by Cameron Lowe
“Stop, Malcolm. You’re making me more nervous than I already am.”
He did, freezing almost completely and glancing sideways at her as though he might have accidentally hurt her physically. “I’m sorry. I just…”
“I know. Me too.”
He rushed to Gwen and covered her mouth with his. The soft insistence of his lips reminded her of the night before, and she shivered pleasantly. Sex had always been good with Malcolm, but now that they were aiming for a child, he seemed to be on a mission to find new, insanely inventive and fun ways to top himself, and Gwen was reaping the benefits. Last night he’d folded her knees nearly to her shoulders and…
Their phone rang. Juliet, outside, and ready. Gwen broke away from Malcolm, laughing softly.
“What?” he asked.
“I’m about to go find out if my mental wiring’s gone all FUBAR and all I can think about is last night.”
Malcolm’s worry broke into a grin. “Yeah? You liked that?”
“So. So. Much.” She kissed him again hungrily, and this time his hands slid down to her ass and squeezed. He tried to chase her mouth, but she pulled back, smiling. “Mm mm. Tonight, though…”
His smile faded and he squeezed her to him one more time, hugging her tight. “It’s going to be okay, Gwen.”
She smiled against him. “Of course it is.”
But Gwen didn’t really think so. She couldn’t tell him that though or he’d decide his early shift at Matto Furio’s could be abandoned after all, and that day, Gwen wasn’t sure if she’d be at all mad at him for it. Even with Juliet there and willing to stick it out with her, she felt terrified and so very alone.
At the car, Juliet gave her a hug and spoke a few encouraging words. Malcolm watched them go from the stoop, his hands making small fists before unclenching again.
The neurologist worked in a small clinic near Rankin Flats Memorial, just a few blocks away from the future site of the light rail station she’d board a decade and change later. His receptionist, a dead ringer for Meg Ryan in her early years, gave them a bubblegum smile and the forms they’d need to fill out. Gwen’s hands shook so hard she couldn’t do it herself, and Juliet, forcing back her own emotions, helped her as she listed her family’s medical history and the other pertinent details the clinic needed.
She expected to wait a half hour like just about every other clinic visit she ever made, but a tall nurse as equally chipper as the woman clearly cosplaying When Harry Met Sally ushered her right in. Gwen glanced back once at Juliet, who smiled at her encouragingly, and ducked through the door to enter into a lifetime of problems.
* * *
“Feels like I’ve got a tiny squid on my head,” Gwen said, trying to stare up at the wires of the EEG machine. “Or a spaghetti hat.”
Lawrence, the lab tech, snickered as he stepped back, examining his work. “Don’t think I’ve ever heard it called a spaghetti hat.”
“This won’t hurt, will it?” Gwen asked.
“Not at all, so long as you remember to wash the goop off your face so it doesn’t drip into your eyes when you sweat.”
“Good to know. Leg day’s supposed to be tonight.” Gwen tried to smile, hoping the tech couldn’t see how hard she was white-knuckling the edges of the hospital bed.
“All right, we’re going to get started. To begin with, I just want you to relax, close your eyes, and take some nice, deep breaths for a few minutes, okay?”
“Easy breaths. Got it.”
The test started, and Gwen clenched her jaw shut as she closed her eyes until the tech reminded her to breathe. A light flicked on and off in front of her eyes for a few minutes. It was easily the worst part of the test and intensely irritating. For the next part, the tech had her take a series of sharp quick breaths, followed by a lengthy period of time when all she had to do was catch a little sleep. She thought she wasn’t going to be able to, but they told her to show up sleep deprived, and that helped lull her into a light slumber, just barely scratching the surface of sleep.
And just like that, the tech was stripping the electrodes from her head gently and the test was over. Up until she had three little ones to look after, that EEG stood as the most terrifying moment of Gwen’s health problems, even outweighing the sheer pain and fear of breaking her leg. Once she’d washed up, the tech promised they’d be in touch as soon as they knew anything, and left her to get dressed.
When Gwen came out to the waiting room, Juliet dropped her magazine onto the chair next to her and jumped to her feet. “Are you okay? Are they done? Did they say anything?”
Gwen held up a hand, smiling faintly even if all she felt was exhaustion. “I’m okay, they’re done, and no, not yet. Hopefully we’ll know something in the next few days. For now, I want food, and to go home and have one hell of a good cry.”
* * *
Malcolm was able to go with her for the results, thanks to a coworker willing to swap shifts. They waited together in the clinic room, hands clasped as Dr. Ditmore chatted and laughed with someone out in the hallway.
“That’s him,” Gwen said to her husband. He’d yet to meet the doctor, and they’d been waiting upwards of ten minutes.
“I’m gonna go drag him in here,” Malcolm said, halfway rising before she managed to stop him by grabbing his arm.
“Honey…”
“What? He’s out there having a good time, joking it up. Meanwhile-” he turned to the door and raised his voice “we’re in here and we don’t know jack shit about what’s going on.”
“Malcolm, please,” she begged. It was the pain in her voice that stopped him, not the request. He turned his head to her and saw how close she was to crying. “You’re not helping things by getting mad.”
“I… I’m sorry.”
She brought his hand up to her lips and kissed it, and he settled back down, looking dejected. “I’m the angry one, remember? Mrs. Gloom and Doom? You’re the lovable, plucky, happy-go-lucky one.”
He wrapped his arm around her protectively. “If this guy was Mike Tyson, I’d punch him for disrespecting your time like this.”
“Have you ever punched anyone?”
Malcolm thought about that, and said, “Okay. I’d maybe backhand him. Like a duel thing. And then it’d be pistols at dawn.”
“If you wake my butt up at dawn for a duel in my honor, I’d be upset for at least fifteen minutes.”
Their jokes were loopy and stupid, but they grinned at each other because it was all they could do. But the good humor faded, and Malcolm got up to pace the tiny room, flipping through the magazine rack on one wall again. It was the sort of selection common to most Montana clinics, meaning they had their choice of magazines with guns on the cover or elk and deer.
“Don’t suppose there’s a Highlights hiding in there?” Gwen asked hopefully.
“Nope. But I will gladly run out to the main room and get you one. Be right-”
The door opened and Dr. Ditmore stepped through. He was a mildly portly man, and the light glossed off his balding head. Still laughing and glancing behind him in the hallway, he didn’t notice Gwen imploring Malcolm with her eyes to ditch the sour glare on his face. It swept away just in time for the doctor to turn.
“Ah, sorry about that. Leslie Ditmore,” he said, holding out his hand for Malcolm to shake.
“Malcolm. Her husband.”
“Nice to meet you. And Gwen, how are you doing today?”
“Terrified,” she said as Dr. Ditmore closed the door behind him.
The doctor’s good humor fell away. “Well, let’s get to the good news first. You don’t have epilepsy, which was my primary concern.”
Malcolm hiccupped out a deep breath, unable to say anything. Gwen whispered, “Oh, thank God.”
“Mm hm. The tests did recreate the problems you’ve been having, particularly during the breathing exercises. What you’re suffering from are absence seizures, or they’re sometimes called petit mal seizures. They’re tiny blips of electrical ac
tivity in your brain, little synapses just not firing quite right.”
“Is… is there a way to fix this?” Malcolm asked. “Like with surgery or something?”
Dr. Ditmore shook his head. “No, but it can be treated with the right prescription. Hopefully that should help alleviate them. I’d also like for you to begin charting your sleeping habits. A lack of sleep could definitely be a factor here, particularly with regards to what you told me about driving your husband to and from work.”
Malcolm looked horrified at that. “I… I did this?”
“It’s okay, Mr. Irving. That’s not the only trigger and I understand you’re dealing with a hard situation.”
Gwen wrapped an arm around Malcolm and hugged him tight. “What are the other triggers?”
“Stress, potentially your diet.” He tapped something out on the computer. “Let’s have you chart that too. If you do become pregnant, diet will become very important, and I’d like for you to speak to our nutritionist when you’re expecting.”
“Stress,” Malcolm muttered, and shook his head. “Our whole life is stress.”
Gwen nodded morosely. Dr. Ditmore smiled tightly. “Understood. Well, when you are feeling stressed, one thing that helps is some simple meditative exercises. Breathing helps, as cliched as that may sound. Twenty deep breaths and you’d be surprised at how much calmer you’ll feel.”
“Okay,” Gwen said. “You said I’d need to take medication?”
They talked about that for a while, along with the side effects. Ditmore shifted into other potential triggers and warning signs, and near the end of the consult, dropped the bombshell.
“Until we know how well the medication works, you’ll want to avoid driving as much as possible.”
Malcolm and Gwen glanced at each other. The new clinic Gwen worked for was eight blocks from the nearest bus stop. Gwen glanced back at the doctor. “I… can’t drive?”
“Well, it may take a while to see results, and we want to make sure you’re not a danger to yourself or others, so I’m advising against it, yes.”
“I… I… but work…”
Malcolm squeezed her hand. “We’ll figure it out,” he promised her.
Chapter 25
“You can’t keep doing this, Malcolm,” Gwen said, huddling in the corner of her seat, her hands in her lap as she stared out at the pink cracking the horizon.
“Sure I can,” he said, the cheerfulness as false to him as it was to her. He was so tired. How had Gwen done this for him during the bus strikes? He felt like a zombie. “You did it for me, and now I’m doing it for you. Greatest tag team on the planet.”
She’d tried riding the bus for three hellish days. The first time was uneventful and she thought maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. But when she got off the bus, a man heading out of a nearby thrift store started trailing her. She hurried at a fast walk, but the guy kept pace with her, staying back only about twenty yards. A true Rankin Flats girl, Gwen had anticipated this might happen and had both a can of Mace and a folding hunting knife in her purse. When the guy didn’t back off, she made a show of digging in her purse for the former, gripping the can near the top so there could be no mistake as to what it was she was carrying. Finally the douchebag slowed and turned away. The second and third days, Gwen was openly accosted on the bus, and both times she needed to pull the can out again. Gone was any notion that she could use public transit in the Flats safely. They had to find another option.
Now Malcolm was driving her, despite her protests that she’d driven for years and years without incident. Her medication seemed to be working but Dr. Ditmore wanted to wait at least six months to see how well she reacted. Besides, Malcolm insisted and sometimes it was pointless to argue with him.
They pulled up to the Moccasin Twin clinic, and Gwen leaned over to kiss his cheek. “I love you, you stubborn donkey.”
“Love you too, you… you… boobied… thing.” Malcolm sighed and rubbed his eyes. “I’m too tired for good jokes.”
“Like you’d crack good ones wide awake.”
“Har har.” He grabbed her hand before she left the car. “Hey. Gwen.”
“Yeah?”
He stared her in the eyes, and for no reason at all, he leaned in, wrapped his hand around the back of her head, and pulled her tight for a long, smoldering kiss that left her toes curling. That they could have been married for years and he still did that to her delighted her.
“I can’t wait for you to put a little monster in me,” Gwen murmured when they broke apart.
He perked up. “We could try right now. I think we could fit into one of those bigger dog carriers, get us a little privacy.”
“Goof. I love your face.”
“Love yours.”
She got out, shut the door on him, and rapped the side of her car with her knuckles. Gwen turned and watched him go, smiling to herself right up to the point where she realized she was about to puke.
* * *
Malcolm pulled into a fast food restaurant for coffee and a breakfast burrito. Fast food wasn’t quite yet as common to the couple as it would be during the hardest, leanest years when the rising cost of food made value menus a godsend, but Malcolm indulged himself that morning. Without some caffeine in him, he was going to be just as much a danger behind the wheel as Gwen would have been, if not more.
He grabbed the food to go, meaning to return to the Camry and eat while he listened to music, but when he stepped foot back outside, a sign for a pawn shop half a block down caught his attention. Why not go take a look? He’d been meaning to hunt down a new tape measurer and a few other tools. Might as well go and see what they had. Besides, if he slept now, he’d be even worse off when he got up to head to Matto Furio’s a few hours later. Gwen had managed her little power naps between his shifts far better than he had.
The sausage, egg, and cheese biscuit disappeared quickly as he walked. Thinking about little but how good the bed was going to feel when he dropped that night after he got off at midnight, he permitted himself a dazed smile. He didn’t want to get his hopes up, but there’d been a whisper among his coworkers at Matto Furio’s that their manager was on the outs with the owner and was getting ready to quit. If that was the case, Malcolm figured the job either came down to him or Manny, a coworker with seniority but who rarely put forth any sort of an effort.
The pawn shop’s sign read OPEN, a nice surprise considering it wasn’t quite eight in the morning. The place was a madcap mess of overstocked shelves and no clear order to anything. A huge woman in maybe her seventies or eighties sat on a stool behind a glass display case full of pistols and in front of a giant rack of hunting rifles and shotguns. Both Gwen and Malcolm had hunted the first year they were together but had given it up. The cost of processing the meat on top of gas to get all the way to the Crazy or Belt mountains was just wildly unfeasible.
A barrel full of fishing rods caught his eye, though. Malcolm loved fishing. It had been too long – at least since he lived in Minnesota. He ran a hand over the poles lovingly. When was the last time he even had time to think about dipping a line in? He picked one up.
“You can take it home for forty bucks,” the woman behind the counter said disinterestedly.
Malcolm put it back into place. “Not today, thanks. Just looking.”
“Uh huh.”
Malcolm peered into another glass case stocked with comic books. He recognized some of the titles on display and thought he might have even owned one or two of them as a kid, but there was no chance in hell they’d made it from his parents’ purges of the last few years. Oh well. He hoped they made half as much money selling them at garage sales as this store was.
He picked through the tools, but they were priced so exorbitantly high he might as well have just bought them new. But parked next to the tools, hidden behind a stack of cowboy hats and a massive, dingy sombrero was a ukulele.
Malcolm knew he was doomed.
He picked it up. It was badly strung, but Nic co
uld probably help him with it. He’d played guitar in high school. Malcolm had always wanted one of these, ever since he saw Joe Versus the Volcano as a kid. He imagined practicing and someday being good enough to serenade his wife, or play something goofy for their future kids, and any common sense screaming inside him that this was a damn fool thing to buy flew right out the window.
“How much for the ukulele?”
“Forty,” the woman said. Apparently, that was the price tag of everything bigger than a hammer.
Malcolm stared at the ukulele. Forty was a lot. They were back on track saving some money after taking a massive hit from the bills for Gwen’s broken leg and the out-of-pocket cost of her medication. Shit, though, when was the last time he’d just bought something for himself? Something fun they hadn’t carefully budgeted for? He hesitated, knowing this was wrong and that Gwen would be rightfully pissed, but…
“What’s your return policy?” he asked the clerk as he headed for the counter, already digging out his wallet.
* * *
“I’ll be just a minute,” Gwen told her coworker. On their lunch break, she’d bummed a ride to a grocery store near the vet clinic. What she needed would have been cheaper from one of the big box stores four blocks away, but she needed to know and she needed to know right the hell now.
She’d chugged a bottle of water half an hour ago, followed it with a refill, and was now bursting at the seams. Funny – Gwen had walked by pregnancy kits a thousand times in her life but never paid them any attention before. Now she wondered frantically if the brand mattered, if she should get the more expensive kind or the generic store brand model. Wait, was that how she should refer to them? Models? Kits? That sounded right. Pregnancy kits.
She decided on a moderately priced one and split the difference. “No running in the store!” someone called after her as she very deliberately did not run but power walked to the front, her bladder screaming for justice anytime she liked. Well… maybe it was a bit of a run.
She paid with cash, tapping her foot impatiently as the clerk counted out her change, and darted for the store’s bathroom, already breaking open the box. She bounced off a bagboy reading the instructions, apologized hastily, and squeezed her thighs together in the most unsexy walk of her life to keep herself from making a mess right there in the store.