by Falon Gold
Chapter Ten
Astrid
Disjointed thoughts and incomplete sentences slash through my head. Luck with love, fucked up. Or shitty. Has to be piss-poor at least. Can’t decide which, after getting the man I want in just the way I want him, and now goddamn amnesia has him pinned down. Out of commission. My world going to hell twice. Broken again. When do the hits stop coming? Kicking me and the baby when we’re down. Punching us. Over and over.
“Astrid!” Malisa shrieks beside me, from the middle of the backseat of Apollo’s navigator, her hand gripping mine way too tightly.
“What?” I answer dejectedly with head hanging low, shoulder saddling the back-passenger window that’s helping me stay erect to some extent.
She should be in the front seat with Apollo, who’s not driving fast enough but going too fast. I don’t want to see Blake, but I wish I had wings. I’ll already be at the hospital, cowering in the hallway. I don’t want to see the unfamiliarity in Blake that I’ll surely get when I walk into his sight. Then I’ll have to go home with my tail tucked between my legs, a loser in love again.
Apollo keeps one eye on the road, one on his wife in the rearview mirror.
I’m coming between them again with my problems.
Although it’s Malisa who wants to sit back here with me, I don’t need the company.
The other Owens trail us in their cars, reception cancelled an hour and a half before time for Malisa and Apollo to take their leave. Fairytale put off indefinitely. So damn messed up. Someone should have a happily ever after. Apollo and Malisa get my vote.
Her hand stuffs the hair falling in my face behind my ear. “No time for this woe-is-me crap, sister. Our boy has lost his mind, literally. He needs it back before the Powers get their hooks into him, and only you can help him get it back. You and baby Blake, so get your shit together. Stop with the pity party, and come up with a plan before his parents get to the hospital. You’re the damn cop here. Do something.” Malisa is warrior. Me, limp noodle.
“Ex-cop.” I regret giving up my badge now. It could be used in the place of blood ties and the marriage license that I don’t have. We’ll all need it to get past the hospital personnel. Instead, I only have future fiancé status, which means nothing to everyone but me.
Air swishes out of Malisa’s mouth, adding more warmth to my heated cheeks. “Whether ex or not, cop is attached, Astrid. Good enough for me. Now, do your ex-job. Think!”
“I can’t slap him with a warrant for his memories and make him give them up. I don’t have a badge to do it if I could. We can’t even tell him who he is without risking planting memories that aren’t real and blocking the real ones from coming back.” Which means he doesn’t even recall he pledged to ask me to marry me.
But oh, how I wanted it to happen.
Got this close to it, needed it. Need him still, which is just another blow, reaming what’s left of my strength out of me.
“Him remembering us is the least our problems, Astrid,” she spits.
Does she know how absurd she sounds? Suddenly, irrationally furious, I whirl around on her like I’m possessed because I am, with desolation which lashes out at everyone.
“What could be worse than him never remembering me, Malisa? Huh? Tell me, please! Even him being dead fails to trump love and baby forgotten.”
And Malisa can’t see that because she’s not in love with Blake, idiot.
Shit. Taking my despair out on the wrong person.
She rears back into her father’s bulk, eyes the size of soccer balls, then points her finger in my face and recoups the space she retreated from. “Don’t go psycho ex-cop on me! Ashley and Martin are worse. They’ll use this to their advantage. They’re low enough to plant memories in his head, Astrid. We’ll all lose Blake for good. We have to make sure he comes home with us and you… tonight.”
Oh God, forgot about his parents. I’m suddenly exhausted again. Slumping now. “Sorry, Malisa, about taking my problems out on you, but it isn’t Apollo who’s forgotten you, so you can’t understand. I pray you never have to. Trust me, Sienna will be the least of your worries.”
I use the webbing in my thumb and index finger to almost gouge my eyes out of my head. They’re extremely dry and spasm like the devil, which gets even more hellish every time Malisa conjures up an idea that won’t work.
“Listen to me, Malisa. I’m not married to him. We’re not even properly engaged, so his parents legally get first shot at being his guardians if the doctor says he needs one until he remembers who he is. It doesn’t matter who we are… all because Ashley regurgitated him like the snake she is.” I bet Martin has a tiny prick too.
“So what now?” she asks, disappointed almost as much as I am.
“Unless Blake chooses to come home with one of us, and I don’t have a home here anymore by the way, can’t lawfully enter his without him, we’re stuck trying to get past the Powers with the law on their side to get to him. I don’t think we have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting past either one. His amnesia plays right into their hands and we’re out.”
“Astrid, you have a home as long as I’m alive, and we can prove they’re unfit parents. They were never there for him as a child.”
I know where this is going. Court. Nope. Ruining what’s left of hers and Apollo’s honeymoon time before the babies arrived by crashing at their home. Uh huh. Excruciating eyeball pang. Present. “He’s not a child, and they haven’t done anything abusive or harmful yet to warrant the law’s intervention.”
I could check on him if I had the Arrow Sheriff Department behind me though. No, wait. Eight months pregnant. One month and six weeks of maternity leave before I can wedge a way into his life legally. Time is a massive elephant and effective blockade. Blake is lost to me and baby until then.
“Astrid, them talking him into doing something to himself that he never wanted should be criminal. So should cutting us out of his life and working for their snobby ass companies with snobby ass board members instead of letting him be around the ones who love him the most.”
“It hasn’t happened yet, and there’s no history of them hurting him as a child or adult. We’re screwed royally.” No KY jelly. No warning of what’s coming from behind. No Blake in my future.
“Calm down, ladies,” Apollo’s deep, gloomy tenor drums into my spiraling thoughts. “Both of you have babies on board and we want them to stay that way. We’ll figure out something together, even if it’s praying morning, noon, and night that his memory comes back as soon as possible… like in the next few minutes.”
Too long. Need him now.
“I know, Astrid. Damn, I know,” Malisa murmurs, then swirls me around in the seat by the shoulders and dumps me in her arms, or she tries to.
My head is laying topside in her chest. I’m hunched over her babies, getting two nostrils full of her dress, and thinking out loud now. Losing it. Big time.
Get it together then. Slap yourself or something.
No energy.
Ask someone else to do it.
Hurting enough already.
Then do it for his baby.
Nothing I can do apart from wait. More damn waiting. Never gets me anywhere when it comes to Blake.
Exactly!
Need to be with him. Touch him. Let him see me.
That might work for you both, you know?
Only option left. Got to man up… no, woman up now. Except my idea of rallying is to encircle Malisa’s torso with my arms, stealing her will to fight by touch, while she shushes me and strokes my back.
Frank snickers to himself and reaches over the front passenger seat, touching Lydia’s shoulders. “Yep, these two could be sisters. Arguing one minute, then holding onto each other for dear life the next. We’ll get in Blake’s room if I have to throw my weight around, girls. All of it.”
Funny. Frank would hurt someone. I would laugh at his joke but that would take too much exertion. I reach for his other hand, palms down, on the seat besi
de Malisa. I can’t take too much of her strength. She’s pregnant three times over and needs her essence just to stand. Frank seems to have plenty grit to go around though. His fingers curl around mine, willing to share. Owens and Nordic-Fords, the best.
“Yes, we are, sweetheart, because we’re there for one another,” Lydia murmurs. “And we got you.”
Lydia reaches between the seats, to draw circles in my lower back, which is growing stronger by the minute. Arrow General Hospital springs up in Frank’s window like a phoenix. The three-level structure resemble a bird. The east and west wings are shaped like Plexiglas triangles spreading out from the top floor. Humongous, neon-red ‘A’ centered on the roof like a cone-shaped head.
Ugliest construction I’ve ever seen, but an extraordinary example of what I should be doing; rising to the challenge. If an architect can get paid for sketching that building, which is lending me hope when I can’t find on my own, then I can do what needs to be done to save Blake from his own flesh and blood. I could do better, if I could throw my weight around like Frank, too. Stomp the Powers even, if I had money and power like the owner of this hospital has, or even had been on the council that approves city projects like... the hospital. An idea begins to take shape.
The cell phone suffocating in my fist becomes a lifeline.
********
Blake
It’s probably rude to mean-mug the bulletproof vest that’s flopping off a chair in my emergency room fashioned from a sheet hung from a circular rod, while the doctor is trying to diagnose me, with lots and lots of questions. Yet, I’m doing it, because it isn’t a vest I needed when I went to Mr. Lindsey’s hotel.
I needed a damn helmet.
Now, I’ve disremembered… Is that a word? I do believe so. At least, I’m not stupefied about who I am anymore. Whatever narcotic is in my system has locked down the pessimism that was rapidly approaching but not the hollowness in my core as I endured the MRI scan. I don’t need to know who I am to decide that feeling just shouldn’t be there, and why it is. Something and someone essential to my existence have been misplaced. I mean to locate each missing piece until I’m whole again.
The chart in Dr. Ellis’ hand slaps the side of the bed, snapping my attention to him. He folds his thick arms across his even thicker chest and furrows his pale brow already marred with crinkles.
He does not get outside much.
“Mr. Powers, are you listening to me?”
“Yes,” I deadpan. But not really.
A low murmuring picks up in the hall, along with the collective outline of a group yielding shadows on the white, thin cotton walls of my makeshift room behind the doctor’s back.
“Same rule applies. Only two at a time,” a female says coldly. “Wait here.”
A figure breaks away from the group, punches through the flimsy partition of my room. Blue scrubs pour in behind Dr. Ellis. Wearing them is a plump woman, with an olive skin tone and her mouth compressed. She doesn’t have to open it for me to know she’s the one who laid down the law, lives by the book, and has some sort of lead position here. “Doctor, there’s a call for you and it’s urgent.”
He whirls around. “Fine, Sasha. Be right back, Mr. Powers.”
“That chick is mad, Frank,” a tinkling voice full of amusement chirps as Dr. Ellis and the nurse leaves.
Being popped on the back of the head from a stern hand for misbehaving is all I can think of.
“Of course, she is, Lydia. We went over her head, baby, and she had to let us back here anyway,” a profoundly rough, equally amused tone replies. “I think I like having clout. You two go first.”
Another man being popped in the back of his head comes to mind. I assume it’s the same person doing the popping.
A dark chocolate hand hammers the slit in the sheet, nudging it apart. A woman trudges through it in a white dress, satiny caramel skin, and tight curls, needing the wafer-thin mattress much more than I do to stabilize the massive girth in front of her. She’s the woman I had the vision of at the hotel, but her dress is different, and the physical response I had doesn’t fire off.
She’s not mine.
Never was or we’ve both clearly moved on. That doesn’t stop me from growing apprehensive about her pregnancy throwing her off balance at any moment. I care for her apparently, and there has to be at least three babies in her. Her attire is a bit odd for a hospital visit though. The first thing I want to do is tease her about it.
“Is that a wedding dress?” I ask.
A big grin snakes across her lips as she bobs her head for a response. She’s as cute as a button, her belly outweighing the rest of her body. I throw my legs over the side of the bed then freeze.
Good Lord, tell me I didn’t marry this woman before getting my head split to the white meat.
Despite my alarm, I pat the mattress beneath me. “Congratulations. Come sit down here. I’ll get up.”
Before she gets to my bedside, Dr. Ellis comes back in a clipboard swinging, sulky mood. “Stop.”
She does. He swerves around her, bends down, and slings my ankles right back where they were on the bed, ticking me off.
“Man, she’s pregnant! Let her sit down comfortably!” If he doesn’t, there’s going to be a problem.
“No,” he fires back, then grabs the blanket bunched at the bottom of my feet, straightens it out, and then chucks it over my legs as if that’s all he needs to immobilize me. “She can sit in the chair with the vest unless she needs a much more comfortable chair brought in here. You’re on strong sedatives and need to lay down until I discharge you tomorrow, Mr. Powers. I’m tempted to put her in her own room though. There has to be at least three babies in her.” He begins scribbling on his paperwork.
I snort and grumble, “That’s what I think too. I’m surprised she can walk.”
She giggles. “I can hear you, you jackass.” I laugh at her nonvenomous slur. She probably aims several of those at me every time we’re in the same vicinity, so I must know her, or she wouldn’t be here. Right?
I’m laughing when another woman in the actual white dress that I envisioned, satiny caramel skin, and tight curls toddles through the hole in the linen much less pregnant than the last woman, with a phone to her ear. Her solemn expression is targeting the ground. My hilarity dies in my throat.
There’s two of them! Both pregnant! Can’t be, unless their twins. Ummm, no that doesn’t fit. But what does?
I start to doubt my own rationality.
My eyes canter to the woman who’s removing the vest from the chair to nestle it on top of the possible triplets she carries, then my gaping swerves back to the woman talking low into the receiver.
She stops at the foot of the bed, staring down at my feet. She places a hand on the footboard, nails digging trenches in the hard plaster. She’s strung tight, and all I want to do is make it better… and get my hands on her belly.
Too far, Blake, my good manners yap, but my instincts don’t think so.
Evidently, they’re not afraid of not being politically correct all the time.
“Okay… Okay… I’ll see you at the station in the morning, and thank you for doing this for us, again. Have a good night.” She hangs up the phone. Creamy honey orbs touch down on my face. They’re a little too creamy. What is making her want to cry?
“Hi,” she speaks softly, with a trace of relief in her cadence.
The muscles in my jaw go flaccid, lungs seize up. Just quit working. She’s the pregnant woman I imagined at the hotel. My nerve endings grow raw, reacting to her mere presence.
“Hi.”
Touch her now, rockets through my head, and I will, as soon as she says it’s fine with her.
Her lips open and close, like there’s something she wants, no, needs to say. While I wait for her to get up the nerve, slanting my mouth against hers becomes an obsession.
God, I hope I had sense enough to sleep with this woman at least once… a day.
What if she isn’t mine? If
she was, she’s undeniably met someone else since she’s pregnant… eight months along, I suspect. I think I’d remember if I had a baby on the way. Hatred for the other man injects itself into my veins, which constrict in my neck.
The woman in the chair with the sun sparking from her face turns glum. “He really doesn’t know who we are, Astrid.”
Astrid. Beautiful name. Even more beautiful woman. Her, I’ll marry right now, with the egotistical nurse and too-talkative doctor as witnesses. Stirrings in my groin produce a tent in the blanket. I lock my hands together over it but can’t help staring at Astrid. It all feels quite routine, truthfully.
Astrid drops her head again. “We expected this, remember, Malisa?”
“Jasmine,” I say the first thing that comes to mind. Anything that’ll get her eyes back on me will do.
She covers her face with both hands instead. I didn’t want her to finish her descent into crying though.
“I’m sorry,” immediately breaks through my teeth.
They’re clamping together, hands clenching, and I want to go to her to put them all on her, calm her down. It’ll work. I’m positive of it. Her neck whips up, finally. She nods, rims of her eyes wholly wet.
“Don’t be sorry, Blake. That’s my favorite perfume.” Then she half-smiles. Much better, somewhat. I rather be exposed to her full grin.
Two shadows materialize on the strung-up sheet, abducting my awareness that wants to be concentrated only on Astrid.
“Dr. Owens and Lydia,” emits from the new guests.
It’s like they’re parrots. Two people return the greeting with a lukewarm impersonation. Common sense says it’s Dr. Owens and Lydia speaking, and one of them has a mean open palm. I memorize the quality of their voices, which I can almost guarantee gets much warmer than lukewarm.
A man and woman breeze in the soft entrance as if they belong here, with a frigid flair haunting their slender frames, and bored vibes. I guess they should be here since they look like the people I thought of right after I couldn’t figure out my name, which my parents surely would have given me. Yet, I’m not all that thrilled to get reacquainted with them. Mothers and fathers aren’t supposed to look like mannequins when their offspring is in the hospital. Or maybe it’s just mine who are like this, and they make a total of four visitors.