“Try to breathe through it,” Blackwell said. “It will help to ease the pain.”
She and Alex were sitting on either side of me while Tank swung the limousine around in front of the hospital’s entrance.
“There’s Lisa,” he said. “At the front door. She just waved to us before she ran inside to let them know that we’re here.”
I squeezed Alex’s hand and closed my eyes as the contraction radiated from deep in my lower back to the front of my belly. It felt like my guts were being twisted in knots.
“That’s your third one in ten minutes,” Blackwell said. “I’m timing it now to see how long it lasts so that I can tell the doctor. Let me know when it’s over, and then we’ll get you inside.”
It seemed like a lifetime passed before the contraction stopped, and when it did, I gave Blackwell a nod.
“Seventy-two seconds,” she said. “Since you’re having them ten minutes apart, I’m afraid that you’re in for a long day. How many weeks are you at this point? Thirty-eight?”
“That’s right,” I said as I sat up.
“Then you and the baby will be fine—thirty-eight weeks is close enough.”
“That’s not what I’ve read. I’ve read that there can be complications if you’re not at full term when you go into labor.”
“There always can be complications, Jennifer, but we’re not going to think about any of them. Instead, we’re going to remain positive, you’re going to be evaluated by your doctor, and at some point today or tomorrow morning, you’re going to have this baby.” She looked out the side window and said, “There’s Lisa. And a nurse is coming this way with a wheelchair. Let’s get you into it and inside the hospital before the next contraction hits.”
Since Alex had already called ahead to my doctor, what happened next was a whirlwind of events that went by so quickly, it was a blur.
Once I was out of the car, Alex helped me into the chair and I heard Tank say that he’d be back after he’d parked the car. Lisa came forward to give me a kiss on the forehead, and I felt a stab of guilt for everything she didn’t know but should.
But before I could think anymore about that, all of us were suddenly in an elevator going up to the seventh floor, and before I even knew it, I was admitted directly to the labor and delivery unit at the Greenberg Pavilion. My doctor, Janet Grace, was there to greet me. And when she saw me, she put her hands on her narrow hips and gave me a friendly smile. She was a good-looking woman around my mother’s age with blue eyes and straight blonde hair that hung down to her shoulders.
“Well, look at you,” she said.
“I’m a complete wreck,” I said.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Scared. I shouldn’t be here for another two weeks, Dr. Grace.”
“You’re going to be fine, OK? There’s no reason to be concerned. You’re about to go through a journey billions of other women have gone through before you. And when it’s over, Alex and you will be parents.”
“That’s the best part,” I said with emotion in my voice. “You know how much this baby means to us.”
I felt Alex’s hand on my shoulder when I said that, and in his touch I felt a mixture of love, nervousness, and excitement.
“I do know,” my doctor said. “And since I saw you just last week, I also know that you’re perfectly healthy. So please listen to me when I say that you and your baby are going to be fine.”
“I hope so,” I said.
“How many contractions have you had?”
“She’s had three over the past thirty minutes,” Alex said, and then he motioned toward Blackwell, who was standing next to him. “Dr. Grace, this is Barbara Blackwell, who was smart enough to time the last contraction.”
The two women shook hands.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” my doctor said. “Jennifer has told me so much about you.”
“Likewise,” Blackwell said. “And from what Jennifer has told me about you, I already know that we’re in good hands.”
“How long did her last contraction last?”
“Seventy-two seconds,” Blackwell said.
“Well, that’s precise.”
“I live to be precise—in all things, large and small.”
My doctor gave Blackwell an amused look before she turned to me.
“And I understand that your water broke?”
“It did,” I said. “In the most humiliating of ways.”
“Sorry?”
“It broke over Barbara’s shoes.”
“It what?” Lisa said.
“You heard me.”
“Stop smiling,” Blackwell said to her. “Because I handled it like a pro. Hell, we were in such a hurry to get out of Wenn, I didn’t even have time to change them.”
“I had no idea,” Lisa said. “Alexa’s at Wenn right now, and I know that you keep shoes in your office. Why don’t I call and ask her to bring you another pair.”
“Why would you even offer to do that?” Blackwell said with suspicion in her voice.
“Maybe because you need a new pair of shoes, Barbara...?”
“Who are you?” Blackwell said. “Why do I feel as if you’ll ask her to bring the wrong pair of shoes?”
“Oh, stop,” Lisa said as she pulled her phone out of her handbag. “Our little rivalry is over. So let me guess. Something Chanel? Something black? Something not covered in amniotic fluid?”
“That would be perfect.”
“I’m on it.”
“And the world continues to spin around me in the most bizarre ways,” Blackwell said.
“I think I’m about to have another contraction,” I said as I felt my back start to burn. “In fact, I know that I am.”
“Then let’s get you into a room so you can have some privacy,” Dr. Grace said. “When the contraction passes, I’ll examine you, we’ll determine how far along you are, and then we’ll discuss our next steps.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SEVEN HOURS LATER, it was clear that I was in this for the long haul.
Before she left for the evening—which wasn’t a good sign for me since it was a clear signal that my baby wasn’t coming anytime soon—Dr. Grace asked me to pace around the room so I would dilate faster.
“If you can sleep, sleep,” she said before she’d left. “But with your contractions coming closer together, I frankly don’t see that happening. Just try to rest as much as you can in-between contractions and walk around the rest of the time. And I’ll see you in the morning, OK? Because that’s when I believe the baby will arrive.”
And so I walked.
With Alex, Lisa, Blackwell, and Tank in the room with me, I paced around in my pale-blue hospital gown, knowing that Dr. Grace was right—there was no sleep in store for me tonight. I’d be up and active until morning, especially since I was only four centimeters dilated.
Despite all the time that had passed since my water had broken, I somehow still had another six centimeters to go.
Attached to my abdomen was an external fetal monitor that assessed the patterns of my contractions and the fetal heart rate. My blood pressure, temperature, and pulse were monitored each hour by whichever nurse was on duty. And since I couldn’t eat or drink, all I had were chips of ice to crunch on to quench my thirst, which turned out to be officially approved by Blackwell to absolutely no one’s surprise.
“The ice is good, isn’t it?” she said at one point. “I mean, it can be a perfectly delicious snack!”
“I’d rather have a burger.”
“Think of the ice as your burger—with all of the fixings.”
“You can’t be serious...”
“Maybe not, but you need to follow doctor’s orders.”
“I plan to,” I said as I paced.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, everyone, but it looks to me like Jennifer is strutting,” Lisa said. “It’s as if she’s a runway model.”
“She is walking with a bit of an attitude,” Blackwell said
.
“That’s because I’m in pain. If I’m ‘strutting,’ it’s only because of that.”
“Well, at least you look good doing it,” Lisa said.
And that was it for me—I could no longer keep my secret from her. Before my baby came and while I had the chance, my best friend and I needed to talk.
“Listen,” I said. “It’s past dinnertime, and all of you must be hungry. Why don’t you get yourselves something to eat in the cafeteria? I’ll be fine here.”
“If you’re absolutely certain, I could eat,” Lisa said as she stood.
“That’s the thing,” I said. “I need everyone else to leave but you. You and I have to talk.”
She furrowed her brow at me as Blackwell got up and motioned for Alex and Tank to do the same. “A fabulous idea,” she said smoothly. “We’ll get a quick bite to eat. I’m not that hungry, but I’m sure the boys are. Is an hour enough time before we return?”
Lisa looked quizzically at Blackwell, and then she turned to me. “What’s this about?” she said. “Because I’m also hungry.”
“It’s about us,” I said. “It’s about something I should have told you a long time ago, when we were younger. But after today? It’s something I have to tell you now and in private. It won’t take long. You can grab something from the cafeteria when we’re finished.”
“Finished with what?” she said.
I just looked at her and allowed my silence to speak for itself.
“Alright,” she said. “If this is important, and you need to share something with me, then I’m here for you.”
After Alex kissed me and told me that he loved me, he left the room with Blackwell and Tank—just as a deep sense of shame and self-loathing came over me. By withholding what my father had done to me, I felt as if I’d betrayed Lisa, which cut me to the core in ways that my contractions couldn’t even touch.
“What’s the matter?” she said when the door closed behind them. “By the look on your face, it clearly isn’t good. So what’s wrong? Is it the baby?”
“No, no,” I said as I took her by the hand and sat down on the sofa next to her. “It’s not the baby.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
“Then what is it?”
How am I going to get through this...?
With the truth.
“My mother called me today,” I said.
Her eyebrows shot up. “Ava called you? After all these years?”
“She did.”
“What did she want?”
“It’s complicated.”
“How complicated? What did she want?”
I hesitated before I said, “Money.”
“Why do I feel that it’s more than just money?” she asked.
“Because you know her too well. She threatened me to get money,” I said.
“Threatened you? What does she have to threaten you with? If anything, you’re the one who should have threatened her for being such a horrible mother.”
“Lisa, there’s something I’ve never told you about my personal life. It’s something I’m so ashamed of, I never told anyone about it until I was forced to do just that today with my husband, Blackwell, and Tank in the room with me. I think it’s the stress of what I went through this morning with my mother’s threats that caused my water to break early.”
“Jennifer, what are you talking about?” she said.
“There’s no easy way to say this.”
“Look, I’m you’re best friend. Just say it. There are no secrets between us. There never have been and there never will be.”
“That’s the thing,” I said as I felt my throat constrict. “There has been one major secret between us, and it involves my father. What he did to me.”
She blinked at me.
“But we share everything together,” she said.
“Not this,” I said as my voice broke. “This is something that I never wanted to share with anyone—not even you, despite how much I love you. I wanted this to be dead and buried years ago. I never wanted to face it or discuss it with anyone. But after my bitch of a mother called to threaten me this morning, I have no choice but to tell you everything.”
She turned and looked directly at me. “What are you talking about? What did your father do to you?”
There was no other way to say it, so I just said it.
“He molested me,” I said.
“He what?”
Just saying the words aloud was nearly unbearable, but I repeated them.
“He molested me, Lisa.”
“My God, Jennifer—when?”
If we were going to discuss this, I couldn’t look at her, so I just looked down at my hands, which were clenched in my lap. “It started when I was six,” I said to her. “It ended when I was nine.”
“You went through that for four years?”
“I did. Since then, I’ve tried to forget that it ever happened, but since my mother knew about it—she fucking allowed it to happen, Lisa—she called today and threatened to share the news with the press if Alex and I didn’t pay her twenty million dollars to keep her mouth shut about it.”
“I can’t believe this,” Lisa said as she put her arm around my shoulders. “Jennifer, I’m so sorry.”
At that moment, a contraction hit, and I had to bend over in pain and wait for it to subside before I could go on.
“I should have told you,” I said once I’d caught my breath. “And I’m sorry that I didn’t, Lisa. But I hope you understand why I couldn’t.” A flood of emotions started to well up within me when I said that, and I had to summon every ounce of strength I had not to give in to them. “I just couldn’t. It’s too embarrassing. Humiliating. I always felt that if I told anyone—even you—that I’d be that girl. You know, the one who was molested. The one who was branded and stained. The one who wasn’t worth a damn. Years ago, I thought I was done with all of this bullshit. But after today? After my mother threatened to go to every tabloid and out me? It’s all real again—and, frankly, it’s as if his hands are all over me again. It’s too fucking much!”
“Don’t,” she said.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t worry that you didn’t tell me.”
“But I should have told you.”
“I disagree. Because to be honest, I’m not so sure that I would have told you if it had happened to me.”
She reached for my hands and held them.
“Jennifer, I might call myself a writer, but I have no words for how sorry I am that your father did that to you. What I don’t want is for you to feel sorry for not telling me. You were just a young girl when it happened, for God’s sake. Of course you never wanted to mention it to anyone—even to me. I get it. I’m not angry at you for not telling me, but I can tell you this—I’m furious that it happened and that your bitch of a mother would even dare to come after you like this. That’s what pisses me off.”
“I know that you have questions about all of this, and I want you to ask them. At the very least, you deserve that from me.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m as sure as I’ll ever be.”
“Well,” she said. “How far did it go? Did he...you know?”
“Penetrate me?”
“I guess...”
“No. He just touched me. Late at night. When he thought my mother was asleep, even though she wasn’t. She knew what was happening when he was doing it.”
“There’s a special place in hell for your mother,” Lisa said. “And also for your father. But somehow, after this kind of betrayal? I think that your mother is worse than your father. She knew that this was taking place for years before it stopped.” And then she just looked at me. “Why did it stop?”
“Do you remember Mr. Gardner?”
“Aiden Gardner? Our fourth-grade homeroom teacher?”
“Yes, him.”
“Of course I do. We loved him.”
“We did, which is why he’s the one
I went to when I couldn’t handle it anymore. He’s the one who stopped it.”
“How?”
“When I finally got up the courage to go to him, I told him everything. Naturally, he wanted to go to the police, but I begged him not to because I knew that my father would beat the shit out of me if he did. But in a roundabout way, Mr. Gardner still found a way to go forward.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s the one who threatened my father, not the police. He came to our house, pounded on the front door, got my mother, and demanded to speak to my father. I was in my bedroom and heard all of it. Mr. Gardner told my father that he would go to the police if this didn’t stop at once. He stopped my father from going any further than he did.”
“It’s all falling into place now,” she said. “This is the reason you never had sex with anyone before you met Alex, isn’t it?”
I nodded at her.
“It wasn’t just because you wanted to save yourself for ‘the one.’ It’s because you wanted to give yourself only to a man you could trust.”
“Yes.”
With a fierceness I felt in my soul and in my bones, she took me into her arms and hugged me. In my ear, she said, “I’m sick that this happened to you. If you’d let me, I’d send Tank there now to kick your father’s ass.”
“Don’t tempt me.”
“You know that he would.”
“And that’s what scares me, so let’s not even go there. Because after this morning? I might just bite and want him to have at my mother as well.”
“You’ve always been a fighter,” she said. “And now I know why. I had no idea just how much you’ve had to fight in your life, but now it all makes sense.”
“I should have told you, Lisa.”
“Again, I disagree.”
“Are you sure that if this had happened to you that you wouldn’t have told me?”
“I am,” she said. “This is way too personal. I would have felt the same as you do. I would have kept my mouth shut about it. If this is any consolation, my respect for you has only risen because of the burden you’ve had to bear alone for all these years. You always have been my bright light—the one person in my life who shines. But how did you even manage to become that person after all you’ve been through? The fact that you did only makes you shine brighter in my eyes.”
Holiday: Annihilate Them, #2 Page 11