by L. A. Casey
“That’s what you have me for. I’ll help you with everythin’ and so will the girls,” Keela assured me then snickered. “You’re also forgettin’ who the baby daddy is—Kane won’t let your child want for anythin’.”
I didn’t know why, but that notion bothered me.
I balled my hands into fists and looked up. “I don’t need to rely on Kane Slater. I can provide for another person, I just don’t know if I’m ready to. I’m not even in a relationship with Kane. We can barely stand the sight of one another. How we had sex is still mind-bogglin’ to me.”
Keela’s hand touched my shoulder. “You aren’t the first woman to have a baby whilst being single, and you won’t be the last. I love Kane, and you know he will actively help in every way he can, but you can do this with or without anyone’s help. You helped raise Gavin, you’re practically already a mother.”
Yeah, Mother Aideen, that’s me.
I snorted, “And what a good job I’ve done with him; workin’ for your uncle tryin’ to be somethin’ he’s not.”
“Aideen,” Keela sighed, her face sullen. “Gavin’s choices don’t reflect your part in raisin’ him. Smart people make dumb decisions every day—we’re only human. Gavin will realise his mistake in his own time.”
His own time wasn’t quick enough for me.
“Even if he realises his mistake, he is in Brandon’s circle now. He can’t be jumped out. Once you’re in his circle, the only way you get out is by dyin’. You know that, and so do I.”
Keela’s hand squeezed my shoulder. “Brandon is me uncle, he loves me. If Gavin wants out, I’ll get him out. Trust me on that.”
That reassured me a little.
“I can’t even think of Gavin right now, me head is a mess,” I admitted and sniffled when a sudden lump formed in my throat.
Keela wrapped her arms around me. “It’s goin’ to be okay, you’ll see.”
I hugged Keela back. “How can I tell him?”
Keela pulled back and looked at me. I didn’t need to verbalise the name, she knew I was talking about Kane.
“I don’t know. Kane is a closed book; it’s hard to read him.”
“Really?” I asked, surprised. “I think it’s easy to understand what he is feelin’ or thinkin’. You just have to pay attention to him.”
Keela raised an eyebrow. “And you pay attention to him?”
I deadpanned, “I’m pregnant with his child, what do you think?”
Keela laughed, “He does act differently around you. He clearly likes you and more than just sexually. You’re the only person he lets give him his insulin when he clearly has a problem with needles.”
Kane didn’t like me. The only thing he liked to do was piss me off, even when I was helping him. Judging from our past, he possibly liked it when I got naked too.
I gnawed on my inner cheek. “Maybe because he knows I won’t take his bullshit and that’s why he lets me jab him?”
“Could be.” Keela smiled.
I smiled a little until Keela spoke again.
“Have you been takin’ care of yourself?” she asked me.
I shook my head when images of nights out over the past three months flashed through my mind. “No, I’ve been drinkin’ and eatin’ badly over the past few weeks. What if I’ve done somethin’ wrong and it hurts the baby?”
My heart constricted with pain. I might not be ready to have this baby, but there was no way in Hell I wanted to harm it.
“Calm down,” Keela said and placed her hands on my shoulders. “We can go to the Coombe now and find out if everythin’ is okay. The emergency room never closes, I heard Branna say it before.”
I gasped when I thought of Branna.
“What if Branna sees us?”
“She works in the delivery suite, not the emergency room—we’ll be fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Very sure. Let’s go.”
I swallowed. “Just the two of us?”
Keela nodded. “Just you and I.”
The melody of “Just The Two of Us” flowed through my mind and it caused me to lightly chuckle and shake my head.
“Okay, let’s go before I change me mind,” I said and stood up.
Keela jumped to her feet and grabbed her phone and keys. “I’m textin’ Alec and tellin’ him we’re goin’ to get petrol and some sweets and that we might be awhile. He won’t suspect a thing.”
Uh-oh.
I winced. “Do you think lyin’ to him is a good idea? Especially after everythin’ that happened between you both on movin’ day. That’s all still very fresh; it was only nine days ago after all.”
Keela hesitated as she pressed on her phone then shook her head and gave the screen one final tap. “It’s not a good idea, but he will understand why I’m doin’ it. Kane should know about the baby before his brothers.”
I huffed. “When he does find out he is goin’ to rip me a new one for tellin’ you before him.”
Keela rolled her eyes. “Please, you can barely stand him, and I’m your best friend. If he has anythin’ to say, I’ll kindly tell him to kiss me arse.”
I laughed. It felt good—for a moment I was calm and relaxed, then I remembered the situation I was in and where I was about to go.
“You look like you’re about to be sick.”
I gripped onto my stomach. “I feel like I’m about to be sick.”
Keela gasped and gripped my arm. “Not on the new floor, it’s only just been polished and buffed!”
I didn’t get the chance to say I didn’t literally mean get sick because Keela proceeded to pull me out of her sitting room, down her hallway, and out of her house. The fast movements and quick turns upset my already unsettled stomach. I bent forward and vomited on her pathway.
“That was close,” she breathed when I was finished. “Are you okay?”
I growled as I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “I was good until you started swingin’ me around. What the hell was that about?”
“You said you felt like you were goin’ to be sick!”
“Because I’m in a fucked up situation.”
Keela gnawed on her lower lip. “I thought you meant physically sick.”
I glanced down at the puddle of vomit and shook my head. “I can see that.”
Keela gave me an apologetic smile then ran back into her house only to emerge a minute later with a pot full of water. She poured it over the area where I vomited and cleared it away.
“I’ll clean it properly with bleach and boiled water when we get back.”
I placed my hands on my stomach. “Let’s just go.”
Keela returned the pot to her kitchen and emerged with a cold bottle of water for me. I gargled some water and spat it out before taking several gulps.
When I was ready, we headed down the pathway and got into my car that was parked outside the Slater’s house. Keela, even though she wasn’t insured on my car, got into the driver’s seat and buckled up. I got into the passenger side, buckled my seat belt and leaned my head back against the headrest.
“I’m so nervous.”
Keela patted my leg. “It’ll be okay, you’ll see.”
When we drove off, Keela began to talk, but I couldn’t begin to comprehend what she was saying. My mind was elsewhere.
Ma, please let the baby be okay.
I prayed to my mother and to God, that I wouldn’t receive bad news when I arrived at the hospital. I prayed that everything would be okay for the baby’s sake. It worried me how scared I was about someone who an hour ago I didn’t know existed inside of me.
When my thoughts combined with my worry, I shook my head clear and glanced at Keela. She was still talking. I barely paid attention to her and let her do the majority of the talking during the drive to the Coombe Hospital. If I had to, I couldn’t guess what we were conversing about because my mind was elsewhere the entire time.
“Aideen, we’re here.”
I blinked my eyes and looked at m
y right. “We are?”
Keela nodded her head. “You were pretty out of it on the way here.”
I sighed, “Sorry, just doin’ some thinkin’.”
Keela smiled. “I understand. Are you ready?”
Was I?
“Yeah,” I mumbled. “Let’s do this.”
Keela parked the car close to the hospital entrance then we exited my vehicle and headed for the hospital.
“Hi, erm, where is the emergency room?” Keela asked the man sitting at the reception desk when we entered the hospital.
He looked bored as hell.
I couldn’t look him in the eye. I didn’t know why, but I felt like I was somehow in trouble for being pregnant even though I was far from being a teenager with parents to disappoint.
“To your right,” the man replied to Keela and gestured with his hand. “Knock on the red door, take a seat, and wait for a nurse to see to you.”
Keela and I thanked the man then followed his instructions and walked to the right. I spotted the red door he mentioned and the rows of chairs in front of it.
“Sit down,” Keela said to me and walked towards the red door.
I sat down in the third row and watched as she reached the door and knocked three times. She turned then and walked back to me, taking the vacant seat to my right. I didn’t know how long we were seated before the red door opened and out stepped an Asian nurse in black trousers, and a white hospital shirt with a pocket watch hanging from the shirt pocket.
“Which one of you ladies wants to check into the emergency room?” she asked in an accent I had never heard before.
I couldn’t reply to her so I just raised my hand like one of my students did in class when I asked them a question.
The nurse smiled at me. “Follow me, please. Your friend can come along too.”
“Like she could stop me,” Keela murmured.
I didn’t laugh, but I breathed a little harder through my noise to show I thought what she said was funny.
Keela and I walked after the nurse into the emergency room. I stood idly by the red door Keela closed until the nurse gestured me to take a seat in front of her desk. Her desk was off to the right of the room. On the left was a hospital bed, a bunch of monitors and other hospital equipment. I sat down and breathed easy when I felt Keela’s presence behind me.
“Name, please?” the nurse asked me.
I cleared my throat. “Aideen Collins.”
The nurse got out a pink folder, and clipped freshly printed out forms into the folder. She clicked her pen and began writing. She asked for my home address and wrote it down when I called it out to her.
“Date of birth?”
I licked my lips. “February 5th, 1987.”
“Is this your first pregnancy?”
I blinked. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Planned?”
Was that really a required question?
“Well, no,” I answered, honestly.
The nurse looked up at me and smiled. “Sorry, standard questions.”
Why?
“It’s fine.”
The nurse nodded her head and looked back down at the pink folder. “Any known allergies to medication or food?”
I shook my head. “Nope.”
She went on to ask a bunch of questions about the medical history of my family and myself. I froze up when she asked if there have ever been pregnancy complications with the women in my family.
“Not durin’ pregnancy, but me mother died while givin’ birth to me brother. She lost a lot of blood and didn’t receive a blood transfusion in time.”
“Sorry for your loss.”
I swallowed. “Thank you.”
After a moment, the nurse launched back into the questions she needed to ask and I was grateful because I really didn’t want to think about my mother dying during childbirth when I was in an emergency room for a pregnancy I just found out about.
“When was your last menstrual period?”
“I can’t remember,” I replied honestly. “Mine are very irregular so I was never good at keepin’ track.”
The nurse nodded her head and made note of what I said.
“Do you have a date for possible conception?”
I grunted, “Yeah, the 1st of April.”
“The 1st of April... are you sure?” the nurse asked, not sure if I was lying or not.
“Pretty sure,” I replied.
Like I could forget the day I fell into stupidity or the day I let stupidity fall into me… three times.
Keela snorted behind me.
“I’m sure you have already taken a test, but I have to ask if you have or not.”
I nodded my head. “Yes, I took one today. It was one of those digital ones; it said I was over three weeks pregnant.”
The nurse wrote that down.
“I’m going to need you to go into the bathroom through the door behind you and urinate into this jar,” she put a little clear jar with a silver twist cap on the desk in front of me, “and then bring it back out to me.”
I did as the nurse asked; peed into the little jar, wrapped it in tissue and returned back to my seat.
“Here you go,” I said and handed her the tissue-wrapped wee jar.
The nurse put on latex gloves, took the jar, and stood up from her seated position. She walked over to the left side of the room, binned my tissue, and removed the cap from the jar. She dipped a little stick into the jar and pulled it back out. The tip of the stick was a bright hot pink.
“Yep, you’re with child,” the nurse said and chuckled to herself.
I wanted to smile at her, but I was so freaked out that I could do nothing more than stare at her. Luckily the nurse didn’t seem to notice my anxiety and gestured me over to the hospital bed next to her.
“As your conception date is a few weeks back I won’t have to perform a vaginal ultrasound. If you would lie down on the bed and pull up your t-shirt, I can check and see how the baby is doing by using a probe on your stomach.”
Oh, fuck.
“Okay,” I whispered.
I did everything the nurse said. I laid down on the hospital bed, pulled up my top until my bare stomach was showing, and then I waited. The nurse stepped closer to me and looked down at me.
“Can you unbutton your jeans and shimmy them, and your underwear, down a little?” she asked. “The baby will be positioned very low right now.”
I began to sweat. “Sure.”
Again, I did as she asked. I unbuttoned my jeans and pulled them down a little, along with my underwear. “Is this enough?” I asked.
“Yep, that’s perfect.”
I looked left when Keela sat on the spare chair that was positioned there. “You okay, boss?” she asked, smiling.
She looked so happy.
I shook my head. “I’m so scared.”
“It’s all goin’ to be okay, you’ll see.”
I nodded my head and looked back to the nurse when she cleared her throat.
“I’m going to squirt some gel on your lower stomach and use this probe.” She held up a device that looked like a microphone. “We’ll take a look at your baby. Okay?”
Okay.
I nodded my head and said nothing. I was afraid I would throw up again if I opened my mouth and spoke.
“This will be a little cold,” the nurse said and squirted the gel.
I flinched when it made contact with my skin. “Shite.”
Keela and the nurse laughed.
“It really is cold,” I murmured to Keela, who was still laughing at me.
“Okay, let’s find the baby,” the nurse chirped and placed the probe on top of the gel and began to swirl it about.
She pulled a monitor closer to us, and stared at the screen as she moved the probe around. I stared at the screen too, but all I could see was black, white, and some grey. It looked like a shitty station on a television that had a poor connection.
I thought it would have taken the nurse awhile to f
ind anything, but less than a minute later I heard a little chirp come from her mouth. I looked at the nurse and saw her smile.
“This little one was hiding from me,” she mused and began to take what I thought was measurements of the baby. I couldn’t really tell though because I still couldn’t see anything but the fuzzy screen.
“Can you see it?” I asked Keela.
She was silent as she stared at the screen so I looked back at the nurse. “I can’t see it.”
The nurse smiled and pointed to the screen. “Do you see this little bean shaped blob right here?”
“Honey, that’s it. That’s your baby. Just the one baby, too.”
It was?
I widened my eyes. “Really?”
I squinted my eyes then gasped when the nurse enlarged the picture.
“I see it!” I whispered.
I could see my baby; the little shape before it was zoomed in looked like a little bean, but now it was definitely a baby.
The nurse pointed at the screen. “That’s the head; the little stumps there are the arms and legs. Still quite small, but forming beautifully.”
“Really? So everythin’ is okay?” I asked then held my breath.
“From what I can see everything is progressing perfectly.”
The relief that filled me was whole.
Thank you, Ma.
The nurse then zoomed in more on the screen and I froze when I saw a little flutter within the centre of the baby.
“The flicker right here is your baby’s heartbeat.” The nurse smiled and leaned over to the machine where she twisted a knob. A loud and quick paced thudding filled the room.
“And that is the sound of your baby’s heartbeat. It’s nice and strong.”
I felt Keela’s hand grip mine. “Aideen,” she whispered.
I swallowed down the lump in my throat and fought back the tears that suddenly wanted to burst free. “I know.”
“Baby is measured at twelve weeks exactly, expected due date is January 1st.”
I widened my eyes. “January 1st?”
The nurse nodded her head.
“Oh, my God,” I whispered and used both of my hands to cover my mouth.
Keela grabbed hold of my hand and smiled with me. Her eyes began to well up with tears.
“Does that date mean something to you?” the nurse asked, curiously.