Becca's Baby

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Phyllis dug into her tacos, and after a few more minutes, Christine joined her. She’d learned a long time ago to shut herself down when things were too overwhelming to endure. Shut down and cope. And pretend. She’d perfected the art of pretending.

  “So,” Phyllis said later as the two women sat curled up on opposite ends of Christine’s couch, cappuccinos in their hands. “You plan to help Tory.”

  Wary at her friend’s tone, Christine stared into her cup. “Absolutely.” She sincerely hoped Phyllis wouldn’t try to talk her out of it. Nothing was going to stop her this time. Nothing.

  “Without professional assistance.”

  Hadn’t Phyllis heard anything she’d been saying all these months? Professionals had no power. They spouted textbooks and laws. Christine could do that with the rest of them.

  “I’m doing this, Phyllis,” she said. Christine had given in all her life. She wasn’t giving in this time. Her life had to stand for something. At least once.

  “I know that,” Phyllis said, her tone softening as Christine’s hardened. “I’m not trying to discourage you.”

  Christine glanced up, a little shocked by the sisterly love she saw in Phyllis’s eyes. She still wasn’t used to the fact that there was someone in her life who was on her side. Wasn’t sure she’d ever be used to that. Or able to trust it completely, either. Phyllis could change; her mood, her feelings, could change. It happened all the time.

  “Helping Tory isn’t just a matter of keeping her physically safe,” Phyllis continued softly. “Even more than the bruises on her body, the bruises you won’t be able to see are the ones that will need tending.”

  Christine nodded. Who better than she to help her sister through that particular hell?

  “So how do you expect to be able to get Tory to open up when you can’t open up yourself?”

  The walls flew up, surrounding Christine in a comforting and secure world.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said resolutely.

  “Of course you do.”

  Hands trembling, Christine set down her cup before she spilled hot coffee on herself.

  “You forget, Christine, I’m not only your friend, I’m a professional. I recognize the signs.”

  Wrapping her arms around herself, Christine soundlessly hummed a little tune. Birds were singing and the sun was shining.

  “Who was he?” Phyllis asked, her voice sounding far, far off. Christine was glad her friend hadn’t moved any closer. She’d have had to run then, and she wasn’t sure her legs would carry her.

  She should never have let her walls down with Phyllis, not for even a moment. She’d never done it before. She should have known better. But she was just so damn tired. And lonely. She’d been a fool to think she could have even a semblance of a normal life. No matter how far she ran, how much she pretended and retreated and hid, she was still Christine Evans, the girl who’d been having sex, unwillingly, since she was thirteen years old.

  “Was it Bruce?” Phyllis persisted softly. “Did he hit you, too?”

  Christine’s bitter laugh didn’t resemble her normal sounds at all. “Bruce didn’t need to hit me,” she said. “He knew I was terrified of him.”

  “He did, though, didn’t he?” Phyllis asked quietly.

  Because Bruce’s blows meant nothing to her, Christine nodded.

  Phyllis didn’t move. “Did he rape you, too?”

  Christine shook her head. Though, by the time she’d met Bruce, it wouldn’t have mattered much if he had. She almost wished he’d taken an interest in her. Then he might’ve left Tory alone.

  “But someone did,” Phyllis said, her tone leaving no room for denial.

  Christine stared straight ahead, trying desperately to hear her little tune. She’d let Phyllis in too far, couldn’t seem to push her back out.

  “Who was it, Christine?”

  Birds were singing. The sun was shining.

  “Who did this to you?” Phyllis was angry.

  Frightened, Christine looked at her friend, wondering if now was the time Phyllis would change, when her feelings for Christine would change. She almost hoped it was. She knew how to deal with every negative emotion life had to offer. It was Phyllis’s love she couldn’t handle.

  Phyllis had tears in her eyes, her hands clenched in her lap.

  “Who was it, sweetie?” she asked. And then, “Let me help you.”

  It was raining, big, painful drops that dug at her skin as they landed their cruel blows.

  “I’m not going anywhere, Christine.” Once again Phyllis’s voice came from far away. “I’ll be right here with you every step of the way.”

  The birds were all dead on the floor. Killed by the rain.

  “Tell me who he was.”

  “My stepfather.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  BECCA WAS LATE. She had a meeting with the mayor in half an hour. Because he’d be up for reelection the following year, the weasel had finally volunteered some city funds for Save the Youth. And now Becca couldn’t get her skirt zipped up.

  Damn.

  Letting her arms fall to her sides, she rested them for a moment before reaching behind her to start tugging again. And grunting. The damn thing wouldn’t budge.

  Unable to decide whether to stamp her foot or cry, she did both. She didn’t have time for this.

  “Can I help?”

  Startled, because she’d thought she was home alone, Becca turned away as Will approached. “No, I’ll get it,” she said. Bad enough that she couldn’t fit into any of her clothes. She didn’t need him witnessing the indignity.

  “You’re going to break your arms, Bec,” he said, approaching her as she backed away. He followed as she backed herself into a corner of their room.

  “It’s stuck,” she said.

  Turning her gently, he yanked at the fabric, drawing it together enough to get the skirt zipped.

  “You need some new clothes, honey,” he said, not a trace of humor in his voice.

  Becca nodded, turning around again, embarrassed, although she didn’t know why. It wasn’t as though she didn’t have a perfectly acceptable reason for gaining the extra weight.

  With the pads of his thumbs, Will dried the tears that had spilled onto her cheeks.

  “We can go to the mall in Phoenix tonight, if you’d like, and buy you a whole new wardrobe.”

  She wanted to refuse. To say that she’d take care of it herself. But she missed Will so much—too much to turn down the chance to spend an entire evening in his company.

  “If you’re sure you aren’t too busy,” she said, slipping into her pumps.

  Will grabbed the money clip he’d left on his dresser—obviously what he’d come back for—and slid it into his pocket. “It’s Monday of finals week, so no one’s got time for the president,” he joked. “Can you be ready by five?”

  Becca nodded, already wondering if she’d made a mistake by agreeing to the trip. The way things were going, the sooner she learned to be happy without Will, the better.

  “Bec?” he asked, stopping in the doorway.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m looking forward to it.”

  God help her, she was, too.

  THE HEADACHE STARTED while she was still in her meeting with Mayor Smith. He was coughing up some funds—or rather, agreeing not to put a stop on the allocation—but it was going to be “soft” money. Which meant a one-time payment, not a yearly budget as she’d requested. Luckily, she’d written all those grant proposals two weeks before and had verbal promises of enough hard money—money that would be replenished every year—to get the program off the ground in time for summer vacation. She should know by the end of the week.

  When she left Mayor Smith’s office, her head was pounding, making it difficult to think. Making her sick to her stomach for the first time in almost a month. She was just hitting her four-month mark. Morning sickness was supposed to be finished now. They’d been in for a doctor’s visit the we
ek before, and although Dr. Anderson had warned her to get more rest, she’d said the next trimester should be easier.

  Apparently someone needed to tell her baby that.

  Slumped in her car in the parking lot, Becca tried to decide what she should do next. In twenty minutes she had a meeting with a group of citizens who wanted more traffic lights out by a new housing development being built on the perimeter of Shelter Valley. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to hold her head up that long.

  Resting against the soft leather seatback, she tried to relax. Loosened the top button of her blouse and undid the button on her skirt beneath the jacket.

  The tension was getting to her, that was all.

  She’d been thinking about the nursery all weekend. She wanted bright primary colors that would work for either a girl or a boy. Lots of rainbows and clouds and stars. She wanted the furniture to be in light wood, and the carpet to be off-white. She wanted a changing table, a bassinet, a crib and a cradle that she could move from room to room. No playpens. Lots of those little sleepers and disposable diapers. She’d only need a few bottles, as she was planning to breastfeed. She’d need a rocking chair for that. And so she could hear the baby at all times, a monitor system, too.

  However, she didn’t know where she was going to put any of it. Not because she wasn’t willing to give up her office—she was, in a second. Or the guest room, although that was a little small for what she had in mind. No, she just wasn’t sure there was any point in decorating a room in that house. Would she even be living there after she had the baby?

  Her thoughts weren’t helping. Reaching to turn on the ignition, Becca grabbed her right arm, instead. It was completely numb. Shaking her arm, thinking it had fallen asleep, she couldn’t feel it tingle. Couldn’t feel anything at all.

  Her face felt odd, too. Like she’d just come from the dentist and been shot full of novocaine. As she sat there, trying not to panic, she lost her peripheral vision. She was going to pass out—die—and no one would even know.

  Somehow, in spite of the fact that her head felt like it was splitting in two, Becca managed, with her left hand, to get her cell phone out of her satchel and to punch in the couple of numbers that would speed dial Will’s private line.

  “Will?” she cried as soon as he answered.

  “Becca! What’s wrong?” His voice was strong, reassuring. And full of alarm.

  She wanted to tell him what was wrong, but couldn’t figure it out for herself. Her arm was numb—would that do it? She was having trouble hearing her own thoughts through the excruciating pain in her head. Giving up trying to see, she’d lain back with her eyes closed. It took everything she had to hold the phone to her ear.

  “Becca?” He spoke with urgency. “Where are you?”

  “Mayor’s office,” she said, breathless. And then, to save time, “The parking lot.”

  She was shivering. And sweating. Needed to lie down.

  “I’m on my way.”

  She heard Will’s words from a distance as her body slid sideways over the console. The pain in her head had reached a crescendo, and she didn’t think she could take much more. Death would be a welcome alternative.

  AFRAID TO WASTE time with the clinic in Shelter Valley, especially since he had no idea what was wrong with Becca, Will called an ambulance from his office and had the paramedics meet him at the mayor’s office. He pulled in just as they did, but made it to Becca first.

  She was conscious. Barely.

  “What happened, Bec? Where does it hurt?” he asked, climbing into the car from the passenger side and cradling her head against his body.

  “My head.” Her words were slurred. “Blinding me.”

  His throat closed up. He’d been expecting the problem to be with the pregnancy. He wasn’t prepared for anything else.

  The paramedics left him no choice but to release her as they lifted Becca away from him and onto a waiting stretcher.

  “My arm was numb. It isn’t anymore,” he heard her tell the young blue-suited men.

  “Her pressure’s high,” one of them reported to the other.

  They were on a radio and then on the road to the hospital in Phoenix before Will had time to do anything more than get into his car to follow them. A crowd had gathered outside the mayor’s office. People were clamoring to find out what was wrong, but for once, Will ignored them all. He couldn’t let that ambulance out of his sight.

  Dr. Anderson met them at the doors of the emergency room, barking questions as she walked alongside the stretcher. So intent was she that she didn’t even acknowledge Will as he followed them through doors that were marked Patients and Personnel Only.

  Becca saw him, though. Her eyes were pinned on him, begging him to make everything okay. She was frightened.

  So was he.

  Her voice trembled as she answered the doctor’s questions.

  The first thing they did was give Becca something to get her blood pressure down. And then Dr. Anderson checked her and the baby thoroughly.

  “Everything’s fine there,” she reported, and though her expression softened, she still looked concerned. “But I’d wager a guess that you aren’t getting the extra rest I recommended.”

  She called for a specialist, who ordered a set of neurological tests. Dr. Anderson assured them that nothing would be done to harm the baby.

  “What do you think is wrong?” Will asked Dr. Anderson as they wheeled Becca away for an MRI. He had to know what to expect.

  The doctor, sitting on a stool in the examining room, wrote a couple of things on Becca’s chart. “My guess is that we’re just dealing with a migraine….”

  They were about the finest words he’d ever heard.

  “Becca’s never suffered from migraines before, but pregnancy can bring them on like this. The high blood pressure didn’t help.”

  Leaning against the wall, weak now that the immediate danger had passed, Will asked, “How high was it?” He’d seen Becca an hour and a half before she’d called. She’d seemed fine then. There’d been no signs….

  “Not alarmingly so, but enough to complicate things if a migraine was present, anyway.”

  “And the numbness? A migraine causes that, too?”

  “It can, yes,” Dr. Anderson said, rising. “We’re running the tests just to make sure.”

  Will wouldn’t let the doctor go. “So you think she’s going to be all right,” he said.

  She smiled at him, laid a hand on his arm. “I do—as long as she gets enough rest.” Holding open the door of the examining room, she motioned Will through. “You can wait right out here for her,” she said. “There’s coffee and a vending machine down the hall. She shouldn’t be long.”

  Panic set in as he watched the doctor’s disappearing back.

  “Dr. Anderson?” he called, chasing after her.

  “Yes?” She turned, her eyes warm with reassurance.

  “How long until we know for sure?”

  “I’ve called in a radiologist,” she said. “We’ll know before you leave here today.”

  SHE WAS GOING to be fine. Becca was perfectly all right. Normal. The baby was normal. Everything was fine.

  Will repeated the words to himself over and over as he drove his car back to Shelter Valley, his wife asleep in the passenger seat. They’d given her something for the headache, a prescription for blood-pressure medication and told him she’d probably sleep most of the day.

  But as Will saw her so lifeless on the seat beside him, he couldn’t shake the fear that had been strangling him since her phone call that morning.

  What in hell had he been thinking, encouraging her, a woman of forty-two, to put her body through the trauma of childbirth? Had he been mad? Today it was a migraine. And there’d been her high blood pressure. Something that, in itself, could create life-threatening problems in the future. Not that Dr. Anderson thought they had to worry, but it could happen.

  They’d checked her kidney function in the bloodwork they’d done
, too. Everything was fine there, as well, but the fact that they were checking at all frightened him. It meant the possibility existed that something could have been wrong.

  As Will slowed for the Shelter Valley exit, Becca stirred, but settled back down without waking. She looked so vulnerable there beside him, not at all the strong vivacious woman he knew her to be.

  That thought raised the vision of how he’d seen her in the parking lot, huddled over her console, limp and racked with pain.

  And he knew that if anything happened to her, if something did indeed go more wrong than it had today, it was going to be his fault. He should have listened to her when she’d talked about terminating her pregnancy. He’d been so shocked, so staggered to find that the woman he’d always considered the consummate mother no longer wanted to be one, that he hadn’t heard everything else she’d told him. He should have examined the option more closely.

  Consumed by guilt, he carried his sleeping wife into their house.

  THE NEXT MORNING Becca was relieved to wake up feeling her old self again. She’d slept a little later than usual, due, no doubt, to the medication she’d taken the day before. But the headache was gone and, other than the discomfort of wearing another skirt that was too tight, she was raring to go. Will, thankfully, had already left for the university. If he’d been home, she was sure he’d have nagged her to take the day off.

  Becca couldn’t afford to lose another day if she didn’t have to.

  Swallowing her new blood-pressure pills along with her vitamins, just as Dr. Anderson had instructed, and promising herself a nap before her business dinner—the rescheduled traffic-light meeting—she left the house with a list of things to do.

  And had to face at least half-a-dozen expressions of concern and good wishes—from her neighbors, from various people as she walked across campus—before she reached her first destination. Because of the crowd in the mayor’s parking lot, Will had made a few calls the night before, letting people know how she was. Rose had taken care of the rest.