by Joan Kilby
“I’m…fine.” Another spasm gripped her, contorting her face and twisting her body beneath the blankets.
“Lexie!”
The doorbell rang.
“The shipping company,” she gasped. “Go. Answer it.”
Rafe hesitated. The doorbell rang again. He hurried down the hallway and opened the door. A reddish-haired man with a deep dimple in his chin stood there, an identification tag around his neck and a clipboard in his hand. “Pickup for Ms. Lexie Thatcher?”
“Around the back,” Rafe said. “Have you got a dolly? It’s heavy.” He glanced about for his shoes and remembered he’d left them at the back door. He led the way through the carport in his sock feet. “This will be delivered to Sydney tomorrow, won’t it?”
“Guaranteed by noon tomorrow.” The man wheeled the dolly across the grass.
Rafe opened the studio door and then helped the man load the crate onto the dolly. “Careful. It’s a framed painting. There’s glass.”
They went back across the lawn, through the carport and up the ramp into the back of the freight truck. Rafe signed the docket and took the receipt. Before the truck had pulled out of the driveway he was hurrying back inside.
“Lexie, the painting’s on its way. You made the deadline.” He paused in the doorway of her bedroom. Beneath the covers she was still curled into a tight ball. “Lexie?”
Her face was white as she turned to him. “Call my doctor.”
Rafe crossed the room in swift strides. He felt her forehead. It was clammy now. Gently he prised back the covers. His stomach tipped into a queasy free fall.
The sheets were soaked with blood.
LEXIE WOKE UP in a hospital bed. A saline drip was inserted into the back of her left hand, the needle taped to her skin. She glanced about, dazed. Renita was asleep in a chair next to the bed, her hair tousled and her blue blouse slipping off her shoulder.
Across the ward, an elderly lady was snoring. The clock on the wall read 3:45. Was that a.m. or p.m.? The lights were dim and it was quiet. She thought it must be early.
She instinctively clutched at her stomach. Had she miscarried? She could feel a bulky sanitary pad between her legs. Presumably that meant she was still bleeding.
This was all her fault. She hadn’t listened to her doctor. Instead of going to bed and resting like a sensible person she’d been on her feet for an hour or more to frame her painting.
Where was Rafe?
Would his offer still stand if she lost her baby?
Panic overtook her. What if she lost her baby?
“Renita.” Lexie stretched out a hand and touched her sister’s knee with her fingertips.
Renita came awake with a start. She reached for her glasses on the bedside table, then scooted her chair forward. “How are you feeling?” her sister asked, taking her hand.
She clung to Renita. “What’s happening to my baby? Am I still pregnant?”
“Oh, sweetie. The doctors don’t know. They have to wait till morning to do a sonogram to try to find the fetal heartbeat.”
Lexie fell back on her pillow. “It’s my fault.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” Renita whispered. “Natalie, Sienna, they both said it’s not from anything you did.”
She hadn’t rested when they told her to. How could she not blame herself? “Is Rafe…?”
“Rafe was wonderful. He called Sienna, then Hetty. He stuck around for hours. Then he had to go home to his dog. Said he was only renting and if the carpet was ruined he’d wouldn’t get his bond back.”
“Poor Murphy. I wonder how long he’d been cooped up.” She pressed fingers to her lips. “Yin and Yang!”
“They’re taken care of. Don’t worry. Just rest. Natalie said she’d be back first thing in the morning. Sienna’s going to be here for your sonogram.” Renita started to rise. “Do you want water? Cup of tea?”
“No, thank you. Please sit. I need to talk to you.” Lexie smoothed the rumpled top sheet. “Rafe asked me to marry him.”
Renita’s tired face lit for a moment before her expression turned cautious. “What did you say?”
“No, of course.”
“Why, Lexie? He’s young but, gee, I think he’s a keeper.”
“He only asked me out of a…a sense of duty or something. I don’t want to marry him just because I’m pregnant. He’d be bound to end up resenting me. And the baby.”
“You can’t be sure about that,” Renita said, troubled. “If he cares about you he’d come to love the baby, too. And now that he’s had a chance to think—”
“You didn’t hear the things he was saying when I first told him I was pregnant. I trust a gut reaction far more than a reasoned response.” She shook her head sadly. “I’m still romantic enough to want to marry for love.”
“I guess I wouldn’t want to marry someone in these circumstances, either,” Renita conceded. “How do you feel about him?”
Lexie fell silent, studying the ceiling. Rafe was energy and heat, a shining life force. He was the light that filled the crystal. “I could love him.”
“Then don’t make up your mind to refuse him now.” Renita yawned. “You’ve been through too much. You need to rest.”
“You should go home, too,” Lexie said. “I feel terrible having caused all this trouble.”
“Don’t be silly.” Renita rose and stretched her back out. “But I do have to work tomorrow.” She blinked sleepily at the clock. “I mean, today.” She kissed Lexie on the cheek. “I’ll come back later this afternoon—if you’re still here. Try to get more sleep.”
Sleep was impossible. Lexie lay awake, tormented by guilt and doubt. What kind of a mother would she make if she always put painting before her child? Maybe she’d been right when she’d told Rafe she wasn’t destined to have a child. Twenty-one years ago she’d aborted one baby to pursue her art. Now the universe was punishing her.
But she loved children so much. The vision of her own baby was pure and clear. A little girl, a boy; it didn’t matter. She wanted to teach him or her to finger paint, to collect pebbles and shells, to see beauty in the veins of a leaf and clouds in the sky. She wanted to cuddle her baby, warm and soft and so alive….
Lexie closed her eyes. She turned her face into the pillow. She was so very tired….
RAFE WALKED through the hospital corridors, past orderlies wheeling trolleys and a pair of doctors in scrubs. It was six in the morning and the nurses were starting to make their rounds. He slowed outside Lexie’s ward and peeked in. The light was on over her elderly roommate’s empty bed, the covers thrown back. He entered quietly and stood at the foot of Lexie’s bed. Even in sleep, she looked exhausted.
He wasn’t much better. He’d been up most of the night, catching only a couple hours of shut-eye at home before racing back to the hospital. He felt the strain in his cold, tense muscles, in the headache from lack of sleep. His stomach was a tight ball of pain.
Where was the nurse? Who could he ask about Lexie’s condition? And the baby—had she miscarried or not? He picked up her chart hanging off the end of the bed and scanned the pages. There was nothing here that told him what he wanted to know, not that he could decipher anyway.
Rafe walked back to the door to look out into the corridor. No one was at the nurses’ station. He heard a sound and glanced over his shoulder.
Lexie opened her eyes. “Rafe?”
He was at her side quickly, lowering himself into the chair, leaning toward the bed. “How are you feeling?”
She turned her head to face him. “Tired. Achey.”
“The baby…?”
“The bleeding hasn’t stopped.” Her eyes, huge and shadowed, searched his face. “They won’t know if the baby is alive until they do another sonogram.”
Taking Lexie’s hand he lifted it to his mouth and held her gaze over her small paint-stained knuckles. Lowering her hand, he kept it tucked in his. “When will that be?”
“This morning.” She made an attempt to smil
e. “How’s Murphy? Did he ruin the carpet?”
“I’ll have to call Guinness Books. He may have set the world’s record on bladder control.” When her smile faded, he added, “I’m sure everything will be fine. They’ll find the heartbeat, then you’ll be out of danger.”
The fine lines at the corners of her eyes tightened. She gripped his fingers. “Even if I don’t miscarry I…I don’t think I’m cut out to be a mother. I’m disorganized, selfish with my time—”
“Lexie, stop. You’re too hard on yourself.”
“No, listen,” she insisted. “This is real. When I’m working I forget everything else. Nothing else matters but finishing the painting. The poor kid would be neglected. As much as I love children, I—I don’t trust myself to be a good parent.”
“Don’t talk about it now,” he said. “You’re not thinking clearly. You’ve got hormones and…and worry over taxes and the Archibald. All of it together is messing up your brain.”
The elderly woman from the other bed shuffled in with a damp towel over her arm and her toiletries bag in hand. Her thin gray hair was newly washed and plastered to her scalp. Slowly, she draped her towel over the back of a chair and put her toiletry bag away in a cupboard. She sat on the bed to catch her breath.
A middle-aged nurse with short brown hair and glasses on a chain around her neck entered the ward, pushing a trolley loaded with Dixie cups of pills and a bottle of water.
“Good morning, ladies,” she said, cheerfully. “Let me help you, Mrs. Mitchell. Up you go.” She assisted the older woman back into bed then poured a glass of water for her to take her medication with.
Rafe stepped back when the nurse came to Lexie’s bed. She rearranged the pillows, clucking briskly over her. “We’ll do your observations then I’ll take you downstairs for the sonogram.” She popped a thermometer under Lexie’s tongue and strapped on the blood pressure cuff.
Hetty arrived and touched Rafe’s arm. “What’s happening?”
“She’s going for a sonogram in a few minutes.”
An orderly arrived wheeling a gurney. He and the nurse transferred Lexie from her bed.
“Come with me,” Lexie said to Rafe and her mother as the nurse began to push the gurney.
“Of course.” Hetty took her hand.
Rafe followed, his steps lagging as they walked the long corridor to the elevator. They rode down two floors and walked along another endless corridor around so many corners he lost track of where he was. This all felt unreal to him. How had he come to be in a hospital with this woman he liked a lot but barely knew, having tests on a baby neither of them had planned on? And only one of them wanted?
This is life, buddy. Shit happens.
The sonographer, a young Asian woman with a pink barrette in her hair, pushed the transducer across Lexie’s abdomen. Hetty stood at her side, keeping a death grip on her hand.
Sienna arrived and stood behind her head, her hands resting on Lexie’s shoulders. “Natalie couldn’t make it but she’ll be in later.”
Rafe stood back, feeling out of place. Everyone was transfixed by the screen. He was watching Lexie’s face. Tearstained and pale, desperately searching for that tiny pulse of light.
Of life.
Minutes passed. The tension became unbearable.
“There’s the embryonic sac,” the sonographer said. She moved the scanner, pressing deeply into Lexie’s abdomen. Her mouth tightened and she gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head.
“What’s happening?” Lexie cried wildly. “Is the baby there? Someone tell me what’s going on.”
Rafe closed his eyes briefly. A dreadful silence had fallen over the room.
The sonographer glanced at Sienna, her expression grim. “It’s empty.”
“I’m so sorry, sweetie.” Sienna bent to hug Lexie.
Rafe heard Lexie give a keening cry and collapse into stifled sobs. The sonographer quietly wiped the gel off Lexie’s stomach and left the room. Hetty and Sienna gathered around Lexie, holding her, trying to soothe her. Everyone was crying.
Rafe’s heart was racing, his palms sweating. It hurt him to see Lexie so distraught. He felt guilty because he wasn’t more upset.
Chiefly he felt…
Relief.
An enormous burden had been lifted from his shoulders. The pressure was off. He didn’t have to try to be someone he wasn’t. Or do things he wasn’t ready for.
He was a bastard to feel this way. Lexie was sobbing as if her own life was coming to an end. He wanted to comfort her but the women were around her, their bodies like a shield, excluding him.
Rafe slipped out the door. He had to get out of here before someone noticed he wasn’t grieving.
LEXIE LET herself into her house after two days in the hospital. The living room was bathed in honey-gold afternoon light. Yin and Yang leaped off the furniture and came running to greet her, their tails straight up in the air. They twined around her legs, purring loudly.
“Hello, my darlings.” She crouched to pet them, gently butting first a cream then a chocolate head. “I hope Renita hasn’t spoiled you too much. I know she feeds you canned tuna when I’m not home.”
Hetty had dropped Lexie off at home and wanted to come in but Lexie had told her she was tired. The truth was, she needed to be alone with her pain.
But although she was long used to living alone, as she walked through the living room and into the kitchen, the house felt empty. Grief went ahead of her, permeating the atmosphere.
She was empty. Her baby was gone.
The doorbell rang.
She thought about ignoring it, pretending she wasn’t home. But it might be a neighbor, someone who saw her come in. She went to open the door.
Rafe stood there. Heartbreakingly, hatefully handsome.
He’d disappeared after the ultrasound and hadn’t returned to the hospital. He’d sent a card and flowers. But he hadn’t come in person.
She started to shut the door. He wedged his foot between the door and the jamb. “You’ve got to stop doing that,” he said.
She yanked open the door and retreated to the living room. “What do you want?”
“To see you. See how you’re doing.”
“How do you think I’m doing?” Right now she was struggling to hold herself together. She would have whole minutes at a time when she was fine, then she would remember she’d lost her baby and the edges of her control would fray.
“I’m sorry I ran out after the ultrasound.” He followed her, hands stuffed in his pockets. “You had Hetty and Sienna. There was no room for a guy who—”
“Who’d never wanted to be there in the first place,” she finished for him.
“Who wasn’t a father. Or husband. Or boyfriend.” His shoulders rose and fell. “I had no role. I was just a guy you’d slept with.”
She turned away so he wouldn’t see her hurt. She’d never been good about hiding her feelings. Since the miscarriage she’d felt raw, her emotions an open wound. Now she wanted to lash out at him just because he was there, because only a few short months ago he’d inspired joy and creativity in her.
She walked over to the dining table, sifted through some old mail and papers. Found his check. “Here,” she said, holding it out to him. “Is this what you came for?”
He flinched, as if she’d slapped his face. “Keep it. You’re going to need it.”
She let it flutter back to the table. If he was going to be that foolish, let him. She sat on the couch and pulled a flowered cushion over her lap. “Well, you’ve seen me. I’m alive. You’ve appeased your conscience. You can go now.”
Instead he lowered himself into the chintz-covered chair opposite the couch. “I also wanted to say I’m sorry for…for your loss.”
“You sound like a funeral director. It was your loss, too, Rafe.” She could hear the edge to her voice. “Although I know you don’t see it that way. You were probably relieved.”
“Hey, I tried to step up to the plate but you d
idn’t want me. You kept pushing me away.”
“I wish—” She broke off. There was no point wishing. For anything.
Yang uncurled from his cushion at the end of the couch and padded over to her for a pat. Lexie shut her eyes and pressed her cheek against his soft fur. Her mood swings were no doubt from the hormones still circulating in her body but that didn’t make them easier to bear.
“Did…did the doctor have any idea what caused the miscarriage?” Rafe asked.
“No. But I’ve seen the statistics. Women my age have a twenty-five percent chance of miscarrying.” In just two years that figure would jump to fifty percent. “I should have been resting, not working. If I’d listened to my doctor…”
“I’ve done some research, too. There must have been something wrong with the baby’s development. It’s Nature’s way.”
She could feel the tears at the back of her eyes and willed them not to spill. “Don’t you dare say it’s probably better this way,” she whispered.
“I would never say that.” He shook his head. “Never. I know how much you wanted the baby.”
Silence filled the space between them. Yang butted her chin to stroke him. Lexie kept her eyes closed, wishing despite everything that Rafe would cross the gap between the chair and the couch and put his arms around her; tell her everything was going to be all right.
“Okay, you’re right.” Rafe got to his feet, took a few steps, then spun back. “I admit it, I was relieved.”
“You’d better go,” she said, shoving Yang aside more roughly than she intended. “I don’t need to hear this.”
“Listen. You think I don’t know how selfish that is? What an asshole that makes me? I’m trying to be honest here so that you’ll believe me when I tell you other things.”
She waited. What else could he possibly say?
“Relief isn’t the only thing I feel. I’m also sorry for your sake you lost the baby.” His dark eyes met hers. “Desperately sorry. You would make a great mother.”
He startled a laugh out of her, accompanied by more tears. “Me? I’ll never be a mother.”
“Lexie, don’t,” he pleaded. “This is what I’m trying to get at. Don’t punish yourself for the rest of your life because you had an abortion when you were seventeen.”