Loves Me, Loves Me Not

by Libby Malin

  “Hmm…you’re losing a lot of blood here,” she says to Wendy, whose eyes are only half open. “I’ll see what we can do,” she offers before mysteriously disappearing.

  We don’t see her for another half hour, during which time I go insane and Wendy has to go to the bathroom. I help her hobble to the little rest room a few feet away, and I wonder if I should call her parents regardless of what she says. What if something happens to her? They’d want to be here, right? They’d hold me responsible if they weren’t here and something happens.

  Something is happening. Turning around, I see the little-nurse-that-could rushing through the door and throwing open the bathroom door. Crumpled on the floor is Wendy. She’s fainted! She must have hit the emergency button before blacking out.

  “Call a nurse!” the sixteen-year-old shouts at me as she kneels down and feels Wendy’s pulse.

  A nurse? What is she—chopped liver? But I do as she says and run to the nurses’ station. Incredibly, it’s empty. Frantically, I look up and down the hallway. I spot a woman in what looks like a uniform. I can’t tell nowadays—they all wear different things. White pants and colorful smocks. Who do they think they are—kindergarten teachers? What’s the matter with the old white get-up and funky hat? If they opt for the kindergarten garb, they should at least have to wear badges that say “NURSE” in huge black letters!

  “You have to help me!” I blurt at her. “Wendy Jackson in 304. She’s fainted.”

  The woman looks at me quizzically, then turns into a nearby room. A few seconds later, a doctor in scrubs comes out with a clipboard in his hand. Because of the shower cap on his head, thick glasses covering his eyes and bushy mustache over his mouth, I’m left with the impression that this is Dr. Quackenbush from a Groucho Marx movie. I want to scream. But he appears unperturbed and takes his time following me to Wendy’s room.

  So this is Dr. Bernstein. Wendy can’t even get a doctor who breaks a sweat to care for her. Maybe she and I should give up men and become lesbian lovers.

  Once in the room, he asks the nurse a few questions. Wendy’s rousing now and is appropriately confused.

  “It’s okay. You just passed out,” the nurse says. “Can you stand?”

  I go to her and help the nurse bring her to her feet. The doctor has fetched another nurse who brings in a wheelchair. Apparently, he is not allowed to handle wheelchairs himself. In a few seconds, Wendy is back in bed, and a few seconds after that, a stretcher comes in and nurses help move her onto it. From no action we’ve gone to body-moving central—from the floor to the chair, from the chair to the bed, from the bed to the stretcher, hup, hup! The doctor talks to me in the hallway, obviously assuming I’m next of kin.

  “We need to do a D & C,” he explains. “She’s lost a lot of blood but that’s probably just because she was nearly at four months. I think if we keep her overnight we can get by without transfusing her.” He smiles quickly and pats me on the arm.

  “Thanks.” Wendy is rolled out now, and I pat her on the arm.

  “Everything’s going to be fine, sweetie,” I tell her. “Dr. Bernstein is here. They’re taking you in now.” She is too out of it to respond and just stares bleakly at the ceiling.

  After she’s gone, I stare after her, suddenly afraid. Maybe she misunderstood me and will misinterpret my comforting message to mean she’s not losing the baby? I think of running after her but stop myself. What would I say? “By the way, Wen, you are losing this baby. I meant to say you’re fine even though the baby isn’t.”

  Spent, confused, sad and even angry, I reenter her room and sit down in the chair by the empty bed. And I cry.

  Oh, it’s not the sobbing, gulping tears Wendy was justly entitled to. After all, what do I have to cry about? A ruined Friday night? Henry and Tess’s escapades? They pale in comparison to losing a baby.

  I cry because she’s better off losing the baby, and when she wakes up she’ll realize it and cry, too. She was denied the uninhibited joy of finding out she was pregnant, and now she’ll be denied the complete cathartic grief of losing it. Other feelings will intrude.

  All of these sad roads lead back to Sam. If he had been true to her, she could have been happy about having the baby and sad about losing it. Now the situation is curiously reversed. That damned Sam. He’s a monster.

  In a fit of anger I grab the phone by her bed, pull out the phone book and look up Sam’s number. I punch in the numbers so hard I miss one and get a wrong answer. Then I try again and he’s not home but his voice mail message kicks in. “Professor Sam Terrill here. Leave a message.” Only prize-winning assholes leave their title in their voice mail message. Professor Terrill?

  “This is Amy, Wendy’s friend, you little shithead. Wendy’s had a miscarriage. So you’re off the hook, bastard.” And I slam the phone down for good measure. And it feels so, so good that I cry again. I use up five tissues, I’m feeling so good.

  And then I call Henry. At least Henry isn’t like Sam. At least he does some nice things, right? He came to see me when I was in the hospital. He encouraged my job hunt. He pulled a coverlet over me when I fell asleep early one night. He’s not married.

  At least I don’t think he’s married. How would I know? Just because he told me? And what does it matter—if he’s willing to lead other women on just to get their business? Maybe he’s leading me on, too.

  I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. I shake my head. I’ll have to think about that tomorrow, Scarlett. Fiddle-dee-dee. Tomorrow’s another day. Tonight, I just need a friend. Henry’s “quick bite” with Tess, the She-Devil, should be over by now.

  “Hello?” he answers on the third ring, just one before it kicks into voice mail.

  “Henry, it’s Amy.”

  “Where are you?” he asks, and his voice sounds kind of odd. Mine is trembling and I plunge forward and tell him the whole ugly story about Wendy.

  “How is she?” he asks. I can’t put my finger on it, but there is something strange about his voice. He doesn’t seem concerned about me at all.

  “Pretty weak. And unhappy. You can imagine. She’s in the O.R. right now.” I don’t care anymore why I was angry at him. I want to tell him that it was stupid of me to set up the whole spare-bedroom scenario. I want to tell him I won’t be the “little woman” anymore and I think I’m falling in love with him, too, but I don’t want to be hurt again. I want to say all these things because I’m tired of wondering if I’m loved, and maybe if I start acting like I am, it will all fall neatly into place.

  “I want to stay and wait until she comes out of the operating room. I…” Go ahead, say it. You can do it. “I would like it if you could wait with me.”

  It doesn’t sound like my voice, at least not the voice I’ve become accustomed to using over the past two years. This voice is slower and a little tremulous. This is my heart’s voice, unadorned at last.

  In the background, I can hear a woman. Tess. “Darling, something wrong?”

  My face flames with hurt and anger. “That’s okay,” I manage to croak out, and hang up.

  chapter 19

  Judas tree: Betrayal

  I have an antipathy to Southern women. Maybe because I was under the illusion that I was one, being born south of the Mason-Dixon line, and it was a rude awakening when I went to college at the University of Richmond to find out that I didn’t really qualify for that club. The Southern girls I met there were so much more confident, and so sure of their own feminine wiles. They were a perfect blend of both coquetry and feminism, the very balance I can’t seem to find in my own life. And it always seemed whenever my eyes lit on a boy I might want to go out with, some postmodernist belle would get there before me, stealing him right out from under my eyes. I began to feel like a traitor on enemy soil, a Yankee (even though I wasn’t officially one) on Rebel ground. Rick’s old flame was a Southern girl.

  But, of course, it’s not okay. Henry not only did go out with Tess. He brought her back to our place! Yes, our plac
e! I live there, too, right? And since I’m not there to act as a natural check on his impulses, who knows what was going on or about to go on?

  As I think of what’s happened to Wendy, of Sam’s hard heart, of my own heartbreak with Rick, I realize that this little bump in the road—Henry—was probably inevitable. Years from now, I’ll look back and think, yeah, that was pretty foolish getting involved with someone like Henry Castle right after getting over Rick, but I had to start somewhere, and look at me now all alive and whole and well.

  I don’t feel well. I feel sick to my stomach. I haven’t eaten anything since before noon, so I wipe my eyes and ask a nurse where to get something.

  “The cafeteria’s closed, but there are some vending machines,” she says, and gives me directions.

  The hospital’s confusing so I almost get lost on my way back after buying a PayDay candy bar and a Dr. Pepper. I manage to eat about half the candy and drink all the soda when they return Wendy to the room around midnight.

  Everything went well, Dr. Bernstein assures me, standing outside her door as they wheel her in, and she should be capable of bearing children in the future.

  “These things are a mixed blessing,” he says, his surgical mask falling below his small chin. “It’s usually nature’s way of taking care of a fetus when there’s something wrong with it. Something that doesn’t make it viable.”

  “When can she go home?” I ask.

  “I’ll see how she’s doing in the morning. If her blood volume goes back up and she’s feeling okay, I can discharge her by tomorrow afternoon. She’ll need to take it easy for a few weeks, I’d say. Is there someone who can help out around the house?”

  “I can do it.”

  He heads off to see another patient and I head into the dim room to see Wendy. She’s just barely out of the anesthesia and glad the pain is gone and everything has reached some conclusion. She smiles weakly when I tell her I’m there, then whispers, “You should go home. I’ll be fine.”

  Go home? Where’s that? I might as well pitch up here in the hospital. Who wants to walk in on Tess and Henry? Walking in on Gina and Fred was bad enough.

  Just as I sit down by her bed, Henry walks out of my angry thoughts and into the room. I shoot him a dark look that says he’s not earning any brownie points by showing up now.

  “I came as soon as I could,” he says, standing by her bed. “How is she?”

  “She’s doing okay. I told you that on the phone. You didn’t need to come.” I don’t look at him. “Wouldn’t want to take you away from your important clients.”

  “You said you wanted me to come,” he hisses back.

  “Well, that was before I found out you were otherwise engaged.” Still I do not look at him.

  A nurse comes into the room, asks me cheerily how the “patient is doing” and I resist the urge to tell her that she’s the one who should be telling me that. She takes Wendy’s pulse, checks her IV and wakes her up so she can take her temperature. Everything must be okay because she leaves without a word and with no furrowed brows or grimacing lips.

  “We were having a nightcap,” he says through gritted teeth. “That’s all. I thought you might want to meet her.”

  I remember that “having a nightcap” is how Henry and I landed in bed for the first time.

  “Hmm,” I say under my breath. He knew I was going to Wendy’s. He knew I’d be out.

  “I didn’t know you were out when I brought her there,” he says, as if reading my mind.

  “Oh, that makes it all better, then,” I whisper, “the fact that you wanted to rub my nose in it.”

  He offers no rebuttal. If he refuses to take the stand I can only infer he’s guilty, right?

  “I was just going to leave, anyway,” I say, and stand. I grab my purse. “You can stay if you want.” I bend over and tell Wendy I’m leaving. She murmurs an acknowledgment. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” I tell her.

  I resolutely refuse to look at Henry as I leave the room. He catches up with me and we silently ride the elevator together. Then we silently walk out to the parking lot together.

  Even though it’s dark, the air is warm as a hothouse’s interior. It swamps me when I open the door after the sterile chill of the hospital air-conditioning.

  At Wendy’s car, I unlock the driver’s door and start to get in, but Henry stops me from closing it.

  “Why didn’t you tell me Rick Squires was your fiancé?” he asks fiercely.

  My heart races. “What?”

  “You blindsided me, dammit. This afternoon, after I talked to you, Calvin Squires stops in my office. He asks me what I’m up to. I tell him I’m going to see a client. He asks who. I tell him. He says he knows her and she’s quite a beauty. And I say that I have a girlfriend, and oh, by the way, she’s looking for a job, does he know of any openings. He asks who you are and I give him your name.”

  My gut twists. I can visualize the scene. Straight and tall Squires, with a long face capped by lush graying hair, always looking frail, as if a strong wind could blow him down.

  “What did he say?” I whisper, even though we are out of the “quiet” zone.

  “He said, ‘I’m afraid I can’t help you,’ and walked away. Another secretary overheard. So she told me.”

  “About Rick and me and the accident.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you must have known. I mean, you work there. Where he worked.” My eyes sting and I blink fast.

  “Jesus Christ, Amy! You know what those people are like. They don’t talk about anything but business. I had no idea…”

  No idea that his current girlfriend might hold him back? It’s unclear, and he shakes his head back and forth in an angry sort of way that doesn’t clarify. And I feel like saying I’m sorry.

  But dammit, I’m so tired of feeling sorry. I’ve spent two years being sorry. Henry should be sorry. Sam should be sorry. Rick should be sorry. Even Dr. Bernstein should be sorry. I wipe my face with the back of my hand.

  “I get the picture. You wouldn’t have gone out with me if you’d known.” I pull the door away from him and slam it shut, then roll down the window to get rid of the stifling heat.

  “I didn’t say that,” he says.

  “You don’t need to. I told you—I get the picture.” I turn the engine on. “At least now I know. Better than waiting like Wendy did for Sam.”

  Henry lets out a snort of derision. “Right. I’m just like Sam. All men are like Sam.” He bobs his head up and down in disgust. “Sam sure as hell made you one suspicious bitch toward men. Guilty until proven…”

  His voice is raised and a security guard steps out of the hospital door and looks our way.

  Henry shoots him a look and then a grimace back at me, and it occurs in my mind that we might end our relationship the same way we began it—with a uniformed man trying to save me from the “raging Latino.”

  He lowers his voice and steps closer. “How do you expect anybody to love you if you keep secrets like this?” His voice is thin and angry.

  “I wasn’t keeping anything from you, dammit. It just never came up.” And then, searching for a parallel, I hurl my own accusations. “You never talk about your other relationships. Why should I?”

  “I told you—I didn’t have any other ‘relationships.’ Nothing serious. Not until you,” he insists. “I don’t mix business with pleasure. Can’t you get that through your head? You’re the one I really—”

  “Don’t!” I interrupt. So what if he cares about me? Fine way he has of showing it—bringing Tess and Joanna and whomever to his condo.

  “Besides, you should have told me Rick Squires had been your fiancé when you told me about the accident.” Henry rocks back on his heels and stares into the distance, shaking his head. “You should have seen Squires. He looked like he’d seen a ghost.”

  A switch turns on in my brain sending white-hot fury coursing through my veins. Henry blames me for how bad Squires feels?!

  “Squires?!”
I cry. It explodes out of me like a volcano. I’m tired of feeling guilty. “If it makes it any easier, you can tell him his son wasn’t my fiancé. At least not when he died. He’d broken up with me that night!”

  Tears choke my voice. I’ve told Henry something no one else knows. Not Wendy, not Gina, not my mother, not even good ol’ Dr. Waylon Freud. Rick had broken our engagement the night of the accident.

  In a strained voice, on the Baltimore-Washington Expressway just north of the Dorset exit, Rick had explained that he wasn’t sure we should get married after all. He felt rushed and unsure. He needed some breathing room.

  Breathing room? I could hardly breathe myself when he told me! My heart beat fast, nothing seemed real. Fear had gripped my gut. My soon-to-be-husband was asking for a divorce.

  And while he spoke, my mind and heart grabbed for any life preserver within reach—maybe he just needs some reassurance, I thought, maybe he just needs to stay with his folks for a few days, or take a trip, or not see me from now until the wedding, or, or, or…

  Or maybe he needed some other woman.

  Sally was her name, Sally Chessman, the woman he’d dated in law school, the one serious relationship he’d had before he and I connected. He’d really been on the rebound, you see, when he met me, and it wasn’t all settled yet but he hadn’t been aware of that, not until he ran into Sally recently at that conference in North Carolina and found out she was joining a law firm in D.C., and the spark was still there, Ame, he couldn’t deny it, and he knew it would hurt like hell and the last thing he wanted to do was hurt me because I was such a great person, and…

  And I couldn’t bear to hear him say the inevitable—that I’d meet someone else who deserved me. Panic rose in my throat as I silently screamed, don’t say that, Rick, please don’t say that. Because I wouldn’t meet someone who deserved me if he didn’t fit the bill. He deserved me! And I deserved him! Didn’t I?

  “I’m sorry, Ame, I really am,” he’d said, “but I can’t go on living like this.”