“No!”
“Or maybe there is someone you’re… sweet on…?”
Tamara’s mind immediately jumped to Zobel. To Brett referring to him as Tamara’s pet, implying they were lovers. Such things happened, but Tamara knew her relationship with Zobel had only been friendly.
Unless she was forgetting things. She couldn’t have forgotten that.
Could she?
“No,” she told Mrs. Henson sharply. Guard-inmate relationships were usually discovered and sorted out pretty quickly. There weren’t a lot of places where any kind of assignation could take place outside of camera range. Not only that, but people noticed nonverbal signals and body language that were out of place. There was little privacy in juvie.
Mrs. Henson looked at Jensen, her eyes still suspicious, wondering.
“No, you don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tamara insisted.
“These cramps you’re having, is it your period? Are you menstruating?”
Tamara’s face got hot. Without looking at Jensen, she could feel his eyes on her. Mrs. Henson’s voice was still low, but he could hear if he listened carefully. Tamara raised her hands to her face, covering her flushed cheeks.
“No. It’s just crap food and the meds. A stomach-ache. Anyone here could tell you how bad the food is.”
“When was your last period?”
“I don’t know. I’m not regular. Just let it go. I’m not. I would never never get pregnant. Never again.”
Mrs. Henson looked at the guard, looked at Tamara, and bit her lip. “It wasn’t exactly your choice last time, was it?”
Tamara fought back against the rush of memories. She wasn’t going to think about Mr. Baker. She wasn’t going to think about what he had done or about Corrine or Julie or Amy. She breathed hard, pushing back against the images.
“Do you feel like you did when you were pregnant before?” Mrs. Henson prodded gently.
“No. I was throwing up all the time. I was…” Tamara tried to remember all of the differences between the blackness, hopelessness, and hallucinations she had had during the month or two before she was arrested and what she had been experiencing since her return to juvie. She remembered how she felt back then before Dr. Eastport told her she was pregnant and she agreed to termination.
The fogginess and crazy thoughts had lifted after the abortion and Tamara had been relieved to find herself comfortable in her own brain again. The psychosis had disappeared, leaving her clear-headed again. For three years. Until it came back.
Tamara looked at Mrs. Henson. “I haven’t been with anyone,” she insisted, “so I couldn’t be.”
“For how long?”
“What?”
“When were you last active? What about when you were with us? Did Coach McClure…? Or anyone…? Did you have a boyfriend we didn’t know about?”
“No.” Parts of the timeline were missing, particularly when Glock and Sybil had gotten her drunk, but Tamara was pretty sure that nothing had happened then. She would have known. Glock would never have let anyone mess with her, Tamara was sure of that. She shook her head again. “I told you, I’m not!”
“What about after the prison break? Is it possible…?”
Panic set in. Tamara jumped to her feet, upsetting the chair and sending it crashing to the floor. There was nowhere to go. She couldn’t leave the room or escape the suggestion. She didn’t have the energy to run, even if there were somewhere to go.
Jensen was at Tamara’s side in an instant, his taser pressed against her shoulder. “Sit back down.”
Tamara didn’t even look at him. She stared at Mrs. Henson in horror. “No!”
“It’s okay. Sit down,” Mrs. Henson said, her voice calm and soothing. “We can talk it through. You don’t want to upset…” She indicated Jensen with a tilt of her head.
Tamara looked down, but the chair was on its side, several feet away, and she couldn’t reach it. Jensen wasn’t going to like it if she moved away from him to get it, and Tamara’s head was whirling so fast she wasn’t sure she could bend over to pick it up even if it were within reach.
“I can’t.”
They each considered the situation, calculating the distance and angles. “I can get it,” Mrs. Henson offered. “Would that be okay?”
Jensen shook his head. While it wasn’t likely that a visitor would attack him with the chair, it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. Tamara was an inmate who had, relying on someone else, escaped before. He had no way of knowing Mrs. Henson’s history or risk factors. They all stayed there in tableau, like a kids’ game of Freeze. Eventually, Jensen pulled back from Tamara, the taser breaking contact with her shoulder as he sidestepped to where the chair had landed. Tasers had good range, he didn’t need to be right against Tamara to deploy it. He kept it pointed right at Tamara, ready if she tried anything. He kicked the chair back to Tamara. But she would still have to bend down to pick it up and Tamara wasn’t confident she could.
When it became obvious that she wasn’t going to move, Jensen stepped back to his original position. He hooked his foot through the back hole of the chair and lifted it back to standing.
“Now sit,” he snapped.
Tamara sank back into the chair, her knees and thighs shaking.
“What happened?” Mrs. Henson asked her.
“I took pills. Pills to keep me from getting pregnant,” Tamara explained. She shook her head, unable to go on any further.
“Birth control pills? Progesterone?”
“No… not that. Another thing. For… after.”
“Morning after pills?”
Tamara nodded. “They said they’d keep me from getting pregnant.”
“Well… they can. But like any other method of birth control, there is a failure rate.”
“Uh-uh.” Tamara swallowed. “No. No.” She put her face in her hands. “No, no, no!”
“Running away from it won’t make it not true. We need to get you checked out. Maybe I’m wrong… but I don’t think so.”
“I would know. If I was… that… I would know.”
“Did you know last time?”
“I would know!”
“Shh.” Mrs. Henson tried to calm her. “It’s not the end of the world. It’s just something that we need to deal with.”
“We?” Tamara challenged. She pulled her face out of her hands to glare at Mrs. Henson. “It’s got nothing to do with you!”
Mrs. Henson’s lip trembled and Tamara knew she was hurt. But it was the truth. Mrs. Henson had been Tamara’s foster mother for a few weeks. She was an occasional visitor at juvie. But she had no legal standing and no place in Tamara’s life. She couldn’t make decisions for Tamara.
Mrs. Henson swallowed and licked her lips. “I would like to help you. I want to make sure that you’re being properly taken care of and have the support and medical treatment you need. I’ve dealt a lot with teen moms. I know how high-risk teen pregnancy can be. This won’t go away just because you ignore it.”
“I took the pills. So I wouldn’t get pregnant. I took them all, just like the nurse said to.”
“I believe you. But sometimes they don’t work.”
“They have to!”
“I know you’re scared.”
“You don’t know!”
“You’re scared, you feel alone, and you don’t think you can handle this on your own.”
Tamara rubbed her eyes. “It’s not fair.”
“No. It’s not.”
“You can’t tell them.”
Mrs. Henson blinked at her and furrowed her brows. “You don’t want me to tell the prison authorities? We need to tell them, Tamara. You need specialized care. I need to tell them.”
“You don’t know anything.”
“I’ll tell them my suspicions.”
Tamara’s guts twisted, and she wrapped her arms around her stomach again. She would know if she were pregnant. Mrs. Henson had to be wrong.
Mrs. Henson wanted Jensen
to take Tamara directly to the infirmary, but he stoically shook his head and informed her that he needed to follow the proper procedures, and if he didn’t see any blood or any indication that she was in medical distress, he had to take her back to her room. He couldn’t just make a decision like that on his own. It would have to go through channels.
Tamara was relieved to be taken back to her room. Mrs. Henson would find it much more difficult to deal with the juvenile authorities than she thought. She would probably give up, and they would leave Tamara alone and forget that Mrs. Henson had ever accused Tamara of anything.
Jensen walked her back to her room, with no comment on her slow, shuffling pace. She was exhausted when she finally got to her bunk, and lay down and closed her eyes.
It seemed like she had just barely dropped off to sleep when one of the nurses was shaking her awake. Her mouth was a thin line and her eyes beady and sharp. It seemed almost as if she were angry with Tamara for something.
“You need to get up. We have some tests to do. Come on. Wake up.”
Tamara pressed her palms into her eyes. “Can’t it wait?”
“I would say not.”
Tamara got up slowly and sat on the edge of her bed. The nurse thrust a plastic jar with an orange lid into her hands.
“I’m going to go out and I need you to provide me with a urine sample. Think you can manage that?”
Tamara stared down at it. She’d had other medical tests done at juvie. Usually in the infirmary, but she had noticed that Forensic, with nurses on the unit, was able to get by without using the infirmary in many cases. Which was just fine with Tamara. She blinked a few times to try to clear her vision and stay awake, then nodded.
“Yeah.”
“All right. I’ll be back in five.”
She left Tamara’s room, shutting the door behind her. Tamara heard the lock engage. With a tired sigh, she plodded over to her toilet to take care of the task at hand.
In another ten minutes, the nurse was making arrangements for a visit to the infirmary. She hadn’t told Tamara the results of her test and Tamara did her best not to think about it.
“Can’t go to the infirmary,” she told the nurse. “Too tired.”
“Oh, you’re going to the infirmary.”
“Already had a visitor today. I don’t have the energy.”
Apparently, wheelchairs were invented for just that eventuality and, before long, Tamara found herself unceremoniously plonked into one and wheeled briskly to the infirmary. Due to the fact that the Forensic unit was in its own stand-alone building, that meant she got thirty seconds of fresh air between two buildings and had to go through an incredible amount of security, which was ridiculous considering she could barely even stand up on her own.
Dr. Eastport greeted her, wreathed in smiles as always. He sat down on his stool so that he was level with her.
“So, Forensic has some concerns?” He took the clipboard the guard handed him, and his eyebrows climbed up his forehead. “I see. Seems you’ve had a positive pregnancy test.”
“No. I’m not pregnant. I can’t be pregnant.”
“Well, first we need to do a physical exam to verify. No point in jumping to conclusions. Tests can be wrong, or read wrong. It happens.” He opened a drawer and handed her a paper robe. “You put that on for me and we’ll have a little look, okay?”
Tamara let the cover-up fall into her lap. She vaguely remembered the first exam he had given her when she had been admitted to juvie, beaten black and blue and not knowing that she was pregnant. Dr. Eastport was always gentle and cheerful with even the most oppositional patient.
He left her alone in the examining room to change, her guard also outside the door.
When Dr. Eastport returned, he found Tamara still sitting there in the wheelchair with the paper robe in her lap. He raised his brows. “I need you to change for the exam, Tamara. We need to do this, even if you think the test is wrong.”
Tamara looked down at the robe. “I just can’t.” Even the thought of all of the effort that would be required for her to change was exhausting. She looked at his examining table. If he would help her up there, she could just close her eyes and go to sleep. They could do the exam another time.
Dr. Eastport sat back down in front of her. “Why not?”
“Too tired. These meds…”
“Oh, I think you could manage it. Just a quick strip-down. It will only take a minute.”
Tamara closed her eyes.
“Okay, how about we get you up here, at least?”
Tamara opened her eyes again. She nodded. “You have to help, though.”
“All right. Let’s do this.”
He helped her out of the wheelchair and boosted her up onto the table. He grunted with the effort, apparently finding her heavier than he’d expected. Tamara lay flat on her back and closed her eyes again. It was more comfortable than her bunk, in spite of the crinkly paper cover.
“I’ll just get a nurse in here to assist, then.”
Tamara was nearly asleep when he returned and didn’t want to wake up to deal with the exam. Eastport spoke to her as he unbuttoned her day uniform and got the nurse to help him remove it, then draped the cover-up over her. Tamara pushed it all out of her mind as he began the exam, not wanting to hear or feel it. It was easier just to sleep and pretend that nothing was happening.
27
WHEN SHE AWOKE, she knew that a number of hours had passed. She stretched and rubbed her eyes and looked around. She was not in her bunk, but in an infirmary bed. One handcuffed wrist ensured that she couldn’t wander. Not that she would anyway on the meds. She lay there, staring up at the ceiling. She didn’t fall back asleep, but had no desire to do anything else.
Eventually, Dr. Eastport came in. Tamara thought that it was nighttime, though there was no window in the room. She wondered if he ever went home. It seemed like whenever she was admitted to the infirmary, he was always there.
“Hello, my dear. Feeling better after your nap?”
Tamara nodded. She stared past him, seeing herself with him three and a half years earlier. How he had come to tell her what she didn’t want to hear. And she knew why he was there again.
“I’m not,” she insisted. “Tell me I’m not.”
“This is all a little too familiar, isn’t it?” Dr. Eastport said. He sat down on a wheeled stool. “It seems like just yesterday when you first came here in need of my services. Such a little girl.”
“I’m not. I couldn’t be. I took that pill after. They said I couldn’t get pregnant if I took the pill.”
“Who did? You know that not everyone tells the truth all the time.”
“It was a nurse. She told me it would stop me from getting pregnant.”
“There are many factors involved. It may have been too late, or it may just have failed. Unfortunately, the morning after pill does have a fifteen percent failure rate. Which means that three times out of every twenty…”
“Then why did she tell me it would work?” Tamara put her hands over her face. “I don’t want this. You have to get rid of it, just like the last time. I don’t want this!”
He scratched behind his ear, looking grave. “Last time, you were in the early stages of pregnancy. The first trimester. You probably remember symptoms like being tired and throwing up a lot.”
“I’m tired now too,” Tamara reminded him. “You can fix it. You can make all of this go away.” She made a motion like he could see all of the problems that had been plaguing her. The voices, the flashbacks, the hallucinations. He could end all of those for her, and maybe she could go back to being herself again. Maybe she didn’t have to live with the psychosis forever.
“You are much further along this time. You’ve probably noticed the weight gain, the baby moving, your body developing in other ways.”
Tamara rubbed at her stomach. It was just cramps. He was wrong. “The nurse said everyone gains weight. In Forensic. The nurse said it’s because of the meds.”<
br />
“Antipsychotics often have that effect,” Dr. Eastport agreed. “As does pregnancy.”
“You just take care of it. Then everything will go back to normal.”
“I don’t think you’re hearing me, Tamara. I will need to consult with administration and with the hospital… but it’s not an easy fix, like last time. You’re too far along. I suspect… that they will probably make the decision for you to carry the pregnancy to term. Then the baby can be relinquished.”
Tamara stared at him, horrified. “No. I can’t handle it any longer. And there can’t be any baby. I can’t have a baby!”
Her breaths were coming in fast, short bursts, and she couldn’t get the oxygen she needed. Dr. Eastport patted her on the shoulder.
“We’ll take care of you. We’ll make it as easy for you as possible. It won’t be that much longer.”
“You’re supposed to take care of it. You said you’d take care of it. You promised.”
“No, Tamara. It’s not the same as last time. We’re going to have to see what the administration decides.”
Tamara had rarely been involved in any kind of meeting with the administration. As a senior mentor, there had been a few information or feedback sessions she and the other mentors had attended. And there had been her Parole Board hearing. She felt awkward and uncomfortable sitting around the table with Rice, Dr. Sutherland, Dr. Eastport, Mrs. Henson, and Kaplan, one of the nurses from the Forensic unit. The meeting being held in the main building, the guard who was standing by to monitor Tamara was Buxton, the one who had interrogated her after the sleepwalking incident.
Rice looked over the people assembled there. His eyes lingered for a few seconds longer on Mrs. Henson. Tamara didn’t know what Mrs. Henson was even doing there. She wasn’t Tamara’s parent or guardian. She didn’t have any standing.
“Glad everyone could make it here,” he said, opening the meeting. “As you are aware, this is an emergency meeting to discuss the discovery that inmate Tamara French is pregnant.” He looked at Mrs. Henson. “Miss French certainly isn’t the first pregnant inmate we’ve had. It is, in fact, fairly routine.”
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