Shake, Rattle and Roll: The Baxter Boys #4 (The Baxter Boys ~ Rattled)

by Charles, Jane

  I’ve been avoiding my friend for three days. It’s not that I don’t want to spend time with Mary. Hell, I want to unload everything that is going on with me, but until I know if Christian has told the guys, I’m afraid I’ll let it slip.

  These have been the three toughest days of my life. The only break I get from being in my head is when I’m in the ER because usually we are too busy to be thinking about personal crap. Such is not the case today and now Mary is going to be able to question me while counting supplies.

  “So,” she says after closing the door. “What’s going on with you?”

  “What do you mean?” Maybe if I feign ignorance she’ll think everything is fine.

  “You and Christian have both been acting strange.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, Dylan says he’s quieter than usual and he’s pretty sure something is going on, but Christian never tells anyone anything until he’s had a chance to think it through.”

  Or he’s waiting for test results, not that I tell her that. So often I’ve been tempted to check the hospital records to find out what is going on, but I don’t because that’s an invasion of his privacy and Christian was pretty clear that he wants nothing else to do with me. I’d hoped that after everything sank in that he’d call, but I’ve heard nothing. He’s done with me and I’ve got to figure out how do deal with that. Right now, it’s just one day, hour or minute at a time.

  Who would have ever thought that one wild weekend and two weeks of calls and texts would leave me nearly shattered when Christian called it quits and shut me out? I wasn’t prepared, but I should have been a hell of a lot smarter and moved a hell of a lot slower.

  “So, what’s up?”

  I just shrug and grab the puke trays and start counting.

  “Is something going on with you two?” she asks quietly. “Christian’s been home every night, except for that first one.”

  “We split. Not that we were a couple or anything, but we aren’t seeing each other anymore.” I put the puke trays back. “Thirty-six.” Then grab the bedpans.

  Her jaw drops. “Are you serious? Why? I thought you guys were perfect together.”

  “Apparently not.”

  “Was it mutual?” she asks slowly.

  “No. His decision.”

  “Oh, Bethany, I’m so sorry.”

  Mary starts to put her arms around me. She’s a hugger and always has been, and one of the reasons I love her, but if Mary hugs me right now, I’m going to burst into tears and I can’t be doing that if I want to get hired on in this department. I turn my back on her. “Let’s just get stuff counted, okay.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?”

  Yes, I want to scream. I need to talk about it, figure it out and determine what I’m going to do next, but until Christian comes out about his diagnosis, which I’m certain is cancer, not that I’ve been told, I can’t say anything. Not about him and not about me.

  Sarah, another nursing student pops into the storage room. “Guess what, they have new flavors of coffee in the break room.” She holds out a cup. “Hazelnut. Smell the richness.”

  The whiff of coffee barely graces my nose before I’m grabbing a single puke pan.

  When I’m finished, Mary and Sarah just stand there staring at me. “Thirty-five.” I correct and run out of the room. After dumping the puck tray, I head into the bathroom.

  “Bethany, are you okay?” Mary asks as she follows me into the bathroom.

  “Yep.”

  “Maybe you should go home.”

  That’s exactly what I wish I could do. Go home, crawl in bed, pull the covers up and pretend this isn’t happening to me right now. “I’m good. It’s passed.”

  “What’s passed? If you have a virus, you shouldn’t be here.”

  Oh, if only. “Trust me. What I have can’t be caught.”

  Mary snorts. “What. You’re pregnant?”

  When I don’t join her in the joke, her smile slips.

  I got the result yesterday, and still haven’t been able to process it. At least I know exactly when I got pregnant. I’m not that far along and surprised I got sick.

  “Does Christian know? Is that why he’s acting weird.”

  “No.” I wheel around to look at her. “And, he can’t know. Not right now.”

  “But…”

  “Do not tell anyone,” I order.

  “Are you going to tell him?”

  “Yes, but I need to do this on my own and at the right time.”

  “You are going to tell him?” she asks again. “He needs to know.

  Not right now he doesn’t. Christian is too busy processing other things to worry about being a father too. “Yes, I will tell him. Just not today. Not right now, but he will know before I even show, I promise.”

  “Okay,” she says after a moment and then bites her lip like she’s worried.

  “You also can’t tell Dylan or any of the guys. When Christian finds out, it has to come from me and on my terms.”

  She blows out a sigh.

  “Look, I know you and Dylan are close and share everything, but this is my secret. You can’t tell anyone. Promise?”

  At first I’m afraid she’s not going to honor my wishes and then she nods. “Just don’t take too long. I hate secrets.”

  “So do I, but sometimes they are necessary.”

  I turn back to the sink and turn on the faucet and cup my hands for cold water to rinse out my mouth. Then I grab a towel, get it wet and wipe my face. That is the first time I’ve gotten sick since I got my test results. I sure hope it doesn’t become a habit, or it will screw with the last days of school. I need to give a good impression in this department so they hire me, if they are willing to hire a pregnant woman.

  I didn’t come to New York to get pregnant, be alone and without a job, but that just may be exactly what happens. At least my uncle won’t kick me out of the loft, but how the hell am I going to eat and take care of a baby.

  Tears well up and in an instant Mary’s arms are around me.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she assures me. “As soon as you tell Christian, he’ll be over the moon and he’ll take care of you.”

  “We broke up remember,” I remind her. “He broke up with me so I doubt he’ll be taking care of me.” Besides, he won’t be in any condition to take care of anyone but himself for a while, and the very reason he can’t know yet. One of the reasons at least.

  Had he not shut me out, he might already know, but he lost that privilege when he turned me away. He’ll learn only when I’m prepared to tell him.

  37

  “Are you ready?” Sean asks as we get off the subway.

  “Not really.” I don’t think I’ll ever be ready, but the guys need to know. They deserve to know and I’d be pissed as hell if they kept something like this from me. Well, now I wouldn’t, but if I didn’t have cancer and they did and kept it quiet, I’d be pissed. “Everyone is going to be there?”

  “Yep. I even told Alyssa to get the night off.”

  “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “Like she is going to want to run out of there. She’d have to be at work in half an hour.”

  Sean’s got a point.

  Prognosis and plan are not bad, if losing a testicle and getting radiation can be called not bad. But, the doctor is sure the cancer hasn’t spread and the radiation is a precaution in case it has and wasn’t picked up on the other scans. With recovery from the surgery and radiation, I should be back to normal in about six weeks to two months, depending on if he decides to take lymph nodes during surgery. That’s really not that much time when dealing with something like cancer. I thought it would be weeks, months, maybe a year, with chemo and all of that, and possibly death. That was the very reason I broke away from Bethany. I didn’t want her to go through that with me.

  Of course, I’ll still have months and possibly years of follow up exams and blood tests to make sure it doesn’t
come back, but all in all, it’s a decent result because we caught it early.

  No. Bethany caught it early and how do I thank her? By breaking up.

  It’s probably the stupidest thing I’ve done. I should have waited to find out how serious this was and then make that decision. Instead, I bolted when things got bad. For me, not her, because I wanted to protect her, and I probably lost the best thing that has ever happened to me in my adult life.

  Sean opens the door and I step inside. Everyone is here. Alex, Dylan, Zach Ryan, Mia, Alyssa, Zoe, Kate, Joy, Mary and Kelsey, Nina and her boyfriend, Tex. This is my family. The ones I keep shutting out and I don’t deserve them either.

  “So, what’s going on?” Dylan asks.

  And for the first time since this all began, my eyes start to tear.

  Sean pats me on the shoulder as he passes. “Go easy.” His tone is serious.

  Everyone at the table shares a concerned look.

  I open my mouth to tell them, but nothing comes out. I’m choked up with emotions I didn’t know were buried. A combination of fear of what is to come and relief that it isn’t a certain death sentence, and the fear that all of my future children have now been frozen. The doctor assured me that they do the best to shield the healthy testicle during radiation, but as a precaution, I was sent to the fertility clinic today, where I made a deposit in case I end up sterile when this is done. The nurse assured me that there were plenty of healthy swimmers and I should be good.

  Should be. What if there is a power outage or something and they die?

  All I’ve ever fucking wanted was children. Someone of my blood, and I might not ever get that.

  Sean pours a glass of whisky and hands it to me. “Do you want me to do it?”

  “How serious is this?” Ryan asks.

  Serious enough that I’m drinking whisky instead of beer. If Sean’s demeanor and tone wasn’t enough indication of the weightiness of this discussion, then my drink of choice is.

  “Bethany found a lump in Christian’s right testicle Sunday night.”

  The girls gasp, but it isn’t because Bethany was touching my testicles and they’ve probably figured out the rest.

  “She got him set up with an oncologist on Monday and he’s been having tests since. He got the result today.”

  “He took you with him?” Dylan asks.

  “I cornered him.” Sean shoots me a look because he’s still pissed that I didn’t say anything before now. “Once I got it out of him what was going on, I went with him because he didn’t need to be alone.”

  “He shouldn’t have been alone in any of this,” Zach says

  I close my eyes and take a sip. They are right and I knew I’d get shit.

  “But Bethany was with you, right?” Alyssa asks.

  “They split,” Mary says.

  I meet her eyes, as Dylan turns to her in surprise.

  “What? She just told me today. I had to corner her because she’s been acting weird.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Dylan asks.

  “I figured Christian would since Sean said he wanted a meeting. I figured it would come up.”

  “Wait.” Mia stands and looks like she’s about to take somebody’s head off. “Bethany finds a lump, gets you a doctor and then breaks up with you?”

  “It wasn’t like that.” I better calm Mia down before the girls go after Bethany for what they assume is shitting on me.

  “He split from Bethany, not the other way around,” Mary answers.

  Mia looks back at me and then her eyes narrow. “Let me guess. You didn’t want her to go through this and cut her lose.”

  “Something like that.”

  She sits down still shaking her head. “You’re such a shit.”

  “I agree,” Mary says. “Bethany has been a mess all week. Probably worried about you, even though you shut her out.”

  Great. Not only do I feel bad about not telling my friends, now they’re going to give me shit about Bethany. “Thanks for the sympathy.”

  “When are you going to stop being alone and get out of your head?” Ryan asks. “We are family.”

  “I’m sorry. I was scared.”

  “The very reason you should have said something,” Joy points out.

  “I know. Really, I do.” I take a sip of the amber liquid. It burns a trail down my throat. “These were the three longest and suckiest days in recent memory and I won’t do that again. I promise.”

  And I won’t. I have friends and a family and I need to just stop shutting people out. You’d think I’d get over being a loner by now, but I haven’t. Even in a room full of my best friends, I’ve often felt alone. But not tonight. Even though they are giving me shit, I can see in their eyes how much this news has upset them.

  “So, what’s the prognosis, treatment, and all of that?” Alex asks.

  “Surgery on Monday. They are going to take out the right testicle, then three or four weeks of radiation.”

  “It didn’t spread?” Zach asks.

  “Not that they can tell.”

  “But you’ll lose one of your balls?”

  “Not exactly.” At least not in the way I imagined. “The doctor will make an incision around the pubic bone and go in and get the testicle that way.”

  “Oh, so they don’t just cut it off.”

  “No, Zach, they don’t.” Even though I thought that is what would happen. I should have read more about the surgery than I did.

  “Kids. Future kids?” Dylan asks, his eyes meeting mine. He’s the one person I told about my dream of a house, six kids and a white picket fence.

  “They try to protect the other one, but just in case they can’t, I had sperm frozen if I ever find a wife.”

  “Well, if you keep dumping them when things get difficult for you, that isn’t going to happen,” Alyssa says.

  “Point taken.” Not that I’ll ever find anyone as perfect as Bethany, and I fucking blew that.

  “It all make perfect sense now,” Mary says as she comes into the locker room.

  “What does?”

  “Why you haven’t told Christian.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I say slowly.

  Mary rolls her eyes. “He told everyone about the cancer last night.”

  Relief flows through me as I blow out a sigh. “Finally.”

  “That’s what you’ve been holding in, along with your secret baby.”

  “You make it sound like a soap opera.”

  She snorts. “You are kind of caught up in one now.”

  She does have a point and it’s exhausting. I’m exhausted. That probably wouldn’t be the case if I wasn’t so worried about Christian and wondering how I’m going to raise a child on my own. “Did they find it anywhere else? Has it spread? What are the plans for treatment?”

  “Hold up. Give me a minute.” She opens her locker and puts her purse inside, before shutting and locking it.

  “It didn’t spread. Surgery is Monday. Some radiation as a precaution and he should be all good.”

  If I wasn’t relieved before, I certainly am now. He’s going to be okay. It was caught in time and he’s going to live.

  “So, how long are you going to wait?”

  “For what?”

  “To tell him,” she says as if I should already know what she’s talking about. I did of course, I just don’t have an answer.

  “Not until he’s done with treatment.”

  “That is a few months yet.”

  “I’m also in the first trimester, we both know that things can go south early.”

  She snorts. “You’re just making excuses now.”

  “Perfectly acceptable ones,” I argue. “Let Christian get through surgery and radiation and let me through the first three months, and then we’ll revisit.”

  “Three months?” she practically yells. “I can’t keep that kind of secret from Dylan, not when the father of your baby is one of his best friends.”

  This is what I fear
ed when Mary found out. Loyal to a fault, and kind and sweet, but I’m asking her to keep something from the man she’s in love with.

  “When he finds out that I knew and never said anything, he’s not going to be happy.”

  “Remind him that it wasn’t your secret to tell.”

  “It’s one of his best friends.”

  “And I thought you were my friend.” I hate putting her in this position, but Christian cannot find out under any circumstances. “He’ll understand when he hears my reasoning. It’s only until Christian is done with the radiation. That is all. He’s got too much on his plate right now to be worrying about becoming a father.”

  She stares at me and I can see the indecision in her blue eyes, the war that must be going on in her mind between the right and wrong of the situation. “I’ll agree to wait until after surgery, but then we will discuss this again.”

  “Mary,” I start to beg. “You can’t say anything.”

  “I’ll tell you first before I do.”

  My stomach tightens.

  “We’ll talk about it again next week, but not another word until then.”

  “Next week, but that is all I’m promising for now.”

  We leave the locker room and head to the nurse’s station.

  “Hand laceration in 5.” The nurse says and then turns to Mary. “Kid with a marble in his nose in 10.” I head off to the assigned room, hoping it will be a busy day and praying that Mary keeps her word.

  I stop just inside the cubicle and pump some sanitizer into my hand. “Hi, I’m Bethany” I say as I am looking up and stop.

  Sean is sitting on the end of the bed, a bloody towel wrapped around his hand. He’s grinning at me. In the chair is Ryan, also grinning at me.

  “All the hospital rooms in New York and you walk into mine,” Sean says.

  I roll my eyes and cross to the bed. “What did you do?”

  “Idiot wasn’t paying attention and the table saw got him,” Ryan answers.

  “If you weren’t talking so much I would have been able to concentrate on what I was doing,” Sean argues back.

  I don’t know them. Not really, but they are Christian’s roommates and good guys, from what I could tell.

  “Where and how?” I ask as I start to remove the towel.