Second Time Around

by Beth Kendrick

  “You’re tracking slush all over the floor,” Anna pointed out.

  “You screwed me over on purpose.” Trish threw down her coat and rolled up her sweater sleeves.

  Anna had never been in a fistfight, and she had no intention of starting now. Especially with an opponent who was in her second trimester. She retreated to the other side of the counter, trying to put a few barriers between herself and the enraged Amazon in the Fair Isle sweater. “I will admit that things got out of hand, but I honestly tried—”

  Trish held her body ramrod straight with her fists balled at her sides. “You can’t stand that anyone from that college still hires me for anything. You think you deserve to have all my business handed to you on a silver platter.”

  “That’s not true!” Anna cried.

  “Well, let me tell you something: I was here first. And I’ll still be here, long after you’ve given up on the pastry chef fantasy and moved on to basket weaving or beekeeping or whatever your next whim happens to be. I went to school for this. I work my ass off. This isn’t some fun little side job for me. This is my life.”

  “Oh, spare me the guilt trip. You’re the one who started this whole thing!” Anna nodded toward the blueberry syrup. “From the second I met you, you’ve been nothing but nasty, with the tricks and the threats and the ‘Legacy’ crap—”

  “You are a legacy! What culinary credentials do you have, other than watching the Food Network?”

  Anna had no response for this.

  “I’m waiting. Do you have any professional training at all?”

  “As you yourself said, just because I don’t have a fancy degree doesn’t mean I can’t do a good job.”

  “Whatever.” Trish wrinkled her nose in disgust. “You’re spoiled and self-entitled, and I hope you choke on that hot mess you call a brioche.”

  Anna opened her mouth to respond, but her words died on her lips when she noticed the dark red stain spreading at the juncture of Trish’s light khaki trousers.

  “Hey!” Trish’s voice sounded far away. “You’re not even listening to me!”

  Anna stepped forward, her hand outstretched. “Are you all right?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Anna glanced at Trish’s crotch as delicately as possible.

  “What now?” Trish followed Anna’s gaze and yanked at the plackets of her pants. She dabbed at the stain with a single paper napkin, then blinked down at the crimson smears on the napkin’s crisp white surface.

  After a few seconds, Trish looked back up, her expression completely blank. “Oh.”

  “Are you hurt?” Anna asked.

  “No. I mean, my back hurts, but I thought that was from hauling around a ginormous slab of cake all day. Oh God. What do I do?”

  Anna pointed to the bathroom door. “Go check it out. Call if you need help.”

  Two minutes later, Trish returned from the restroom. Her face had gone pallid. “It’s not stopping. There’s a lot of blood down there.”

  Anna grabbed her car keys. “Let’s go. The clinic’s only a few blocks away. This’ll be faster than waiting for an ambulance.”

  Trish waved her off. “I can drive myself.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “I’m fine, seriously, I’ll just—” Trish took two steps toward the door and slipped on the melting slush she’d tracked in a few minutes ago. Her arms pinwheeled wildly as she started to fall, and Anna lunged across the kitchen to steady her.

  “I’m not letting go.” Anna clutched one of Trish’s forearms with each hand. “Now shut the hell up, get in the car, and cross your legs until we get to the clinic.”

  Is there someone we should call?” Anna asked once they’d been whisked past the clinic’s admitting desk and straight into the E.R.’s “GYN room.” “Your husband?”

  Trish folded her hands over her abdomen and kept her gaze fixed on the exam room ceiling. “My boyfriend is out of town and no, we definitely shouldn’t call him yet.”

  “You want to wait until you know for sure,” Anna said.

  “Give me a break. I look like the Red Sea parted in my pants.” Trish closed her eyes. “I think we already know for sure what’s happened.”

  “Don’t say that. You have to keep your hopes up until—”

  “And on top of everything else, I ruined your car upholstery.”

  Anna blinked. “Are you honestly thinking about my upholstery right now?”

  Trish curled her fingers into the starched bedsheets. “What is taking that ultrasound chick so long?”

  According to the physician’s assistant who’d performed Trish’s intake assessment, the only on-call obstetrician was currently in surgery performing a C-section, which meant that Trish would first be checked by an ultrasound tech. But, due to the small hospital’s limited resources, the ultrasound techs had already gone home for the night. So Anna and Trish were left to talk amongst themselves while they waited for the on-call tech to respond to her emergency page.

  “Should be here momentarily,” Anna said. “They said she only lived about ten minutes away.”

  “It’s been eighteen minutes. I’m counting.”

  Right on cue, the ultrasound tech bustled in, wearing maroon scrubs and a harried expression.

  “Hey.” Trish raised one hand off the bed. “Sorry to drag you in after hours.” She sounded meek; totally unlike the bully in the baking aisle.

  “No problem. Sorry to take so long getting here, but the roads are getting a little dicey with all this freezing rain.” The tech took a seat and switched on the monitor. “Ready when you are.”

  Trish tucked in the paper sheet around her hips and yanked up the hem of her flimsy cotton gown, exposing a bare, pale strip of belly. “I’m ready.”

  The tech squirted a dollop of clear gel onto Trish’s abdomen, then produced the ultrasound wand and got to work. “Okay, lie still and try to relax.”

  A few faint bursts of static crackled through the silence. Then they heard the unmistakable pulse of a heartbeat. Trish’s and Anna’s gazes locked.

  “Well, from what I can see, your little guy looks fine,” the tech announced after a few minutes. “There’s the heartbeat. He’s moving, he’s breathing. Look, he’s sucking his thumb.”

  “Hold on.” Trish lifted her head off the pillow and peered at the fuzzy image on the screen. “It’s a he?”

  “Mm-hmm.” The tech nodded. “It definitely looks like a boy. Didn’t they take a guess at your nuchal translucency screening?”

  “I don’t think I had that.”

  “Oh, well, they’ll know for sure at your twenty-week ultrasound. I wouldn’t paint the nursery blue just yet, but I’m hardly ever wrong.”

  Anna squinted at the blurry black-and-white blobs. “You can get all that from this? It looks like … well, a bug.”

  “I told you so.” Trish turned back to the tech. “So what’s wrong? Why am I bleeding?”

  “The OB will have to make the diagnosis,” the tech said.

  “Yeah, but hearing a heartbeat is good, right? Breathing is good. Thumb sucking’s good.”

  “The doctor will be here shortly.” The tech gathered up her notes and slipped out the door.

  Trish let her head drop back down. “I’m starting to freak out.”

  “Don’t freak out.” Anna squeezed her hand. “I’m sure you’ll both be fine.”

  “If everything were fine, she wouldn’t be passing the buck and escaping as fast as she could.”

  “Don’t think like that. We have to stay positive. Positive thoughts will yield positive results.” Anna realized that she’d spoken these exact words to Jonas after every round of IVF, after every compulsory bout of preovulation sex, and look how that had turned out. But this time (and she always added that part, too) would be different.

  “Ugh.” Trish stuck out her tongue. “Don’t you dare go Kumbaya on me now. I liked you better when you were ruthlessly sabotaging me.”

  “In that case,” Anna
said, “at least we know you’re having a boy. Now you won’t be able to steal my baby name.”

  “This whole thing is crazy.” Trish rubbed her forehead. “I didn’t exactly plan to get pregnant. When I saw those two blue lines on the test, I sat down on the bathroom floor and cried. I went to the drugstore and bought like eight different kinds of tests, hoping there’d been a mistake, but they all came back positive. Blue line, blue line, blue line—bam, bam, bam. Total sucker punch. I wasn’t ready to be somebody’s mom. I’m still not. There’s a reason Mother Nature made pregnancy last nine months. That’s how long I thought I’d need to come to grips with the reality of the situation. But if the Bug and I can make it through tonight, we can make it through anything.” She glanced at Anna, then lowered her gaze. “Sorry. I probably shouldn’t say any of this to you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because of your, you know, situation.”

  “Infertility?” Anna half smiled. “You can say it out loud; the truth doesn’t offend me. How did you hear about that, anyway?”

  “I didn’t. But I knew something was up when Kris Doyle asked you to do the baby shower cake. The look on your face said it all.”

  “Well, you’re right. My husband and I have been trying for years, and nothing.” Anna settled back in her seat and fiddled with the buttons on her jacket. “The doctors can’t find anything wrong with us. ‘Unexplained infertility.’ We don’t get to know why we can’t conceive; we just have to accept it.”

  “That sucks.”

  “Big-time.”

  “Yeah, but if you did get pregnant, you wouldn’t curl up in the bathtub and cry.” Trish started to shred the paper towel she’d used to wipe off the ultrasound gel. “Normal women don’t cry when they find out they’re pregnant.”

  “I’ve never been accused of being a normal woman,” Anna said.

  “You know what I mean. You’d be all misty-eyed and glowing. And your husband would probably tag along to every single doctor’s appointment and both of you would team up to decorate the perfect nursery with organic everything from Pottery Barn Kids.”

  Anna raised one eyebrow. “You have some interesting ideas about my life.”

  “Well, you have the designer label education and the yuppie car, so I figured Pottery Barn is your natural habitat.” Trish sounded more wistful than snide. “But I shouldn’t rush to judgment; maybe you’re more into Crate and Barrel?”

  The door opened and a physician in blue scrubs walked in. She looked athletic and startlingly young, although the stethoscope around her neck added to her air of capability.

  “Hi, I’m Dr. Lafosse.” She offered her hand to Trish. “Sorry to keep you waiting. How are you feeling?”

  Trish managed a weak smile. “I’ve been better.”

  The doctor scanned the medical chart. “Your baby looks good. Strong vitals, no sign of distress.” She washed her hands at the sink, pulled on latex gloves, and settled herself on the stool at the foot of the bed. “May I?”

  Anna flipped through a dog-eared celebrity tabloid while Dr. Lafosse performed a brief internal examination on Trish. After several long, silent minutes, the OB wheeled back the stool and jotted down some notes.

  “Well, the bleeding seems to have subsided, which is an encouraging sign. Have you noticed any spotting over the last few days, or did this come on suddenly?”

  “No spotting at all,” Trish replied. “Everything was fine until an hour ago.”

  “Any abdominal pain? Back pain?”

  “My back has been a little achy, but I chalked it up to dragging baking equipment around.”

  The doctor nodded and kept writing. “Any contractions?”

  “I don’t think so, but I’ve never been pregnant before, so I don’t really know what they feel like.”

  “With any luck, you’re going to find out in just a few more months.”

  The exam table shifted as Trish’s body relaxed. “So I’m really going to be okay? And the baby, too?”

  “I’m optimistic.” The doctor nodded. “As far as I can tell, we’re dealing with a Class One partial placental abruption. What that means, basically, is that a small section of the placenta separated from the uterus, you started bleeding and, in your case, a clot formed and stopped the bleeding. Although.” Dr. Lafosse frowned down at the chart. “We don’t usually see it this early in a pregnancy. How sure are you of your due date?”

  “Not very. This baby is kind of a surprise.”

  “Well, don’t worry; we’ll figure it out.” More rapid-fire note taking. “We’re going to do some blood work and double-check the fetal measurements on the ultrasound.”

  “What made the placenta start to tear away?” Trish asked.

  “I wish I had an answer for that, but honestly, most of the time there’s no obvious cause,” the doctor said. “There are a few factors that can elevate your risk: smoking, drug use, episodes of high blood pressure. But in the majority of cases, it’s just a fluke.”

  “None of that applies to me,” Trish said.

  Anna held up her palm. “Wait. High blood pressure?”

  “Yes.” The doctor pushed back a section of hair that had started to come loose from her ponytail. “But we don’t need to worry about that. Your friend shows no signs of preeclampsia—”

  “She was kind of worked up right before she started bleeding. We were having an argument.” Heat rushed into Anna’s face. “This is my fault.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” Trish said. “I wasn’t that worked up.”

  “You were yelling at me. You were ready to kick my ass.”

  “I can do that without breaking a sweat.”

  “Your placenta is messed up—you could have lost your baby—because I conned you into putting a typo on a cake.” Anna buried her face in her hands. “I’m going to hell.”

  “If you’re going to hell, then I’ll see you there in the baking supply aisle. Jeez, Legacy, don’t be so melodramatic. This had nothing to with anything that happened in the kitchen tonight.”

  But Anna knew the truth. “I’m bad baby karma.”

  “The Bug’s still kicking,” Trish pointed out. “You’re good baby karma.”

  The doctor clicked her pen and reclaimed control of the conversation. “We’re going to keep you here for a few more hours for observation and then you can go home,” she told Trish. “But you’re going to have to stay on bed rest.”

  Trish’s forehead creased. “For how long?”

  “Until you deliver the baby,” Dr. Lafosse announced, then glanced down at her pager and rushed for the door.

  “There’s no way!” Trish cried. “I don’t do bed rest! I can’t lounge around eating bonbons and watching TV for the next four months. I have bills to pay. I have events I’m already contracted to cater.”

  “I’ll do them,” Anna volunteered.

  “No.” Trish looked murderous. “No way, no how.”

  “It seems to me you don’t have much of a choice.”

  “I’ll figure out a way to bake in bed,” Trish said. “We are not friends, and I’m not your charity case. Besides, I have my own special recipes and techniques for everything that I make.”

  Anna smiled sweetly. “Then you’re going to have to give me very detailed instructions.”

  “Aha! See? You just want to steal my secrets!”

  “And you say I’m melodramatic?”

  Trish swiveled the upper half of her body until all Anna could see was the thick auburn waves at the back of her head. “I work alone and I like it that way.”

  “Well, you know what they say: A baby changes everything.”

  “Security!”

  They both started laughing.

  After a moment, Anna said, “If it makes you feel any better, I will admit that I do love going to Williams-Sonoma.”

  “Actually, it does.” Trish released her death grip on the hospital sheet. “And if it makes you feel any better, I was lying when I said I had nothing to do with t
he missing mixer attachment. I totally took it to mess with you. I had it tucked inside my coat, and I put it back the next morning when I opened the drawer.”

  Anna leaned back and exhaled. “That’s such a relief.”

  “It is?”

  “Yeah, I was starting to worry I really was going insane.”

  “I didn’t used to be like this,” Trish said softly. “I used to be tough and confident and fearless.”

  Anna rested her palm on her flat stomach. “Me, too.”

  “And now look at us.”

  “Disgraceful,” Anna agreed.

  “So how do we stop acting this way?”

  “I think we just did.” Anna cleared her throat. “By the way, don’t worry about the typo cake. I’ll smooth things over with the college president.”

  “How?”

  “I’m Legacy, remember? I have connections.”

  “Tell you what. I’ll teach you how to make a proper brioche.” Trish grinned. “Check it out. The Bug’s bringing people together already.”

  “He’s destined for greatness,” Anna said. “If he can accomplish all this in utero, imagine what he’ll be capable of in thirty years.”

  “My boy’s gonna broker peace in the Middle East.” Trish froze and sucked in her breath. “Oh. Except I should probably warn you, I did one more tiny little thing to screw you over. Sorry in advance.”

  Anna rubbed her temples. “Oh Lord, what now?”

  “I may have taken a few artistic liberties with that china cake topper you had in the kitchen.”

  Anna’s breath caught. “What kind of artistic liberties?”

  “Let’s just hope the bride’s a Groucho Marx fan.”

  “In literature, as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others.”

  —André Maurois

  The florist dropped off yet another delivery for you.” Anna peered through the half-open door to Cait’s bedroom. “Lots of lilies this time. Really gorgeous.”

  Cait glanced up from the stack of pages in front of her, wrinkled her nose, and quoted, “‘Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.’”