He nodded. “My buddy was a patient here when we were kids. Got a nasty head injury while we were playing Pee Wee hockey. He had to stay here for a few days for observation, so my mother would drive me here to visit him after school. Bringing him comic books and stuff.”
When they entered the cafeteria and Samantha caught the aroma of a variety of food, she knew at once, like her sister, she didn't have the stomach to get anything down either. “What did you want to say to me?” she asked Ben, with a touch of unconcealed impatience.
“Come here and sit down first,” he said, trying to take her by the elbow. She brushed his hand away, but went with him to a table farther removed from the other people huddled around several tables. She crossed her arms in front of her chest and waited.
“Alright. This is difficult,” he said. “And now that I'm here and I see what's happened to Henry, I know the timing is way off to spring the news on your sister. But I do want to give you the heads up.”
“Heads up about what, Ben? Wait, let me guess. You and your father have a big shot Halifax lawyer retained now, have you? And you're going to turn the screws to Veronica and the rest of us who love Henry? You're going to take her son away? The one thing in the world she has that means anything to her?” She knew she sounded hysterical, but she didn't care. “And you have the utter gall to tell me at this moment, while my nephew is in this hospital fighting for his life?”
“It isn’t about lawyers, Samantha.”
“How dare you show up here, in the middle of my family's pain and suffering! We're going through an unholy nightmare here, and you want to add to it by threatening custody proceedings? How cold and callous a human being are you? And how could I have ever fallen in love with you? Ronnie’s little boy would be better off without you as a father.” She dashed away the bitter tears rolling down her cheeks, ignoring the people staring at her from the other tables and the hollow hurt in Ben's eyes.
“Samantha, stop your yammering for one second, will you? It so happens you've gotten your wish.”
“And what wish would that be?”
“I'm not the father,” he said quietly.
She stared at him, uncomprehending. What was he talking about? “What did you say?”
“The results of the paternity test show there is no possible way I could be the boy's father. I found out last week, so I came here to tell Veronica, and you, of course, that I have no claim to the child. There won't be a custody hearing, or anything like it. Not from me.”
Ben wasn’t Henry's father? But how could this be?
And if he wasn't, then who was?
“They must’ve made a mistake with the test.”
“That’s what I thought first, but the results are solid. They ran the test twice. I had to be certain.” He raked his fingers backward through the thick hank of hair hanging over his forehead. “I brought the paperwork with me to prove it, if anyone needs to see it. Trust me. It is what it is.”
Samantha's thoughts leaped back to the year they’d moved to St. John's and when Henry had been conceived. How disappointed she’d felt when Veronica had begun dating Ben, the object of her crush. Their courtship, passionate and wonderful at first, had soon become rocky when Ben overcame his infatuation with her and set his sights on her younger sister, Samantha.
“But I can't believe it. Who could be my nephew's father, then? I don't remember Ronnie dating anyone else that summer. Only you.”
“The only person I know who could answer your question is Henry’s mother herself.”
The blond hair, the blue eyes, like Veronica's. Samantha had wondered before why her nephew had none of Ben's colouring. This explained it. “Well, it’s a question that must wait, for the time being. Ronnie has enough on her plate. Do you have any theory at all? Because I sure as hell don't.”
Ben shrugged. “Not a clue.”
Samantha pushed her chair away from the table. “I'm going back.”
“Okay. I'm going to leave, but I'm staying at Aunt Valerie's. I'll check in with you guys later to see how things are going.” He sighed. “You know I care about Henry and I'm praying for him to recover. And you have to realize I still want what's best for him. No test result will ever change that. All these years, thinking of him as my flesh and blood, worrying about him and wanting to get well so I could be a part of his life? It's as if I've suddenly learned the sun is the moon. Or up is down.”
“When do you go back to Halifax?” she asked.
“Well, the thing is, Samantha, I found a job here in St. John’s. For the summer.”
Samantha gave him a double take. “Oh? Doing what?”
“Working as a crew member with a boat tour company. They operate out of the harbour. The owner is a good friend of my old man.”
“I see.”
“You and Kalen still involved?” he asked in a clipped tone.
He acted somewhat bashful all of a sudden, Samantha thought. “Funny you should ask me that. We've cooled things off until we get some stuff sorted out. But we're still friends.”
“How long have you been his girlfriend?”
“Since December past.”
“He's a lucky guy to have you for a friend. Or anything else.”
“About the paternity thing, Ben…”
“Yes?”
“Veronica is hardly in any condition to hear about it right now. Would you consider leaving it in my hands? Let me break it to her when I think she can process it?”
“God, yes.” The relief in his voice sounded as if she had taken an enormous burden off his shoulders.
She hesitated another minute, staring at him with regret. “Oh, and Ben?”
“Yeah?”
“I'm sorry for saying all those mean things to you.”
He gave her a gentle smile. “I know,” he said.
As distraught as Veronica was, when Samantha rejoined her in the waiting area, she asked her sister right away what Ben had to tell her.
“Oh, some stuff,” she said. “We were catching up on each other’s news. Apparently, he's found a job in Newfoundland for the summer months.”
“He's finished at Dalhousie already?” Gina asked, her arm still cradling Veronica's head against her shoulder.
“No, he’s still got two years left.”
Mandy snorted. “Don't let that Swift character get you down, Ron. Plenty of time to fuss over all that. After Henry wakes up.”
“My mind can't even go there right now,” Veronica said.
But Samantha's could. She reeled with shock at Ben's revelation and how so much had changed in an instant. As she sat down with the others and mulled it over in her mind, she wondered about everything. Particularly, how one's point of view can swing one hundred and eighty degrees in a matter of seconds.
With one short conversation, the world she thought she knew had shifted on its axis. His disclosure boomeranged her back to a host of heightened memories, of all the conversations she and Ben had had after learning of Veronica's pregnancy. How terror-stricken he’d looked and acted when he first found out. How unprepared he’d felt for fatherhood at the tender age of eighteen. How fearful they both were that a baby would separate them and shackle him to Veronica for the rest of their lives. And how both of their worlds somersaulted and turned inside out when they put their plan into execution to run away, a plan that, instead of keeping them together, had ultimately torn them apart.
With the truths that had come to light, she thought it conceivable that things for the two of them had probably worked out for the best. Ben had gotten the psychotherapy he’d desperately needed to cope with the heart-rending loss of his mother. But what if they had known the truth before then, that Henry was not his child? They never would have suffered the need to escape together, to go to the drastic lengths of stealing Mr. Swift’s Thunderbird and racing across the island to the Gulf ferry. They could have dated, their relationship accepted by their parents, and they might have remained a couple in love to this day. No devastating ca
r accident, no painful trauma and recovery, no years of separation that transformed their lives.
How could Veronica have been wrong? Or why did she lie? Why did she saddle Ben with a pronouncement as the boy responsible, when he wasn't, and ruin his and her sister's lives in the process?
Like a lightning bolt, a new realization struck Samantha. If Ben had given up on his intent to pursue custody of Henry, they might never have learned the truth.
Chapter Twenty
“Such miserable creatures of circumstance are we all!”
― Thomas Hardy, The Woodlanders
Samantha’s head sprang up when the hospital entrance doors slid open and a gurney rolled in. Two paramedics maneuvered the gurney, its metallic wheels clacking on the smooth floor, carrying a young teenage girl in dreadful pain toward one of the treatment rooms off the waiting area. Samantha cringed at the piercing sound of her shrieks and the sight of her elevated leg, the ankle twisted, her foot bent horribly around the wrong way.
Since she'd returned from talking to Ben, several others had taken up chairs in the waiting area: a pair of young parents with anxious faces; a boy of about nine with a blood-soaked bandage wrapped around his hand; a small girl with flushed cheeks curled in her father's lap, sucking her thumb.
She thought of all the misery that goes along with being a parent. The sleepless nights spent comforting a colicky infant; the worrying over a sudden illness or injury; the troubles and angst over the teenage years and often beyond. Why would anyone have a kid, she contemplated, with the enormous responsibility it required and the suffering and hardship it might entail? Yes, children were adorable, and she loved Henry with all her heart and soul. But to sit for a while in this waiting room, to see the fretful worry and concern, to witness what could happen; why would anyone take it on?
It might take having a baby of her own someday to fully understand how to answer that question.
Her sister perked up, her face expectant, when a nurse in dinosaur-print scrubs came forward with an update. He reported they had completed her son's tests, they were readying him for transfer to the Intensive Care Unit, and she could see him again. Veronica's expression flared with hope as she followed him into the treatment room.
Samantha brooded on Veronica’s retreating form with new judgement, as if she were a stranger who had dropped into her life only one half hour ago. She seethed and burned inside with a newfound rage at her sister. Veronica had deceived them all about Henry's paternity. She had lived with it, pushed it down, and sat on the uncertainty for close to five years. By far, this had to be the worst thing Veronica had ever done to her. She’d sabotaged Samantha’s first love, aware, Samantha now realized, she had no moral or ethical right to do so.
Twenty minutes later, Veronica re-emerged, saying she could have one other family member accompany her to the ICU on the third floor. She asked Samantha if she wanted to see Henry. An anxious flutter quaked in Samantha’s stomach, but she jumped at the opportunity to see her nephew, regardless of the anger she harboured for her sibling.
“I want you two to go home now,” Veronica said to Gina and Mandy. “You can always come back later.”
Grudgingly, they agreed, walking over to give Veronica hugs and reassurances before they left.
Samantha trailed after her sister to the elevator that would carry them up to the ICU. When they entered the large unit, Samantha saw it also contained a neonatal section for ill and premature infants. They had to walk by several other patients in beds before they got to Henry, an experience Samantha knew she wouldn’t soon forget.
She tried not to stare past the half-drawn curtain at the first patient they passed, a girl who had obviously starved herself; an anorexic, lying still and uncovered and hooked up to a feeding tube. Her knees, visible below her hospital gown, jutted bony and huge from her matchstick legs, her face skeletal with pale lips stretched over her teeth, her hollowed eyes staring, dark and vacant. As terrifyingly thin as she was, she appeared as tall as Samantha, so she was probably no more than a few years younger. To think an otherwise healthy young girl had the capability to do this to herself filled her with alarm. What must her parents be going through?
As they walked farther along, a boy of six or seven came into view. He must have had an amputation, she realized, when she saw the visible single leg. She wondered if he'd had a horrible accident, or if he had lost his limb to cancer. Catching the odor of something unpleasant and medicinal, Samantha’s stomach clenched. The boy’s mother sat beside him, dozing in her chair, holding his hand while he slept.
When they approached a bed against the far wall of the unit and Veronica slowed beside it, Samantha thought her sister must have made a mistake. This was not Henry. The boy looked too small, his tiny form lying motionless on the huge tilted mattress, his elevated head propped up on giant pillows. But moving in closer, she recognized his golden blond hair, the impossibly long lashes fanned on his pasty cheeks, and the quarter-sized temporary tattoo of Inspector Gadget on the back of his left hand. Her throat ached once again and she tasted the salty sting of tears.
She thought it was Veronica whose keening cries filled the air, until she felt her sister's arms pulling her in, hugging her and holding her close. Only then did she comprehend they were her own sobs, welling up in her throat and spilling out into the room.
Fighting to pull herself together, she disengaged from Veronica's embrace and leaned against the bed rail. She looked down at her nephew. He lay there so still and lifeless, he made her think of a small, beautifully-painted china doll. He would have looked more peaceful if it weren't for the intervention of the medical devices to which he was connected. His narrow chest rose and fell mechanically with the help of a large ventilator, the only movement from him. Plastic tubes sprouted from his body, while a nearby monitor beeped and flashed with green and red lines and numbers that tracked his vital signs.
Like a head-on collision with an eighteen-wheel transport truck, it hit her full force what their mother had done.
Samantha checked her wristwatch. Getting on for midnight. She’d remained at the hospital with Veronica, checking on Henry together periodically and waiting with her in the family room outside the ICU. A television was affixed to the wall, though no one bothered to turn it on. Kalen had dropped by for a couple of hours after supper and left again, right before Gina had returned to Veronica's side an hour earlier, toting a grab bag full of her friend's favourite snack foods and bottled water. Water was the only thing she would accept.
Ben had called the reception desk at eight-thirty to find out if there were any updates.
“His test results are in,” Samantha had told him. “There is brain activity, thank God, but they won't find out if there is any damage from the loss of oxygen until he wakes up.” No one knew for sure when Henry had stopped breathing after the overdose or for how long. Yes, they pumped his stomach on admission, she also told him, but the toxicology tests showed traces of the drug still in his system. They were monitoring his liver and kidneys to see if there were any after-effects of the drug he had absorbed. Other than that, she said, his organs appeared unharmed.
“So, it's brain damage they are concerned about, is it?” Ben had asked.
“Yes. The possibility is there.”
“How long will they keep him in the induced coma?”
“I wish I knew.”
Cash returned before twelve, this time without Darlene. He told Samantha she'd taken a sleeping pill at nine and had gone to bed. She had phoned Jack in Alberta to give him the weighty news, and had to endure a bombardment of blame from him in the process. Her nerves were shot and she'd been beside herself with worry, remorse and self-hatred, so Cash had persuaded her to take the sedative and turn in early. After he got caught up on Henry's status, he told Veronica and Samantha he’d come to bring them home, so they could get a few hours of sleep as well.
Veronica cast him a withering glance. “If I go anywhere, it won't be with you.”
; “Ron, where is Sebastian?” Samantha asked. “Does he know yet?”
“He’s at a medical conference in Halifax,” Veronica said. “It doesn’t matter. He called me at Othello’s last night and we had a fight. We’re through. I haven’t spoken with him since.”
“I'll try to talk her into coming home with me and Mandy now, the once,” Gina reassured him. “You need to get some rest, Ronnie. How can you be of help to anyone if you're a zombie?”
“Have you all taken leave of your senses? I can’t leave my baby in there alone! The nurse said I can sleep in one of the recliners or big chairs. I’ll move it next to his bed.”
“Samantha?” Cash asked. “Will you come home with your mother and me, sweetie?”
“Go on, Sam. I'll call you if anything happens.”
Reluctance filled her, making it difficult to move, but she nodded and left with him.
Instead of going to her own room, an exhausted Samantha sprawled on the unmade spare bed, stretching out where she found a warm Lily. The purring cat lay curled neatly on top of the rumpled plaid comforter Henry must have crawled out from under this morning, when he woke and started the day that would tragically end with him in a coma.
Thinking of her stayover at Kalen's place struck Samantha as something that had happened eons ago, instead of just last night. Consumed with worry over their relationship yesterday, she had placed on it an importance that, at the time, she’d measured as paramount in her life. Now, it shriveled by comparison to what her beloved nephew and her entire family were dealing with. She tried to feel something for Kalen, tried to recapture at least the memory of her intense affection for him, but discovered instead that her passion had receded to what she’d requested of him for the time being: friendship. With this blatant realization, she wept with loss for the romantic love she’d believed to be solid but now lay extinguished, blown out like the candles on Henry’s birthday cake. A brief but torrid enchantment that had exploded and vanished like a falling star.
Calmer Secrets: Calmer Girls 2 (Calmer Girls Series) Page 18
