by Tasha Jones
I tried to open the door, but the water made it hard to open. When I managed to pry it open the water swirled into the car and filled it. Tamika’s eyes were closed and blood streamed over her face. She made small whimpering noises, but I wasn’t sure if she was conscious.
I tried to undo the seatbelt but it wouldn’t budge. I took out the pocketknife I carried on me and cut it loose. Her body was limp when I pulled her out, and I hoisted her onto my shoulder. I didn’t know what was wrong, just that she wasn’t moving.
I managed to get her back to the house, but she was deadweight and the wind and the rain didn’t help. I slipped a couple of times in the mud, landing on my knees twice, but I managed. It didn’t matter what it took, I had to take care of her.
“Call an ambulance,” I said to Vanessa when I finally managed to get back into the house. I let Tamika slide to the floor, guiding her down. She wasn’t moving. I held my ear close to her mouth. She was breathing but it was shallow. If she hadn’t been unconscious before, she definitely was now.
“They’ll come as soon as they can with this weather,” Vanessa said, pulling her cellphone away from her ear. “Get her onto the bed. Let me help.”
Together we managed to move Tamika. I was relieved Vanessa was there to help me. For the first time in weeks she didn’t look like she was going to freak out. Maybe it wasn’t as emotional for her as for me. I felt like my world was spiraling out of control.
When Tamika was on the bed, Vanessa found a washcloth. She was the one that cleaned up her face and made sure she had blankets.
“Shouldn’t we get the wet clothes off her?” I asked, but Vanessa shook her head.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with her, I don’t know if it’s safe to do that.”
I nodded. I crawled onto the bed next to her, and curled up in a ball, my face close to hers. Vanessa looked at me.
“You really love her, don’t you?” she asked. I didn’t know how to answer that. It was something I hadn’t admitted to in years, but seeing her like this on the bed, fragile, reduced to a lifeless shell, I was starting to think I’d been a fool denying it all these years.
“I don’t know how to make up for everything I did wrong,” I said. I meant it in every way. Everything I’d done to Tamika. Everything I’d done to Vanessa.
“I’m not going to pretend like I didn’t want things to work out between us,” Vanessa said. “But I do know that in all the time we’ve been dating you never looked at me the way you look at her. Call me selfish, but I want that. And if I can’t get it from you maybe it’s not such a bad thing we broke up.”
She was being very reasonable about it. Too reasonable. I’d thought she would be screaming and crying when it came down to the topic of what happened between us.
“I still think you were a dick,” she said outright. There it was. “But I don’t blame you for it as much as I did until now. I’m starting to get what’s going on.”
“It’s not that I didn’t care for you,” I said. I didn’t want her to feel that I’d thrown her away.
“How I feel about that doesn’t matter right now. What matters is the fact that she might not be okay. We need to get her to a hospital.” The conversation was over. I still wasn’t sure if she was angry at me or not.
Vanessa walked out of the room. I closed my eyes and lay next to Tamika, hoping, praying, that everything would be alright. A while later Vanessa came in with coffee for me.
“You need to get warm and dry. You’ll be no use if you get sick on top of everything.” She was right. I changed into dry clothes and drank the coffee, even though it wasn’t good. The storm carried on raging outside. When was it going to stop?
Vanessa sat with me. Tamika still wasn’t waking up. I let out a shaky breath.
“It was crazy to come out in this weather. I thought I was the only stupid one.”
I shook my head.
“I’m the reason she’s in this mess. I can’t be the man she needs. All I know how to be is a failure, and she deserves so much more than that.”
Vanessa put her hand on mine, but it was comforting. Friendly. There were no traces of romance. Or anger for that matter. “You’re too hard on yourself. You’re not a bad man, Noah.”
“I was to her.” I swallowed hard. “I was to you.”
“Then fix it.” She stood up. “I’m going to try to call the ambulance again,” she said and left me alone again.
An hour later they finally arrived. They stabilized Tamika and put her on a gurney in the back of the van. I drove with them. Vanessa stayed behind to ‘take care of the house’. I never really understood what that meant, but I was grateful she wasn’t coming with us.
***
I sat next to Tamika’s bed. She was cleaned up properly, and her skin was smooth and radiant like I hadn’t seen it in years. Her skin was warm to the touch again. She had a gash on her head but it was stitched up and she had a big white bandage over it. Other than that she looked perfect, like she was just sleeping. There was no IV lines or machines beeping, nothing to drive my worry through the roof.
“Can I talk to you for a moment?” Dr. Paso asked. The man was about my age, and he’d been in Ingram for a while. I knew him and it was a relief to talk to someone I knew and not leave Tamika in the hands of a stranger.
I nodded and stood up, walking out into the hallway. Two nurses shuffled past. Other than that it was quiet. The rain still fell in a light patter on the roof, I could hear it, but the worst was over.
“Will she be alright?” I asked.
“She’ll be fine. She’ll probably suffer from a concussion, but we’ll only be able to know that once she wakes up. She was very lucky. It could have been so much worse.”
I breathed out in relief.
“The other thing is the baby.”
I stilled, blood draining from my face. So she was pregnant after all.
“Is the baby alright?” I felt like I had to ask. It would wreck me if she’d lost this one. It would wreck me if she kept it. Everything was wrecking me. I felt like was being trampled by my life.
“Yes, the baby is fine. The accident didn’t cause any damage, and there shouldn’t be any complications because of it. Are you the father?”
I took a deep breath. Someone might as well know. Maybe that would make me realize that it was real. Maybe that would get me to snap out of this illusion that it would go away if I ignored it. “I am.”
“When she’s awake we’ll need to send her for more checkups, there was a problem we picked up on the sonogram that we need to address.”
“What?” I asked. I was suddenly nervous.
“I think we should discuss this together,” Paso said. He put his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t look so nervous, it’s going to be fine.” He walked away. I tried to find my balance. I couldn’t do this. How was I going to be a father? How was I going to send her away to do it all alone again? I didn’t want her to get rid of another baby, but I realized that I might have pushed her to do it the first time. She shouldn’t have done it, but maybe she hadn’t seen a way out. I just didn’t know. I felt like I didn’t know anything anymore.
I took a deep breath, and walked back into her room.
She woke up a short while later. Her eyes fluttered, and then opened. Her fingers curled around my hand on hers, and she turned her head.
“What?” she asked. I wasn’t sure if she meant her surroundings or me.
“You’re in the hospital,” I said. “You’ve had an accident, but it looks like you’re going to be fine.”
“The baby…”
“Yes, the baby too. You’re both going to be okay.”
Tamika closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I was scared it wouldn’t be,” she said. When she opened her eyes again she frowned.
“What are you doing here?”
“I needed to make sure you were okay. I couldn’t…” I swallowed hard, trying to keep it together. “I couldn’t let anything happen to you.”
“She’s not here,” I answered. Tamika nodded and closed her eyes like it was hard work to keep them open.
“Why did you come?” The question that had burned me since she’d walked through the front door.
“It doesn’t matter, I’ll leave as soon as I can.”
“Don’t,” I said. “Please don’t leave again. I don’t think I’ll be able to make it through that. Not a third time.”
She looked at me, her eyes vacant. “But Vanessa,” she finally said.
“Vanessa was there to find a file. We haven’t been together for a while now. I couldn’t do it.”
“Why?”
I took a deep breath. “Because I love you. And without you everything is falling apart. And I can’t afford to fall apart too. I’ve seen what that looks like, and I can’t do it.”
Tamika closed her eyes again, and tears leaked out from underneath them, rolling over her cheeks. She didn’t say anything. I didn’t know if she was crying because she was going to send me away, or crying because she agreed.
“I don’t want to lose you again,” I said. I wanted her to respond to me, but even if she didn’t I needed her to know that. I needed her to know I needed her.
The doctor appeared, and smiled.
“I’m glad to see you’re awake, Miss Davis,” he said. “You gave us quite a scare.”
Tamika smiled, her cheeks still wet but her crying had stopped. She didn’t make a move to wipe her face.
“I’d like to talk to you about your baby.”
“Is everything alright?” Tamika asked.
“It’s perfectly fine. We can’t tell the gender so early, of course, but we noticed something else that gave us reason for concern… your cervix hasn’t closed properly. It could be a reason for miscarriage, and we’re worried about it.”
Tamika squeezed her eyes shut and nodded. “I know,” she said softly.
“What causes something like this?” I asked Paso. I didn’t want to say it out loud, but I was sure something like that could be caused by abortion. Someone couldn’t just get rid of a child and not suffer consequences. I scolded myself for being so hard. The situation wasn’t right. I tried to swallow the bitterness.
“I lost the first baby that way,” she said, not looking at me at all.
The room shrunk and grew around us. My ears started ringing. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. My chest was tight and it felt like all the air was being squeezed out of it. My head felt heavy, like I had to balance it on my neck so it didn’t fall to the side.
“What are you talking about?”
“I lost the first baby, Noah. Because something went wrong and it was born way too early. I hadn’t had the money to find out about complications or to take care of it. And it was..." her voice cracked and she stopped mid-sentence, swallowing. Tears rolled over her cheeks again.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, not caring that she hadn’t finished. “I thought…”
She nodded again. She knew what I’d thought. How must it have been for her? Everything that had happened between us, alone in a new city, and then she’d lost it? And the guilt that I’d put on her, when she’d had this kind of pain to deal with. I’d always thought she’d gotten rid of it.
When I looked at her again she was crying freely.
“We’ll put in a cervical stitch,” the doctor said, finally taking part in the conversation again. “We’ll stop this from happening again. You won’t lose this one, Miss Davis. We’ll do everything we can to make sure of that.” He put his hand on her ankle, a reassuring gesture. Then he left the room to leave us alone.
“I didn’t know…” I said. I felt like I was coming undone at the seams. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all happening again. I can’t do this; I can’t go through it all again.”
“You won’t,” I said. The need to protect her was overwhelming, attacking me from left field. I put my hand on hers. “Come stay with me. We’ll make sure it’s okay.”
She looked at me, her eyes big and glassy.
“But it’s a child, Noah.”
“I know.” I was scared to death. I knew this was going to be hard. But I forced myself to say the words, because deep down inside, even if I felt like it might be the end of me, I had a responsibility.
“I just can’t lose you again. We can figure it out. Just don’t leave again. I want you to stay.” I put my hand on her belly. “Both of you.”
Chapter 12 - Kody
Mom says I’m never going to be allowed to ride in rodeos. She says I’m a miracle baby and she doesn’t want to throw that away by letting me do something dangerous. I’m not sure what makes me a miracle baby. People always say babies are miracles, but Mom told me that I have a brother or sister in heaven and she’s so happy I didn’t go there too.
Dad is going to convince her about rodeos one day. He promised. He’s already bought me a colt to train when Mom’s working, the way he trained his horse Spartan. I’m still looking for a name, but I think I want to call him Buck, because that’s all he does. Mom says I should rather have a dog, but I don’t see how that’s going to win me any rodeos. Dogs just sit there wagging their tails at you. That’s no fun.
I can’t wait until Uncle Aaron comes to visit. Dad hates him, but he won’t tell Mom that to her face. He only swears about Uncle Aaron when he thinks I’m not listening, because Mom shouts at him for talking like that in front of me. Maybe Dad hates Uncle Aaron because he never gets expensive gifts from him like I do.
I think Uncle Aaron is funny, the way he pulls up his nose when I come in dirty from the dung heap. This time he might bring his new girlfriend with him when he comes to visit. He told me about her, but when we’re alone he always says that no one will ever be as special as my mom. I think Dad will give Aaron a black eye for saying that, so I won’t tell him for now.
Uncle Aaron comes to Ingram now and then to help Mom with her work. She kicked old Mr. Dunham out of the office a while ago and now she needs a lawyer to help until she can find a new one. It looks tough to be the boss, even if you only have two people working for you. Mom says she likes it, and her job here is much better than the one she used to have long ago when she lived in the big city. I think I’d rather be a rancher like my Dad.
He knows everything.
Next month Grandma and Grandpa are going to visit from the coast. I’ve never met them, but they send me birthday money every year. I don’t know if I’ll like them, but Mom says they’re great because they never once got mad about anything she and Dad did wrong, so they can’t be too bad. They’re the only grandparents I have. Dad doesn’t like to talk about it when I ask him where the others went, but that’s okay because when Dad gets quiet like that I tell him that I think they had to be amazing, because he is. That’s the only time I ever see Dad nearly crying.
Yesterday Mom came and told me I was going to have a sister. I’m not going to be allowed to play with her until she’s a bit older, but Mom says it’s going to be fun to take care of her. Afterwards she had a big fight with Dad because she made him throw away the juice in the top cabinet. I don’t know why he got so mad about it, because I haven’t seen him drink it ever. Maybe it was a present from someone. I don’t use the kids’ laptop Uncle Aaron brought me, but I’ll get mad if they make me throw that away, too.
After Dad walked out of the kitchen and left Mom scrubbing the dishes like mad, I took him my juice. He gave me a hug and told me I was going to be a great brother one day, because I knew how to make people feel better even when I didn’t always know what it was all about, and that I was the best thing that ever happened to him.
All I know is that I don’t care what happens at home because Mom and Dad will always fix something if it breaks, even when it’s people. And having a sister might distract Mom so I get to spend time with Dad training my horse. It’s going to be a great summer, I know it already.
The End
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