“You okay, buddy?” she called from across the ice.
David stayed on all fours, and I heard the sound, a grinding almost, a shift in the way he was balanced. A sway and dip, then the crack of the ice beneath him. I gave a shout and threw off my coat, heading onto the ice.
“Stay back! You’ll break the ice with your weight!” Jessica shouted, speeding toward him.
I saw him plunge into the dark water with a cry. She lay down on the ice at full length, her arm reaching into the hole where David had disappeared under the water.
She called his name. She reached and waited for him to bob up again. I held my breath till my lungs were bursting and still he didn’t come back up. She went in after him. Before I could say a word. Before I could reach them. Jessica went under.
That was it. I had understood the wisdom of my staying off the ice at first, but with both of them in icy water, I wasn’t standing by to watch. I went around the edge carefully until I was at the side nearest where they’d gone in, the fractured blackness in the smooth blue white surface of the ice. I set off for the hole. I heard water slopping against the ice and wondered if they were moving under there, if she had him. I peered in, hearing the ice splinter beneath me every time I moved an inch.
“David!” I screamed! “David! Jess!”
I stripped off my glove, probing beneath the water for any sign of them. The frigid water numbed my hand until I couldn’t tell if I struck anything or not. I gasped when I saw my son’s soaking head pushed up through the hole. He coughed and gasped as I grabbed him and dragged him to the edge of the pond. I got him safely there, God knows how. I peeled his wet clothes off, wrapped him in my puffy jacket, put my gloves on him and my hat. Then I turned to see where Jessica was.
She hadn’t come out of the water. She had saved my son, but she hadn’t been able to get herself out. I saw her hand, her sopping wet mittened hand scrabbling weakly for purchase on the jagged ice. I gave David my phone and dialed 911. He wasn’t able to talk to them, but they’d damn sure come when they got a call. In case I didn’t get her out safely, in case things went wrong, I needed to know help was on the way for David.
I struck out across the ice gingerly, praying it didn’t give way. I talked to her the whole time.
“I’m coming for you. Hang on, Jess,” I said through my teeth. I got close and then I stretched out to distribute my weight across the ice as much as I could. I grabbed her wrist, seized it hard and jerked. Her shoulder and head came up out of the hole in the ice. I hitched a hand under her armpit and dragged until I had her out of the water except her feet. Then I backed up inch by inch, hauling her with me, hoping the ice held. I pulled her the opposite direction from where I’d left David, hoping the ice was stronger there. I was breathing hard, gasping, so cold, stricken by her pale face, her refusal to wake up when I got her to shore. I heard sirens.
I picked her up and carried her around the shore over by David, ripped off my sweater and tried to dry her face and get layers of icy clothing off of her. When the paramedics came, I let them take her to the ambulance. David and I rode in the second one. In the ER, they warmed him with blankets, took his temperature. He drank two mugs of hot cocoa after puking up some pond water and he was on the mend. I was thankful beyond words. I lay on the bed holding him.
“I’m going to check on Jessica. I’ll be right back,” I said.
“Okay, I’ve got cartoons,” he said, “Tell her thank you for saving me.”
“I will,” I promised.
I went to the nurse’s station and inquired after her, “Jessica Cunningham. She saved my son’s life out on that pond. How is she?”
“Are you a relative?”
“She’s a family friend,” I said, “She’s my son’s nanny. She has no other next of kin.”
It sounded so superficial, when that wasn’t all she was to us. She was so much more. She’s my wife, is what I wanted to say. I had to bite back the words.
I would have to say those words to Jessica first. She deserved to hear them. I hoped she would live to hear them.
“She hasn’t regained consciousness. Her body temperature was dangerously low, which we refer to as hypothermia. Her pupils are equally responsive, so it’s unlikely she struck her head under the water, but we don’t know yet how the hypothermia will affect the pregnancy.”
“The pregnancy?” I repeated.
The nurse turned back to her computer.
“Can I see her?”
“She has been moved to the ICU. That’s on floor six.”
“My son is in ER still. I can’t leave him. When he’s released can we go see her?”
“No children under fourteen on that floor,” the nurse said.
“I’ll figure something out.”
I called Mrs. Henderson at the house and asked her to call a car and come to the hospital, that David was okay but I needed her to watch him for a few minutes so I could check on Jessica. I waited with David, who was mad about being banned from the sixth floor.
“If you have a marker I can make a mustache. Then they’ll let me in,” he insisted.
“Buddy, you’re not even four feet tall. No one is gonna believe you’re an adult,” I told him.
“Will she be okay? She gets to come home, right?”
“I don’t know. If she’s in ICU I bet they’re going to keep her for a few days. Just to make sure she’s doing okay.”
I sat there while he watched cartoons and heard the word pregnancy over and over in my mind. Was that why she was quitting? Did she even know she was pregnant? Had she been afraid to tell me?
Something inside me unlocked or melted. I was restless, desperate to get to her. I needed her, and couldn’t live without her. I wanted her. I wanted the baby. All of it. I ached to hold her hand, to tell her the truth about how I felt.
When Mrs. Henderson arrived, I kissed David’s head and told him I’d be back. Mrs. Henderson had brought the iPad for him, and he was playing happily when I left them together.
Impatiently I rode the elevator and demanded her cubicle number from the nurse. When she asked how I was related to the patient I said, “I am the father of her child. We’re having a baby.”
There was a thrill to those words, but the fear of losing her was so strong that I couldn’t stop to think about the joy they gave me. I had a powerful need to fix things, to correct what I had set in motion with my fear. I could lose her, lose our child because I wouldn’t claim them. Because I turned her away, again and again.
I came to the glassed in cubicle where she lay, small and hooked to wires and tubes on a narrow bed with plastic rails hemming her in on either side.
“God, Jessica,” I said, words leaving me as I went to her, breathless and more scared than I had ever been. “I need you. I should never have let you go or pushed you away. I was such an idiot. I could have ruined everything. This could be the miracle that brings you back to me, that I can finally see how precious you are to me, how I don’t want to live another day without you. Come back to me, to us. To the man who loves you. To our children—to David and the baby. Please. Jess, please, I’m begging you.”
I sat beside her as they changed her warming blankets and monitored her blood pressure and took her temperature. They added a vitamin drip to her IV fluids. I spoke to the doctor who said she was consulting with the high risk OB/GYN on the case.
“Provided we get her temperature stabilized, the fetal heart rate should increase back into normal range. Her blood pressure has improved since she was admitted. She should regain consciousness in the next few hours. She expelled a great deal of the water in her lungs and stomach when she was down in ER, and her respiration is good.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Are you David?” she inquired.
“No. Why?”
“The only time she stirred and spoke was after vomiting up water. She asked for David.”
“That’s my son. She saved him from drowning,” I said, choking out the word
s.
“Just stay beside her, son, let her hear your voice,” she told me.
I nodded, unable to speak. When the doctor left, I took Jessica’s hand in both of mine, kissed her fingers, “I love you, Jessica,” I said, “Come back to me.”
I sat there for what seemed like an eternity, in that cold room listening to the pump and whine of medical devices, the grind and beep of the blood pressure cuff monitoring her every ten minutes. The nurses took her temperature and murmured encouraging things to me. I kept my eyes trained on Jessica’s pale, lifeless face. I couldn’t look away.
I had so many regrets.
I had been cold and formal with her from the moment we met at the diner. Even when she generously offered to care for my child, I was no friendlier, not grateful in any human way. I had given her a higher salary to salve my conscience because I knew I treated her unfairly. When she was with me in my bed, I didn’t let her stay the night. I acted as if she were a stranger, someone I didn’t want in my home, someone I didn’t want to wake up with.
Then when she called me, when she found the courage to ask me what was going on when I stopped speaking to her, stopped treating her like the closest person to me in the world, my best friend, my lover, the only woman I’d ever truly loved—I had refused to talk about it. Childish and fearful of how it would feel to lose her, I had left her before she could leave me. I was disgusted with myself. With how I had abandoned her. How I had unwittingly abandoned our child as well. She should never have had to feel rejected, to feel that I didn’t want her and treasure her. That she had a moment of fear that I would not want our child made me physically sick.
She had brought me to life, shown me what it was to truly love a woman. She had saved David’s life at the risk of her own. I had failed her in every way. I didn’t deserve another chance. I had no claim on her forgiveness, much less any claim on her heart.
I waited so long that I had to go down to the ER and sign papers for David’s release. Mrs. Henderson took him back home and said she would stay with him until I could return. I thanked her and told her we’d be lost without her. She seemed startled, but I knew now that I should acknowledge the kindness of people who cared for my son, not merely offering them money. Of course, I’d give her a bonus as well, but she was deserving of my gratitude. I had been too often aloof to others, considered their services to be something I bought and ignored their humanity.
I rushed back up to the sixth floor. Jess was the same as when I’d left her. I should have been grateful that there was no change for the worse, but I blamed myself severely for what had occurred. Had I not been so stubborn, so determined not to give my heart, things would have been so different. If I had the chance to do it over—she had asked me only days before, would I change anything if I could. I had shaken my head no. I could grind my teeth and punch in the drywall just thinking of that answer, of how differently I felt now.
Drawing my chair up to her bed, I leaned my elbows on the narrow mattress, holding her hand in both of mine. I spoke to her, told her how I had loved dancing with her in the kitchen when she was barefoot, how I had loved shouting answers at game shows with her, comforting her when she spoke of her father. How I had loved raising my son with her, having such a connection with her. The depth of intimacy between us, when a single look could spark tension through my body with arousal or how the lift of her eyebrow could admonish me for misjudging her. I sang her that song, the first one we had danced to. Then I sang her the theme song from Golden Girls, which she had confided was her guilty pleasure show. I didn’t remember all of it, but I knew it was saying thank you. Something I had never said enough to her.
I laid my cheek on our joined hands and shut my eyes.
13
Jessica
It was cold and dark except for a moving green light off to the right someplace. The only sounds were like robot, a hissing and swoosh, a buzzing and a beep followed by something squeezing the top of my arm. I tried to reach for it with my other hand but it was weighed down with something. I flailed the arm being squeezed, looked around in panic. In my arm flapping, I connected with something hard and plastic that made a light above me flare on.
It flickered, too bright in my eyes, but I saw that I was in a hospital room. The thing on my arm was a blood pressure cuff. It should have reassured me, but I didn’t know at once why I was there. I was scared and confused. I looked toward my right hand, the one that was so heavy. Because William’s head rested on it. I tried to flex my fingers to move my arm. Finally I just jerked my right leg and jostled him. He sat up, waking up all at once.
“Jessica! Good God, Jessica!” he burst out, his hands on my face. He kissed me so thoroughly, fingers framing my face, lips and tongue stroking, nipping, just as if it were the only one we’d ever have.
“What—what—” I cleared my throat, my voice rusty. “David?” I said, frantic, reaching for his arm.
“David is fine. He’s at home. Thanks to you. You rescued him. It could’ve cost you your life. My darling,” he said.
He had called me that once before. Had said Just you, darling to me in bed when I asked what he wanted. I felt a thrill at the memory of it alone.
“I went into the water to get him,” I said, piecing together what happened.
“You pushed him up through the hole in the ice to safety. I got him to shore and was warming him up when I realized you hadn’t been able to pull yourself out.”
“Weak,” I murmured ruefully.
“No, you were so strong. You went into freezing water to rescue my son without a thought for yourself. You hauled him to the surface and saved his life and then held onto the ice with one hand until I got to you. You are the bravest, strongest, most infuriating woman—and if I ever try to let you go again, you have my permission to slap me in the head and tell me to stop being such a damn fool.”
“Do you mean it?”
“Do I mean it? Only think all the things I’ve sat here promising God and anyone else who would listen if only you’d come through this alive. How I’d bring you breakfast in bed, and how I’d tell you that I love you every single day.”
“What?”
“I love you. Of course, I love you. There was never any other possibility from the moment you said ‘don’t stop yourself’ and let me kiss you. Before that when you talked about your restaurant, and later when you put your head on that pillow in my lap, so trusting, and let me run my fingers through your hair—I fell in love with you so hard every single time.”
“Then how could you push me away like that?” I said, fresh tears in my eyes.
“I was afraid. What I felt for you was unlike anything I’d ever known. I couldn’t call it love. I only knew it could destroy me. You could destroy me. Losing you would be the end of the world. So I turned away from you before you could leave me. And end the world.”
“But I loved you all along. I wanted to tell you a hundred times.”
“I know,” he said, grinning sheepishly. “ I couldn’t control myself. That was terrifying to me, how I would have done anything, given anything. I would have bankrupted myself, debased myself however you wanted. I knew the second I tasted you that you had such power over me. It was too dangerous. I couldn’t face it. But to know that you loved me then. That you love me now. I want another chance. I won’t waste this one, I swear. I’ll make you mine. Under my roof, in my heart, in my bed. Please, Jessica.”
“William, there’s something I have to tell you,” I said, my voice breaking. I moved my free hand to my belly.
“The baby’s fine,” he said, “I know all about it. The doctor said once your temperature returned to normal, the heartbeat would go back up.”
“I didn’t hurt the baby did I?” I sobbed.
“No. You kept the baby safe. Just like you kept David safe. Just like I’ll keep you safe. Always.”
He got on the bed with me, took me in his arms and held me as I cried. When I calmed down, he mopped up my face with some tissues, k
issed my forehead.
“I didn’t want to tell you,” I confessed. “I didn’t think you’d want us, or that you’d try to take my baby like you took David.”
“This isn’t like that. You’re different. I want you. I want the baby. I want us all to be a family. And I didn’t take David forcibly. She gave him up willingly. I would know better than to offer you money. You’d throw it in my face and kick me in the nuts for good measure,” he chuckled.
“Do you—did you only say you love me because I’m pregnant?”
“Never. I love you, Jessica. Nothing can change that. I would want you just as much, in fact I did want you just as much when I didn’t know about the pregnancy. That just made everything—more perfect to me. You are everything I’ve ever wanted. And more. Because you’re not only the woman I love. You’re the mother of my child. Our baby—it’s a new start. For all of us. If you were afraid to tell me, it’s because I taught to believe you couldn’t depend on me, Jessica. I failed you, but I won’t fail you again. I’ll keep you close, bring you home to stay.”
“How will you explain to David?”
“I don’t know. I’ll tell him I love you and I want you to live with us. He’ll go for it, especially if you keep helping him cheat at Candy Land.”
“Do you mean it?”
“I deserve your doubt, Jessica. I’ve given you no reason to credit what I say as trustworthy. But I promise you that I mean this with every fiber of my being. I should never have doubted that you’d be good to and for me. The way you love my son, the way you love me, I should have trusted that from the get go. To have kept you close, to have kept you safe and with me. I would give so much to change what I’ve done. I regret so much of the last few weeks. I want to make it up to you. If you’ll let me.”
CEO's Secret Baby: A Single Dad & Nanny Romance Page 13