Lawson decides his presence is hindering my 'self-reconciliation' (whatever that means), but I'm angry at him for calling the paramedics that night I tried to leave, and he knows it.

  They can't keep me here forever, I tell myself. Even as my belly grows to the point where I can barely find a comfortable position to sleep in, and the nurses tell me I'll go into labor at any time, I remain cooped up, subject to the never-ending questions of a woman who thinks she has me all figured out and can't allow herself to be wrong.

  I'm not a particularly strong person. I'm only strong through this ordeal because I have something – someone – to be strong for. My baby. Eirik's baby. Whoever this person is in my belly, I owe it to them to do everything possible to keep them safe, to get myself out of the predicament I'm in and build a life around them. Eirik is with me in this, keeping me strong, steeling my resolve every day. It's his face I see before I go to sleep at night, and his blue-eyed gaze I feel in my heart when Dr. Lawson is hounding me with questions. I talk to him sometimes. Not prayers, and not the act of a crazy woman – I know he's not physically with me. And not out loud, either. Just in my head.

  I'm trying, Eirik. I'm trying to come back to you. I'm trying to do the best for our baby. And I'm going to keep trying for as long as I can.

  ***

  One day, I turn away from the window where I constantly sit, watching the world outside and thinking of my time in the Viking camp, to see Emma standing in the doorway. I blink, not sure if I'm finally actually crazy, or if it's really her. She looks different – her hair is longer, she's thinner than I remember.

  "Oh my God," she says – her first words to me in almost a year. "You really are pregnant!"

  I stand up awkwardly, pushing my big, disproportionate body up out of the chair using my arms, and just look at her for a few seconds. "Yeah," I say eventually. "I am. Due any day now, apparently."

  My instinct is to wrap my arms around my friend and squeeze her until neither of us can breathe. I don't do that, though. I don't move from my spot. I remember the interview my father told me she did, spilling secrets she'd sworn to keep. She made me look like a nut, she helped get the ball rolling on this whole 'Paige Renner is a crazy person' thing. She knows why I'm not hugging her, too, I can see it in her eyes.

  "You don't know how hard it was to get in here to see you," Emma says, after a long and awkward silence. "I've been talking to your dad for weeks, trying to negotiate a visit the whole time. They've really got you on lockdown."

  "No shit."

  More awkward silence. Finally, she just blurts it out.

  "Look, Paige. I'm sorry. I think you know that's what I'm here to say. I'm really sorry. You don't understand what they said to me, though, before the interview. They made it sound like I would be helping you if –"

  "Helping me!?" I ask, spitting out the words bitterly. "Helping me? Well shit, Emma, you've got a funny way of helping. I suppose I'm misremembering the part where you promised never to say a damn word about any of that to anyone, aren't I? I seem to be misremembering so many things these days!"

  Emma's staring at me, and it just makes me angrier. "What?" I ask. "Do you think anything they're saying about me is actually true? Do you think I'm really nuts? Oooh, better run away fast before I beat you to death with my fucking pillow!"

  "Paige –"

  "What?!" I yell. "You PROMISED, Emma! You fucking promised me!"

  "I know," she whispers. "And I would have kept that promise if you hadn't gone missing, Paige. If I didn't think you were dead, or in some psycho's basement! You don't know how it was, the police were questioning everyone, the media was going crazy, everyone was just telling the people who knew you to give any information they had, that any little thing could give them a lead. The producer on that show told me I was helping you! He told me if I didn't tell them everything I knew then I could be making it more difficult to find you. And, Paige, all I wanted to do was find you. I had to withdraw from school for two semesters over this. Every single night I went to sleep with all these horrible images in my mind, all these terrible things I thought someone might have done to you and I'm just – I see now I did the wrong thing and I am so sorry. Please believe me, I am so, so sorry. I never wanted to hurt you. I just wanted to find you. You're my best friend."

  I try to blink away my tears but that just sends them rolling down my cheeks. Emma is crying, too, but I'm still too angry to give her the hug I know we both want.

  "Why do you think I'm in here?!" I reply, my voice choked with emotion. "Why do you think everyone thinks I'm nuts, Emma? That interview just gave everyone an excuse to think I'm just some delusional attention seeker. And now I'm about to have a baby in a fucking psych ward!"

  I collapse into my chair. A few seconds later, I feel Emma's hands on my shoulders, trying to comfort me, and shrug them off.

  "I'm sorry," she repeats miserably. "I didn't know, Paige. If I had known –"

  We stay there like that for ten minutes, fifteen, sitting across from each other, miserable. When the height of the emotion passes, I look out the window at a passing school-bus full of kids.

  "Did you really withdraw from both semesters?" I ask finally. "Are you back in classes again now?"

  Emma inhales, and her breath shakes the way it does sometimes after you've cried a lot. She nods. "Yeah, both semesters. And yes, I'm back now. Technically, anyway."

  "What do you mean 'technically?'"

  She shrugs. "I mean I'm enrolled. I only go to about thirty percent of my classes, I'd guess, but all my professors know who I am, they're mostly going super easy on me. I'd definitely fail every single one if they weren't."

  "You shouldn't be missing so many classes," I tell her, allowing a smidgen of sympathy to soften my heart.

  Emma nods. "I know, Paige. Believe me, I know. It's seriously so dumb for me to even be talking about this right now, as if somehow I'm the one who has suffered the most here. I came to apologize. I understand that you can't forgive me. I just wanted you to know that I've never felt worse about anything in my life – it kills me that I hurt you, that I made things more difficult for you after everything else that's gone on."

  "Everything that's gone on," I repeat, rolling my eyes a little when Emma's not looking. "The worst part of it is this, right now! I'm not allowed to leave, the doctor is convinced I'm some kind of psycho – you know they're talking about taking away the baby, right? Because I can't even look after myself so how can I look after a baby or some shit like that?"

  "What?" Emma asks, confused. "They're thinking about – Paige, why would they take away your baby? You're the victim here!"

  I shrug, trying to act tough, but even in the midst of the shrug I can feel the emotion rolling back over me like a wave. "I don't know!" I reply, my voice thin and high-pitched. "I don't know, Em! The doctor here – Dr. Lawson – she hates me. She hates me because she thinks this is all just some big con I'm pulling and –"

  "And what's happening about that?" Emma cuts in.
"Like, do you have a lawyer? Does anyone even know about this? Does your dad know?"

  I nod. "He knows. We called a lawyer but he said we should just do whatever the doctors recommend, that if it went to court it'll look good, like I'm making a good faith effort to get better."

  Emma shakes her head like she can't believe what she's hearing. "What?! Paige, I – I don't understand. 'A good faith effort to get better?!' What exactly is wrong with you? How are you the person who is in the wrong here? Are you seriously telling me they're threatening to take your baby? Because if you are, someone needs to intervene. Your dad needs to get a better lawyer or someone needs to tell the media or, I don't know – something! That's completely insane!"

  The media. There's an idea. I haven't been allowed access to the internet for weeks and the only channels I can access on the ancient TV in my room only show nature documentaries and infomercials. "Does anyone even care about me anymore?" I ask. "Like, is this even still a story?"

  "Are you kidding?" Emma asks. "This is still a huge story – people are super curious, there's some kind of huge bidding war between the networks over who gets to interview you first when you get out – it's crazy. They still call me at least once a day begging for another interview – which I promise you I am not going to do."

  "And why do people think I'm in here?" I ask, as the first inkling that maybe the view from outside is very different from the truth comes over me.

  Emma fiddles with the zipper on her purse. "Because you're pregnant, I think. That you're vulnerable, you're recovering from what happened to you." She pauses, because she, like everyone else, still has no idea what did happen to me. "I'm not going to lie, there are a few people who think you made it all up but I want you to know I don't believe that for –"

  "Do they realize I can't leave?" I cut in. "Has that been reported?"

  "No," Emma replies. "I don't think so. I haven't seen anything about that."

  A flicker of hope lights up the darkness in my heart and I'm about to ask Emma if she thinks letting people know would change anything when the door to my room opens and a nurse walks in.

  "Visiting hours are over," she says, setting a tray of tomato soup and plastic-wrapped saltine crackers down. "You're lucky Dr. Lawson even let you –"

  "Tell them," I say to Emma as she gathers her things. I grab her and pull her into a sudden hug, whispering desperately in her ear: "I forgive you. I know you were trying to help! Tell them about the baby. Tell them –"

  "Come on now," the nurse intervenes, pulling me away. "Time to leave – and time for you to get some rest, Paige."

  Emma is looking at me questioningly. "Really?" She asks, as she's hustled gently out of the room.

  "Yes!" I call after her. "Tell them!"

  The door shuts and the nurse looks at me disapprovingly. "Dr. Lawson isn't going to let you have new visitors for long if you –"

  "Fuck Dr. Lawson," I respond flatly, rolling over on my bed so my back is to the nurse. She leaves less than a minute later and I fall into a short, unsatisfying sleep.

  It's dark when I wake up. I look around the room, because I've got a vague feeling like something specific has woken me, someone calling my name or a loud noise of some kind. But everything seems to be in place. I look out the window at the moon, filling my room with pale light.

  "ARRRGH."

  I sit up at straight, not even aware, for the first second or two, that the strange noise is coming out of me. My stomach hurts. My tired brain runs through the possibilities. Sick? Am I going to puke? Do I need the bathroom? No. The bed underneath me is wet. And my stomach really is quite painful...

  Oh my God.

  Without thinking I reach out and slam my hand down on the red button that summons the nursing staff. Then I do it again and again and again until I hear footsteps in the hallway outside. The door opens and someone turns the light on. I shield my eyes from the brightness and, just as I'm about to be asked what's wrong, I get up off the bed and myself and the two nurses look down at the huge wet spot.

  "I think –" I start.

  "The baby is coming!" One of the nurses finishes for me.

  And then I remember the conversation with Emma, the advice to get a new lawyer. That was only a few hours ago. It's not enough time. I need a few more days, at least. Time for the story – that I'm not allowed to leave the hospital, that my doctor is planning to have my baby taken into custody – to get out. Time for my dad to find a lawyer who gives better advice than 'do what they say.'

  "No," I say, in a strange half-asleep, half-panicked state. "No, I – I can't. I can't."

  The nurse thinks I'm talking about giving birth – which in a way I am but not in the way she thinks – and pats my knee affectionately. "Don't worry, Paige, they'll get you set up with an epidural."

  I look at her face. Hazel eyes, dark-blonde hair, about 30. Help me, I want to say. Please help me. Get me out of here. They're going to take my baby.

  But I don't say any of that, because I know if I do that she might tell Dr. Lawson. I bite my lip, hard enough to taste blood in my mouth, as another sharp pain seizes my belly.

  Chapter 27

  21st Century

  At some point in what is to become a mostly-blurry memory of pain, brightly-lit rooms and the antiseptic scent of the hospital, I am moved to a different room. I refuse the epidural because the anesthesiologist explains that it will numb my entire body from the waist down and some primitive instinct buried deep inside my lizard brain thinks I might be able to make a run for it when the baby is born.

  I don't even notice when my father arrives, because I'm in another world by then, a world made of pain, pain and more pain. I'm only vaguely aware that I'm groaning and shrieking like a wounded cow, because every ounce of my consciousness is taken up with the task at hand.

  "I feel like an animal," I gasp at one point, to a nurse who is kindly allowing me to crush her left hand. She half-smiles, half-winces down at me.

  "Your baby will be here soon, Paige."

  My eyes search the room as I give birth, finding my father's face at the last second. I push one more time when the doctor instructs me to do so, and then it feels like my heart is simultaneously exploding and being crushed as a slippery, tiny, naked creature is placed on my chest. I look down, somehow not quite seeing, and then up again at the medical staff, at my dad.

  "Is it –?" I ask, because it doesn't seem possible. A minute ago there were five people in the room. Now there are six. Now there are six?!

  Again, I look down. This time, I see a face. A very small face, the eyes dark blue and fathomless.

  "Oh my God," I breathe. "Oh my God. He looks just like –" I catch myself. Even at that moment, when I should be free to say and feel everything, I have to catch myself. "He's beautiful," I continue. "He's so beautiful."

  It's not a lie. He – because the child is a boy – is beautiful. And he also, and I have to keep this part to myself, looks so much like his father it takes my breath away. I clutch the baby to my breast and sob for Eirik's absence. He should be here. I sob for happiness, too, because I feel happy. How could I not, holding my baby for the first time?

  ***

  Half an hour later, my son and I are alone in a recovery room, his downy head nestled into my neck. Everything is quiet now, soft, dim. Nurses speak in whispers, the lights are turned down low. I'm besotted. I'm also not thinking.

  A knock at the door.

  "Paige?"

  "Come in," I whisper, beckoning my dad into the room. "Look. Isn't he gorgeous? Look at his little hands!"

  My dad struggles to maintain his composure when I pass the baby to him. "You're right," he agrees. "He's wonderful. Beautiful. They're not going to take him away from you, Paige."

  A sliver of ice cuts through the blissful warmth of a new mom and her baby.

  "How do you know?" I ask, my voice so soft my dad has to lean in close to catch it.

  "I spoke to your friend Emma yesterday," he says. "She came to
the house after visiting you. I didn't think she was making sense, but she was so persistent. I – I called a new lawyer, someone famous – she offered her services a month ago but I turned them down. And then I –"

  "Dad?" I prompt, as my son snuffles in his grandfather's arms. "What?"

  "I called the news," he replies after a long hesitation, eying me like he's afraid this is going to make me angry. Which it would have, weeks ago. Not now. Now I see that my father and I are both on exactly the same page – every single possible thing must be done to keep this baby with me – with us.

  "Not the local news," he continues. "The national news. CNN. They wanted me to do an interview and I, uh – I agreed to it."

  I look up and say one word: "Good."

  "They're not taking him away from you," my father repeats and there is something steely in his voice that I don't remember ever hearing before. "It's not right, I won't let it happen."

  We sit, staring down at our new family member and making plans to keep him with us, for I don't know how long – hours. The new lawyer has been in touch, she thinks my dad should do the CNN interview. I don't want to be dealing with any of it. All I want to do right now is drown in the softness of my baby's skin, the way his expression, when he turns his head a certain way, is exactly the same as one I used to see on his father's face all the time.

  But that isn't how things turn out. When Dr. Lawson barges into the room that evening, after a small commotion and some angry voices I can't quite make out in the hallway outside, I'm expecting it. All the same, my entire body tightens with anxiety and my arms itch to shove her away from the baby as he sleeps in my arms.

  The doctor runs a hand over her hair and gives me the fakest smile I've ever seen. You'd think a psychiatrist would learn how to fake goodwill a little better.

  "Paige!" She says brightly. "How are you doing? I hear the birth went well."