by Karen Gordon
She blew out a breath. “She didn’t want me to tell you, but she kind of waited too long. I mean, it’s all gonna be ok, but the contractions are really close. She won’t be in labor much longer.”
“Fuck! I’m on my way.” Steve slapped his phone shut and waved to his supervisor as he ran for the door. The guy waved back, letting Steve know that he understood why he was leaving. Everyone on his shift knew that this was probably going to be the night. He exited the building to them shouting, “Run, man,” and “Go Steve,” and laughter from the fathers who had been through this already.
♪ ☺ ♥
The lady at the admissions desk seemed to be moving in slow motion checking in the family in front of him. They were signing form after form, and she was going over rules with the group of ten or more people who were there with the pregnant woman. He finally couldn’t take it any longer, and he interrupted.
“Look, my girlfriend’s in there.” He pointed toward the ward doors. “Her name is Amanda Collins. She was brought in not long ago, and she might be having our baby right now.”
The calm pregnant woman said, “Let him go ahead of us.” She smiled at Steve.
He smiled back and breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks.”
The receptionist checked her computer. “Collins, ah, room four. Through the double doors, second door on the right.”
Amanda looked as white as the sheets and sweaty. Wanda was holding her hand. Her legs were propped up and she was breathing hard through a contraction. She smiled at him, but was in too much pain to talk.
“You must be Steve.” A nurse with a halo of soft brown curls and beautiful, calm blue eyes smiled at him.
“Yeah.”
“She’s been looking for you.” She gave Amanda a reassuring smile then turned back to Steve. “I’m Carolyn. I’ll be your nurse tonight. Dr. Prager should be here in a minute, and your daughter should be here right after that.”
Her cheerful, composed demeanor calmed his nerves. Wanda let go so he could hold Amanda’s hand. He nodded to Amanda and she nodded back through her breathing.
Dr. Prager came in and began moving quickly but methodically in a well-choreographed routine with the nurses. “OK, Amanda, she’s ready. Push for me.”
The doctor and nurses kept talking, quietly saying numbers and medical terms, then coaching Amanda to push more. It was all background noise to Steve. He was focused on Amanda’s face, her breathing, her hand squeezing the crap out of his.
He didn’t look when the head crowned or popped out. He wanted to help Amanda focus through the pain, and he was a little worried about being grossed out. He didn’t notice that Dr. Prager and nurse Carolyn had gotten quiet, or the looks they were exchanging.
“One more, Amanda and you’ll be done. You’re doing great. One more big push.” She was still coaching, but Carolyn’s voice was no longer upbeat. Steve noticed.
He looked back at Carolyn and the doctor. They looked nervously at him then down at his daughter. His heart stopped. Something was wrong. He tried to calm his face and breathing so he wouldn’t worry Amanda. He let go of her hand and smiled at her as he stepped back to see his daughter.
Only, it wasn’t his daughter.
Her hair was black and wildly curly. Her skin so many shades darker than either he or Amanda. Her face was rounded with the tiny flat nose of a black baby.
It wasn’t his daughter. He knew in an instant it was Trey’s.
And Amanda knew, too.
When she saw the look on his face, the confusion then recognition, she wasn’t surprised. It was like she half expected it. She must have wondered all along if this was his baby or Trey’s.
The room was too quiet as Carolyn swaddled the baby and weighed her. Amanda was focused on Steve, waiting to see what he would do. He broke out in a cold sweat as the reality of the situation sank in. He could actually feel his heart crushing. It was a sharp pain in his chest as he felt himself let go of his daughter, his Meggie. In an instant he saw all his dreams for her vanish, the dolls, the clothes, the car, college.
A thought passed through is foggy brain--Trey should know. He reached for Amanda’s purse and pulled out her phone.
“Steve? I …” She looked at him with pleading eyes, but had no idea what to say.
He took her phone and walked out the door.
He found the smoking area outside the main door where he bummed a cigarette and a light from another smoker. He didn’t trust his voice until he had a minute to calm down … a little.
It wasn’t hard to find Trey’s number in Amanda’s phone. She had called it a few times a day almost every day. As the phone rang he remembered that it was around three in the morning. Trey answered in a whisper.
“Hello.”
“Trey it’s, um, Steve.”
“Steve? Man, what …? It’s like three a.m.”
“Amada had the baby.”
“That’s great, but couldn’t you wait …”
“Your baby.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah, you said it, fuck.”
Steve could hear his girlfriend in the background ask who was on the phone. “Yeah, tell your girlfriend you need to go, because you need to get your ass down here to Methodist to see your daughter.”
“Fuck.”
Steve didn’t have any more to say so he slapped the phone closed then hurled it into the small pond surrounding a fountain. He walked to his bike then sat on it, holding his helmet, not sure what to do next.
His life had never been easy, but he had always just sort of rolled with the punches and figured it was better to laugh at it than sit around and cry. Being laid-back had kept him from ever fully feeling all the disappointment and hurt of his childhood. But this, fuck, this hurt. It physically hurt all over his body, radiating from his chest. He didn’t know if he was having a heart attack or his heart was just breaking.
He hung his head and tried to cry. But he didn’t know how. He hadn’t cried since he was a baby.
He rubbed his head where a headache was starting to form. He needed a cigarette or a joint or … maybe something stronger. It wasn’t a great plan, but it was something – something other than sitting in this god-damned parking lot. He turned left out of the parking lot and headed out of town. He had promised himself he would never go to his dealer’s house again, but … no, he reasoned; he had promised Meggie. And there was no Meggie.
Chapter 16
Steve didn’t go to work that Monday night because he went someplace he swore he would never go, but it was the only way he could think of to deal with pain stronger than he had ever known. He lay in his dealer’s basement on a bed that reeked of armpit and piss and sex and floated in a fuzzy, dust-induced nightmare. Stony did dust. It made him into the shit-head loser he was today. Is that where he was headed now?
When he ran out of money, he was kicked out early Tuesday morning. It was probably for the best. Lying there, too lost in the haze to get up and do anything, his thoughts drifted. He wished he could call MG again, like he did before, when everything went to shit. But then, he didn’t want her to see him like this. She would be pissed at him and rip him a new one for heading down the same path that had ruined Stony’s life. He had no idea what he was going to do now, but he knew it didn’t involve going back in that house and lying in that bed and slowly dying. Until he knew for sure that he could never have her again, he had to keep trying to be someone MG might want. It was a slim thread to hold on to, but it was all he had today to get him on the motorcycle and make him ride away.
He checked his pocket for his phone. It was dead. He vaguely remembered it buzzing and ringing over and over. No doubt Amanda trying to reach him. And tell him what?
Below his phone he found a five-dollar bill. Not enough to buy another hit, good thing, but just enough to get a breakfast sandwich and a pack of cigarettes at the quick shop.
♪ ☺ ♥
“Five Twenty.”
“Huh?” Steve looked up at the guy at
the register. “It should be four eighty-nine.”
“Cigarettes went up again. It’s five twenty.”
Steve shook his head. He didn’t have another twenty cents. He needed the sandwich and the cigarettes. Damn. When it rains it pours. Could his life get any worse?
The guy behind him was getting impatient as Steve stood there trying to figure out what to do.
The glass front door swung open and a man entered. He was pale, his eyes as big as saucers. “We’ve been attacked.” He didn’t say it very loud so no one paid attention to him. “We’ve been attacked.” He got louder, “America is under attack!”
Everyone stared at him like he was crazy. But he didn’t look crazy. He was a businessman, wearing a suit. “Turn on a radio or a TV. I’m telling you. Someone flew a plane into the World Trade Center. New York City is under attack!”
Steve felt the blood drain from his already too-light head. New York? MG. No! He looked at the cashier--neither of them sure what to do.
“My girlfriend,” Steve tried to explain to the cashier that he had to go. “She’s there.”
The guy behind Steve grabbed his sandwich and cigarettes and put them in his hands. “Go, go call her.” He pulled out his credit card. “I’ve got this.”
“Thank you.” He turned around. Any other day he would have had to stifle a chuckle at how over-the-top swishy this gay guy was. He had on a glitter scarf. Glitter for fucks sake. But he had just helped him out so he said, “Thank you,” again and walked out the door.
♪ ☺ ♥
Tuesdays and Thursdays MG had an eight a.m. class then a three-hour break before her next one. The first week back she had gone back to her dorm room, which was now horrifyingly quiet. Lexi had made the lowest grades of her entire life when she was running around with MG, and she had lost her scholarship. Logically, MG didn’t feel like it was her fault, but it still felt shitty that the girl’s life had completely tanked when she had started hanging around with her. It didn’t help that Lexi had called her and told her that it was her fault. It still stung a little each time MG went to her half-empty dorm room. The chaos at the sorority house was a great distraction from the guilt that hung around her dorm room.
Although she still hadn’t officially joined, but Alex had lured her in to hanging out at the sorority house to get to know more of the girls. Formal rush was scheduled to start the third weekend in September and Alex wanted to make sure MG was a shoe in.
Normally the place was loud and chaotic at nine a.m., with girls looking for clothes, open outlets, lost cell phones, but not today. It was almost silent and everyone was packed into the TV room in the back of the house.
The girls were clinging to each other, some crying, most just staring at the TV in stunned silence. MG looked at the TV screen and tried to make sense out of what she saw there–black smoke, the World Trade Center, fire, people in the street running from the falling debris--running past her mom’s office–fire falling from the sky onto her mom’s office building. Her heart and breath stopped, and she grabbed onto the girl next to her so she wouldn’t collapse.
And she stayed that way, clinging to this girl, who she didn’t really know, for the next few hours. Everyone in that room knew someone who worked in the World Trade Center or nearby. There was a collective scream and loud crying as the second plane flew into the second tower. That was followed by shared shock, bodies shaking, everyone screaming “NO!”, then frantic cell phone dialing.
MG tried her mom’s cell phone but all she got was a message about there being a problem with the service in the area. And she kept getting the same message as she continuously redialed and redialed.
They were hours from the scene of the attack, but it might as well have happened at the school. It seemed that no one was unaffected. So many people crowded into one room, sobbing, shaking, or eyes transfixed on the TV. When her phone died, MG panicked. It felt like her mother died when her only possible connection to her died. Alex saw her and helped her find a charging cord that matched her phone. They sat together near the outlet, eyes on the TV.
“My dad had an office there.” Alex mumbled. “My Uncle, too.”
MG reached out and held her hand. “My mom,” was all she could say.
Then the towers collapsed and any hope they were clinging to went with them. Hours of shock were taking a toll. Both girls, in fact most in the room, were now silent, barely breathing, wondering if anything this bad could be real.
At two that afternoon her cell phone buzzed. MG stared at it in her hands. It took a minute to register that this could be the call she had been waiting for, it could be her mom. She looked at the screen … it was Randy’s number. She was relieved then too scared to answer. It might be news about her mom. She wanted good news as much as she feared the worst.
“Hello?” Her voice was so quiet, unused all day and still short of breath from the shock.
“MG, baby, she’s alright. Your mom is alright.” Randy was out of breath too, as if he had run from the city.
“What?” MG sucked in a deep breath, her first since nine a.m.
“She wasn’t in the office. She was showing an apartment.”
MG’s throat choked close and tears started streaming down her face.
“Do you need me to come get you? We can’t go down there yet, but I can come get you.”
MG looked at Alex who still had no news. “No, no, I need to stay here. I need to stay with Alex until she knows … until she gets some news.”
“OK, but call me if you need me. You can reach me. I’ll be here.”
“OK, I will.” The relief tears started to pour again. “And thank you. Thank you for finding her.”
“Anything for you, baby. You just call.”
♪ ☺ ♥
Steve stared at his stupid dead cell phone. Somewhere trapped in that phone was MG’s number in New York.
The charging cord … was at Amanda’s. He didn’t want to go back there, not now. That would be piling too much fear on top of the hurt that was already there.
Casey … she was the geekiest person he knew. She had her own computer. She would have MG’s number, too.
Casey answered the door and only said, “MG,” and shook her head. She pulled him inside where her mom was glued to a spot on the couch, eyes trained on the TV. He pulled Casey close and hugged her.
“You don’t have her number?”
“I have one, but it’s not working. I don’t know if it’s the number or if we can’t get a call into New York City.”
Her mom gasped, and they turned to see the second plane hit the second tower. Casey whimpered and Steve hugged her tighter. Her mom reached a hand up and Casey grabbed it and held on.
“We have to find her. How can we find her?” He looked at the terror on the screen, “Damn it, we have to find her. She can’t be gone.”
Pat, Casey’s ex-boyfriend, started them on the path to finding MG. He came right over when Casey called and moved her computer from her bedroom to the living room. His suspicious nature paid off. The guy had cyber stalking down to an art.
Through connections that had to be illegal, he was able to access the call history for the phone number they had for MG. It hadn’t been used since January–dead end.
Pat and Casey were brilliant together. Casey remembered that MG had gotten a new phone from her dad. Pat figured out who he was and where he was from, his last name, and some court records tying him to MG. His cell number was an easy next step.
When they got through to him they explained who they were.
“She’s OK.” He assured them.
Casey relayed the news to Steve.
“She’s at school, hours from the city. And Amber is OK, too.”
There was a huge collective sigh of relief in the room. Steve let go of Casey’s mom’s hand that he had somehow taken over holding hours earlier.
“Can we call her?”
“It might be hard to get through, but here’s her number.”
&n
bsp; Casey said it out loud as Pat wrote it on the scratch pad they’d been using all afternoon.
“Thank you! You have no idea how worried we were.”
“She’ll be glad to hear from you.”
Casey hung up and immediately handed the phone to Steve and prepared to read off the number.
He was about to protest that she should be the one to call, then he realized how desperately he needed to hear her voice. It only rang twice.
“Hello.”
Her voice – joy and relief shot through him at the sound of her voice. He nearly broke down and sobbed.
He choked out, “MG?” then cleared his throat so he could talk. “It’s me … Steve.”
“Steve?” Her voice was so quiet and distant. “Steve?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s really you?” She was crying.
“Yeah, babe. It’s me.” He was breathing hard, trying not to cry too. “I’m so glad you’re OK. I …” He looked around the room. “We, Casey and Pat and Casey’s mom, we’ve been looking for you all day.”
“I’m OK, and my mom’s OK, but … god, it’s so bad here. So many people don’t know about their parents and friends and …”
“Do you need me to come get you?” The words were out of his mouth before he realized how illogical they were.
“What? Would you? Would you really come up here?” She sounded so hopeful; there was no way he was going to back out now.
“Give me your address, and I’m on my way.” Casey and Pat looked at him like he was crazy.
He wrote down her address, and Pat got to work quickly finding it so he could make maps and print them out.
“I don’t know how many hours it will take me, but just hang in there. I’ll be there.”
She was crying again. “I miss you.” She sniffed. “I love you.”
He wasn’t sure if it was real or the stress talking, but he’d take it. They were the words he’d waited three years to hear her say. And he would drive over a thousand miles to hear her say them again.