by Cruise, Anna
She nodded, resting her hand on my knee. “I...I'm going to keep the appointment on Wednesday.”
I swallowed. “Really?”
She hesitated, then nodded again. “Yeah.”
Her hair was loose, waves of brown on her shoulders, and I twisted a strand of it around my finger. “Okay. Why? I mean, what pushed you that way?”
She stared down at the hand she'd placed on my knee. “I don't think it was one thing. I just...I just thought a lot about where we are. I'm not sure we're ready to have a baby.”
“I'm not sure anyone's ever ready.”
“I know,” she said. “But some things can make it harder. Neither of us has finished school. My mom's cancer. Baseball. We have so much going on and it feels like throwing a baby into that mix would be a recipe for disaster.”
It was my turn to nod my head. I'd had the same thoughts, the same concerns. But there was just something so difficult about deciding not to have it.
“And you're sure?” I asked.
She looked at me, smiled a sad smile, then shook her head. “No. But I'm trying to be.”
I pulled her to me and wrapped my arms around her. Her tears soaked my chest beneath my T-shirt and I closed my eyes. I wasn't sure, either. But I also wasn't sure there was necessarily a right decision.
“I'm sorry,” I whispered.
“For what?” she asked, her voice trembling. “You didn't do anything.”
“I'm sorry we're in this spot,” I said. “I don't know. I know it's not anyone's fault. I'm just sorry we're here.”
“I know,” she whispered.
We sat there for awhile and I tried not to think about the future we were choosing not to have, the future we were deciding on instead. It was one of those moments you read about in Lit class, those stupid forks in the road in books, where characters have to make decisions that will dramatically alter the rest of their life. And I was living it. Right then, in the moment living it.
Abby stirred against me. She sat up and wiped at her eyes, then gave a half-hearted laugh.
“I probably look like a raccoon,” she said.
“You look beautiful.”
“Yeah. A beautiful raccoon,” she said. She took a deep breath and patted my leg. “I'm gonna go use the bathroom.”
I let her go and watched her walk to the bathroom and close the door.
I threw my head back on the sofa. I thought once we'd made a decision, I'd finally be able to breathe again. But I couldn't. I was still torn. I didn't feel any better than I had before she'd come over. It wasn't that it was the wrong decision. It was just that I felt like we had no idea what we were doing and we were flying blind. I wanted someone to tell us we were doing the right thing and we'd be okay and live happily ever after.
But I knew no one could promise us those things.
The door to the bathroom opened but I didn't hear Abby come down the hall. I twisted on the couch to look for her. And just like that, she appeared, her arms folded over her stomach, her face as white as a sheet.
“What?” I asked, my own stomach knotting immediately. “What is it?”
“There's...there's blood,” she said.
Even from where I was sitting, I could see that she was shaking.
“Blood?” I repeated
“In my underwear,” she whispered. “There's blood.”
“Jesus,” I shot to my feet. “Are you alright?”
“I...I don't know,” she stammered.
I didn't think, just reacted. Five steps and I was next to her, grabbing her hand. “Let's go.”
“Where?” she asked. She looked like she was frozen in place.
“The hospital,” I said, incredulous that she could think of any place else.
She immediately withdrew her hand from my grasp. “I don't want to.”
“Tough shit, Abby,” I said. “We have no clue what we're doing here and you're telling me you're bleeding. We need to get you to a doctor. Now.”
“I think...I think I read that it's normal,” she said.
“I don't care,” I said, wrapping my arm around her and guiding her toward the door. “We're going to the emergency room.”
“But West...”
“No buts,” I said, grabbing the keys off the table. “We're going.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
ABBY
The jelly, or whatever the hell it was, was cold on my stomach.
West had driven like a NASCAR racer to get to the emergency room. He didn't listen to me when I told him that I felt fine, that the article I'd pulled up on my phone said bleeding could sometimes be normal in early pregnancy. Sometimes. I didn't want to think about it, didn't want to worry about what might be happening. I wanted to put my hands over my ears and chant nonsense and wish it all away. But he'd just kept driving, one hand gripping the wheel, the other gripping my left hand just as tightly.
The front desk in the emergency wing admitted me quickly, sending me straight to the triage nurse. It was strange telling people I'd never met that I was pregnant. I'd already worked over the scene in my head where I told my parents and I'd imagined all of the crazy possibilities that might happen–yelling, screaming, crying, hugging. All of them were possible. But the triage nurse, a young Asian woman wearing a white scrub shirt with yellow smiley faces, just wrote it down on the chart. She asked for a urine sample, took my vital signs, and then left to retrieve the doctor.
I didn't say anything to West while we waited, just sat on the examining table and stared at the clock mounted on the sterile, white wall. Less than two minutes later, a man in surgical scrubs walked in, a stethoscope looped around his neck. He was young, probably no older than thirty, with a thick shock of red hair and a face full of freckles. I was convinced he was fresh out of med school.
Doctor Lowell spent five minutes asking me routine questions about how far along I thought I was and if I'd shown any other signs of anything being wrong. He asked if he could examine me and I let him, hiking up the hospital gown the nurse had given me. West stayed by my side while the doctor did a quick check.
“I don't see anything,” he said, slipping the gloves off and sliding the stool over to the trash can. He dropped them in the open container and stood up. “We should do an ultrasound, though. Take a quick look and see what's going on.” He went to the computer on one of the counters, logged in and tapped away at the keyboard. “We have portable units so you can sit tight. A tech should be here shortly. If they see anything unusual, they'll let me know.”
Unusual. I wasn't stupid. I knew what he really meant. If they saw anything wrong.
West sat and held my hand and we didn't talk.
Five minutes later, a tech arrived, wheeling a machine into the room. Another few minutes and a blanket was over my legs, my hospital gown was hiked up again and she was squirting clear, cold gel on my stomach.
She saw me jerk and smile. “Sorry. It'll warm up pretty quick.”
And it did.
“Have you had an ultrasound before?” she asked, her fingers poised above a keyboard as she studied the information on the screen. She was young, too, and I wondered if anyone in the emergency department was over forty.
I shook my head.
She looked at West. “Have you seen one before?”
He shook his head.
“Okay, so it's basically like a live action x-ray,” she said. Her fingers tapped away at the keys. “But there are no x-rays so there's no danger to you or the baby. Hopefully, it'll give us a better picture of what's going on. If there are any issues, we should be able to tell and we'll go from there.”
I tried to nod, but I was nothing more than a bundle of nerves. Issues. Unusual. They all danced around what might be going on inside of me.
The tech removed a wand-looking thing from the cart and rubbed the end of it. “This won't be so cold, I promise.”
“Thank you,” I said. It was an odd thing to say, but I felt like I'd been quiet for so long and I wanted to make sure I co
uld still speak. My voice sounded far away, different.
“I'm going to hold this over your stomach and I'll actually hold it against your skin,” she explained. “Won't hurt or anything like that. You have any questions before we start?”
I shook my head and looked at West. He squeezed my hand again and shook his head, too.
The wand touched my skin, gliding across the gel. The monitor hummed and buzzed and the tech reached over with her free hand to turn a dial below the screen. The screen popped on like a television, showing a black screen with a bunch of lines and numbers. There were some muddled gray and white images in the middle of the screen but I couldn't make anything out.
She held her finger to the screen. “See this?”
Just above the tip of her finger was a very small gray image that looked like an oval. I peered closer and saw that it was more like a figure eight, one oval on top of a larger oval.
“I think so,” I said.
“That's your baby,” she said. She rotated the screen so I was looking at it straight on. “Head is there,” she said, a slim finger pointing to the smaller shape. “Body below. See that darkish speck?”
I couldn't respond because my voice felt frozen.
“That's the heart,” the tech said. She adjusted another knob on the monitor and a sound filled the room. A sound unlike anything I'd ever heard, a constant whooshing, like air and water flowing through a faucet.
“Hear that?” she asked.
I looked at West. His eyes were glued to the screen and his hand tightened around my fingers.
“I hear it,” he said.
“That's the heartbeat,” she said.
I kept listening. Dub dub. Dub dub. Dub dub.
The baby had a heartbeat.
My baby.
Our baby.
The tech smiled at me. “Pretty neat, huh?”
I cleared my throat. “Yes. Absolutely.”
“It looks like a peanut,” West said, his eyes still glued to the screen.
The tech nodded. “For sure.” She moved the wand again and adjusted the screen, enlarging the image. “But you've got arm buds here,” she said, pointing. “And legs. Too soon to tell gender, though, if you guys were wondering.”
She pulled the wand from my stomach and the picture disappeared. “Okay. I'm going to share what we've got here with the doctor, but so far, so good.” She grabbed a handful of paper towels and wiped my stomach clean. “Give us a few minutes and we'll be back with you in just a bit.” She stood, pushed a button on the machine and walked out, pulling the door closed behind her.
I took a deep breath and laid my hand across my stomach. There was still a little bit of the gel on my skin. It was sticky and I rubbed it into my skin. The heartbeat still echoed in my ears. It wasn't soft; it was a roar, drowning out everything else.
“You okay?” West asked, his fingers flexing against my hand.
“No,” I said. “I am not okay.”
“Me, either.”
I turned my head to look at him. “Why? What's wrong?”
He sat back in the chair. He looked shell-shocked. He rubbed at his chin with his free hand, then pushed the hair off of his forehead. “It's a baby,” he said, his voice quiet.
“I know,” I said.
“It's a baby,” he repeated.
“I know.”
“I wasn't...” He ran a hand through his hair, then took a deep breath. “I wasn't expecting that.”
“Expecting what?”
He stared at the blank monitor for a moment. “I don't know. For it be so...”
“Alive?”
He hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah, I guess so. Jesus.”
I knew what he meant. It wasn't that I'd ignored that idea before the sonogram. But seeing it live on the screen made it feel much different. It was a living, breathing something inside of me.
His eyes were fixated on my own hand across my stomach. He reached over with his free hand and laid it on top of mine.
“I don't think I can do it,” he said after a moment.
“Do what?”
He looked down at the floor for a moment, then moved his eyes up to mine. “Not have it.”
My heart hammered against the inside of my chest and I nodded slowly. “I know.”
“And I know everyone's going to tell us we're wrong,” he said. “But...that's a baby. And I know we're gonna be together for the rest of our lives, Abby. I know we are.” He paused and he looked at me, his expression fierce. “So I don't care what anyone says. Maybe we aren't doing it in the right order, but I don't care. When the hell have I ever done anything the right way, anyway?”
I laughed because I could help it. Tears blurred my eyes.
“Are you sure?” I asked. “Absolutely sure? Because it will change everything.”
He stared at me for a long moment and the corners of his mouth turned upward into a smile. “It won't change you and it won't change me. So, yeah. I'm absolutely sure.”
I laughed again, the tears leaking out of my eyes. “Okay.”
He squeezed both my hands. “I guess we're gonna have a baby, then.”
“I guess so,” I said.
He stood from his chair, gently slid his hands from mine and gathered my face in his hands. At that moment, I wasn't scared. I wasn't afraid. I wasn't nervous. As long as West was with me, I'd be alright.
His lips brushed against mine. “I love you, Abs. Both of you.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
WEST
“We're having it,” I whispered.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Griffin whispered back.
Abby and I were back at my place. All of the test results had come back normal and the medical staff assured us that the baby was fine. They said to alert Abby's personal doctor and to watch for anything else out of the ordinary, but in all likelihood, it was a one time occurrence and there was nothing to worry about. We'd gone home and Abby had immediately passed out in my bed, exhausted from the entire morning. I'd shut the door and gone out into the living room, where Griffin was planted on the sofa, digging through a bag of chips.
“Not kidding at all,” I said from my spot in the recliner. “We're having it.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean why?”
He waved a hand in the air. “I don't mean it like that. But I thought you were leaning the other direction.”
“I was,” I said. My knee bounced as I talked. “We both were. But then we saw it on the monitor.”
“The baby?”
I nodded. “Yeah. It just...changed the whole picture. I don't know. Just felt different.”
“Guilted you into it?”
I thought for a moment. “No, not really. It just felt different.”
He stuffed a chip in his mouth. “Okay. Dad.”
I gave him the finger but there was a smile on my face as I did it. I leaned back in the recliner. Three hours before, I didn't think I was anywhere near ready to be a dad. Nothing had really changed that idea. But when I heard that heart beat inside of Abby, I immediately realized that it didn't really matter whether I was ready or not. Abby and I had created something that I wasn't willing to get rid of. It wasn't a religious or moral decision. It was a decision about us and our future. And our child.
“So what are you gonna do, then?” Griffin asked, brushing the salt from his hands and dropping the bag of chips on the floor.
“About what?”
Griffin laughed and shook his head. “Your fucking life. School. Money. Job. Baseball. All of that shit.”
“I have no clue,” I said. And it was the truth. I didn't have one single idea of what the hell I was going to do.
“Well, that seems like a great start.”
“We just made the decision.”
He nodded. “I know. But now you've got a shit ton of other decisions to make.”
“Can I take a breath first?”
He chuckled. “Sure. One.”
I shook my head.
I knew what he getting at. He was thinking we'd made the decision on impulse, without even thinking about what it meant. Maybe that was true to some degree. But she and I had hashed out a lot of the possibilities before we'd gone to the emergency room. We knew that having a baby would shake up our lives. But so had everything else. Baseball. Her mom's illness. Hell, Abby's decision to upend her life and go to Mesa instead of State had been the start of all of the rash decisions she and I had made over the last couple of years.
Maybe we were just continuing the trend.
TWENTY NINE
ABBY
The doorbell rang and I was pretty sure I vaulted off the couch. I hurried to the front door and pulled it open. West stood on the other side, holding a plate of something wrapped in aluminum foil.
He smiled at me. “Hey, gorgeous.”
I moved out of the threshold and motioned him inside. He wrapped his free arm around my waist and pulled me close, kissing me. He tasted like toothpaste, warm and minty, and I held tight for a second, my arms wrapped around his neck.
“You okay?” he whispered against my cheek.
I nodded. “No.”
He chuckled. “Your head says yes but your mouth says no. Hmm.”
I stole a quick glance down the hallway. My parents were either in the kitchen or their bedroom. “I'm just...nervous.”
He tightened his grip on my waist. “Don't be.”
I pulled away and, grabbing his hand, led him toward my room. He held up the plate in question. “Bring it with,” I told him.
We got to my room and I shut the door and leaned up against the wall.
“Hey,” he said, his voice gentle. He set the plate down on my bed and positioned himself so he was directly in front of me. He touched his thumb and forefinger to my chin, tilting it up so I was looking at him. “It's gonna be okay.”
I nodded again. “I know.”
He was at the house for dinner. I'd asked my parents if he could come and they'd immediately agreed. Probably because we were all tiptoeing around, trying not to think or talk about what the future might hold for Mom. They probably thought it would be a good distraction. The problem was, I'd invited West over so we could tell them, together, about the baby. And that was going to rock their future just as much as the news we were waiting on about my mother.