Matt is taking deep breaths, clearly trying to get his anger under control. This is his baby too—he has to understand why I’m doing this. He shouldn’t want the umbilical cord to be squashed either.
I’m about to offer him more of an explanation when I feel something that stops me cold. A tiny poke from inside my abdomen. It almost feels like gas. But it’s different—stronger.
I put my laptop down beside me and place my hand gingerly on my belly, the same way I instructed Matt to do so. I lift my eyes to look at him. “I think I felt the baby kick.”
The anger immediately melts from Matt’s face. “Really?”
“Yes, I think so.” I look down at my relatively flat stomach. Why don’t I have a baby bulge? Lisa was gigantic by this point in her pregnancy. How am I supposed to protect the baby if I can’t even see him? “You can touch as long as you’re gentle.”
He doesn’t argue. He very slowly reaches out with his hand and touches me ever-so-gently. He raises his eyebrows at me.
“Do you feel it?” I ask.
He shakes his head.
I get another poke. “Did you feel that?”
He shakes his head again, but he’s smiling. “No, I guess he’s still too tiny for me to feel.”
“Maybe soon.”
“Yeah, maybe soon.”
Matt gives me this funny grin, then he leans forward and kisses me. And then we’re kissing and I’m not worried about the baby anymore. The baby is okay. He’s surrounded in amniotic fluid, after all. Just as long as Matt doesn’t touch my belly too hard.
Chapter 33: Matt
I’m stuck in The Meeting That Will Not End. We’ve been at it for an hour and there’s no sign we’re leaving any time soon.
I look across the conference table and see my buddy Calvin’s eyes drifting shut. He’s famous for falling asleep in meetings, but he’s got an excuse now with that baby of his still keeping him up most nights. Even at a year old, their baby is still a terrible sleeper. As excited as I am about our baby, I’m not excited about that part. I like my sleep.
I’m having trouble keeping my eyes open too. Anna is sleeping badly lately, which means I’m sleeping badly. And ever since my MS diagnosis, I haven’t had the energy I used to. I can focus on coding, but meetings are a different story. Maybe it’s just my opinion, but I think all meetings are useless. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a meeting where anything was actually accomplished. But this meeting is on a project I’m leading, so I have to pay attention.
“Does that timeline work for you, Harper?”
Jack Rogers, my boss’s boss, is asking me a question. My eyes snap up, trying to replay the last two minutes of the meeting. Shit.
“Well, I’m not sure,” I say, looking down at my watch for no reason aside from the fact that he said the word “time.” There’s no way I can ask Rogers to repeat what he just said. He’s my boss’s boss, for Christ’s sake. You can tell how important he is by how expensive his suit looks.
I’m not even wearing a suit. I’ve got on a blue dress shirt with a tie. And my shirt is wrinkled because Anna decided she might burn the baby with the iron, so she threw it out.
Rogers cocks his head at me, clearly unimpressed. He’s newish here, having only come on two years ago, whereas I’ve been here more than a decade now. He didn’t know me before I was in the wheelchair and I can tell he’s not entirely comfortable with it. After all, if there’s something wrong with my legs, what’s wrong with the rest of me?
“So you don’t think you can have the product ready for beta testing by December first?” he asks me.
December first. Okay, at least now I know what he wants from me. But no, not possible. He has no concept of where we are in this project if he thinks December is even a remote possibility. February, maybe. These higher ups have no clue.
“Very unlikely,” I finally say.
Rogers is frowning at me, a crater forming between his eyebrows. I know what he’s thinking. He’s probably wondering if someone else could do it by December. He’s wondering if my boss made a mistake by putting me in charge of this one.
He didn’t make a mistake though. I’m doing better than anyone else at this company could do. Except maybe Anna.
Maybe.
“What do you need to get this done by December first, Harper?” Rogers asks me. “Would more people on your team help?”
“Uh, how many more people?”
“How many do you need?”
“Uh…” I grab the ballpoint pen I’d been using to haphazardly take notes before I abandoned all pretense of paying attention. I look down at the typed sheet in front of me that I’d put together for the meeting, with all the components of the project and how much is yet to be done. I make a few checkmarks on the sheet for the components already completed, trying to figure out how much I can subdivide the remaining components, when my pen flies out of my hand.
It’s awkward. As always. Everyone is looking at the pen, not sure if they should pick it up for me because they don’t want to assume I can’t do it. But yes, I’d appreciate it if someone picked up the goddamn pen. Except nobody does. Calvin would, but he’s all the way on the other side of the table. And asleep.
“Hang on,” I mutter. I push myself away from the table and do a one-eighty turn, only bumping against the chair next to mine once. I wheel over to where I dropped the pen. I lean forward to pick it up, trying to be as careful as I possibly can, but it’s no use. Picking things up from the floor always sets off a spasm in my legs.
I should’ve just asked someone to pick up the fucking pen. Anyone would have jumped to do it. What the hell is wrong with me? What was I trying to prove?
I grab my right knee, which is jumping like crazy, and I wince at the pain of the calf muscle tightening. I’m glad I can still feel my legs, but sometimes I’m not so glad.
I can’t even bear to look up at Jack Rogers until the spasm has subsided and I’m back at the conference table. When I look at him, he appears so shocked, it’s almost funny.
“So, yeah…” I clear my throat as I look back down at my notes. “If I had another two people, I might be able to manage…” Not December. I shouldn’t promise December. But this guy is looking at me like he thinks I ought to be carted off to the hospital. I have to show him I can do my job. “Christmas?”
Rogers glances at my boss Peter, who shrugs. I can just imagine what Rogers will say to him the second they’re alone:
That Harper guy, he doesn’t look so well. You sure he can manage this?
But Peter will stand up for me. I’m sure of it.
Rogers grudgingly agrees to Christmas, and everyone filters out of the meeting. Everyone except me, because I’m still staring down at my scrap paper, trying to figure out how I’m going to make this work by December 25, even with two extra people on board. And of course, Calvin sticks around, because he’s still too groggy from his nap to get up.
“Good morning,” I say to him as he yawns loudly. “The meeting ended two hours ago.”
“Shut up.” Cal rolls his eyes. “I wasn’t asleep.”
“Sure you weren’t.”
“I wasn’t,” he insists. “I even got to see the epic pen drop.”
“Oh, wonderful.”
“What a bunch of inconsiderate assholes.” He grins at me. “If I were sitting next to you, I would’ve picked it up.”
“Fat lot of good it did me.”
And almost on cue, the pen falls from my fingers again. Cal sees it happen and leaps out of his seat to grab it for me. He’s smiling, but I’m not.
Why the fuck did I drop my pen twice?
And last night at dinner, I dropped my fork.
I get this horrible sick feeling in my gut that I haven’t felt in years. Why am I dropping things? I’m not clumsy. I’m no athlete, but I’m not a klutz. If I’m dropping things, that means…
Shit.
I need to make an appointment to see my neurologist.
Chapter 34: Ann
a
I’m chopping vegetables for dinner when Matt wheels himself into the kitchen. He opens the refrigerator the way he always does, by grabbing the little scarf he tied around the handle so the door doesn’t whack him as it opens. He stares into the depths of the fridge, a frown on his face. For nearly a minute, he doesn’t budge.
“What are you looking for?” I ask him.
He doesn’t answer. He just keeps staring. He’s been distracted this week and I’m not sure why. The baby has been moving quite a bit lately, and I let him put his hand on my belly for sixty whole seconds this morning, but he barely smiled.
“Dinner won’t be ready for at least twenty minutes,” I say, “but you can have some bread if you’re hungry now.”
“I’m not hungry,” he mumbles.
I go back to chopping vegetables. I’m chopping an onion and it’s making my eyes water. I hope the fumes aren’t hurting the baby. But I haven’t read that onions are harmful. Although maybe just in case…
No, I’m sure it’s fine. But I’ll chop quicker.
I slip with the knife and it nicks my finger. I cry out and yank my hand away. Deep red blood oozes from my index finger.
I stare at my wound in amazement. I haven’t slipped with a knife in such a long time. Years. What’s wrong with me? It must be pregnancy affecting my coordination.
What if the slip with the knife had been worse?
What if I accidentally stabbed myself in the belly?
It seems unlikely. But not impossible. My stomach is jutting out now, getting in the way of everything. I’ve slammed doors into my belly. It seems like it would be only too easy for the knife to slip and…
Oh my God.
I back away from the cutting board I’ve been using for the last six years. My hands are shaking, my finger dripping blood onto the tiled kitchen floor.
“Anna?” Matt has torn his attention away from the fridge. “Are you all right?”
“I almost stabbed myself in the stomach,” I manage.
His eyes widen. “What?”
“I mean, I could have.” I shake my head. “I just cut my finger, but I could have stabbed my belly. I could have killed the baby!”
“Killed the baby?” His mouth is hanging open. “What are you talking about? How could you have accidentally stabbed yourself in the belly? That’s…”
He stops himself before he says the word. Crazy. He thinks I’m being crazy. It hurts to know that’s what he’s thinking. I’ve accepted most people believe me to be crazy, even my family, but not Matt. He’s supposed to be the exception.
“I mean it, Matt,” I say. “I could easily stab myself in the belly by accident. I just… I can’t even bear the thought of it…”
My eyes are tearing up. I look at the knife on the cutting board, still damp with onion juice. I can’t believe what I nearly did to myself.
“We have to get rid of all the knives,” I say.
“What?”
“You have to do it,” I tell him. “Get rid of them so I don’t stab myself while I’m collecting them. Just… get them out of the house. Throw them away.”
“You…” Matt is shaking his head, a deep crease between his eyebrows. “You want me to throw away all the knives in the house?”
I nod. “Please.”
“This is ridiculous,” he says. “Listen to me, Anna, you’re not going to stab yourself in the belly. You won’t. You’d never do something like that.”
I hold up my bleeding finger. “Well, I never cut myself while chopping vegetables… and look! And my belly is… well, it’s a big target, you have to admit.”
“Come on…”
“Matt, please.” I swipe tears from my eyes, desperate for him to believe me. “I can’t be in the house with those knives. I can’t.”
He doesn’t believe me. It’s all over his face. He thinks I’m being Crazy Anna. But I’m not. He doesn’t know what I’m capable of. The baby won’t be safe unless all the knives are gone.
“Okay,” he finally says, his voice heavy. “I… I’ll get rid of them.”
And he does. I hide in the living room while he gathers every single knife in the house into a cardboard box, which he stashes way in the back of one of the closets. I can’t even look at those knives after what I almost did to myself. I want him to throw them out, but he won’t do that. He says I might want them again someday.
Chapter 35: Matt
I don’t want to be here.
Even when everything’s okay, coming to Dr. Dunne’s office fills me with dread. My blood pressure shoots up the second I wheel into his waiting room. This is the guy who told me when I was twenty-six years old with nothing worse than a weak ankle that I had a progressive form of multiple sclerosis and I’d be in a wheelchair in five years. And he was right. So I take his words like they’re the words of God.
My last few visits were good. The disease was stable. My legs were mostly paralyzed, but on the bright side, they weren’t getting more paralyzed. I was fine.
Now things aren’t so fine.
Dr. Dunne’s latest cute, blond nurse (I don’t believe it’s a coincidence how the nurses here look anymore) smiles cheerily at me with her fingers poised at the computer in the corner of the room. “So what’s going on today, Mr. Harper?”
“I think…” I take a deep breath. “I think my right hand is… weaker.”
I’m still dropping things. I dropped one of those goddamn knives last night when I was stashing them away so Anna wouldn’t accidentally go on a stabbing spree. I’m still baffled by that one, but I can’t argue with her when she gets like that. Anna needs to give birth and go back on her meds. In the meantime, I’ll indulge her.
The nurse taps on her keyboard while I shift in my wheelchair. She asks me a few more questions about my medications and my general health. I’m in good health except for the MS. So I’m not actually in good health.
She glances at the slippery examining table looming at the level of my shoulders with its crinkly white paper cover. “Do you… you think you can hop on here?”
I almost roll my eyes at her. She must be new. “No.”
Not that I absolutely couldn’t. I could if my life depended on it. But why would I? Dr. Dunne always examines me in my wheelchair.
When she leaves, I’m too nervous to even mess around with my phone. The second I see Dr. Dunne, I’m going to know how bad things are by the look on his face. That guy’s got the worst poker face I’ve ever seen. So when Dr. Dunne enters the room with a frown on his thin face, my stomach sinks into my shoes.
I’m screwed.
“Kaitlyn says you’re having weakness in your right hand,” he states.
I nod.
“How long has this been going on?”
“I’m not sure,” I admit. “Maybe… a couple of weeks?”
“Numbness? Tingling?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Did you injure it?”
I shake my head no.
Dr. Dunne sits down in his rolly chair facing me. He keeps that frown plastered on his face as he stares into my palm. “Can you straighten your fingers, Matt?”
I try. They get straighter, but not completely straight.
“Can you make a fist?”
Dr. Dunne puts his fingers in the middle of my hand and I make a fist around it. I’d become very strong in the last few years, but he’s able to very easily pull his fingers from my grasp. It turns out I’m no longer as strong as I used to be.
He keeps testing me. My left hand isn’t too bad, but he’s still able to get his fingers out easier than I would have thought. When I see him yank his hand free from mine, I get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. It also turns out I can’t spread my fingers apart very well anymore and I can’t feel my fingertips on the right.
“Well, you’re definitely weak,” he says. “On both sides.”
Yeah, no shit.
“Do you think the MS is… progressing?” I ask.
Dr.
Dunne hesitates. I watch his face, my heart pounding. “It’s certainly a strong possibility. Considering you work with computers and push a wheelchair, carpal tunnel is also in the differential, but the pattern of weakness isn’t entirely consistent with carpal tunnel.”
“Right.”
Great. I’m fucked.
“I’m going to order an MRI,” he says, which I knew was coming.
I’ve had lots of MRIs. They’re not pleasant. You’re stuck in a donut hole for an hour with pots and pans banging around your head that are deafening even with the earplugs. How come they can make a gun silent but they can’t make an MRI any quieter?
But I’m not going to complain. At least I don’t have to give birth.
“Okay,” I agree.
I’m going to put this out of my head for now. Anna needs me and I can’t let myself get distracted by this. If the MS is advancing, well, I’ll deal with it when I find out for sure. And just because my hand is weak, that doesn’t mean it’s going to spread to the rest of my arm. Or my other arm. It doesn’t mean I’m going to become some guy who needs a sip and puff wheelchair and needs Anna to feed me.
Shit. This really sucks.
Chapter 36: Anna
Matt is packing his things. He’s throwing all his belongings into a bag on his lap. I watch him, a fist squeezing my heart in my chest until it feels as if it might explode.
“Please stop,” I say. “Don’t do this.”
“I can’t live here another second,” he says as he stuffs a couple of books into the bag. “Not with you.”
“Matt,” I whisper. “Please. I’ll try to do better.”
His brown eyes lift to meet mine. I search those eyes and where there used to be love, there is only ice. He doesn’t love me—not anymore. “You can’t do better. You’re crazy. That’s just who you are.”
“Matt…”
“Crazy Anna,” he mutters, stuffing his laptop into the bag with such vehemence, I’m certain he’s broken it. “This was never going to work out anyway between you and me. I should have seen it from the beginning. My parents warned me about you.”
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