“What condition?” He looked horrified and confused. Her medical history was a complete mystery to him, and all he could think of were things like diabetes. “Will she be all right?”
“We don't know yet.” He looked even more serious then as he looked at Bill. “And given the extent of her injuries, it's a distinct possibility that she could lose the baby.” Bill stared at him in stupefaction as he said it.
“The baby?” He felt totally confused and like a complete fool.
“Of course,” the doctor went on, assuming he was in shock and having trouble remembering anything after almost losing his son, and still being in danger of losing his pregnant wife. “She must be, what …four, four and a half months pregnant?”
“I …of course …I …I'm just so upset, I …”It was insanity, why was he pretending she was his wife? And why did he feel like this? Why did he actually feel as though she were his wife and this were his baby? And why in God's name hadn't she told him? He felt as though he had had yet another shock, as the doctor asked him to stay where he was. He was going back to check on Adrian again and he would report to Bill the moment there was any change in the situation.
He sat there alone for a long time, trying to absorb what had happened and what he had just heard, and for a long moment, he just couldn't. It was impossible to understand what had gone on, except suddenly little pieces of the puzzle began to fit into place …her enormous appetite …the fact that she looked as though she had gained a little weight since he first met her …but far more importantly, Steven's leaving her …but why, if she was having a baby? He had to be some kind of son of a bitch, Bill thought to himself. And that was also why she kept thinking he might be coming back, and why she still wore her wedding ring probably …and it was why she was loath to get into a relationship with him. Suddenly, it all made sense.Except now she might lose the baby. Four and a half months was serious …and she might die herself, which was a great deal more so. He felt as though his heart had just been torn out, as another doctor came slowly toward him. He looked ominous as Bill stared up at him, afraid of what he was going to tell him.
“We've done everything we can for her. She's breathing on her own, she's had a unit of blood. The concussion is severe but not necessarily fatal, there's no fracture of her skull …but we're just going to have to wait. She's still unconscious.” And Bill knew that she could just slip into a coma and die. Those things happened sometimes. “There's no reason to expect permanent damage from this, if she survives. But the big question is, will she? We just don't have the answer to that yet.”
“And the baby?” He felt a responsibility for the baby now too. For both of them. He wanted them both to live. He wanted both of them … or just her …anything …but please don't let them die…. He looked at the doctor, waiting to hear the answer to his question.
“The pregnancy is still viable. We have a monitor on her, and so far everything looks fine. We're still getting a fetal heartbeat.”
“Thank God.” Bill stood, waiting for more. But there was nothing more. Only time would tell what would happen. “May I see her?”
“Of course. We're going to leave her where she is, until we see what happens. She's still in an emergency unit. We'll move her to ICU later, if she improves.” It was difficult to believe. A few hours earlier she'd been making bacon and eggs, and now suddenly she was on the brink of death, after saving Tommy.
“Is my boy all right?”
“I haven't seen him myself. But the last I heard, he and his brother were having lunch in the pediatric ward.” He smiled at Bill. “I'd say he's going to be okay. He's a lucky boy. I understand that only her quick thinking and heroic maneuvers saved him. She's a very slight woman, it's amazing she was able to hold him up like that. She must have gashed her arm somehow in the process …” and hit her head …and almost drowned …and almost lost her baby …and she hadn't hesitated for an instant, even knowing that she was pregnant. He owed her everything. If she lived long enough for him to repay it.
He walked into the special emergency unit then, and sat down next to her. There seemed to be machines hooked to every part of her, and the oxygen mask obscured part of her face, but he gently took her hand in his own and kissed her fingers. The knuckles were cut and bruised, and there was still earth underneath her fingernails. She must have struggled ferociously to save him.
“Adrian …”he whispered to her still form. “Hove you, sweetheart. I loved you the first time I ever saw you.” He had decided that if he never got a chance to say it to her, he was going to say it all to her now, whether she heard him or not, and maybe she would hear him and it would make a difference. “I loved you right away, that first night in the supermarket, when I almost ran you down … do you remember that?” He smiled as tears ran down his face and he kissed her fingers again. “And I loved you the next time …when I saw you in the parking lot at the complex. Do you remember that? I think it was a Sunday morning …and at the pool at the apartment … I love you … I love everything about you …and the boys love you too …Adam and Tommy. They want you to get better too.” He just went on talking to her, in his strong, gentle voice, and holding her hand carefully in his own. “And I love the baby too …that's right …and if you want that baby, so do I …I want you and the baby, Adrian. Both of you …and the baby is going to be just fine …the doctor said so.” He watched her face then, he thought he had seen her wince, but when he looked more closely, he thought he had imagined it. She seemed as expressionless as ever. He went on talking to her for a long time, crooning her name, and telling her how much he loved her and the baby. He rested his hand on the baby then, and felt the small lump that he had never noticed before, that she had never told him about, and he told the baby that he loved it, and that it had better stick around, or it was going to make a lot of people very unhappy. “That's right …you don't think your mom has gone through all this in order to have you bail out now, do you? So settle down and take it easy … right, Adrian? You tell the baby to relax. …” And then he kissed her gently on the cheek and talked to her some more, as one of the nurses watched him from the doorway. She had never seen anyone so distraught, and she had never heard anyone talk to a woman like that. As she listened, she thought Adrian was awfully lucky to have a man love her the way he did. And as she watched, she saw something on the monitors that caught her attention. She frowned and walked into the room, and as she approached, Adrian turned toward Bill and opened her eyes and then closed them. For an instant of sheer terror, he thought she had just died, and he let out an almost animal sound of grief, as he stood up and looked down at her again in anguish. But as he did, she opened her eyes again, and the nurse checked her vital signs and smiled down at her, and Bill smiled at her as he was crying. He couldn't speak anymore. She had taken his breath away, and he was so moved, he had started to tremble.
“You're a very lucky girl,” the nurse said to her. “Your little boy is fine. I just gave him a Popsicle.” She glanced at Bill encouragingly. “And your husband has been right here talking to you ever since you got here.” And then she remembered as she glanced at the fetal monitor and back at Adrian again. “And your baby is fine too. Looks like everybody is going to be all right now. How are you feeling, Mrs. Thigpen?”
She fought to pull off the oxygen mask, and the nurse helped her to lift it. “Not so good,” she croaked. They had pumped the water from her stomach and now she was hoarse and she felt desperately nauseated and viciously battered. The last thing she remembered was slipping into a soft warm place, when she had gotten the final blow on her head from a rock and started drowning.
“I'll bet you don't feel so good.” The nurse smiled at her, and propped her head up a little bit. “You had quite a fight with a rock, and a whole lot of water. But they tell me you ran a race. You saved your little boy. You did!” She smiled at her, and Bill finally caught his breath, and looked at Adrian gratefully through his tears, still holding her hand tightly.
“Adrian,
you saved Tommy.” He started to cry harder then and leaned down and kissed her face. “Baby, you saved him.”
“I'm so glad … I was so afraid … I couldn't have held him up for much longer …” Bill still remembered the limp body and the gray-blue face when they had snatched him from her just beneath the surface. “The current was terrible …and I was afraid I couldn't run fast enough …” There were tears in her eyes, but they were tears of relief and victory as she held fast to Bill's hand, and the nurse slipped quietly out of the room to report her improvement to the doctor. And then Bill leaned down and whispered to her.
“Why didn't you tell me about the baby?”
There was a long silence as she looked at him, grateful that he was there, her eyes full of the love for him that she'd been fighting almost since she met him. “I didn't think it was fair to you.” She started to cry then as she said it and he kissed her gently and shook his head.
“It wouldn't have changed anything.” He smiled then, and sat down next to her, never taking his eyes off her. “It's a little unusual, I admit, but hell, to a guy who writes soap operas for a living, did you really think I couldn't understand it?” She smiled and then coughed, as he held her, and then laid her gently back down on the pillows. “Frankly, Adrian, I'm relieved. I was afraid that for you that appetite of yours was normal.” She laughed again and then sighed, with a worried look.
“Is the baby really okay?”
“They say it's fine. I think you'll probably have to take it a little easy for a while. But babies are pretty sturdy.” He remembered a bad fall Leslie had had when she was pregnant for the first time, and he had almost had a heart attack watching her stumble down a flight of stairs, but in the end, nothing had happened. And then he remembered something he wanted to ask Adrian. Something he now suspected. “Is that why Steven left you?” It was something he wanted to know now. It was inexcusable if it was true, and while she was unconscious, he had guessed that that was the reason for their separation.
And quietly, she nodded. “He never wanted children, and he gave me a choice. Him or the baby.” She started to cry again, thinking of it, as she clung desperately to Bill now. “I tried …but I couldn't do it. I went to have an abortion, but I just couldn't. So he left me.”
“What a nice guy he must be.”
“He has very strong feelings about it,” she tried to explain, and Bill looked at her ruefully.
“I'd say that was an understatement. The guy is divorcing you for having his baby. Does he realize it's his, or does he question that too?”
“No, he knows it's his. His lawyer sent me papers, he's filing for a termination of parental rights, so neither the child nor I can claim him as the father. In essence, the baby will be illegitimate,” she said sadly.
“That's disgusting.”
And then she sighed again. “But he may change his mind …maybe if he sees it.” He realized then what the problem was. She was still hoping Steven would come back, for the baby, if nothing else. And then he asked her something else he wanted to know now.
“Adrian, are you still in love with him?” She hesitated for a long time, and then shook her head as she looked at Bill.
“No,” she said quietly, “I'm not. But the baby has a right to its natural father.”
“If he wanted you back, would you take him?”
“I might …for the baby's sake. …” She closed her eyes then. She felt nauseated and exhausted, and Bill was looking at her, saddened by what she had just told him, grateful for the honesty. It was one of the things he loved about her. He didn't think Steven would come back, not if he was filing papers renouncing the child, and divorcing her. The guy was obviously crazy. But it was equally obvious that she felt she owed him and the child something, a relationship they deserved, even if it meant giving something up herself. But she was that way. In trying to save Tommy, she had been willing to risk herself and her baby. She was an all-or-nothing kind of person. She lay there and closed her eyes then and for a while neither of them spoke and then she looked at Bill again, worried about what he was thinking. “Do you hate me?”
“Are you out of your mind? How can you say a thing like that? You just saved my child.” And it had almost cost her her own life. He moved nearer to her again, and touched her bruised face with gentle fingers. “I love you, Adrian. This may not be the time or place to say it,” he said softly, “but I love you. More than that, I'm in love with you. I have been for two months, maybe even three.” He kissed her hand then and her fingers. He was afraid to hurt her if he really kissed her.
“You're not mad about the baby?” There were tears in her eyes as she asked him.
“How could I be mad about the baby? I think you're wonderful to do what you're doing. You're very courageous, and unbelievably strong, and a good, decent woman. And I think it's very special that you're having a baby.” It was the first kind word anyone had said about her pregnancy, except Zelda, but she had taken so much abuse from Steven that in the face of Bill's kind words, she started to cry. And he gently wiped her eyes as she sobbed and tried to explain it all to him. She was feeling very emotional and terribly upset and suddenly the dam had broken after three months of having to apologize to her husband, and trying to cope with the pregnancy on her own.
“Just relax.” She was getting too upset, and he was afraid of what it might do to her. She had already had a terrible shock to her system. “Everything's going to be fine. Okay?” He smoothed her hair off her face, and gently tucked her in. She looked like a battered child, and she was hiccuping like a little girl who'd been crying. “You're going to have your baby and it'll be beautiful.” He leaned his face down to hers and carefully, carefully kissed her lips, and there were tears in his eyes too. “I love you, Adrian … I love you so much …you and the baby.” And the beauty of it was that he meant it.
“How can you say that?” Steven had deserted her over this child, and now Bill, who barely knew her, was telling her he loved her. “It's not even your baby.”
“I wish it were,” he said honestly as he looked down at her. And then, he dared say to her exactly what he was feeling. “Maybe one day, if I'm very lucky, it will be.” Fresh tears rolled down her cheeks then, and she didn't say a word, she just held his hand tightly in her own, and closed her eyes as she nodded. She dozed for a little while then, holding his hand, and he watched the monitors while she slept. The nurse came in a couple of times, and reassured him that everything was normal. He left for a little while eventually, to check on the boys. He found Tommy sleeping too. He was taking a nap, but he looked fine. They had put in a glucose IV, and they were checking his temperature regularly, but they said he could go home by the end of the afternoon. And Adam was watching old reruns of Mork and Mindy.
“How're you doing, sport?” Bill sat down next to him in the television room, and across the way he could see where Tommy was sleeping.
“How's Adrian?” he asked worriedly, but Bill looked so relieved, he knew she had to be okay. And a nurse had told him long before that his “mother” was much better. He hadn't corrected her, he was old enough to have figured out that it was simpler not to.
“She's sleeping, but she's better.” He had been thinking all afternoon about what they ought to do. He didn't think she should travel right away, particularly in view of her pregnancy, but he also didn't think that she should be camping. What they needed was a week's holiday in a terrific hotel, some sun, and a lot of room service. “What do you say we stay in a hotel, instead of going back to camping?” He didn't want to disappoint the boys, but he had a responsibility to her now, too, particularly after what she had done for Tommy. The day could have ended in tragedy for all of them, and Bill was certain that if she hadn't been so quick to react, and relentless in her efforts to save the child, Tommy would no longer be with them. It was a debt he would owe her forever. But he had to think of Adam now, too, and he looked a little shaken. “Would you be very disappointed if this vacation wasn't too rugged?”
But Adam was quick to shake his head vehemently. “I'm just glad they're both okay. You should have seen her, Dad. She ran like a blue streak once the current started taking him away. I guess she was trying to get downstream before he did, so she could stop him, but I couldn't figure it out then. And it worked. But it was so awful.” He choked on the words as he said it. “They kept going under, and at first no one helped them. She just kept pushing him up, and the current right where they were, kept shoving her down again. And then she'd push him up again, and she'd go under. It was awful….” He buried his face in Bill's chest, and he held his son for a long time.
“Tommy should never have left her in the first place. What in hell was he doing?”
“I think he must have been looking at the rafts or something. And he fell in while he was watching.”
“We're going to have to talk about that when he wakes up.” Eventually, he went over to check on the sleeping child, but his color looked good and his breathing and temperature were normal. He looked fine and there was hardly a scratch on him. It was hard to believe that this was the same child who had been blue only a few hours before. Bill knew that as long as he lived, he would never forget it.
He made some phone calls after that, and got a large suite in a deluxe hotel, and he went back to check on Adrian and talk to her doctor. She was still asleep, and they wanted her to stay that way for a while. She still had some repairing to do, and they thought she might be able to leave the hospital the next day if there were no further problems. They wanted to be sure she didn't develop pneumonia, or have complications with the baby. But so far, things seemed to be improving.
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