The Way It Ends

by Marnie Vinge

  Her planner laid open, broken at the spine, on the counter. She glanced at it. The nagging feeling that she had in her stomach from earlier returned. She flipped through the past few weeks. Black hearts marked several days each week, but then about four weeks back, they stopped. There was a gap. And then approximately eight weeks ago, there were three red hearts in one week.

  Vanessa flipped frantically backward, looking for another black heart and not finding one. Her heart raced. The blood drained from her face and she swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry.

  She tried to calm herself. She gathered up mail and opened it. She’d let it slide for months. She came across something from the fertility clinic from when she and Tom had been trying so hard to conceive. She opened it.

  It was addressed to him.

  And it confirmed something that Vanessa had feared for a long time.

  Tom was sterile.

  BIRDIE

  Her thighs are slick with a mixture of fluid and blood and Birdie reaches down for her abdomen, grabbing it as a contraction seizes her. Her legs glide, the liquid making them move like velvet against glass. She grunts, biting her cheek until it bleeds, trying to keep herself quiet. She collapses against the wall of the art studio.

  Her breathing quickens. She needs to move. She can’t stay here beside the door. The contraction abates, and she seizes the opportunity for mobility. She drags herself to her feet, her legs shaky and her shoulder aching. She stumbles past stacks of paintings, rotten and weatherworn, neglected for years and never displayed like they should have been.

  Absurdly, she suddenly feels a sadness come over her for the person that used this studio. She wonders what they must have been like. But the thought is short-lived when her shirt sleeve snags against a painting, knocking it to the ground and tugging at her wound.

  The pain is enough to make her vomit. She retches and heaves, whatever her last meal was comes up and lands at her feel, a wet splatter. The sight of it makes her heave again until there’s nothing left. And then another contraction reaches out and grabs her deep inside her abdomen. She can feel it in her back like a seizure. She wonders briefly if this is normal.

  Fear spreads as she begins to breathe too quickly. She can feel herself losing oxygen, hyperventilating. She’s having a panic attack and she’s in labor. She can’t calm down.

  The darkness seems to close in around her, the stacks of paintings seeming to grow in the gloom. They tower over her, threatening to topple and spill on top of her. The pain in her shoulder is eclipsed by the contraction. Her body feels like it’s breaking under the weight of all her decisions. She doesn’t know what she’s going to do. She bites down hard on her cheek and blood runs between her teeth and out over her lips, dripping onto the floor. A bitter laugh escapes as the contraction slows down.

  She pants for a moment, like a wild animal fresh off a chase. The room seems to spin, the pain in her shoulder once again booming to the forefront of her mind. It’s an airhorn in the silence, ricocheting off the sides of her skull, making it hard to remember that she’s about to have a baby.

  She tries to focus, bringing her attention back to the present—to her surroundings. The paintings tower around her, stacks of moth-eaten canvases like ancient sentinels in the darkness, warning her of what’s to come. She breathes deeply, trying to calm herself. She remembers something someone told her once about drinking water to stave off a panic attack.

  Just then, as things begin to come into a clearer focus, she hears the creak of the door. Its old hinges protesting against whoever has pushed to inward.

  “Birdie?” The voice is instantly familiar. And suddenly she remembers who told her that tidbit about panic attacks. Ione.

  But it’s impossible.

  She claps a hand to her mouth to quiet her ragged breath, hoping that whatever delusion she’s suffering will pass. It’s most likely Vanessa. God, she hopes it’s just in her head. That there’s no one there at all.

  But she hears the door creak shut. She hears this interloper step cautiously through the canvases just as she might have if she’d been in any condition to use caution.

  The person calls her name again, this time with more confidence, less fear. It isn’t Vanessa. The voice is lower. Female. Familiar.

  “Birdie it’s me,” she says.

  Ione, Birdie thinks. It is her. This can’t be. This is all in her head. The pain has overwhelmed her and seized any ability that she had to differentiate fiction from reality. There’s no way that Ione is here. It’s absurd to even think it. But such are dreams.

  Birdie groans.

  Footsteps quickly make their way to her and suddenly a hand is on her arm, warm and alive. She opens her eyes, closed against the hallucination, and staring down at her she sees blue eyes that she would recognize anywhere.

  It is her.

  Ione’s eyes fill with fear at the sight of her old friend. Birdie laughs once again.

  “We need to get you out of here,” Ione says.

  “No shit,” Birdie replies.

  The irreverence makes Ione smile, and Birdie remembers the way it felt to make her smile. The intensity of the friendship that they shared. It was so long ago, and crow’s feet crinkle in the corners of her friend’s eyes as she pulls her lips back, baring her perfect teeth. Time has reached out and touched her, just as it has Birdie.

  In the midst of the pain, she acknowledges that unsettling moment of seeing someone again from the past. Acknowledging the way that time withers us all. Ione is as beautiful as ever, but she’s changed. She’s known pain. Birdie can tell because once upon a time they were sisters.

  A contraction comes, seizing her back and abdomen, making her breath quicken. Ione kneels beside her.

  “Breathe, just breathe,” she says.

  “You ever delivered a baby?” Birdie asks, half-joking.

  Ione’s face falls.

  “No,” she says. Birdie knows this. She also knows the chances of her surviving this are virtually nothing if they don’t get out now. “You’re gonna be okay, Birdie.”

  “You don’t know that,” Birdie says through clenched teeth.

  The idea that her own death is imminent sweeps over her like a curtain falling prematurely on an actor. She’s not ready. She’s not done. This isn’t how things were supposed to go.

  For the first time since she was shot, Birdie allows herself to cry. A tear escapes and slides quickly down her cheek. Ione reaches for her hand.

  “You’re going to get out of here,” she says. “I’m going to get you out of here. Whatever it takes.”

  Birdie breathes rapidly, trying to imitate anything she’s ever seen about how women are supposed to breathe in labor, but it gives little relief. What a crock. The only thing that could make any of this bearable is an epidural. A needle straight into the center of her spine sounds heavenly right about now. The idea that it could inoculate her from the pain that she’s feeling is intoxicating though the thought is fantastical.

  “I’m not going to make it out of here, Ione,” Birdie says as the contraction slows down.

  “Yes, you are,” Ione is emphatic. She squeezes Birdie’s hand.

  Birdie looks down at her friend’s knuckles, white in the moonlight. She notices there’s no wedding ring. Neither of them ever married.

  “Do you have children?” Birdie asks.

  “No,” Ione says.

  Birdie didn’t think someone like Ione ever would. Even as far as they stretched from each other over the last seven years, she often thought of her. She pictured her, living her best life, and in Birdie’s imaginings, that never included children. Ione was destined for greatness. And for women, greatness required sacrifice. It wasn’t the same for men. They could have it all: the career, the family. But it was different for women. It was one or the other.

  She wishes she had chosen differently. In this moment, when her child is about to come into the world, she feels regret. She hopes that the baby will be okay. She hopes that she will
be okay. But there’s a part of her that acknowledges that this is not the life she ever wanted.

  Another contraction seizes her. They’re coming closer together. She cries out and squeezes Ione’s hand.

  She looks into her friend’s eyes. She wants to plead, as though Ione can fix this. As though she can erase everything that’s passed between them. She wants to beg her for forgiveness and apologize for how everything went so long ago. Scars fade but never disappear.

  She allows the tears to come. She heaves, her breath quickening.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” Ione says. She rubs the back of Birdie’s hand.

  It’s little comfort. Birdie knows she probably isn’t going to survive this.

  “Hey,” Ione reaches up and turns Birdie’s chin to face her, the gesture at once tender and commanding. Birdie looks at her, tears fogging her vision. She swipes at her eyes with her good hand.

  “I’m so sorry,” Birdie coughs through her tears.

  “What? Why?” Ione is incredulous.

  “For everything,” Birdie says. “I can’t believe you’re here.”

  “Of course I’m here,” Ione says.

  “How did you even know?” Birdie asks.

  “The news.”

  Birdie nods. Of course. The news. They had made the news. She laughs bitterly once more. Another contraction seizes her abdomen and she cries out, clutching it. The movement rattles her wounded shoulder, making the feeling that death is close by, clutching its black robe and ready to sweep Birdie into it so acute that she can’t think.

  Ione clutches her hand, Birdie squeezing her friend’s knuckles so hard she feels and hears them pop inside her own. She grits her teeth, bearing down on her own molars with the pain. Suddenly, it passes. She breathes rapidly, soaking in the moment of reprieve, knowing that the next will come sooner than the last.

  “Birdie?” Her name is a question. A summoning.

  Birdie looks up at her friend.

  “We have to get you out of here,” she says.

  Birdie nods. And once again, she thinks she’s hallucinating because as her head bobs up and down, she can hear the rickety door creaking open once again.

  IONE

  “We have to get you out of here,” I say.

  Birdie nods. And as she does, tears fill her eyes to the brim. Just then, the door creaks. At first, I think it’s a desert wind, sweeping through the compound, reminding us that the world is wild. That out here, nature rules. But when it doesn’t begin to swing back shut—when it hits the wall and footsteps follow it in—I know that we’re not alone. Not anymore.

  “Birdie,” I whisper.

  She nods again, ready for whatever I’m about to tell her, obviously hoping that it’s news of her salvation. I don’t bring such good tidings, though. But I can offer her the promise I made so long ago.

  “I promised you a long time ago that I would always come back for you, and I’m here. We have to get out.”

  Birdie nods, her eyes crinkling shut in pain. I look around the shelf that Birdie has leaned against, trying to figure out who’s in the studio with us. Through the shelving, I see a pair of boots, the leather glowing silver in the moonlight.

  Tom.

  Shit.

  It’s my best estimation that Tom doesn’t think I’ve left the study. He probably thinks I’m still lying there, dried blood caked on my scalp, turning my blonde hair burgundy. I reach for the crown of my head and feel the knot there from the award that he bashed into my skull. My heartbeat quickens at the thought of confronting him. With the barrier of violence breached, all bets are off.

  Blood thunders in my ears, making it almost impossible to hear his footfalls finding their way through the stacks of paintings. I think briefly about cutting to the chase, standing up and facing him once more. The thought emboldens me. A self-destructive streak running through me—the same streak that longs for and abhors the idea of its own annihilation—pricks its ears at the sound of him moving through the building. I feel like a wounded seal, floundering in the waves leaving a trail of blood being picked up by a great white shark.

  “Birdie?” he calls. “I saw the Jeep by the road.”

  His tone is calm, reasonable even. Deceptively so. Not the voice of a man that just knocked his former lover unconscious after being presented with the idea that he might not hold the child that’s rightfully his.

  I look down at Birdie and place a single finger against my lips. I pray that her contractions will slow, though I know that’s impossible. It goes against the inevitability of nature—against the fact that her body has already decided that the baby is going to be born tonight.

  The thought makes my blood run like ice in my veins. The idea that we may not get out of here is enough to make me sick. I can hear Tom stalking through the stacks. It reminds me for just a moment of our time in the library and of another time when I met him at Bizzell Memorial on campus in Norman. A stolen kiss and passion that required more than a library could offer in terms of privacy. We’d left hand in hand that night, both of us intoxicated by the affair and the idea that anyone could see us at any time.

  The thought is so distant now, the impact of the trophy against my skull still making my headache and my ears ring. It makes it hard to concentrate, the sound of him moving a reminder that we are not safe. Not yet.

  “Birdie?” he calls again, traipsing through the stacks, hunting us, unaware that I’m here. And I’m not sure how he’ll react to seeing me. If it will piss him off, make things worse. My stomach clenches, and I try to steady my breathing. I look down at Birdie once more. She grits her teeth, tears leaking down her cheeks like raindrops following the path of least resistance down a windowpane.

  She gasps suddenly. I see Tom’s boots abruptly stop moving. Dirt shuffles against the oval toes of each of them, making half-moons in the dust as he steps backward. I imagine him looking for us—for Birdie—and I try to keep myself from imagining what he’ll do if he finds her.

  I feel responsible. This is why I’m here. This is why I’ve come. I look down at Birdie again, the gap between her front teeth showing as she grimaces from the pain. Her face is twisted into a ghoulish imitation of a smile. She wants to scream, I can tell. She brings her good hand to her mouth and shoves her fist inside, digging her canines into her flesh hard enough that a bead of dark blood pulls to the surface and runs down before she lets up.

  I make a decision in that instant. This has to end. There has to be a way.

  “Tom,” I say. My voice is even. His name feels like a four-letter word, dirty on my tongue. A curse. A summons for something not of this world. Someone that I don’t know anymore.

  He stills, the sound of his footsteps stops. The quiet is overwhelming—suffocating even—and the tension in the room is palpable. A thing with a pulse, writhing and coming to life. It coils around me, a snake in the air, its muscles constricting around my throat. My mouth dries, my tongue suddenly cotton.

  Tom starts to walk towards us. His footsteps are slow, cautious even. I wonder what he thinks he’s going to find. If he thinks we’re armed. I remember then that he has the revolver from the desk—from my waistband. The thought makes me sick.

  And then he steps around the corner.

  In the moonlight, the shadows on his face are long. The crevices that time has carved seem sharper, more pronounced. The ridge of his brow reminds me of a classic horror film monster. I swallow, the lump in my throat hard as a baseball.

  He doesn’t say my name. He doesn’t even say anything to acknowledge what happened in the study. He looks from me to Birdie and back again.

  “Where’s Vanessa?” he asks.

  Birdie doesn’t answer immediately. She grunts in pain. He slams his hand into a stack of canvases, sending them flying across the room. Birdie cries out.

  “Where is she?!” his voice booms.

  “I don’t know!” Birdie barks at him.

  “She needs a doctor, Tom,” I say.

  “Shut up
. Just shut up!” he hollers. He brings his hands to his head, cradling it as though the sound of my voice is piercing his ear drums like a beetle boring into his brain.

  I react as though slapped. I shut my mouth. I raise my hands. He begins to pace and grabs something from the waistband of his pants. A blade glints in the moonlight, the tang catching the illumination in such a way that’s almost beautiful—elegant, even. In any other situation, I could appreciate it. If this was a movie, I might.

  “Tom,” I say, nearly breathless.

  “Shut up,” he growls.

  He shoves me aside and I tumble into a stack of paintings, turning them over and falling to the side with them. I cough as I hit the dusty concrete floor. It’s cool against my face. The air whooshes out of my lungs, sucked out as though by a vacuum.

  I pant, trying to regain my breath. I look over my shoulder and see Tom crouched over Birdie, the knife in his hand. He waves it in front of her face, and he pleads with her.

  “You understand, don’t you?” There are tears in his voice.

  Birdie says nothing. She moans. She mumbles incoherently. I shove myself to my feet.

  “Tom,” I say. I try to keep my voice even, as reasonable as I can—as empathetic as I can.

  He breaks his concentration for a brief moment and looks at me. There’s a hollowness in his gaze. The pale blue of his eyes is icy and holds a threat. I realize what he’s capable of in that moment and I wish that I was wrong.

  “This baby is mine,” he growls.

  “I know, Tom,” I say, raising my hands. “But we need to get her to a doctor if we want the baby to be okay.”

  Tom seems to think about it.

  “No,” he says abruptly, a pouting child. He spits the word out again. “No.”

  “Tom,” I say. I wish this wasn’t on me. I wish that hostage negotiator was here. He’d know what to do. I’m impotent in the situation, as useless as I possibly can be. Tom has already decided I have no value, as evidenced by what played out in the study. I rack my mind, rolling through memories as though through a Rolodex, trying to find something—anything—that might flip the odds in our favor.