Lone Eagle

by Danielle Steel

  “So what's happening to you these days?” Andy asked her one afternoon, when he dropped by from Harvard. He was having an excruciatingly busy first year of law school, and was feeling utterly swamped. They were walking slowly through Harvard Yard as he talked to her, and his long lanky good looks and dark hair caught the attention of every girl who walked by. They were beginning to look desperate these days, and Andy was getting a lot of attention from the Radcliffe girls.

  “You're spoiled rotten,” Kate teased him, and he grinned. He had a beautiful smile, and big dark eyes that were filled with warmth and kindness.

  “Hell, somebody has to take care of these girls for our boys in uniform. It's hard work, but someone has to do it.” He was actually enjoying being at home these days, and was getting over being embarrassed by being 4-F. He had explained it so many times that he was no longer as sensitive about it. And there were times when he was secretly glad to be home.

  “You're disgusting, Andy Scott,” Kate reassured him. She enjoyed his company, and they had become good friends in the past two years.

  He was going to work at the hospital again that summer. She had been dragging her feet about a summer job, because she knew she'd be showing by then, and as an unmarried mother, no one would want to hire her. She was thinking about staying at their house on Cape Cod until she had the baby. And in a few weeks she was going to advise Radcliffe that she would be taking a leave of absence, starting at Easter. It meant she wouldn't graduate with her class. But with luck, it would only cost her one semester. And she would have a great reward for it, if they would take her back. She would have to tell them why she was leaving. She wasn't the first woman it had happened to, and she had made her peace with it. She wondered what Joe would think of it when he found out. She wasn't going to tell him until he next came home, even if that meant her having the baby without his knowing. And she was such good friends with Andy now, she was almost sorry not to tell him. But she knew she couldn't. And he would probably be shocked when he heard. She worried at times now that he would think less of her once he found out. But it was a price she was prepared to pay.

  “So what are you doing this summer, Kate? The Red Cross again?”

  “Probably,” she said vaguely, but he didn't notice that she was distracted. She looked better than she had in February, and he was trying to convince her to go to a movie with him. She went with him occasionally, more so now that he had given up on her as a potential date, and accepted her as a friend. But she had a paper due the next day, and said that this time she couldn't go with him.

  “You're no fun. Well, at least I'm glad you're looking better. You looked like death the last time I saw you.” The nausea was actually beginning to abate, she was almost three months pregnant, and nearly at the end of her first trimester. She was getting excited about the baby, and hoped it would be a little boy, who would look exactly like Joe.

  “I had the flu,” she reiterated, and he had believed her all along. He had no reason to doubt her, or suspect she might be pregnant. It was the farthest thing from his mind.

  “I'm glad you're over it. Do your paper so we can go to a movie next week,” he said, as he hopped on his bicycle, and waved as he rode off, his dark hair ruffled by the wind, and his brown eyes laughing at her. He was a nice boy, and she had grown very fond of him.

  She wondered at times if things would have been different between them if Joe had never existed. It was hard to say. She had deep feelings of affection for Andy but couldn't even imagine feeling for him what she felt for Joe. There was something warm and cuddly and kind about Andy, but he elicited none of the excitement and passion that she felt for Joe. But she knew that one day, Andy would make someone a fine husband. He was responsible and loving and decent, all the things that women looked for in a man. Unlike Joe, who was awkward and vague, and brilliant, and totally obsessed with airplanes, and had no desire to settle down. She had never expected to fall in love with a man like Joe Allbright, let alone have a baby with him, without even being married. Her life had taken several sharp turns recently, in totally unexpected directions. But with his baby growing in her, she had never been more in love with Joe.

  She was actually feeling very well that weekend, and not nearly as tired as she had been. She'd finished the work she had to do, and she had three letters from Joe in one day. They tended to arrive in clumps like that sometimes, it had to do with the way the censors sent them, after they cleared them, to make sure that no one gave away sensitive security secrets, or the locations of their missions. Joe's letters to her had never been a problem. He wrote to her about people, and the local countryside, and his feelings for her, all totally safe subjects.

  She had been planning to go home that weekend, and at the last minute decided against it. She went to a movie with a group of friends, and saw Andy there with a girl Kate knew from one of her classes. She was a tall blonde from the Midwest, she had a great smile and long legs, and she had recently transferred from Wellesley. She grinned at Andy when the girl turned away to put her cardigan on, and he made a face at her. Kate and the girls she had gone to the movie with all went back to the house on their bicycles afterward. It was the best way to travel around campus and Cambridge. They were almost home, when a boy on a bicycle came whizzing out of nowhere, cut through the group with a holler and a whoop, and hit Kate so hard she went flying off her bike, fell to the pavement, and was knocked momentarily unconscious. By the time the other girls got off their bikes, she was awake again, but a little groggy. And the boy who had hit her was standing next to her looking panicked and disoriented. It was obvious that he was drunk.

  “Are you crazy?” one of the girls shouted at him, as two others helped Kate to her feet. She had hurt her arm, and her hip, she had fallen hard on her bottom, but nothing seemed to be broken. But all she could think about as she limped back to her room was her baby. She didn't say anything to anyone, but she went straight to bed as soon as they got back to the house, and one of her friends brought her a couple of ice packs for her arm and her hip.

  “Are you okay?” Diana asked in her long, slow southern accent. “These northern boys sure don't have manners!”

  Kate smiled at her, and thanked her for the ice packs, but it wasn't her arm or her hip that was bothering her. She had had cramps for the past several minutes, and didn't know what to do about it. She thought about going to the infirmary but it was too far to walk, and she was afraid that might make things even worse. She thought maybe if she just stayed in bed, it would get better. She had obviously shaken up the baby pretty badly. But hopefully, it would settle down.

  “If you need anything, just call me,” Diana said as she left Kate, and went downstairs to smoke a cigarette with a boy from MIT who had dropped by to visit. And when she came back an hour later to check on Kate, she was sleeping. Everyone was sound asleep by the time Kate woke up again at four o'clock in the morning. She was in agony, and when she rolled over in her bed to try and get more comfortable, she saw that she was bleeding. She tried to keep quiet, in spite of the pain, so she wouldn't wake the other girls sleeping near her. And she was doubled over in pain as she made her way to the bathroom. She didn't see it, but she left a trail of blood behind her as she walked. Her arm and her hip hurt too, from the encounter with the bicycle, but nothing was as painful as her belly. She could hardly stand.

  She closed the door to the bathroom as quietly as she could, and turned the light on, and when she looked in the mirror she saw that everything from her waist down was covered in blood. She was hemorrhaging, and knew what was happening. She was losing Joe's baby. But she was afraid that if she called someone, she might get kicked out of school, or they might call her parents. She didn't know what the consequences would be if the administration found out she was pregnant. She assumed she'd be asked to leave.

  This wasn't the way she had wanted things to happen. She had no idea what to do, or who to call, or what was about to happen. But she had no time to think about it, the pai
ns that had awakened her were suddenly so severe that she could hardly breathe. She was being hit by wave after wave of powerful contractions. She was on her knees on the floor, gasping for air, with blood everywhere, when Diana, the southern girl, wandered in for a drink of water and found her on the floor.

  “Oh my God… Kate… what happened?” She looked like the victim of an ax murder, and all Diana could think of was that they had to call a doctor, an ambulance, someone, but as she said as much to Kate, she begged her not to.

  “Don't… please… I can't… Diana…” She couldn't even finish her sentence, but the girl from New Orleans suddenly suspected what had happened to her.

  “Are you pregnant? Tell me the truth, Kate.” She wanted to help her, but had to know what was happening to her. Her mother was a nurse, and her father a doctor, and she had good experience with first aid. But she had never seen as much blood as the pool rapidly spreading around Kate. She was afraid she'd bleed to death if they didn't call someone to help them. Not getting Kate to the hospital seemed like a big chance to take.

  “Yes, I am…” Kate choked and admitted she was pregnant, as Diana helped her roll over onto a stack of towels. Kate was crying at each pain now, and biting a towel to stay silent and not make any noise. “Almost three months….”

  “Shit. I had an abortion once. My daddy nearly killed me. I was seventeen, and I was afraid to tell him … so I went to someone outside town…. I was as bad as you are… poor baby,” she said, putting a damp cloth on Kate's head, and holding her hand now with each contraction. She had locked the door so no one could walk in on them, but what she feared most was that she would cost Kate her life if she didn't get help for her. The bleeding was horrific. But it seemed to slow a little as the pains got worse. Neither of them was sure what was happening, but it was easy to figure out that Kate was going to expel the baby. There was no way it was still alive with all that bleeding.

  It was another hour of excruciating pain before Kate's entire body writhed in agony, and within seconds, she lost the baby. She lost more blood, but as soon as it was out, she seemed to be losing less. Diana was mopping up what she could with towels, and she had wrapped the fetus in a towel and put it where Kate couldn't see it. She was too weak to even be hysterical, and when she tried to sit up, she almost fainted. Diana had her lie down again.

  It was nearly seven o'clock, and they had been in the bathroom for three hours, before Diana could help Kate back to bed. Everything had been cleaned up, and once she was sure that Kate was safely tucked into bed, she ran downstairs to the garbage room, to dispose of the towel that held the evidence of what had happened to Kate.

  The bleeding was less out of control, and she was still in pain, but it was tolerable. Diana explained that it was her uterus contracting to stop the bleeding, which was a good thing. The earlier pains had been to expel the baby. And if she didn't bleed too much more, Diana hoped that she would be all right. She had already told Kate that if it got any worse she was calling an ambulance and sending her to the hospital, no matter how much Kate objected. And Kate had agreed, she was terrified and too weak to argue, and in shock from losing so much blood. She was shaking violently, as Diana put three more blankets on her bed, and the other girls began stirring.

  “Are you okay?” one of them asked as she got up. They had class that morning. “You look kind of pale, Kate. Maybe you got a concussion when that guy knocked you off your bike last night.” She was yawning as she headed for the bathroom, and Kate said she had a terrible headache, and was still visibly shaking as she lay tucked into her bed.

  Diana continued to hover over her, and a girl from another room came in to borrow some towels, and looked worried when she saw Kate's ashen lips, and her face, she was the color of chalk.

  “What happened to you last night?” the girl asked, and came over to take Kate's pulse.

  “She fell off her bike and hit her head,” Diana covered for her, but the other girl knew better. Like Diana, she came from a medical family, in New York, and she knew enough to understand that Kate had more than a headache or a concussion. She was so gray, she looked like she'd lost a lot of blood, and was possibly even in shock.

  She leaned her face down close to Kate's ear, and gently touched her shoulder. “Kate … tell me the truth… are you bleeding?…” All Kate could do was nod her head and shake. Her teeth were chattering so hard she couldn't even speak. “I think you're in shock…. Did you have an abortion?” she whispered. Kate had always liked her, and was willing to trust her with the information. She knew she was in trouble. She was feeling dizzy and her body had been so traumatized that she was freezing and couldn't stop shaking, in spite of the stack of blankets Diana had put on her. Both girls were standing next to her bed looking worried sick.

  “No,” Kate whispered to the girl, whose name was Beverly. “I lost it.”

  “Are you hemorrhaging?” She didn't think so, the bed didn't feel damp around her. She was afraid to look.

  “I don't think so.”

  “I'm going to cut class today and stay with you. You shouldn't be alone here. Do you want to go to the hospital?” Kate shook her head no in answer. It was the last thing she wanted.

  “I'll stay too,” Diana volunteered, and went to get her a cup of tea. Half an hour later, all the other girls had gone to their classes, and the two caretakers sat on either side of Kate's bed. She was wide awake, and crying intermittently. The entire experience had terrified and depressed her.

  “You'll be okay, Kate,” Beverly said quietly. “I had an abortion last year. It was awful. Just try to sleep, you'll feel better in a day or two. You'll be surprised how fast you get better.” And then she thought of something. “Is there anyone you want me to call?” Obviously, there was another person involved in this, and she didn't know Kate's situation. But Kate shook her head.

  “He's in England,” she whispered, through teeth that were beginning to clench. She had never felt as awful in her life, the loss of blood had shaken her entire system to the core.

  “Does he know?” Diana asked, as she patted Kate's shoulder and Kate looked at her gratefully. She couldn't have gotten through it without her. And this way, no one would know, neither Radcliffe nor her parents. Nor Joe.

  “I didn't tell him. I was going to have the baby.”

  “You can have another one when he comes home.” Beverly didn't add “if he lives,” which was what all three of them were thinking as Kate started to cry again. It was a long, lonely day for her, and it was another two days before she felt even halfway human.

  Diana and Beverly went back to class the next day, and Kate just lay in her bed and cried all day long. It was Wednesday before she got out of bed, and when she did, she looked ghostly and had lost ten pounds. She hadn't eaten since Sunday, but the bleeding had almost stopped. She looked and felt terrible, and there were dark circles under her eyes, but all three girls agreed, she was out of danger. She tried to thank them for what they'd done for her, but every time she did, she started crying again.

  “It's going to be like that for a while,” Beverly warned. “I cried for a month. It's just hormones.” But it wasn't just hormones, it was their baby. She had lost a part of Joe.

  No one knew what had happened to her, and they all thought in the house that she was in bed as a result of her bike accident on Sunday night. And she never told anyone anything different. She felt as though she had been on another planet for several days. Everything seemed unreal and different, and the only thing that cheered her up were Joe's letters. But she cried again when she realized that she couldn't even tell him what had happened, and what they'd lost.

  She spent the following weekend in bed, studying. She was quiet and pale, and still didn't look well when Andy dropped by on Saturday afternoon. It had been a week since the miscarriage, but she still looked awful. She made her way gingerly downstairs to see him. Beverly and Diana had been bringing her food from the cafeteria all week. And the first time she left her room was to
see Andy, as he waited for her in the living room downstairs.

  “Jesus, Kate, you look legally dead. What happened to you?” She looked so fragile and pale that he was frightened for her. She was wraithlike.

  “I got hit by a bike last Sunday night. I think I had a concussion.”

  “Did you go to the hospital to get it checked out?”

  “No, I'm okay,” she said, sitting in a chair next to him, but he was genuinely worried about her.

  “I think you should see a doctor. Maybe you're brain dead,” he grinned at her.

  “Very funny. I feel better.”

  “I'd hate to have seen you on Monday.”

  “Yes, you would have,” she said, but seeing him brought her back into the world again and she was less depressed when she went back to her room, although she was bone tired. Diana had warned her that she would be anemic for a while, and told her to eat lots of liver.