Forbidden

by R. R. Banks

  Part of me thought that I might be making a mistake, that I should probably just let them bring me wherever they could, but I knew that Richard had gone to extensive trouble to create the medical facility so that I would get the best of care. Even though I had only been there for two appointments so far, including the procedure itself, I felt strangely accustomed to that care and as though I couldn’t really trust anyone else with his baby. So, after the EMTs released me from the bed, I climbed carefully down and into Tessie’s waiting arms, allowing her to support me as she guided me back into her house.

  “What are you doing?” Christopher asked. “You need to go to the hospital.”

  I shook my head.

  “I’m alright. I think I just stood up too fast. I’m going to call Richard and tell him what happened, and then if he wants me to be seen, he can come get me and bring me to the medical center.”

  We went back inside, and I excused myself to the restroom. Moments later the need to call him felt far more urgent.

  ****

  Richard

  Please no. Please no. Please no. Please no.

  I had never felt so helpless as I did in that moment. I hadn’t even bothered to try to get Abraham, preferring instead to save the time and drive myself to the medical center, but even being behind the wheel of the car myself wasn’t enough to make me feel in control of what was happening. The call from Rue’s friend Tessie had been so frantic that I had barely been able to understand what she was saying, but I had gotten enough out of her to understand that Rue had passed out and was now bleeding. She had refused an ambulance, but I insisted that Tessie take her directly to the facility rather than wait for me. Now I was trying to get there, desperate to be at her side, terrified of what I was going to find out when I got there.

  The traffic around me was infuriating and I found myself wanting to ram the people in front of me to get them out of my way. The drive from my house to the medical center was less than five miles but it felt like it was taking an eternity to arrive. When I finally did, I pulled my car right up to the entrance and jumped out, not even noticing if I actually turned off the ignition and not really caring. If someone wandered by, noticed the car, and wanted to take it, they were welcome to it. There were plenty more where that one came from and I had no issue replacing it.

  I burst through the doors and was met by a nurse who escorted me toward an emergency examination room without greeting. When I got to the door, she paused, and we stared at the closed door for a beat. There was no sound coming through and I didn’t know if I was relieved about that or if that made me more afraid. Finally, I lifted my hand and knocked.

  “Come in.”

  I followed Dr. Morgan’s voice and entered the room. He was standing at the end of the bed where Rue lay, her knees bent up and her body covered with a pink blanket. She didn’t turn to look at me. Instead, she seemed focused intently on something in front of the doctor. I walked up to the side of the bed and noticed that his hand was tucked beneath the blanket and that he was staring at the same thing that held Rue’s attention. It was what looked like a computer screen and on it was a fuzzy grey image. I took a step to the side to get a better look, my heart pounding in my chest as I tried to understand what I was seeing.

  “What is that?” I asked. “What’s going on?”

  “That,” Dr. Morgan said, reaching up and touching a finger to something white on the screen that looked vaguely like a Tic-Tac. “Is your baby.”

  “My baby?” I asked, leaning against the bed. “Is it alright?”

  I felt my hand touch Rue’s and her fingers shifted, causing mine to intertwine with hers. I squeezed them lightly, wanting to find as much comfort in her touch as I wanted to give her in mine.

  “It is,” the doctor said. “What Rue experienced is frightening, but it’s not all that out of the ordinary for early pregnancy. In fact, some women experience so much spotting in the early weeks that they think that they have had their period and don’t actually realize that they are pregnant until they are in their second trimester. As for passing out, I’m guessing that’s just a good old-fashioned case of nerves and some dehydration. I’m going to give her some fluids and let her rest here for a while, then she’ll be just fine to go home.”

  The doctor withdrew an instrument from under the blanket and brought the blanket down further to cover Rue the rest of the way. The image on the screen disappeared and I felt a hint of sadness that I couldn’t look at it anymore. The doctor walked out of the room and I waited until the door closed to look down at Rue.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “Don’t be sorry.”

  “I worried you and brought you all the way out here so late and it was for nothing.”

  “You didn’t worry me,” I told her. She looked up at me. “You scared the living hell out of me.” Her head hung, and I reached over to take her chin in my hand and turn her face toward me. “But I’m glad that you had Tessie call me. You’ve never been through this before, neither of us have, how were you supposed to know that everything was fine? If you hadn’t called or come in and I found out later that you had passed out and then had bleeding, I would’ve be really upset.”

  We looked at each other and the fear that had been in the room dissipated. I stroked her cheek softly with my thumb and Rue turned her face slightly into the touch. My heart was pounding again, shivering in my chest, but for a completely different reason. I could feel my mouth watering and I licked my suddenly dry lips. Rue did the same and I felt myself leaning toward her almost involuntarily, as if magnetized to her. Behind me the door opened, and I jumped away from her, the appearance of the nurse with Rue’s IV snapping me back into reality.

  I stepped out of the room to draw in a few breaths and when I went back in, the IV was in place and Rue was resting back against the pillow, her eyes closed. I walked up to her side again and looked down at her. She was so beautiful. Even lying there looking so vulnerable, her makeup streaked down her face carried with tears that she undoubtedly cried out of fear as she made her way here, not knowing what was happening, unsure of what she was going to find out when she arrived. She opened her eyes and looked up at me.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said.

  “Of course,” I said. “I’m here. If you ever need me. For anything. Ever. I’m here.”

  She smiled, but then let out a long sigh.

  “I am not looking forward to the drive back home tonight.”

  “Then don’t go.”

  “I have to. Tessie and Christopher both have to work tomorrow. It’s too late for me to go back to either of their houses. I guess I could get a hotel, but finding one with vacancies this late is going to be a hassle.”

  Suddenly her face scrunched up and I felt a stab of panic go through me.

  “What’s wrong? Are you alright? Does something hurt? Do you need the doctor?”

  I was getting ready to call out to Dr. Morgan when Rue shook her head, her face relaxing.

  “No. Nothing’s hurting. I just realized that my car is still at Tessie’s. I drove it over there, but she drove me here. I don’t even have a way to get to a hotel even if I could make a reservation.”

  “So, come with me,” I said.

  “That would work,” she said. “You can bring me to the hotel and then tomorrow Tessie can meet me there in my car and I’ll bring her back home on my way home.”

  “No,” I said. “I mean come home with me.”

  Rue looked at me sharply, some of the color draining from her face.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Come home with me,” I said. “Like you said, it’s late. The hotels might be booked, and even if they aren’t, that would mean finding one, going through check-in, dealing with other guests. That’s a lot of fuss to go through when you could just come back to my house and stay in the guest wing. You wouldn’t have to check in, the room service is exceptional, and I promise you can have late check-out
without any of the maids knocking on your door.”

  I meant it as a joke, but it fell flat as Rue looked at me with an expression in her eyes that said she imagined that might actually happen and I was going to have to make special arrangements with the staff to make sure that it didn’t.

  Which was actually true.

  “I don’t know,” she said, sounding uneasy. “Do you think that’s appropriate? I wouldn’t want to impose.”

  “It’s no imposition,” I insisted. “You wouldn’t even have to interact with me at all if you didn’t want to. The guest wing has all of its own facilities and features, so you could completely relax, and no one would bother you. Stay just the night or stay for a few days. Please? It really would make me feel better.”

  Rue still looked uncertain, but finally she nodded.

  “Alright,” she said. “Thank you. I really appreciate this.”

  “It’s my pleasure,” I said. “Don’t mention it.”

  Especially to Flora. Let me take on that fallout myself.

  “The nurse said that I might be here for another couple of hours,” she said.

  “Perfect. I’ll go home and get everything ready for you and then I’ll be back to pick you up. Try to relax some. Everything is going to be alright now.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Rue

  What the hell did I just agree to?

  I watched Richard walk out of the room and let my head fall back against the pillows, reaching up with the hand that wasn’t attached to the IV to rub my forehead.

  Why did it seem like every time this man opened his mouth I went along with something that I knew for damn sure was a bad idea?

  I closed my eyes, trying to concentrate on relaxing and letting my body absorb the fluids gradually dripping into me. I felt ridiculous ending up in the hospital because I hadn’t had enough to drink and had gotten myself so worked up about the whole situation that I passed out. At the same time, though, the fear that I had felt when I started to get dizzy and then when I saw the blood was unlike any fear that I had ever experienced. It was a sense of terror and dread that reached all the way inside me and made me feel like I was turning inside out. I couldn’t describe the emotions that coursed through me or the thoughts that raced in my mind as Tessie herded me into her car. My fingers were shaking so hard that I couldn’t dial the phone and my brain was so frantic that I couldn’t remember how to find his number even if I had been able to dial, so she had to call Richard. All I could do was sit by and listen as she tried to form the words, tried to tell him what had happened and ask him to get to the medical center.

  It had been only days. Only days since we found out that I was pregnant, and I had seen that look of joy on his face, and I was terrified that something horrible had happened. Now as I lay in the medical center trying to let my body recover, I felt a tremendous sense of gratitude, both toward the doctor and nurses that had been here for me to help me through this situation, and for Richard. I could only imagine the chaotic, hectic environment that I would have found myself in had I had to go to a normal hospital. This medical center meant that I didn’t have to wait, I didn’t have to contend with the prying eyes and straining ears of anyone else around me, and I got the full, undivided, and unrushed attention of literally everyone in the building. Though the entire concept of building a private medical center for me to use during my pregnancy had seemed outlandish when I first heard about it, I was indescribably thankful for it now. This baby deserved nothing short of the best, and that is what this center would provide for it.

  Now all I had to do was figure out how I was going to handle being in Richard’s home.

  I couldn’t believe that I had accepted his offer. I knew when Tessie brought me to the center that she wasn’t going to be able to stay with me, even though she wanted to. It was already late, and she needed to get some sleep so that she could go to work the next day. I had insisted that she leave, and she had reluctantly complied, though I had felt a hint of regret almost as soon as she walked out of the door. This wasn’t something that I wanted to go through alone, but at the same time I didn’t really feel like it was appropriate to be sharing it with Tessie, either. I was stuck in a strange, awkward position and didn’t really know how to move forward until Richard arrived. Now he wanted to bring me back to his house to rest and though I knew that Tessie going back home had left me without my own transportation and that I was not up for the hour drive back to Grammyma’s house, the tingling of my fingers where Richard had held them was still enough to make me question whether entering his private world and spending even a few hours in it with him was a good idea.

  Just as he had promised, Richard was back at the medical center as they were discharging me. The doctor handed me a sheaf of instructions and a reminder about my appointment with the midwife. He emphasized that I should be absolutely fine, but that I might want to take it easy for a day to let my body and my mind get over the experience. Plenty of fluids. Plenty of rest. Good food. All those things that doctors tell you when you are dealing with virtually any type of health issue. It was another reminder that pregnancy was, in the greater scheme of things, a run-of-the-mill event and that it only held the white-knuckled intensity for those going through it.

  Richard asked if I wanted to use a wheelchair to get to the car, but I begged off of it. He probably already thought that I was two shades short of inept. The last thing I needed at that moment was a further blow to my self-confidence. We walked along the hallway toward the car slowly and silently. My hand hung between us and I found myself wishing that he would reach down and hold it again. The warmth and comfort that he had given me as we looked at the tiny speck of a child on the computer monitor was unexpected and thrilling, but at the same moment unnerving. I didn’t want to have these feelings. They weren’t mine to have. Yet every time that I got near Richard, every time I even thought of him, they seemed to get stronger and there was nothing that I could do about it.

  His house was just as extraordinary as I would have thought it would be. Possibly even more so. The car pulled up to a massive wrought iron gate and paused for only a moment before the gate slid open and we entered. The meandering driveway was like something out of a sweeping family saga movie and I had the sudden mental image of a woman standing on the balcony in a hoop skirt gazing out over the grounds waiting for her man to come home.

  Or the land to stop burning. Or the ice cream truck. Not a real woman. An actress there for ambience.

  As we curved around the driveway the house came into sight, rising up out of the horizon so that it towered against the first hints of early morning sunlight. I couldn’t help but gasp at the sheer size and beauty of it. This was a home from another era, not like the other era that had brought the birth of Whiskey Hollow and Grammyma’s house. Yet all around me I noticed subtly integrated hints of modern technology that spoke to a cutting edge quality of life and enormous wealth that only grew each day.

  The car brought us directly up to the bottom of the steps that led up to the front door and Abraham got out to open the back door. Though Richard had driven to the medical center when he first came, he told me that he had Abraham bring him back so that he would be able to sit in the backseat with me. It gave me a warm feeling in my chest, yet part of me wished that he had driven. It would show me a part of him that I could almost relate to, something that wasn’t so far out of the realm of my reality.

  And keep me from wanting to cuddle with him and fall asleep in the backseat.

  As soon as we stepped through the front door Flora came stalking down the stairs toward us. It was still so early that it could barely be considered morning, yet this woman was up, coiffed, perfectly made up, and wearing more spandex than the cast of Cats. A leotard with legs cut all the way up to her waist and matching tights were from another time, yet their intensely retro feel made them somehow totally contemporary. She wore a sweat band around her head, though I somehow doubted it saw a tremendous amount of sweat, and she ha
d pared down her jewelry to just a pair of diamond studs in her ears and a delicate gold watch.

  Practically one of the people.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded. “I woke up and you weren’t here. What is she doing here?”

  “You didn’t tell her where you were going?”

  “I didn’t have the time,” Richard said. “It was an emergency.”

  “The second time?” I asked.

  He looked down at me and started to say something but a plump woman with shimmering silver hair and a smile that made me feel like if she was around nothing could go wrong in the world came scurrying into the foyer.

  “Good morning!” she boomed in a voice that was sweet but far louder than I was really prepared for that early in the morning.

  “Good morning, Hannah,” Richard said. “Will you please bring Rue to the guest wing and make sure that she’s comfortable?”

  “Of course. Come along, Sweetie. Let’s get you some rest.”

  I glanced at Richard and then fell into step beside Hannah, who rested a comforting hand on my back as we climbed the wide, winding staircase toward the upper floor. I could hear Flora and Richard start arguing as soon as we reached the landing and immediately felt guilty. Hannah must have been able to see the emotion on my face when she finally led me into a sprawling, elaborate bedroom and guided me toward the bed.

  “Now, don’t you feel bad about this for an instant,” she said.

  “But I shouldn’t be here,” I said. “I should be at my own house. I’m intruding, and Flora is obviously upset.”

  “You are right where you are supposed to be,” she said. “If you weren’t supposed to be here, then you wouldn’t be here.” It was the type of logic that made my head spin slightly, but I tried to go along with it. “And don’t you pay Flora any mind. Mean as a rattlesnake that one is. But I think down deep in there, there’s a good person. Somewhere. It’s just hidden real good. Somebody will find it one day.”