And for that reason, I usually just mumble a hello when I pass them.
“—working from home today,” Laura is saying. “He called to let me know.”
“I don’t blame him,” Nicole says. “I mean, he’s already around her all the time at home—I’m sure he doesn’t want to be at work with her all day too. Can you imagine?”
“Well, he married her! He knew what he was getting into.”
“Maybe he didn’t. Maybe she used to be normal and then she got crazy.”
“No, she didn’t. I talked to Simon about it, and he said she used to be way worse. Like, certifiable.”
“Is it possible to be way worse?”
I may not be as normal as these two secretaries, but I’m not an idiot. I know they’re talking about me. I clutch my phone in my hand and press myself against the wall of the stall, hoping they don’t notice I’m in here.
“It’s so sad,” Nicole sighs. “Matt is such a nice guy.”
“I guess it’s hard for him.” Laura’s voice lowers a few notches. “Being in a wheelchair and all. I’m sure a lot of women don’t… you know…”
“Hey, I’d go out with him if he wasn’t married. He’s cute.”
Laura giggles. “If he wasn’t married? Nicole, do you go out with any men who aren’t married?”
“Stop it! That was just one… okay, two guys.” She lets out a giggle of her own. “What can I say? All the good ones are married.”
“So give ol’ Matt a break,” Laura says. “I mean, how much sex could he possibly be getting? Anna’s so germ-obsessed. She sprays down her cubicle with Lysol, like, literally ten times an hour. I bet he could use an hour of fun.”
I do not literally spray down my cubicle ten times an hour. This is a complete misuse of the word “literally.” I spray it down when I first arrive in the morning and before I leave. And maybe once more.
“Hey, even I wouldn’t hook up with a guy whose wife is preggers,” Nicole says. “That’s pretty low.”
“I can’t even believe she’s having a baby. Can you imagine what that kid’s life is going to be like? She’ll probably wrap it in bubble wrap.”
As the women dissolve into giggles, any comfort I had from my phone call with Matt drains out of me. I can’t believe this is what everyone in the office thinks about me. Well, actually, I can believe it. It’s not surprising at all. But it still hurts to hear it. Everyone thinks Matt just settled for me because he couldn’t get anyone better. They think he’s unhappy with me. They think I’m going to be a terrible mother.
Cold sweat breaks out on the back of my neck and on my palms. I realize a second too late how sweaty my hand has become and watch in horror as my phone slides right out of my hand and onto the floor.
It’s bad enough I dropped my phone. Worse that I dropped it on the floor of the bathroom. And even worse that it’s bounced out of the stall and I’m sure the secretaries now realize someone is in here.
I hold my breath, hoping somehow they’ll just leave and not say anything. But no such luck. I see the phone scooped up off the ground, then the knock on the stall door.
“Um, excuse me?” It’s Nicole’s voice. “I think you dropped your phone.”
My panic is almost overwhelming. It feels like the walls of the stall are closing in on me. I’ve got to get out of here.
“Excuse me?” Nicole says again.
I grab some toilet paper so I can slide the lock open on the stall door without having to touch it. Although I’ve already touched the wall of the stall and my phone has been on the floor. I can’t even think about how awful it all is. I wish I could boil my phone in a pot on the stove.
When I push the stall door open, Nicole’s eyes go wide. She lets out a gasp and takes a step back. Well, at least she has the good grace to seem embarrassed.
“Anna!” Laura says, looking equally ashamed. “I… we didn’t realize you were… in here…”
Nicole is still holding my phone. The screen is cracked, which is fine because I would never use the phone again after it’s been on the floor of the bathroom. I don’t even want to touch it.
“Your phone…” Nicole thrusts it awkwardly in my direction.
I take a step back. “Um, well, it’s cracked, so just… you can throw it out.”
“Throw it out?” Nicole seems astonished, but she shouldn’t be. If a phone’s screen is cracked, you get a new one. That is a completely normal thing to do. Isn’t it? “But… don’t you want it till you can get a new one?”
“No, that’s fine.” I force a smile. “I’ve got a phone at my desk. And, you know, it’s all backed up on the cloud!”
My voice sounds so high and unnatural. Why is it so hard for me to talk to people? It’s so easy for everyone else. Why does everything in my life have to be so hard?
Nicole looks down at my phone doubtfully, but she doesn’t try to give it to me again. I stride past her, over to the sink, where I wash my hands for eleven seconds. But then it turns into twenty-two seconds. And then thirty-three. Soon enough, I’ve lost track of how long I’ve been washing my hands. I can’t stop. I can’t get them clean.
Most germs are not harmful.
My immune system is strong.
I have a husband who loves me very much, and I love him.
It doesn’t work. My stupid mantra is completely useless. It only worked when I had the medications backing me up. Now it’s just meaningless words. Mantra—what a joke.
Nicole and Laura leave me there, washing my hands. The last thing I hear as they push through the bathroom door is Nicole saying, “What the hell…?”
Chapter 31: Matt
Our kitchen sink has been dripping the last two days and it’s driving Anna up the wall, so I’m grateful when Jake shows up at our door with his toolkit and his son. Luke, who propels himself at my leg, immediately yells, “Ride!”
“Hey,” Jake says, scratching at his light brown hair that he keeps shaved about half an inch from his skull. He’s glancing behind me. “Anna here?”
I shake my head no as I help Luke scramble onto my lap. “She doesn’t have work-from-home privileges.”
His shoulders sag. “Good. Because I had a cigarette an hour ago and I was sure she’d smell it on me.”
I laugh. “She definitely would. I thought you quit?”
He grins. “It’s a work in progress.”
Luke tugs at my pants leg eagerly. “Ride, Uncle Matt!”
Luke wants me to take him down the ramp to our front door. Since it’s not a regulation ramp, it’s fairly steep, which means if I give us even a small push, we’ll go fast. He loves it.
“Go for it, Uncle Matt,” Jake says. “I’ll check out the sink.”
Apparently, going down a ramp is my best trick for my nieces and nephews. Luke squeals with delight as we go racing down the ramp at top speed and I get us stopped just before my chair goes careening into the street. Not that there are many cars on our street, but it’s probably still good not to risk getting run over.
We do it about five times before I start getting tired. Because the ramp is steep, it’s hard work to keep pushing both my weight and Luke’s up the ramp over and over. My shoulders are starting to ache as we go up the ramp for the sixth time.
“Again!” Luke yelps. I have a feeling he could do this all day. I’m glad I’m making him happy. Maybe it’ll be okay if I have a son. I’m fun.
“Sorry, buddy,” I say. “I have to take a break. Let’s see how your dad is doing with the sink.”
We go back inside the house, where Jake is putting his tools away. He gives me a thumbs-up with a hand so greasy that I’m glad Anna isn’t around to see it. He struggles to get back on his feet, then washes his hands at a kitchen sink that no longer seems to be leaking.
Luke tugs on my arm. “Wrestle, Uncle Matt!”
I raise my eyebrows at him. “Wrestle?”
Jake rolls his eyes. “Yeah, he saw one match and now he’s obsessed.”
Luke tugs m
y arm more urgently. “Wrestle!”
I grab the wheel of my chair uncertainly. I don’t know what wrestling with a three-year-old entails, but I’m not sure how it would work when I can barely move my legs.
“Wrestle!” Luke whines again.
“Hey, Luke,” Jake says. “Uncle Matt can’t do that with you. I’ll do it.”
I watch Luke and Jake rolling around the ground and roughhousing. I can tell Luke loves it. That kid’s got a ton of energy—it makes me tired just watching him. And seeing the two of them messing around like that in a way I know would be hard for me now is making me really sad. And scared I’m going to be a shitty dad because I won’t be able to do all the stuff with my son that Jake can do with his boys.
After a couple of minutes of this, Jake turns on the TV for Luke and drops onto the couch. He grins at me. “That kid wears me out.”
“Yeah,” I mutter, trying not to feel jealous.
“How about a beer?”
I shake my head. “Anna got rid of them all.”
“You kidding me?”
“She’s worried she’ll drink it by accident and kill the baby.”
Jake snorts into his fists. “Oh wow. I’m so sorry, man.”
I shrug. The beers Anna tossed are the least of my problems right now. I can’t stop thinking about Jake rolling around on the ground with his son, and how much I’m going to miss out on because I’m in this chair. Wrestling is the least of it. What if he wants to play football with me? What if he wants to go to the park and go sledding like I see all the kids doing in the winter? I can’t wheel anywhere around that goddamn hill in the snow. It would be impossible.
“So…” I force myself to smile. “Does Luke want to wrestle… a lot?”
He looks at me curiously before his mouth down into a frown. He gets it. He’s not a dummy. “Hey,” he says, “it’s no big deal if you can’t…”
“Is it?” I sigh and drop my head. “It’s not just the wrestling. It’s… a lot of things. I mean, what if he joins the boy scouts and they go camping?”
He shrugs. “So you’ll go camping. They have accessible camping sites. I’ve seen it.”
“So I’m going to make the whole camp go to some accessible campsite just for me?” I fold my arms across my chest. “And what if there’s some father-son picnic and there are a whole bunch of sports I can’t participate in? Hell, half the places they’d have a picnic, I probably wouldn’t even be able to push my chair.”
“So you get one of those, you know, all-terrain wheelchairs.” He shakes his head. “You’re not the first guy in a wheelchair to have a son. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Matt.” Jake’s voice is low and firm, cutting me off. His steely eyes are looking straight into mine. “Listen, there’s something you don’t know about me. Something I don’t tell many people. Even Anna doesn’t know.”
I stare at him. Jake has become one of my best buddies in the last few years and I don’t know if I want to hear this. Is he sick or something? Dying? Shit, this sounds like it could be serious.
“I’m dyslexic,” he says.
“Oh,” I say.
That’s a relief. I was thinking he was about to tell me he had five years to live. Dyslexic? Well, so what? I’m in a fucking wheelchair. I have multiple sclerosis. I win.
“I know you think it’s not a big deal,” he says, “but let me tell you, it is. I struggled all through school in special ed classes and just barely graduated high school. College wasn’t an option. Think about what your life would be like if you had trouble reading, Matt. What kind of job could you get? I’m always scared shitless for people to find out because I figure they’ll think I’m an idiot. And when Lisa was pregnant…” He sighs and rubs at the stubble on his head. “I kept thinking, how the hell was I going to read my kids bedtime stories? How was I going to help with homework? What were they going to think of me when they found out how much trouble I have with something everyone else can do so fucking easily? I didn’t want my kids thinking their dad is dumb.”
He has a point. If I couldn’t read… well, I don’t know what I’d do. It would suck, that’s for sure. “Does Jayden know?”
He nods. “Yeah. I play it down, but he knows. Lisa helps him with anything that involves reading and I help him with math if he needs it. Luckily, he’s a smart kid and doesn’t need much help. Unlike his old man.”
Jake looks sad in the same way I did a few minutes ago. Now I feel bad for him, even though I’m still pretty sure I have it worse.
“Anyway,” Jake says, “you won’t have anything to worry about because your kid is probably going to be a huge geek like you and Anna. He probably won’t even know what a football is.”
I feel a smile tugging at my lips. “No way. My future son is going to be tough as shit. He’ll be able to kick anyone’s ass.”
“Do you mean he’ll be able to kick anyone’s ass at World of Warcraft? Because I won’t argue with that.”
I laugh because he’s probably right. When I was a kid, I had more fun taking my computer apart than I did playing football. Actually, I don’t think I ever even played football. There were never any father/son picnics where my father could humiliate me with his ineptitude with sports. I only started playing basketball in my twenties when my friend Calvin got me into going with him to the gym.
Maybe this will all be okay. Maybe I’m worrying over nothing. After all, Anna worries enough for the both of us.
Chapter 32: Anna
Matt and I don’t watch a lot of television together, but we do share screen time. When we get home, before I start dinner, I’ll sit on the couch with my laptop and Matt will transfer to the couch so he can be next to me with his own laptop. Then we both do our thing.
It must sound odd to other people, but it makes me feel close to him. If I see something interesting on the computer, I can immediately share it with him. And he does the same. Sometimes we hold hands. It’s nice. We’ve been relatively happy since all our prenatal testing came back normal. We’re having a normal baby boy. Well, “normal.”
Today while we’re sitting together, Matt absently lays his hand on my belly, on the very slight bulge visible only in certain positions. His hand feels nice—warm and comforting and heavy. I look up at him and we share a smile. It’s sweet how excited he is about this baby.
I look down at Matt’s hand. He has a sprinkling of dark hairs on the back of his hand that I’ve always found sexy. He has sexy hands. It’s good because he does so much with his hands now. He can bring me to climax with his hands.
His hand is also heavy.
I hadn’t noticed quite how heavy until this very moment. I think about the fetus growing in my uterus and Matt’s hand resting on top of it. His hand must weigh more than the fetus does! What if he suffocates it? What if his hand is right on the umbilical cord and cuts off the baby’s source of oxygen?
No, that’s stupid. How could a hand crush a baby that’s protected in my womb? That can’t be possible.
Yet when I look down at his hand, it’s suddenly all I can think about.
“Matt?” I murmur. My voice is shaking.
He lifts his eyes and smiles at me. “Uh huh?”
“Do you…” I swallow hard, unable to even get out the words. “Do you think you might hurt the baby by having your hand there?”
He looks down at his hand lying on my belly, then back up at my face. “What?”
“I just mean,” I mumble, “your hand is very heavy so it seems like… don’t you think you might suffocate the baby?”
“Suffocate the baby?” Matt’s looking at me like I’ve lost my mind, although he does lift his hand off my belly. “But the baby can’t breathe yet.”
“Yes, but you could crush the umbilical cord.”
“The umbilical cord is floating in amniotic fluid.”
I glare at him. “Look, it’s not impossible.”
“Find me one article online about a
fetus that was killed by someone putting a hand on the mother’s stomach.”
I sense this isn’t a good idea, but I grudgingly Google, “fetus killed by hand on stomach.” I look at the page of articles that pop up on the screen…
Woman killed her unborn child by stabbing it with knife…
Teacher who killed his unborn baby is sentenced to…
Unborn baby survives being stabbed…
Matt’s eyes widen when he sees what’s on the screen and reaches over to shut the screen of my laptop. “Never mind. Don’t search for anything about fetuses being killed. Ever.”
I take a deep breath. My heart is pounding now. I thought Matt would reassure me and I’d feel better, but it isn’t working. All I can think of is my poor baby, gasping for air in my uterus as the umbilical cord is compressed. “I’m just worried, okay?”
“Yeah, but…” He shakes his head, his eyes glassy. “What do you want me to do? Are you saying I can’t touch your stomach again for the rest of your pregnancy?”
I bite my lip. “Well, you can touch, but very gently. Like, without resting the entire weight of your hand on my stomach.” I gently tap my belly with my fingers. “Like this, see? And also, you can still look.”
I’ve made him angry. I can see it in his eyes. And it’s confirmed when he says, “Are you fucking kidding me, Anna?”
I avoid his eyes. This isn’t what I want. I want him to be able to touch my belly. I love the feel of his hand on the swell of my abdomen. I love the possessive way he touches my belly. It makes me feel so close to him.
But now those feelings are overwhelmed by my fear he’ll hurt the baby.
I hate this. When Matt first asked me out, a long time ago, I told him no. Not because I didn’t find him attractive—I’d been in love with him for years and wanted nothing more than to go out with him—but because I was absolutely terrified. I am so scared of hurting this baby.
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