Mom nodded and turned to go. The door clicked shut behind her like a slap to my face. I'd failed her in every way. I just wanted everyone to be okay—my mom, Rodney, myself, this little boy—everyone.
Why was that too much to ask?
Chapter Nineteen
Week Seventeen
The hospital was only across the parking lot from Dr. Kauffman's office, so the nurse wheeled me there. I didn't feel one stab of pain for the entire trip over, and even though Dr. Kauffman had given me painkillers, I told myself they couldn't have kicked in yet. This was just a precaution. They'd monitor me for a few days, I'd spend some time on bed rest, and then I'd be fine, and the baby would be fine, and we could be on our way and pretend that none of this ever happened.
Unless Mom had a stroke in the meantime.
Mom pulled the car across and she and Dad both met me at the elevator. Mom gripped Dad's hand so tight I was pretty sure they were both going to lose circulation and maybe their limbs. I could see the headline now: teen pregnancy leads to double amputation. At least they'd each get to keep one of their arms.
The hospital had crammed more furniture into my tiny room than I would have thought possible. There was the bed, of course, and then a sectional couch big enough for a family member to sleep on, and two uncomfortable-looking plastic chairs. Mom and Dad squeezed onto the couch, with their knees mashed against the side of the bed, while the nurse wheeled in a cart covered in cords and a monitor, crowding the room further.
I hoped we wouldn't be here that long.
Mom and Dad still gripped each other's hands. The nurse hooked me into a belt with sensors that wrapped over my abdomen and sent data arcing across a monitor to my left. I studied it until I could recognize my slow, steady heartbeat, and the baby's tiny heartbeat, pulsing along with two beats for every one of mine.
I leaned back into my pillow. I just had to hold on. My baby would make it at least five more weeks. Maybe he'd be born as soon as he was old enough to breathe on his own—early, but ready. Mom would have her baby; my baby would have a life.
And then, at last, all of this stress would be over.
After about fifteen minutes, Athena swept into the room, her eyes shooting daggers. She stood at the end of my bed, some of her hair hanging out of her ponytail like she'd been obsessively pulling at it.
"Penny," she said. "What the hell? Are you okay?"
"Yeah," I said. "Sorry, I should have called you. I mean, I tried, but you didn't answer." I shot a look at Mom, hoping she hadn't caught that I'd tried to call Athena before I'd texted her. Both my parents had somehow managed to keep their limbs, though Mom was now threatening her circulation by winding her purse strap around and around her wrist.
"I called," Dad said.
"Good," I said. And then, turning back to Athena, "Sorry."
Athena's eyes bugged out. "Why are you apologizing to me?" she asked. "Stop doing that."
I held up my palms. "Doing what?"
Athena clamped her hands over her eyes, like this was all just too much to deal with.
"Honey," Dad said to Athena. "Why don't you have a seat."
"Yes," Athena said, her voice crawling with sarcasm. "Let's all sit around and pretend that Penny isn't dying."
My heartbeat quickened. As I looked up at the monitor, the baby's matched pace. "I'm not dying," I said.
Athena widened her eyes at me. "Don't be stupid. Placental abruption can kill you."
Mom looked up at her wearily. "Athena," she said. "You're not helping."
"I'm not helping?" she said. She drew herself up to her full height. "If you weren't so obsessed with having a baby, this wouldn't even be happening."
The air grew thick, dampening all sound. Mom stood off the couch, her face livid, and Athena glared back with equal force. I wrung my hands, wishing I could step between them. My mouth fumbled for the words that would make them stop, but Mom got there first.
"You," she said quietly, "cannot pin this on me."
Athena waved her arms in the air. "Are you kidding me?" she said. "Are you blind?" I could tell in the way her stance changed that she was getting worked up, like a rubber band stretched near to breaking. I balled my sheet in my hands. This wasn't the time to tell Mom the truth. Not in the hospital. Not with everything she wanted on the line. "You guys," I said. "Stop it."
But Mom didn't even look at me. "What's that supposed to mean?" she snapped.
Dad sank deeper into the couch, looking at the floor. A look of satisfaction crossed Athena's face. Of all of us, she was the only one who didn't mind being the voice to deliver the hard news. But she hesitated, then, her eyes flicking to me.
She wanted to tell Mom. She was burning to tell her. She was looking to me for permission.
But Mom looked over at me, and I could see it was already too late. The pieces she'd been holding at arm's length were finally snapping together like magnets.
She was going to realize the truth. And then, if we said nothing, we'd all know, and we still wouldn't have talked about it.
I slipped my hands under my thighs, digging my nails into my skin.
I couldn't let Athena be the one to deliver the news. Mom would take it even worse, coming from her. "Mom," I said. "I got pregnant on purpose. I wanted to have this baby . . . for you."
I huddled down in the bed. If I'd been a magician, maybe I could have disappeared—slipped under the sheets and never surfaced again. But no, magicians did their tricks by misdirection, by distracting the audience into looking at something else.
There'd be no distracting Mom from this now.
Dad covered his eyes with his hand. Mom looked over at him, her face contorting as she noted his lack of shock.
He was no help. Come to think of it, he'd never been any help when Mom was freaking out. He always laid low, waiting for the storm to pass. We used to wait it out together, while Athena battled the winds. Before I put myself directly in that storm's path in a desperate attempt to stop it.
It hadn't worked, but for the first time, I wondered if it wasn't my total failure at fault. Maybe no one could have stopped the winds. Maybe it didn't matter how good of a daughter I was. Maybe my family would still be a mess, no matter what.
And if it wasn't my fault, it was no wonder that I couldn't fix it. I was an idiot even to try.
But I still couldn't stop myself. "I'm sorry," I said. "I was just trying to make it better."
Mom closed her eyes, and her face seemed to go gray. "How," she said, but she stopped as her voice lilted higher, and broke. She tried again, lowering her tone. "How could you have ever thought this would be better?"
I looked around at my wilting father, and my shouting sister, and my fading mother. I looked at the beeping monitors, and at myself, strapped in bed, and thought about the poor, unwitting child maybe dying inside me in a soup of my own blood, and I told her the truth. "I thought it was the only way you'd ever be happy. I didn't think you'd ever stop crying unless I found a way to give you a baby."
I waited for her to scream at me about what an idiot I'd been. I deserved it. But Mom's cheeks seemed to collapse in on themselves. Her chin quivered, like she was barely hanging on.
"How could you think that?" she asked. "We're a family. We would have pulled through."
Athena's voice was flat. "In her defense," she said. "We all thought it. Penny's just the only one crazy enough to do anything about it."
The pain of that seemed to hit Mom square on, and her frame swayed. Dad stood and steadied her from behind, giving Athena a stern look. She wasn't supposed to say things like that to Mom. None of us were.
But wasn't it about time that somebody did?
"I'm sorry," I said to Mom. "Things have just been so bad for so long."
And I waited for her to tell me that things hadn't been that bad. That we'd been dealing just fine. That it was all my fault if I thought she'd been having such a terrible time. But instead, her lower lip wobbled, and she pawed at her eyes. Then she tu
rned and paced out of the room, with Dad following right on her heels.
I sank back in the bed, wishing I could meld with the mattress and become it: a soft place for people to rest. But I was the opposite, like a nail to the foot. A thing that only caused pain, and never prevented it.
Athena bit her lip. "I made things worse, didn't I?"
I let my hands fall limply at my sides. "No," I said. "It had to come out eventually."
Athena sat down on the couch, her hands on her knees. "Yeah. But maybe I could have started that fight somewhere other than the hospital."
I squirmed in the bed. I wanted to chase after Mom and apologize, to make sure she was okay.
But who was I kidding? She wasn't okay. If I couldn't make it better, that should mean I didn't have to, shouldn't it? It should absolve me of the responsibility to try.
But instead of feeling comfort from that, my stomach twisted around the pit that just kept growing larger and larger.
If I didn't fix it, maybe no one would.
Chapter Twenty
Week Seventeen
I sent Athena to get herself dinner around seven o'clock. Mom and Dad still hadn't come back, and watching her watch the door with guilt etched all over her face was worse than scrutinizing the baby's heartbeat. I couldn't take it.
When I checked my phone, I found a text from Kara, asking if I'd been sick.
Yeah, I texted back. I'm in the hospital.
She texted back almost immediately. ?!?!!
Not much to tell, I sent back. They're just observing me to make sure things are okay. That wasn't exactly true, but it was as much as I was prepared to explain over text message.
Okay, Kara responded. Keep me posted.
I appreciated the thought, even though there wasn't anything she'd be able to do.
When a knock came at the door a few minutes later, I assumed it was a nurse. Athena couldn't be back yet, and Mom and Dad wouldn't knock. "Come in," I called.
When the door cracked open, Rodney peered in. "Hey," he said. "Is it safe?"
Never, I thought. I sat up as much as I could without disturbing the sensors. "How did you know I was here?"
"Athena," Rodney said. "She just texted me. I told her your mom didn't want me around, but she said they weren't here right now." Rodney stepped into the room, and I watched him take in the monitor, and the cords running underneath my sheets.
I straightened in bed, tugging at the sheet so it covered my hospital gown up to my armpits. I'd been wishing at the doctor's office that Rodney had stayed, but now I was shocked at how much I wished that Athena had minded her own business for once. "She shouldn't have done that," I said. "You don't need to be here."
Rodney hesitated, but the door snapped shut behind him. "Well," he said. "I am."
I sighed. "Do your parents know you're here?"
"Yeah. My mom called right after Athena texted to find out where I was."
"And?"
Rodney gave me the traces of a smile. "And she told me I didn't need to be here. It's a popular theory. But I told her if I'm old enough to father a child, I'm old enough to be at the hospital with that child and its mother."
"You're not old enough," I said.
Rodney rolled his eyes, his tone dry. "That's what she said. And I said the evidence states otherwise."
I wouldn't have thought it possible, but that actually made me blush. This time, I tried to sound like I meant it. "No, really, though. You should go."
"Because of your mom?" he asked. He studied the monitor, like he was trying to decipher it. "Athena said it's bad." Rodney took a step closer to the monitor. "Is that the heartbeat?" he asked.
I pointed to the blue line. "The fast one," I said. "The slow one is mine."
Rodney's mouth hardened into a thin line. "They have you on a heart monitor." He looked at me, appraising the situation, and I could tell by the hollowness of his eyes that he was coming to the right conclusions.
"I'm—" I said. "It's not that—"
He tensed and looked down at me, waiting for the lie.
I shut my mouth. If I told him the truth, he'd worry. If I didn't, he'd know, and then I'd be hurting him by not being honest with him, again.
A scream balled up in my throat and lodged there, and from the look on Rodney's face, I figured he felt the same. Rodney stood there, his whole body tense. What happened to my relaxed Rodney, the guy who talked me down from my stress?
I happened to him, that's what. I'd dragged him through hell for months, and it was slowly eating away at him from the inside, leaving only a tired, worn-out shell. And he still loved me, so he couldn't walk away. But if I was willing to drag him through this, how could I claim that I loved him back?
I couldn't.
"Rodney," I said. "You don't need to worry about me, okay?" I'd have added this conversation to the list of wrongs that I'd done him, but I was pretty sure the end of that list was in China by now. "Seriously. You can go."
Rodney put his hands in his pockets. "Is that what you want?"
Blood pounded in my ears. Was that what I wanted? No. What I wanted was for him to lie down next to me and hold me and tell me that even though this was all my fault, he still loved me, and that everything would be okay.
My body went numb. I wanted him to take away the pain, to make it easier to bear. To bear it for me, so I could keep marching forward with things that hurt him.
I wanted him to do for me what Dad and I did for Mom. I wanted to drag him through hell, the same way Mom dragged me.
If this was love, it was a sick, twisted kind.
"It'll be better for everyone," I said, "if you just go." And it would be. For everyone but me.
Rodney's chest seemed to sink in. He shuffled his feet. His voice was so quiet, I could barely hear him. "Okay," he said. He turned toward the door, but as he did, a sharp pain cut right through the pain killers and tore up my back. I winced, and drew a sharp breath, and Rodney wheeled back around, eyes wide.
"It's fine," I squeaked. But I wasn't fooling anyone, especially him. I shut my eyes, but I heard the legs of the chair next to me scrape against the ground. And then Rodney had my hand in his, his fingers knotting through mine, holding onto me like he thought I was going to slip away. "Should I get a doctor?" Rodney asked.
I eyed the nurse call button. But the cramp began to subside. And there on the monitor was the baby's heartbeat, and the flat line that indicated I wasn't having contractions. They were watching my numbers from outside; they'd know if something really bad was happening.
When I was a child, I'd always been afraid that cuts and bruises would never heal. I'd peel back Band-Aids to peek at them. What if they didn't get better?
But they did. They always did. And this was just an internal cut, a tiny tear, bleeding inside rather than out. I couldn't peek; I couldn't cover it with a Band-Aid. But it would heal.
It would. "I'm okay," I said. "Really."
But Rodney put his other hand on my forearm. His face had gone pale.
He didn't believe me.
That's when Mom opened the door. And I had this horrible, selfish thought: Good. If I didn't have the courage to make him leave, at least she would. He'd listen to her when she told him to go.
From the red rims of Mom's eyes, I could tell she'd been crying, though now she seemed to be all dried up. Rodney's hand actually shook as he looked at her, and I remembered a moment months ago, when he'd said goodnight to me on my front porch while Mom sat in the swing, just after Lily decided to keep her baby. I'd had this thought about Rodney then: he was never awkward with anyone. And I flattened onto the bed, wishing I could erase the misery I'd put him through since then.
I held my breath, waiting for the blow up. I expected her to scream at me, to scream at Rodney, to get dragged out of the room by hospital security, possibly by her hair. Rodney would leave and never come back. He'd find someone else and be happy, and someday I'd get over that. I'd learn how to breathe again. And even if I didn't,
at least I wouldn't have to watch him hurt and know that it was all my fault.
Mom eyed Rodney's hand in mine. She drew a slow, deep breath, and even though I was staring right at her, she refused to look me in the eye. But she and Rodney looked at each other, and I could feel his hand tighten on mine as he, too, braced to be kicked out.
But Mom just sighed, wearily, and her shoulders drooped. She walked across the room to the sectional and sat down. Dad followed behind her and joined her on the couch, but neither of them said a word.
Mom still wouldn't look at me, but after three or four minutes of quiet, she turned to Rodney. "Thank you for being here for Penny," she said.
Rodney and I both let out a breath together. His shoulders dropped in relief. I closed my eyes and lay back on the pillow, hating myself for being glad that he stayed. It meant I was already the same sort of person that Mom was—the kind who took all the support she was offered, without caring who it hurt.
And at that moment I was certain: if I lost this baby, I was going to turn out just like her: sad, sick, and irrevocably broken. I tried not to move. I tried not to breathe.
I had to hang onto this child for all of our sakes.
An hour later, a nurse came in. Rodney had let go of my hand, and sat with his elbows on the bed, twiddling his thumbs like he was playing an imaginary video game. The scant air between us shifted with each flick of his thumb, and I wished he'd reach out and touch me again, but I couldn't reach for his hand. I couldn't deliberately tie him to me any more than I already had.
I'd done enough.
As the nurse approached the bed, he got up and moved to the end of the sectional, next to my mom. And Mom actually reached out and put a hand on Rodney's shoulder, and squeezed.
What planet was she from? I couldn't even watch. The nurse bent over me, adjusting the sensors.
"Did I move too much?" I asked.
"I'm just checking," she said. "The numbers are a little off, so I wanted to make sure."
Giftchild Page 20
