by Holly Rayner
She felt a single tear roll down her cheek, but wiped it in a hurry. She was impatient with people who cried. She knew that a million other terrible things were going on in the world; women died in labor, babies didn’t always make it. The world was a cruel place.
And the only thing that had happened to her was that she’d lost her one true hope at love. What was the big deal?
Rosie called the front desk and asked that the food they’d ordered be donated. The front desk personnel agreed, curious at the unusual request, but Rosie hung up the phone before the clerk had a chance to ask another question, hearing the click deep in her ears.
She dressed quickly and took the elevator to the ground floor, where she heaved herself to the road. She would go to the bus station, she thought. She would wait for her bus. And, as she walked, she would feel the fresh rain glide down her shoulders: a reminder that all things beautiful had to come to an end.
SIX
Rosie’s life went on. It was horrible that she had to accept it, but she did—donning her scrubs the following day and heading to work on the crummy bus. It always smelled the same, she thought as she leaned her head back. The Seattle rain pattered against the windows, and she thought back to the sun shining the morning before with that massive brunch spread before her naked body. God, it felt like it had all been a dream. She had felt like a goddess.
She headed into the hospital in her white tennis shoes, realizing this was the first time she’d been back since her whirlwind adventure. She wondered if she looked different, as if events could change her face the way they changed her heart. As she clocked in beside another nurse, Vanessa, she asked her how her week had been. Vanessa began rattling off a list of all her complaints about the week. Her kids were sick, vomiting all through the night. Her husband still hadn’t gotten a raise. And God, how about this rain, huh?
Rosie blinked at this news, feeling deflated, like she could hardly breathe.
Vanessa clearly didn’t notice a difference, or, perhaps, just couldn’t see beyond herself. “And what about you, Rosie?” she asked. “Another night in with a movie?”
Rosie frowned. “Yeah. Just wanted to rest up for my shift.”
Vanessa scoffed and went on rotation, then, winding her way from room to room with her clipboard and her terrible attitude. For a moment, Rosie’s heart burned with anger.
All at once, however, Amy appeared in the doorway. She flipped her blond hair and grinned at her friend, placing a stethoscope around her neck. “Rosie, darling,” she said. “I haven’t seen you in a week. You have to tell me all about this date you had.”
Rosie decided to play along, not to show her cards just yet. “Oh, Amy. I don’t know if you’ll be interested…” She teased. Her smile felt strange on her face.
Suddenly, Rosie’s buzzer started beeping, alerting both of them that they were needed in a hospital room, that moment. They exchanged glances.
“You ready to rumble?” Amy said.
Rosie chased after her friend, thoughts of the Sheikh ebbing and flowing from her mind. Like he’d said, she had an important job to do. And she couldn’t linger on the past, no matter how sweet it was, if she was going to help bring lives into the world.
Hours later, deep into their twelve-hour shift, Amy and Rosie found themselves in the same room once more. Rosie was drawing blood from a woman who was struggling with the beginnings of her labor, and Amy was helping make her comfortable, asking her questions to distract her. The girls worked well together, having been a team for several years. It was like they had a sixth sense, always knowing what the other was thinking.
“Now, I know it’s painful,” Amy began, “but just look at my friend Rosie over there. Rosie went through a painful date last night. Imagine being out in the dating world again! You’ve got a husband, you’ve got your baby. And now, just one final mountain to climb.”
Rosie scoffed playfully. “How rude.”
The pregnant woman was practicing her breathing, but allowed herself to laugh for a moment. “I really do have to agree,” she said. “I never want to be back on the dating scene. It was the worst.”
“Come on, now,” Rosie said, shaking her head as she remembered the look the Sheikh had given her in bed the morning before. That wasn’t the stuff of the dating world. “I’m doing the best I can.”
“We know you are, honey,” Amy said. “We’re just teasing.”
“Was he handsome?” the pregnant woman asked, trying to keep her mind from her labor. “Heee. Hooo,” she breathed.
Rosie nodded. “Terribly attractive, yes.”
“Those are always the heartbreakers,” Amy said, warning in her voice. “That’s why I settled down with someone less attractive than me.”
“Me too,” the woman in labor said. In the corner, her husband slept soundly with his nose in the air, between two chubby cheeks. They’d been together too long, Rosie thought, and she couldn’t actually tell which one was better looking than the other. But she smiled all the same.
“Want to go to dinner later?” Amy asked. “I want to try that new salad place, and I have the babysitter till midnight.”
Rosie considered. Beneath them, the pregnant woman inhaled, exhaled, and said: “I wish I could join you, ladies, but I have a life to create.”
“You’re busy,” Amy agreed, using that mom voice again.
The girls laughed, both on autopilot. In the corner, the woman’s husband sent a snore rocketing into the ceiling.
***
Rosie met Amy after work a few hours later. They changed into street clothes, removing their stinking white tennis shoes and tossing them into Amy’s car, which she needed now that she lived in the suburbs. Rosie hopped in, and Amy started the engine as rain continued to splatter on the windows.
“It’s not supposed to stop till next weekend,” Amy sighed.
“What a bummer,” Rosie agreed.
Amy drove down the street where Hakan had crashed his vehicle. All that was left, Rosie noted, was a slight dent in the telephone pole, and a splatter of red paint. The car had been taken away, and the place felt almost like a ghost town, even with the cars whizzing past. Don’t they know what happened here? she thought. But she knew she was being childish.
Amy pulled into the salad place, and they sat down across from each other, in two linoleum seats, studying the menu. Famished, they ordered two large salads and an eggroll appetizer, along with two hefty glasses of red wine.
“To you,” Amy said, clinking her glass with her friend.
“Thanks for coming out. I’m feeling a bit vulnerable at the minute,” Rosie murmured. “I think I really fell for this one.”
“You can’t fall for someone after one date, Rosie,” Amy said, raising her eyebrows. “And didn’t he say that he had to move away after a few days, anyway? So it wasn’t going to be long before this happened.”
Rosie had filled Amy in on the details in the break room. She’d had to calm herself inwardly, afraid she was going to break down.
“But you weren’t there,” Rosie shrugged. “The way it was between us. It was like a movie or something. The chemistry was electric. I could have laid with him in that bed for days and days. If he hadn’t left, I would probably still be there.”
“You’d have abandoned your entire life for this guy?” Amy asked, scoffing.
“He had this whole spiel about fate,” Rosie continued. “About how it was fate that I had walked across the street in front of him; that it was fate that he would meet me, and that we would have something—something special together.”
Amy was rolling her eyes. “You’re too smart to believe in fate, Rosie. I know you thought this guy was special, but let’s look at the facts. He abandoned you and went to a different country. Despite everything else, you have to realize: you aren’t in his life now. He’s not thinking about your fate. He’s thinking about how you were his last lay before he was crowned king or—or whatever he is.”
Rosie eyed her salad. The le
aves were sopped in dressing. She’d overdone it. “I know you’re right, I do, I’m just struggling to get him out of my head,” she whispered. She tapped at her eyebrow with her fingers, as if trying to shove him out of her thoughts.
“I know what could help,” Amy said then, snapping her fingers. “Maybe you could come to my place this weekend, on your day off. Play with the kids, hang out with me. Nobody could feel upset playing with Marco.”
Rosie reluctantly agreed, knowing that sitting in her best friend’s house, listening to her baby scream, wasn’t exactly what she needed on her day off. But she didn’t have anything else.
SEVEN
A few weeks later, Rosie lay on her couch, drumming her fingers over her stomach. She had the day off, thankfully, but had wasted the many hours she could have used for anything else on daydreaming. The Sheikh’s smile hadn’t escaped her mind, and it seemed that no matter what she was doing: sleeping, walking, eating, or some combination of all three, he wasn’t far from her mind. She wished she could snap her fingers and erase him forever. At least that way, she wouldn’t have to live with all that leftover hope.
She stood from her couch, her knees creaking, and meandered toward the kitchen, opening and then closing the refrigerator to no avail. There, on the freezer front, was his card—something she’d magnetized there and not been able to take down. She bit her lip, staring at the scrawl: “Call me!”
She had called him. She’d played into his spiel about fate. And she’d been screwed.
Rosie yanked her cellphone from her pocket, then, and felt herself dialing the number, almost as if someone else was doing it. As she neared the end of the number, she imagined him on the throne, all the way across the world. She imagined the women who lined up for him, who wanted to please him, their ruler. She imagined that he thought about his life in the United States in a very abstract way, now, and that she was just a blip in his memory, if that. She was nothing.
She halted her dialing and put her phone down, running her fingers through her hair. Her frustration was growing. This wasn’t the first time she’d considered calling him.
It was a classic case, really, she considered. When she’d been in high school, she’d always forced herself to wait till the boy called her first. After all, if he wanted anything to do with her, then he would surely make the first move. That was always, always how it worked. And she was silly to think this was any different.
Rosie returned to the living room, remembering that at one point she’d considered the date with the Sheikh to be practice for further dates, with different guys. She imagined herself going on a rampage: one guy after another, until she found someone who suited her. But it seemed like she’d already hit the pinnacle of her dating career, and she wasn’t prepared for another round. Not yet.
That afternoon, Rosie dressed to attend the baby shower of her and Amy’s close friend, Denise. Denise was also a nurse at the hospital, but she’d been on maternity leave for the previous month. She had often joked that she could work right up until her labor, since she worked on the obstetrics floor—crawling into bed with her clipboard in toe. But when she’d reached eight months, she’d become too uncomfortable—a walking beach ball wearing scrubs, Rosie had thought.
Rosie wore a red autumn dress. The season was changing, which in Seattle just meant that it rained even more than usual. She wrapped a coat around her and raised the hood as she marched to the bus stop, a pair of tiny jeans—her present for the new mother—concealed in a package beneath her left arm.
As the bus hummed toward the suburbs, Rosie thought abstractly about her own body, which had been acting strangely lately. Perhaps she was just aging poorly? She knew she couldn’t eat much dairy, but now, every time she ingested it, she nearly vomited. What’s more, she’d been crying more often, finding sadness and happiness to be extremes that she couldn’t control. And she normally had no patience for criers. Not outside of the hospital.
Plus, there was the issue of her period. It hadn’t come the previous week, like it should have. And despite knowing that the likelihood of her being pregnant was very, very low, she felt frightened, as if she was standing on the edge of a cliff. What was going on?
She carried this information with her silently, not telling a single soul of her fears. Not even Amy. She didn’t want to be nagged about “always being precautious.”
Rosie stood in a gaggle of moms in the large suburban house, gazing at the pile of presents that towered beside the window. Each had been wrapped in colorful paper, many in blues, greens and dark purples, because the baby was going to be a boy. Denise sat on the couch like the queen bee, her feet out before her, her ankles swelled to the brim.
Rosie meandered from Amy and the others, who were talking about how truly terrible the terrible twos were, and sat beside Denise. Denise laid her head on Rosie’s shoulder and sighed.
“What is it, honey?” Rosie asked softly.
“I just don’t know if I’m ready,” Denis murmured. “It seems like those ladies over there have everything figured out. I’m sure they weren’t as frightened as I am right now when they were pregnant. But I feel like I can’t voice my concerns. I sound like a child.”
“Psh,” Rosie said. “Please. Don’t you remember Amy, when she was pregnant with Mario? She had a panic attack every second. I distinctly remember her using one of the baby blankets at her baby shower to mop up her tears. She didn’t know what she was doing, but she figured it out. You know?”
Denise nodded, her eyes gleaming. “You would be a good mom, Rosie. You’re very comforting. You know that?”
Rosie blushed. “Well. I don’t think that’s going to happen any time soon.” If only she could share her suspicions; if only she could dive into the depths of her fears.
“Amy told me about that asshole sheikh,” Denise said then, frowning. “You know, I hate to say this, but I think you’re getting too old to mess around like that. You went into that knowing he would hurt you.” She shook her head, hesitating. “As a woman, you have to learn what will hurt you, and stay away from it. It’s a wilderness out there. We’re all just trying to survive.”
“What are you going to tell you son, then, about the wilderness?” Rosie whispered.
Denise strummed her hand over her bowling ball stomach. Her fingers were so swollen that her wedding ring looked like it was cutting off her circulation, pushing blood-red skin into a balloon. “I’m going to tell him to become a priest. I never want him to hurt anyone, or for anyone to hurt him.” She grinned, then, and the two friends devolved into laughter.
“I guess it isn’t too late for me to join the convent,” Rosie offered.
“They do have pretty good style,” Denise teased. “Now. Help me gather up these presents. I’m going to put you all through the torture of watching me open all of them, one by one. Won’t that be fun?” She winked, then, and the other women drew closer, babbling on about the baby brands they trusted.
As she watched them, Rosie vowed to herself that she wouldn’t become one of them. That is—if she truly carried a baby within her. A baby no bigger than the olives on the appetizer platter. Absentmindedly, she placed her hands over her stomach, and watched the afternoon float by, daydreaming about the Sheikh and imagining what he would say if he learned of a son.
***
No sooner had Rosie leaped off the bus back in Capitol Hill, she found herself marching toward the convenience store near her home, where pregnancy tests sat, stacked upon one another, in the very back aisle.
She stared at the shelf for a moment, unsure of which to choose. She’d taken a test exactly once before, in college, and it had been negative. She vividly remembered the moment of relief. “God,” she’d said to her roommate. “Can you imagine.”
With the blue and white packaging in her hand, Rosie marched toward the checkout counter, determination in her eyes. As the lady at the checkout picked up the box and eyed her, a fit of nervousness came over her. She felt she had to say something,
anything to explain herself. Her tongue felt heavy.
“I—um. I’m not actually sure,” she muttered, trying to find words. “It wasn’t a—” She felt she needed to explain to the checkout lady that she wasn’t in a relationship, that she really didn’t know the guy, and that, ultimately, she probably wasn’t pregnant. It was just a pipe dream. But who dreamed of having a stranger’s baby?
But the checkout lady smiled and spoke in a southern drawl, which was a strange but oddly comforting thing to hear in Seattle. “Don’t worry about it, honey. I’m sure you know what you’re doing. We all do, in the end.”
Oddly, these words reminded Rosie of Hakan’s speech about fate. She paid for the test, allowing her heartbeat to return to normal, and as she walked to her house, she realized she would live with the consequences of this truth, no matter what it was. She knew what she was doing. Sort of.