In the Woods

by Robin Stevenson

  “Hi, you’ve reached Nancy, emergency room social worker for…”

  Recorded message. I hang up. Crap, crap, crap. I grab a clean pair of sweats from Katie’s room and head back down the hall to the washroom. My heart is banging away, my palms sweating, my stomach in knots. I knock on the bathroom door.

  “Go away,” Katie says.

  I turn the handle. She’s locked it.

  “Katie. Let me in.”

  There’s no answer.

  “Katie. If you don’t let me in, right now, I’m calling an ambulance.” I wait a couple of seconds. “I mean it.”

  There’s a silence, a pause. Then the door opens. Katie’s paler than ever, her freckles standing out like grains of pepper against her white skin, her forehead and upper lip beaded with sweat. “I don’t feel good,” she says.

  “I’m taking you to the hospital,” I say.

  “What about Mom? What are you going to tell her?”

  I haven’t thought this through. “That you’re sick?”

  She starts crying again, and I get this glimmer of how she must feel—this sense of her world falling apart, of all the pieces crashing down around her. My chest feels tight. “Katie,” I say, “it’s all going to be okay.” I don’t believe this, but I say it anyway.

  Grandma Bess, Dad’s mother, used to have this embroidered picture on her wall that said This Too Shall Pass. I always thought it was a depressing saying, but it comes to mind now—like maybe if we can just hang on, if Katie can just get through this, that there might be life somewhere on the other side.

  “I can’t do this,” she says.

  “You don’t have a choice.”

  She leans against the wall.

  “Let’s go,” I say. I open the bathroom door and hold out my hand to her. “Right now, or I really will call an ambulance.”

  To my surprise, she takes my hand and follows me willingly, and I wonder if, somewhere deep down, she is relieved to have someone else making the decisions.

  “There you are,” Mom says. She sounds irritated. “Were you planning on coming back to actually eat your dinner, Katie?”

  “Mom, Katie’s sick,” I say. “I’m going to take her to the hospital.”

  Mom puts down the dishtowel and one hand flies up to her mouth, fingertips pressed against her lower lip. “What’s wrong?”

  I look at Katie. She doesn’t say anything. “I don’t exactly know,” I say.

  It’s only half a lie.

  “I’m bleeding,” Katie says. Her voice is a whisper.

  Mom looks at her. “God. You look awful, Katie.”

  “Can I take your car?” I say.

  Mom stares at me. “If Katie really needs to go to the hospital, I’ll take her.

  But Katie…is it just a bad period? Why don’t you go lie down for a while? I’ll bring you a heating pad.”

  I shake my head. “Mom, she needs to go to the hospital. Seriously. Can I take the car?”

  She gives me a strange look. “Is this some weird twin thing? Like when you were six and you got lost and Katie knew where you were?”

  “Something like that,” I say. I don’t even remember that incident, but if it helps… Mom shrugs, torn between irritation and worry. “Fine, then. I’ll come too.”

  Mom drives. No one talks much in the car. Fortunately, the hospital isn’t that far, because the silence is pretty uncomfortable. Also, Katie looks like hell. She’s in the backseat, and I keep twisting around to look at her, but she won’t meet my eyes. Mom seems annoyed, like we’re totally overreacting, but I’m not going to be the one to tell her the truth. I figure that’s Katie’s decision to make.

  When we get to the hospital, Mom and Katie go up to the reception desk. I hang back, clench my hands into fists and try to breathe evenly. I hadn’t quite realized how scared I was, but as soon as we walked into the emergency room, I felt the weight of my fear start to lift a little. It’s a huge relief to know that no matter what kind of mess this ends up in, at least Katie will be taken care of. At least she won’t bleed to death alone in our bathroom.

  The emergency room is pretty quiet: a couple of old men sitting reading magazines, a skinny haggard-looking guy pacing back and forth restlessly, a dark-haired woman with a toddler whimpering in her arms. The last time I was here, I was holding Katie’s baby in my arms.

  I can’t believe that was only last night.

  Chapter Fourteen

  After a few minutes, Mom comes and sits down beside me. Katie goes to the washroom. When she comes back, she picks up a battered copy of People magazine and pretends to read it.

  Mom crosses her legs and sighs. “I’m sure that nurse thought we were overreacting. Honestly. I bet we’ll be here for hours.”

  I sneak a sideways glance at Katie. She doesn’t look up. She hasn’t told them a thing. I’ve relaxed too soon: she won’t bleed to death at home alone, but apparently she’s quite prepared to bleed to death right here in the emergency room. “I’ll be back in a minute,” I say. I walk in the direction of the washrooms, but I don’t stop there. I head right past them, down the hallway to Nancy’s office. The door is closed, so I knock, and to my surprise, she answers.

  “I’m just on the phone with someone.

  Can I…” She breaks off and steps into the hall. “Cameron, right?”

  “Yeah. Good memory.”

  She just waits, eyebrows slightly raised, face calm and serious.

  “My sister’s in emergency,” I say.

  “Can you…can you make sure someone sees her soon? She’s…she’s bleeding.”

  “Ohh.” She nods, blinks, nods again.

  “You’d better come in.” She tells whoever is on the phone that she’ll call them back. Then she turns to face me. “Your sister… that was her baby you brought in?”

  “Yes. I didn’t…” I was going to explain that I hadn’t known that at the time, but it no longer matters. “She’s bleeding. A lot. I got her to come in, but… well, our mom’s here too.”

  Her face is carefully expressionless. “Your mom doesn’t know.”

  It doesn’t sound like a question, but I answer it anyway. “Katie doesn’t want her to find out.”

  Nancy shakes her head. Then she picks up the phone. “Margo? It’s Nancy. Is there a teenage girl there with her mother? Yeah…No, I don’t think that’s all it is…Yeah, I know…Remember that baby that was brought in last night? Yeah…No, the mother doesn’t know. Can you get her seen fast? I think she might be having a postpartum hemorrhage.”

  When Nancy gets off the phone, she turns to me. “You know, Katie isn’t going to be able to keep this a secret.”

  I’d figured that much out. “So what’s going to happen?”

  “First thing is to get your sister taken care of,” she says. “Then we’ll go from there.”

  “Will you call the police?”

  She shakes her head. “Not my job.

  Child welfare is already involved, of course—the baby will be placed in a temporary foster home. She doesn’t need to be in hospital; she can go as soon as arrangements are made. Now, though…”

  She shrugs. “Well, I’ll let them know about your sister. They’ll want to talk to her.”

  “And they’ll call the police?”

  “Cameron…” Nancy looks at me seriously. “They might have to. I don’t know exactly what will happen. But no matter what, you did the only thing you could do.”

  I hope she’s right.

  “Do you want to go back to the emergency room? Katie probably is being seen by a doctor, but you could go sit with your mom…”

  I shake my head. “I don’t want to be the one to tell her, and it’s too weird, with her not knowing. She was trying to get Katie to take a Midol and lie down, and I was freaking out thinking she might die.”

  “You can stay here for a few minutes, if you want,” she says. “I’m going to go see how things are going with your sister.”

  When Nancy’s gone, I pull out my c
ell phone and call Audrey again. This time she picks up.

  “Audrey? It’s me. Cameron.”

  “Hey, Cameron. What’s up?” She sounds surprised to hear from me.

  “I’m at the hospital. I just wanted…”

  I don’t know what I want to tell her, or what I want her to do. I’m not even sure why I called her.

  “Are you okay?” She drops her voice to a whisper. “Is the baby okay?”

  I suppress a flicker of irritation. “The baby is fine. It’s Katie.”

  “Oh…Jeez. What happened?”

  “She’s pretty sick, I guess. Mom’s here too, but she still doesn’t know.”

  I swallow a lump in my throat. “It’s going to be a huge mess.”

  “Oh. Wow. That’s…” She trails off.

  “Are you alone? Or is someone else there with you?”

  “Um, Dexter’s here. He’s playing some game online. You know…wizards and dragons and all that. I’m not that into it. I was just reading.”

  Dexter’s there. Of course he is. I can’t help feeling disappointed though. I don’t know what I expected—that she’d come rushing to the hospital and somehow, magically, help me get through this. I mean, I know she has a boyfriend. I know we’re just friends, and barely even that.

  “I guess I better let you go,” I say.

  “Cameron, do you need…do you want us to come? Dexter has his car here— we could be there in ten minutes.”

  I almost laugh. “Nah. Thanks. But, you know…I don’t really want anyone else to know about this.”

  I can hear her smacking her forehead. “Duh. Sorry. Of course you don’t.” There’s a brief pause. “Cam? Do you want me to come? ’Cause I know Dex would let me borrow his car, no questions asked.”

  I really want to hate that guy, but I just can’t do it. “Nah. That’s okay. I just wanted to tell you.”

  “You sure?” “Yeah, I’m sure. I’ll call you later.” I hang up, feeling better already. She’s

  willing to leave her perfect boyfriend to come hang out at a hospital with me.

  Not that I’m reading too much into that, but I’m pretty sure it means we’re at least friends. That she gave me a second chance, and I haven’t blown it yet. And who knows. Maybe she’ll get tired of having a perfect boyfriend.

  I know how hard it can be to be around someone who is always perfect.

  I’m thinking that maybe perfect is over-rated, and for the first time I wonder what it has been like for Katie, always having to be the perfect one. I wonder what it will be like for me and her, after we get through all this. I wonder whether things will ever go back to the way they were.

  I wonder whether we’ll want them to.

  Chapter Fifteen

  There’s a knock, and the door slowly swings open. I half stand up, wondering if Nancy has seen Katie.

  Nancy steps through the door. Mom is right behind her.

  I sink back into the chair. I look from one of them to the other, wondering what has happened, what has been said, what Mom knows. Wondering how much trouble I’m in. Then an awful thought flashes into my mind. “Katie?” I say. My voice comes out as a croak. “Is she okay?”

  Nancy nods quickly. “She’s getting excellent care, and the doctor says she should be just fine.”

  “Oh. Good. Then…” I look at Mom. Her face is pale and strained, nose swollen, eyes puffy and pink-rimmed, her usual mascara washed off. “I guess you talked to Katie.”

  Nancy answers for her. “The doctor met with your mother and Katie together. Katie told your mom about her pregnancy.”

  “And…”

  She nods. “And about the baby.”

  I look at Mom. “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too,” she says. She starts to cry again. “How could I not have known? My own daughter…under my roof! I don’t understand this.”

  Nancy leads Mom to a chair, and she collapses into it. Nancy slides a box of tissues across the table toward her. “It’s a big shock,” she says.

  Well, duh.

  Mom looks at me. “Thank God you found the baby.”

  “Katie made sure I did,” I say. As I say it, I realize that’s what I will tell anyone who asks. There’s no need for anyone to ever know how easily it could have ended differently. I guess now that’s all I can do to protect Katie. I hope it is enough.

  “You mustn’t blame yourself,” Nancy tells my mom. “This happens more often than you would think.”

  “Katie says she didn’t even know she was pregnant,” Mom tells me.

  I nod. “I know. She told me that too. But I don’t really get how that’s possible.”

  “It’s called dissociation,” Nancy says. “She may have sometimes suspected it, but the idea was so frightening—so unacceptable—that she pushed it right out of her consciousness.” She opens a drawer of her filing cabinet and rifles through some papers. “I’ve got some information for you about it that you might want to look at later. But basically, she is telling you the truth. She really didn’t know.”

  “And then, when she realized she was…she was in labor…” Mom wipes her eyes with a tissue.

  “She panicked,” Nancy says. “She drove to a place she could be alone, she delivered the baby…”

  “And left it in the woods,” Mom says flatly. She starts crying again.

  “And told me,” I say quickly.

  Mom nods and sniffs. “Thank God.” She looks at me, then at Nancy. “It’s so hard to believe this. Katie’s never been in trouble at all, she’s a straight-A student, an athlete…”

  “Yeah, she’s pretty much perfect,” I say. I try not to sound bitter, but it’s a bit much, after everything that has happened, to have to listen to Mom listing Katie’s achievements.

  “I can see how that might make it hard for her to admit to herself that she was pregnant,” Nancy says. “You know, often these girls are high achievers. They’re kids who don’t want to disappoint their parents, who are afraid of rejection.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Mom says quickly. Too quickly. “I’d never reject my kids. Never.”

  “Of course not,” Nancy says. “But subconsciously, maybe she didn’t want to let you down.”

  There’s a long silence. I don’t know what Mom is thinking, but what Nancy is saying makes sense to me. If you are already seen as a bit of a screw-up, what’s one more problem? But if your whole life is constructed around being perfect… well, I can see how an unplanned pregnancy would mess that up.

  I watch the second hand ticking on the large white clock above Nancy’s desk and I think about the baby that is at the center of all this. Even though I held her and everything, she doesn’t seem quite real to me—not like an actual person—but, of course, she is. I think about Audrey and her questions about her own birth mother. A missing piece, she had said. I know she’s right. This baby does have a right to know, someday, about all of this. Katie’s baby, my niece, Mom’s granddaughter.

  “Can I see the baby?” I ask Nancy. For some reason, I’m blinking back tears myself. “Just, you know, to know she’s okay?”

  Mom looks startled. “I’d like to see her too. Can we?”

  Nancy nods. “I’ll take you up to the neonatal unit. Come on.”

  The baby is even smaller than I remem-bered. Nancy picks her up, and I lift up my arms, but she hands her to Mom instead.

  Mom holds her a little stiffly, away from her body, and looks down at the little face. It’s a bit squashed-looking, sort of puffy, with creases around her eyes. Not exactly cute.

  “She looks just like you did,” Mom says. “Just like you.”

  Huh. I take a closer look. “She’s tiny.”

  Nancy laughs. “She’s almost eight pounds. Nothing tiny about her.”

  Mom touches the baby’s cheek with her fingertips. “So soft.” Her eyes are suddenly teary again. “If Katie changes her mind…if she wanted to keep the baby…would there be any chance of that?”

  Nancy perches on the edge of
a long table. “I honestly can’t say. That would be for a judge to decide.” She sighs. “If she’d abandoned the baby at a hospital or handed it to someone instead of leaving it where she did, the situation would be very different.”

  “She made sure I’d find her,” I say quickly. “You know that.”

  She nods. “That would be in her favor, for sure.”

  We are all quiet for a long moment, all of us looking at the baby. Mom hands her to me, and I hold her against my chest and remember riding my bike with her tucked inside my jacket, listening to her breathing and praying she would live. “Good luck, little baby,” I say.

  I’m pretty sure Katie won’t change her mind, but before we leave, I snap a quick photo with my cell phone. Maybe it’ll help Katie to know that the baby really is okay.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Mom and I sit in the emergency room together. We don’t talk much. Every so often Mom shakes her head and says she still can’t believe this, or wonders aloud what will happen. At one point she gets up and leaves a message for a friend who is a lawyer.

  “She’ll call back,” Mom says. “She’ll know what we should do.”

  I nod, relieved. She’s going to do her best to protect Katie too. “I didn’t know how you’d react to this.”

  “I don’t know how to react,” she says. “Katie…well, I’ve always worried about her.”

  I raise my eyebrows. “Come on. She’s always been perfect. I’m the one who screws up.”

  “No.” Mom shakes her head. “You’ve had your challenges at school, but you’ve always been yourself. Katie doesn’t have that confidence. She’s always needed to be perfect.” She looks at me. “I tried to tell her she was, but maybe that wasn’t the best way to handle it.”

  I squirm in my seat and look across the room at a couple of little kids who are tussling over a picturebook. “I don’t know,” I say. “I always thought she really was.”

  Mom gives a sad laugh. “Goddamn Brian,” she says. “If I’d handled that differently, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.”

  I catch my breath. We never talk about Brian.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself,” she says. “For not protecting you two.”