by Hawk, Maya
“All right, class, we’re going to do something a little different today.” Coach Wiggins, my gym teacher, paces the basketball court as we sit and stretch out. Her fingers tug and toy the lime green lanyard attached to her whistle as her sneakers squeak against the shiny floors. “We’re playing dodge ball against Coach Mallory’s class.”
A boy behind me lets out a quiet, “Yesss…” and a couple kids to my right bounce excitedly.
I fucking hate dodge ball.
Tennis? Okay.
Swimming? Fine.
Whiffle ball? Whatever.
Dodge ball? No! Just…no! Nothing about dodge ball is remotely enjoyable.
“Everyone grab a mesh vest from the bin over there and meet me on our half of the court.” Coach Wiggins blows her whistle, sending a sharp pain through my left ear drum. She is obsessed with that thing. It hangs out of her mouth for the duration of our gym period every day, and she blows it every chance she gets. She should’ve been a damn traffic cop.
I pull a vest over top of my gym uniform and take my place strategically sandwiched between layers of other classmates.
I fucking hate dodge ball.
The shuffle of sneakers ushers in a stampede of our opponents. I scan their faces in search of only one: Sutton’s. We haven’t spoken most of the school year, but I know we have gym at the same time because I’ve seen him in passing.
He spots me immediately, as if he’s looking for me too. I glance away, hoping he didn’t see me watching him. As soon as it’s safe, I look his way once again, watching as he grabs a ball and palms it. From across the gym, I see his mouth moving, and my heart flutters for a second when I catch him smiling. He speaks to a classmate who seems to be laughing at everything he says. He has that effect on people. They think everything he says is hilarious. Everyone wants to be his friend or his girlfriend or whatever. They’ll do whatever it takes to spend a moment basking in the way he makes you feel like you’re the most important person in the world.
The shrill chirp of Coach Wiggins’ whistle forces me back into the moment. “All right, everyone. You know the rules. Balls are not to come into contact with faces.”
A few students snicker.
“Opposing teams are not to cross the center line,” she continues. “Once you’ve been hit, go sit on the bleachers. First team to hit all members of the opposite team wins. Best of three. And…go.”
Coach Wiggins blows her whistle once again and heads to the sidelines to chat up the other teacher. I stay back, hoping to blend in with some of the other girls while the guys laugh and chuck balls as hard as they can at the opposite side of the court.
I fucking hate dodge ball.
I cross my arms, glancing up at the clock and mentally calculating how many more minutes I’d be subjected to this medieval torture.
DOINK.
That’s the sound the ball makes when it hits me in the face. Correction – it hit me in the nose. Pain pulsates through the center of my mug like a ring of fire, spreading to the rest of my face. The gym grows silent. All activity ceases. Everyone stares in my direction, but I glance down at my shoes where drips of blood are splattered between my white sneakers.
It’s my blood. I am bleeding. Coach Wiggins doesn’t blow her whistle, instead she runs toward me as if I’m two seconds from dying and this is a life or death emergency.
I lift my hand to my nose and pull it away along with a handful of blood. I pray it’s my nose and only my nose. Noses heal. Noses can be fixed. I run my tongue along the inside of my mouth, making sure all teeth are accounted for, and thank God they are.
“Who did this?” Coach Wiggins screams. “I said NO balls to the FACE!”
The students across the gym separate, everyone distancing themselves from Sutton Pierce.
“Sutton,” the other teacher said. “Did you hit this student in the face with your ball?”
The boys behind me snort.
“It was an accident,” he says. His face is somber, but I still don’t buy it.
Yeah fucking right.
“Ms. Hudson, go see the nurse. Pierce, you’re in time out.” Wiggins blows her whistle and the game continues while I hightail it out of there, stomping down the empty halls toward the nurse’s office.
“Wait up.” A voice behind me, that could only belong to the biggest asshole on the face of the earth, fills the empty hall. The shuffling of his sneakers is a clear sign he’s running toward me.
I turn to face him, holding my bloody nose and furrowing my brows. If my face wasn’t smeared in blood right then, he’d have seen that I was glaring at him. “What do you want? Aren’t you supposed to be in time out or whatever?”
“I snuck out,” he says, as if that was supposed to impress me. It kind of did. “Wanted to check on you. Tell you I’m sorry. It was an honest mistake. I was going for Clayton’s shoulders and someone bumped me and-”
“Save it.” I turn around and resume my trek, but he continues to follow me.
“Honest, Lauryn, I’m sorry. God,” he huffs. “Just stop. I need to talk to you.”
His hand grabs my shoulder, pulling me toward him. I glance up and down the halls in search of a hall monitor, the principal, a lunch lady, anyone. We are alone. I haven’t been alone with Sutton Pierce since the previous summer. It was one of the greatest summers of my entire life, until it all went up in flames.
“You don’t answer my texts anymore,” he says. “And obviously our families don’t hang out anymore.”
No fucking shit they don’t hang out anymore. “No need to state the obvious.”
My nose alternates between throbbing and numbness. I need an ice pack right away.
“How is my dad, huh? You always said you wished he was yours. Looks like you got your wish.” I spit my words at him like poison darts. I hope they hurt. He hurt me. I want him to hurt too.
“This is why we need to talk. I have so much more to tell you about-”
“Oh, now you want to talk?” Tears burn my eyes. “You couldn’t have said anything over the last five years, but now you want to talk?!”
My mind flashes to the look on my mother’s face when she told me what had happened. She’d stopped by Sandra’s to drop off a dress she’d borrowed, opting to hang it in her closet for her, only she walked in on my dad and Sandra naked and tangled in Sandra’s bed. She flew out of there, crying and broken, and Sutton walked her to her car, apologizing like it was his fault.
He had good reason to feel guilty, too.
He knew. He could’ve stopped it. He could’ve spoken up at the very least. He could’ve prevented my mother from finding out the way she did. It wasn’t his fault that they cheated, but he stood back and did nothing about it. And for that, I can’t forgive him.
“My mother tried to kill herself!” I yell through a whisper, as if there are ears lined up and down the hall. Not many people know that my mother, five time Emmy award winning actress, Diane Hudson, tried to take her own life after her marriage crumbled. As her daughter, it’s my job to pick up the pieces, arguably a burden much too heavy for a teenage girl. I do it though. I do it because I love her, and all we have left is each other.
Sutton hangs his head, opening his mouth to speak until the shuffle of scuffling sneakers against tile jerks our attention toward a red-faced Coach Wiggins.
“Pierce! What the heck are you doing out in this hallway? I put you in time out.” She pauses for a second, studying our faces with her hands on her hip. “Come on, kid. Let’s go. NOW. Lauryn, you get along. Go find the nurse.”
The blood is half dry before I make it to the nurse’s office, but the pain is already subsiding.
“Oh, honey, let’s get you cleaned up,” the white-haired nurse says sweetly as I walk in. “Coach Wiggins called ahead. Said you took a dodge ball to the nose. Ouch.”
I nod, saying nothing because my mind was too busy thinking about Sutton.
“Do you want to file a report against the boy who did this to you? It would g
o home with his parents and another copy would go to yours. If your nose is broken and requires surgery, it’s a mandatory process.”
“No,” I say. “I don’t want to file a report against him. It was an accident.”
Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t, but I don’t need any more excuses to have anything to do with my dad and Sandra or with Sutton.
NINE – LAURYN
Present
I wake in a dark room – my living room – with a cold, melted baggie of ice over my ankle. The underside of my ankle is warm. My body is warm. There’s a blanket covering me. The second my eyes adjust, I see the outline of a man at the foot of my couch.
I pull my ankle from his lap. “Sutton, why are you still here?”
He stirs from his light slumber and clears his throat as he faces me. His eyelids are vaguely parted, giving him an impossibly dreamy expression, and I hate myself for noticing. “Just taking care of you, Lauryn. Like I said I would.”
My ankle has stopped throbbing. I think I can walk on it now if I try. I drag my feet to the ground and brace my hands against the seat cushions.
“Don’t,” he says, springing up. “If you need something tell me.”
“You’re acting like I have a broken foot,” I huff. “It feels better.”
“Let me see.” He clicks on the lamp on the side table and crouches down to examine me. His hands are warm and soft and his touch is gentle and light. When he’s in doctor mode, it makes me forget how much I want to punch him. “Fine. But let me help you stand. We’ll go from there.”
His hands are outstretched, and I place mine in his. He hoists me up, holding me as I put pressure on my right foot.
“See? I’m fine,” I assure him. I wait as he stares, glancing from my ankle to my face and back.
“All right. Fine.” He releases my hands, and I do my best not to hobble as I walk away.
“What time is it?”
He glances at his watch. “Time for me to head to the hospital.”
He’s going to work a 24-hour shift after taking a catnap in a seated position on my sofa, all so he could take care of me. That says something.
I grip onto the edge of the kitchen counter as I watch Sut slip his shoes on. He tugs his white lab coat over his shoulders and pulls a badge from his pocket, clipping it on. Never in a million years did I ever think Sutton Pierce, ladies man extraordinaire with a wild, obnoxious streak and a cock piercing, would ever be a doctor.
Never mind that he’s a doctor who delivers babies and tends to medical issues of the womanly variety.
Sutton reaches for the doorknob; turning and flashing me a close-lipped smile that almost makes me forget how angry I’ve been.
“Have a good night at work.” I say it like we’re friends, and then I promptly remind myself that we are most definitely not friends. My lips purse in case I say something else I shouldn’t.
He nods and vanishes behind the door within seconds. His void fills the small space of my apartment. It’s noticeable. I can feel it in my bones. I breathe in the nothingness and miss his presence instantaneously. It’s unsettling and confusing, so I shake my head to rattle my thoughts before heading back to my room to change.
I need to call James.
My boyfriend.
I need to stop thinking about Sutton.
TEN – SUTTON
“Dr. Pierce, thank God you’re here.” A plump nurse in Winnie the Pooh scrubs grabs me by the elbow the second I walk through the door of the delivery floor and pulls me down the south corridor. “I’ve got a patient in twenty-six who’s ready to push. I’ve been paging Dr. Cardwell but she’s not responding. She needs to deliver now.”
“Where’s Dr. Brunswick?”
“He’s with another patient,” she sighs. “Full moon, Dr. Pierce. I swear that’s it. We’ve been delivering one after another all day.”
I head into twenty-six, wash and sanitize my hands, and wheel my stool over to where a red-faced, huffing and puffing woman is lying with thighs wide open across her bed. She’s squeezing the life out of her husband’s hand, and he’s taking it like a champ. He wears the quiet smile of a man who’s done this before and knows better than to say a damn word.
Smart guy.
“I need to push, I need to push!” she pants, her words thick with desperate intensity. Our eyes meet, and she looks at me like I’m her hero, like I’m the only person in the entire world who can relieve her pain and safely deliver her of her condition.
I know it’s my job, but damn it feels good to be needed.
“Okay, Missy, the doctor’s here. I couldn’t reach Dr. Cardwell, but this is Dr. Pierce, he’s going to take good care of you, and we’re going to get that baby delivered,” the nurse says. She scoots a tray of tools next to me and pulls out a paper delivery gown to cover my scrubs.
“I need you to breath, Missy,” I say, eyeing the monitors. Each time she has a contraction, the baby’s heart dips slightly. I don’t want to alarm her. I don’t want to cause panic. If she can deliver this baby soon, all will be fine. It’s my job to keep her calm and to get this baby delivered safely. “We’re going to start pushing. Are you ready?”
“This is her fourth baby, doctor,” the nurse says. She’s talking to me, but she’s smiling at Missy. “She’s an old pro.”
“Oh, this won’t take long then.” I smile at her, my hands finding her vagina and massaging and stretching her perineum. The top of the baby’s head is coming down.
“Last one came in four pushes,” her husband says. It’s typically the woman who brags about those minor details, but he seems just as proud.
“All right, ten seconds of pushing, Missy. Here we go,” I say. The nurse pulls Missy’s leg back and her husband grabs the other. She pushes a few times and out slides a newborn baby girl with a full head of dark hair. I suction her nose and mouth, and the nurse takes her and cleans her up.
Missy is crying, happy tears of course, and her husband is cupping her cheek with his hand, his forehead pressed against hers.
The nurse swaddles the baby and hands her to the mother, laying her across her bare chest. Her father whispers, “She’s beautiful.”
“Thank you.” Missy pulls her gaze off her baby for a second and looks at me. Her face, which was previously writhing in pain, is now softer, and her eyes are gentle and misty. “Dr. Pierce, would you mind taking a picture with us? You know, for the baby book?”
This is why I do this.
“Of course,” I say. I clean up and head to the side of her bed. Her husband hands one of the nurses their camera and we lean in, posing for a picture that will be cherished for the rest of their days.
“One, two, three!” the nurse declares with a heart-warmed grin before the flash goes off.
I lean away, placing my hand on her shoulder. “You did great, Missy. Really. You’re a pro.”
“Couldn’t have done it without you, Dr. Pierce,” she says.
I wave her comment away. “All I did was get here in time to catch. You did the hard part.”
“Dr. Pierce, if I could get your signature here,” the nurse pulls my attention away, holding a pen and pointing to the birth certificates and hospital records lined up along the counter. The room is hot now with the afternoon sun beating in through the window. I push up my sleeves and take the pen.
A second later, Missy and her husband laugh. When I look up, they’re smiling in my direction.
“That’s something you don’t see everyday,” Missy giggles.
“Excuse me?” I ask with a polite smile.
“I can’t wait to tell my sister that a tatted up doctor delivered her niece,” Missy laughs. “I’ve never seen a doctor with a whole sleeve of tats. You drive a motorcycle too?”
“No, no motorcycle,” I say. “Just a fan of ink.”
“You single, doctor?” Missy asks. One of her eyes squints, and she cocks her head slightly.
“Missy,” her husband says gently. He’s embarrassed for her. “Sorry, do
c, I think the meds have gone to her head.”
“That’s very likely the case,” I say with a wink, signing the birth certificate.
Missy nudges her husband with her arm; the one not cradling their fresh, sleepy baby. “I just thought I’d ask.”
“You’re always trying to hook someone up with your sister.” Her husband shakes his head, turning back to look at their baby. He smiles, gently grazing the side of his finger across her chubby cheek. He’s itching for his chance to hold her, I can tell.
“I’m sorry, but he’s very good looking, he’s tatted up, and he delivers freaking babies for crying out loud,” Missy says. “Why did you go into this field, doctor? What made you want to deliver babies?”
I pause. No one’s ever asked me that question before except a few times in med school, and even then I never really gave an honest answer. It always seemed silly coming from someone who looked like me. I’m not supposed to be sentimental. I’m supposed to be damaged and deep and dark. I don’t see a reason I can’t be everything and then some.
“It’s exciting,” I say. “There’s never a dull moment.”
I neglect to mention the part about how my family is slightly fucked up and all kinds of broken, and that all I ever wanted was to be a part of a normal family. The next best thing I could think of was delivering joy to other people’s families.
Missy smiles and nods before returning to tend to her suckling baby. I think she was expecting a better answer than the generic one I gave her.
I head to the door, stopping and turning back to them. “You might forget your podiatrist. You might forget the urgent care doctor who diagnosed you with a mild case of shingles five years ago. But you never forget the person who delivered your baby.”
It’s the most honest answer to that question I’ve ever given in my adult life. I don’t want to be forgotten.
“Got any more for me?” I ask when I breeze past the nurse’s station.
“Not yet, doc,” one of them calls back. “I think thirty-seven’s going to go soon though.”