Maybe in Another Life

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

  I’m right, of course. Which is why Gabby changes the subject. “You are going to love this baby,” she says. “You know that, right? You are such a loving person. You have so much love to give, and you are so loyal to the people you love. Do you have any idea what a great mom you are going to be? Do you have any idea how loved this kid is going to be? The love it will have from its Aunt Gabby will eclipse the sun.”

  I laugh, despite myself.

  “Hannah, you can do this. And one day soon, you’re not going to imagine how you ever found meaning in your life before you did.” Maybe she’s right.

  “What if your dad fires me before I’m even hired? ‘Hi. Hello. You gave me this job when you thought I wasn’t pregnant, and now you’re stuck with me.’ ”

  “This is why you puked at dinner,” Gabby says.

  “Should have been your dad’s first clue.” To be honest, it probably should have been my first clue.

  “Would you listen to yourself? We’re talking about my dad. The man who picked up the boutonnieres for our dates to the prom. My dad once sat there with a pair of tweezers pulling tiny pieces of glass out of your foot when you dropped my mom’s favorite crystal vase.”

  “Oh, don’t remind me,” I say.

  “But that’s my point. My dad loves you. Not like ‘Oh, I’m telling you my dad loves you.’ I mean, he has love in his heart for you. My father loves you. Both my parents do. They like being there for you. My dad’s not going to fire you when he finds out you’re pregnant. He and my mom are going to jump for joy and tell everyone who will listen that the generation of grandchildren is finally arriving.”

  I laugh.

  “Also, he can’t fire you for being pregnant. It’s illegal. That’s Human Resources 101.”

  The minute she says “human resources,” I remember talking to Joyce. I remember her telling me I have insurance and maternity leave. For a flash, I almost feel as if Gabby is right. That things will be OK.

  “OK,” I say. “So I still have a job.”

  “And you still have me, and my parents, and Mark, and . . .” She looks at the dog and smiles. “And Charlemagne.”

  “I have to call Michael and tell him, right?”

  “Yes? No?” she says. “I have no idea. But I’ll think about it with you. We’ll weigh the pros and cons.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. And we will come up with an answer. And then you’ll do it.”

  She makes it sound so easy.

  “And Ethan might not leave me?”

  “He might not,” she says, although I can tell by her voice that she has less confidence in this one. “But I can tell you, if he does, it’s because it wasn’t meant to be.”

  “You think things are meant to be?” I ask her. For some reason, I think I’ll feel better if things are meant to be. It gets me off the hook, doesn’t it? If things are meant to be, it means I don’t have to worry so much about consequences and mistakes. I can take my hands off the wheel. Believing in fate is like living on cruise control.

  “Are you kidding? I absolutely do. There is a force out there, call it what you will. I happen to believe that it’s God,” she says. “But it pushes us in the right direction, keeps us on the right path. If Ethan says he can’t handle the fact that you’re pregnant, he’s not the one for you. You were meant for someone else. And we will handle that together, too. We will handle all of this together.”

  I close my eyes briefly, and when I open them, the world seems a little brighter. “So what do I do now?”

  “Tomorrow morning, we’re getting you prenatal vitamins and making an appointment to see an OB/GYN so we can figure out how far along you are.”

  “It would have to be at least eight weeks,” I tell her. “I haven’t slept with Michael in a while.”

  “OK,” she says. “So we know that. Still, we’ll make the appointment.”

  “Oh, no,” I say out loud. “I had a beer. Last week at the bar.”

  “It’s OK,” I hear her say. “It’s going to be fine. It happens. You weren’t wasted. I saw you.”

  I am a terrible mother. Already. Already I am a terrible mother.

  “You’re not a terrible mother if that’s what you’re worried about,” Gabby says, knowing how my brain works almost better than I do. She picks Charlemagne up off my lap and gestures for me to get up. She leads the two of us into my bedroom. “It happens. And it’s OK. And starting tomorrow morning, you’re going to learn all the things you have to stop doing and all of the things you have to start doing. And you’re going to be phenomenal at all of it.”

  “You really think that?” I ask her.

  “I really think that,” she says.

  I put on my pajamas. She gets in on one side of the bed. Charlemagne lies down with her.

  “She’s a cute one, this little Charlemagne,” Gabby says. “How did she end up at my house?”

  I laugh. “It’s a long story,” I say. “In which I make a snap decision that I now realize was probably hormone-driven.”

  Gabby laughs. “Well, she’s precious,” she says. “I like having her around.”

  I look at Charlemagne. “Me, too.”

  “I hate Mark’s stupid dog allergy,” she says. “Let’s keep her in here all night and see if he itches. I bet you he won’t. I bet you it’s all in his head.”

  I laugh and get into bed next to Gabby. She holds my hand.

  “Everything is going to be great, you know,” she says.

  I breathe in and out. “I hope so.”

  “No,” she says. “Say it with me. Everything is going to be great.”

  “Everything is going to be great,” I say.

  “Everything is going to be great,” she says again.

  “Everything is going to be great.”

  You know, I almost believe it.

  Gabby turns the light off.

  “When you wake up in the middle of the night, terrified because you remember that you’re pregnant,” she says, “wake me. I’m here.”

  “OK,” I say. “Thank you.”

  Charlemagne snuggles up between the two of us, and I wonder if maybe it’s actually Gabby, Charlemagne, and me who were meant to be.

  “Mark and I have started talking about when to have a baby,” she says.

  “Wow, really?” Even though I’m actually having a baby, I can’t quite wrap my brain around people having babies.

  “Yeah,” she says. “Maybe soon. I could hurry up and get pregnant. We could have kids the same age.”

  “We’d force them to be best friends,” I say.

  “Naturally,” she says. “Or maybe I’ll just leave Mark. You and I could raise your baby together. That way, I don’t even need to have one. Just me and you and the baby.”

  “With Charlemagne?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” she says. “The world’s most adorable lesbian couple.”

  I laugh.

  “Only problem is, I’m not attracted to you,” she says.

  “Ditto,” I tell her.

  “But just think of it. This baby would be raised by an interracial lesbian couple. It would get into all the good schools.”

  “Think of the pedigree.”

  “I’ve always said God made a mistake making us straight women.”

  I laugh and then correct her. “I’m trying to believe that God doesn’t make mistakes.”

  Henry checks some stuff and puts the clipboard down.

  “Dr. Winters says we can try the wheelchair,” he tells me. His voice is solicitous. As if we’re doing something taboo.

  “Now?” I say. “Me and you?”

  “Well, the female nurses can’t bench-press as much I can. So yeah, I’ll be the one lifting you into the chair.”

  “You never know,” I say. “Maybe every single one of those nurses can bench the same as you, and you don’t know because you never asked.”

  “Well,” he says, “regardless of who can bench-press what, it’s my job to lift you. But before I do, we�
��ve got some stuff to cover.”

  “Oh,” I say. “OK, go for it.”

  He tells me it may hurt. He tells me it’s going to be an adjustment. We can’t do much at first, just get into the wheelchair and learn to move around a bit. Simply moving into the chair initially might wear me out. Then Henry starts unhooking me from a few of the machines that have come to feel like my third and fourth arms. He leaves the IV in. He tells me that while I’m in the hospital, that’s coming with us.

  “Do you feel ready?” he asks me once everything is set up and I’m all that’s left to deal with.

  “As I ever will,” I tell him.

  I’m scared. What if this hurts? What if this doesn’t work? What if I have to stay in this bed for the rest of my life, and I can never move, and this is it for me? What if my life is sugar-free Jell-O and dry chicken dinners? I’ll just lie here in a hospital gown that doesn’t close in the back for the rest of my waking days.

  Oh, God. Oh, God. This gown doesn’t close in the back.

  Henry is going to see my ass.

  “You’re going to see my butt, aren’t you?” I ask as he moves toward me.

  To his credit, he doesn’t laugh at me. “I won’t look,” he says.

  I’m not sure that answer is good enough.

  “I’m a professional nurse, Hannah. Give me a little credit. I’m not gonna sneak a peek at your tush for kicks.”

  I can’t help but laugh as I consider my choices. Which is to say that I consider that I don’t really have a choice at all if I want to get out of this bed.

  “Cool?” he says.

  “Cool,” I say.

  He takes my legs and spins me. I inch myself toward him.

  He gets up close to me. He puts his arm around my back, his other arm under my legs.

  “One,” he says.

  “Two,” I say with him.

  “Three!” we say as he lifts me, and then, within seconds, I’m in the wheelchair.

  I’m in a wheelchair.

  Someone just had to lift me into a wheelchair.

  I was going to have a baby, and it died.

  “OK?” Henry says.

  “Yeah,” I say, shaking my head and pushing the bad thoughts out of my mind. “Yes!” I add. “I’m excited about this! Where are we going?”

  “Not much of anywhere this go-around,” he says. “Right now, we just want to get you comfortable in the chair and familiar with it. Maybe just wheel around the room a bit.”

  I turn and look at him. “Oh, come on,” I say. “I want out of this room. I’ve been peeing in a bedpan for days. I want to see something.”

  He looks at his watch. “I’m supposed to check on other patients.”

  I get it. He has a job. I’m a part of his job. “OK,” I say. “Tell me how it works.”

  He starts showing me how to push the wheels and how to stop. We roam around the room. I push myself so hard that I crash into the wall, and Henry runs toward me and grabs me.

  “Whoa, there,” he says. “Take it slow.”

  “Sorry,” I say. “Got away from me.”

  “I guess we know you probably won’t ever be a race-car driver.”

  “Pretty sure I ruled that out when I got hit by a car.”

  Henry could, at this moment, feel bad for me. But he doesn’t. I like that. I like that so much.

  “Well, don’t be a pilot, either,” he says. “Or did you already cross that one off because you were hit by a plane?”

  I look up at him, indignant. “Do you talk to all of your patients this way?” I ask him. There it is. The question I’ve been pondering for days. And I said it as if I didn’t care about his answer in the slightest.

  “Only the bad ones,” he says. Then he leans down and grabs the arms of my wheelchair. His face is in mine, so close that I can see the pores on his skin, the specks of gold in his eyes. If this were any other man in any other situation, I’d think he was going to kiss me. “If you happened to roll yourself out of this room,” he says with a sly smile across his face, “I’m sure it would take a minute before I caught up with you and wheeled you back in here.”

  Henry slowly takes his arms off my chair, clearing the way.

  I don’t look at the door. I stare at him. “If I just happened to scoot my wheels this way,” I say, “and push myself right out into the hallway . . .”

  “I might not notice until you’d had a nice breath of air out there.”

  “So this is OK?” I say, looking at him but heading for the door.

  He laughs. “Yeah, that’s OK.”

  “And if I get to the threshold?”

  He shrugs. “We’ll see what happens.”

  I keep rolling myself forward. My arms are already tired from pushing myself. “If I just roll on right past it?”

  He laughs. “You should probably take your eyes off me and watch where you’re going,” he says, just as I ram a wheel into the door frame.

  “Oops,” I say, backing up and then straightening. And then I roll myself right out into the hallway.

  It’s busier than I would have thought. There are more stations, more nurses, than I get a glimpse of in my room. And I’m sure it’s the very same air I breathe from my hospital bed, but it seems fresher somehow out here. The hallway is even blander, more banal, than what I imagined from my bed. The floor underneath my wheels is squeaky clean. The walls on either side of me are an innocuous shade of oatmeal. But in some ways, I might as well have landed on the moon. That’s how novel and foreign it feels for a split second.

  “All right, Magellan,” Henry says, grabbing the handles on the back of my chair. “Enough discovering for one day.”

  When we cross through the doorway back into my room, I thank him. He nods at me.

  “Don’t mention it.”

  He wheels me back to my bed.

  “You ready?” he says.

  I nod and brace myself. I know it’s going to hurt when he picks me up, when he puts me down. “Go for it,” I say.

  He puts his arms underneath my legs. He tells me to put my arms around his neck, to hold on to him tightly. He leans over me, putting his other arm around my back. My forehead grazes his chin, and I can feel his stubble.

  I land back on my bed with a thud. He helps me move my legs straight and puts my blanket back on me.

  “How are you feeling?” he asks.

  “I’m good,” I say. “Good.”

  The truth is, I feel as if I am about to cry. I am about to break down into tears the size of marbles. I don’t want to be back in this bed. I want to be up and moving and living and doing and seeing. I have tasted the glory of sitting in the hallway. I don’t want to be back in this bed.

  “Good,” he says. “So I think Deanna is taking over for me in an hour or so. She’ll be in to check on you and see how you’re doing. I’ll tell Dr. Winters that it went well today. I bet they will have you headed for physical therapy in no time. Keep it up.”

  I know that a nurse telling a patient to “keep it up” is normal. I know that. I think that is what bothers me about it.

  Henry is by the door, heading out.

  “Thanks,” I call to him.

  “My pleasure,” he says. “See you tonight.” And then he seems to suddenly feel nervous. “I just mean . . . if you’re awake.”

  “I know what you mean,” I say, smiling. I can’t help but feel as if he’s looking forward to seeing me. I suppose I could be wrong. But I don’t think I am. “See you tonight.”

  He smiles at me, and then he’s gone.

  I’m so jittery that I can’t sit still, and yet sitting still is all I’m capable of. So I turn on the TV. I sit and wait for something interesting to happen. It doesn’t.

  Deanna comes in a few times to check on me. Other than that, nothing happens.

  The hospital is a boring, boring, boring, quiet, sterile, boring place. I turn the TV off and turn onto my side as best I can. I try to fall asleep.

  I don’t wake up until Gabby come
s in around six thirty. She’s got a pizza in her arms and a stack of American magazines.

  “You snore so loud,” Gabby says. “I swear I could hear you down the hall.”

  “Oh, shut up,” I say. “The other night when you slept here, Henry compared you to a bulldozer.”

  She looks at me and puts the pizza and magazines down on the table. “Who is Henry?”

  “The night nurse guy,” I say. “Nobody.”

  The fact that I call him nobody makes it seem as if he’s somebody. I realize that now. Gabby raises her eyebrow at me.

  “Honestly,” I say, my voice even. “He really is just the night nurse.”

  “OK . . .” she says.

  And then I slump over and bury my red face in the palms of my hands. “Ugh,” I say, looking back up at her. “I have a massive, embarrassing, soul-crushing crush on my night nurse.”

  I am eleven weeks pregnant. The baby is healthy. Everything looks good. The doctor, Dr. Theresa Winthrop, assured me that I am not the only woman who has gotten almost out of her first trimester before figuring out she was pregnant. I feel a little bit better about that.

  On the way back to the car, Gabby stops me. “How are you feeling about all of this? You know that if you don’t want to, you don’t have to do this. Eleven weeks is early.”

  She’s not telling me anything I don’t know. I’ve been pro-choice my entire life. I believe, wholeheartedly, in the right to choose. And maybe, if I didn’t believe I could give a child a home or a good life, maybe I’d avail myself of my other options. I don’t know. We can’t say what we would do in other circumstances. We can only know what we will do with the ones we face.

  “I know I don’t have to do this,” I tell her. “I am choosing this.”

  She smiles. She can’t help herself. “I have some time before I have to go back to the office,” she says. “Can I buy you lunch?”

  “That’s OK,” I tell her. “I want to get home before Charlemagne pees all over your house.”

  “It’s fine,” she says. “Mark didn’t say anything this morning about feeling itchy, by the way. I’m convinced it’s all in his head. I’m already planning to persuade him that we should keep both you and Charlemagne with us. We’re near his office, actually. Should we go surprise him for lunch and begin our campaign? Plus, I want to see the look on his face when you tell him where we’ve been this morning.”