by Melissa West
***
I parked in the lot behind Helping Hands, grateful to have something to distract me for the rest of the day. The air was thick and humid, so the moment I stepped out of my car, my body became clammy with sweat. I’d lived in the South my entire life and still wasn’t used to the overwhelming humidity.
I draped my crossover bag over my shoulder and tugged down my shorts, curious if I should have asked Tori if it was okay for me to wear something so casual. But then in the middle of summer in the South, I couldn’t imagine she’d say no.
I started around the corner and felt my heartbeat begin to pick up speed. I’d intentionally parked on the farthest parking lot from Helping Hands, giving me an excuse to walk past the architecture firm where Colt was interning. We’d barely spoken since the day at the beach, and I found myself lost on his intentions. I didn’t know what to think. When we were together he seemed so into me, but then once we were separated, everything felt so out of sight, out of mind. I had no idea if that meant he had other girls he was seeing. Maybe he was with them when he wasn’t with me, which was fine. Totally fine. Completely and totally fine.
I shook my head at my own stupid attempt to convince myself and paused just before the large windows at the front of the firm. I tried to keep my head forward, but with my sunglasses shading my eyes, I peered through the windows, thankful they had the blinds open. At first I didn’t see him, but then my gaze caught on a guy in the far back corner of the office, seated behind a drawing table, his head down close to the project he was working on, a pencil in his right hand moving feverishly, then pausing, before starting up again. I found myself smiling at his intensity, at the dress shirt he had rolled up to his elbows, at the way one side of his hair was tucked behind his ear and the other hung loose over his right eye. It was like watching something on TV, or like flipping through a magazine and stopping to check out the model in the ad. Colt embodied this easiness and confidence that couldn’t be faked. It was just him.
“Kara!”
My head jerked to attention and my eyes widened at the possibility of being caught checking him out, but that was stupid. No one around here knew anything about Colt or me. I peered around in search of who’d called my name and saw Tori hanging out the door to Helping Hands, waving me over.
“It’s Maggie,” she said, her voice rich with fear, and then I was running.
I slipped through the door, petrified that something horrible had happened.
“She’s having contractions, but refuses to let us take her to the hospital. She’s just screaming that she isn’t ready, that she hasn’t decided. I can’t get her to calm down, and she keeps asking for you. I have no clue what to do,” Tori said. I realized in that moment that while Tori was amazing at working with adults, she always became uncomfortable around the kids that came here, passing them off to one of the other counselors. It made me wonder if something had happened with one of her children or if she didn’t have kids and felt lost on how to handle them. Which all explained why she liked to keep one college student around as a volunteer, and this summer I was her only counselor under the age of thirty.
“Where is she?” I asked.
“Back here.”
Tori led me through the back hall to her office, where Maggie sat in a chair inside, covered in sweat, her face red and blotchy from crying.
“I can’t do this,” she said, her voice breaking.
I swallowed hard and steeled myself, then walked over to her, and as calmly as I could muster, said, “Maggie, you’re only seven and a half months along. This is probably Braxton Hicks, nothing more. My aunt used to get them all the time before her last delivery. But we won’t know for sure until we take you in. Can you please let me take you to the hospital?”
She bit down on her lip and her face tightened. I reached out for her hand and let her squeeze my palm as another contraction hit her. “Just breathe,” I said. “Just breathe.” A few seconds passed, and then her face relaxed a bit and she peered over at me.
“You’ll be the one to take me?”
“I’ll take you if you’ll let me.”
She nodded quickly, and I turned back around to Tori. “Can you sit with her for a second? I need to make a call.”
“Sure,” Tori said, rushing to Maggie’s side.
I stepped outside and pulled out my phone, searching through my contacts until I found Colt’s name. God, how could I call him with something like this? We were barely anything. But there wasn’t time for Olivia or Preston to get here, and my ridiculously tiny MINI Cooper couldn’t handle the magnitude of the situation—or at least the magnitude of Maggie’s belly. I closed my eyes and clicked send, cringing with each ring, but knowing I had no other choice.
“Kara,” Colt said after a beat.
“Hey, look, I’m so sorry to ask this, but I need a favor. It’s urgent.” I explained the situation to him and then breathed a huge sigh of relief when he told me he drove a 4Runner. “Can you get it and meet me out front of Helping Hands?”
“I’ll be right there.”
I closed my eyes again, this time in relief. “Thank you.” And then hung up the phone and went back into Maggie.
“I have help coming.”
“Help?” Maggie’s eye went wide. “Please tell me you didn’t call my dad. He— Please don’t call my dad.”
I shook my head. “No. I called a friend of mine, but Maggie, Tori is going to have to call your dad. You’re underage. We can’t not call your dad.”
She nodded to me as tears began to pool in her eyes. “Okay.”
“Okay. Now, my friend is meeting us out front. Do you think you can walk?”
“I think so.” She started to push herself up, and I wrapped my arm around her to help support her.
“Okay?”
“Okay,” she said with a nod.
With Tori’s help, I managed to get Maggie out front before another contraction hit her.
I let her lean into me, putting all her pressure, frustration, and fear on me. I blinked hard to keep myself from crying, repeating again and again in my mind that Maggie needed me. She needed me. I couldn’t break down.
Colt jumped out of the driver’s seat and came to my side. “What can I do?”
Maggie’s body relaxed, and I knew the contraction had stopped. She peered up at Colt, her eyes suddenly wide. “No. No, no, no. I can’t have some hot guy seeing me like this.” Her gaze returned to mine. “You didn’t tell me your friend was hot.” She started crying again, and I pulled her toward the 4Runner.
“Don’t worry. He’s not that hot,” I said, shooting Colt a wink as I helped Maggie into the backseat, then ran around and slid into the seat beside her. “Just pretend he’s not here. It’s just you and me and that little baby of yours.”
At the mention of her daughter, she started crying again. “I haven’t decided yet. I can’t have this baby yet. I still don’t know what to do.”
I nodded and brushed her hair off her face, then pulled a tissue from my bag and wiped away the tears from her face. “You won’t have to decide that today. Okay? One step at a time. Let’s get you to the hospital first and then we’ll go from there.”
It took an excruciating amount of time to make it to East Cooper hospital, where Maggie planned to deliver, and after two more contractions and lots of screaming from Maggie, we managed to get her to the Labor and Delivery floor. But because I wasn’t family, they wouldn’t allow me to go back with her without a family member present to consent.
I sat down beside Colt in the waiting room after calling Maggie’s dad—again. The sudden weight of everything I’d just been through and what Maggie might be experiencing came over me like a tidal wave. I placed my head in my hands, and then before I could conjure up enough strength to push back my tears, I began to sob into my hands.
Colt reached over to put his arm around me,
and then I felt myself being picked up. He placed me in his lap and tucked my head into the curve of his neck, allowing me to cry a lifetime’s worth of tears into his chest while he whispered comforting words over and over.
The days after my abortion began to play out in my mind. The fight with Preston. My parents’ refusal to speak to me. The visit from our pastor and the excruciating hour-long chat about the importance of virtue and the need to ask forgiveness for my sins. Sins, plural. Sex and the abortion. Premarital sex and murder, he had all but blatantly said.
“What can I do?” Colt finally asked, bringing me back to the moment.
I shook my head. “Nothing. There’s nothing either of us can do.” The weight of those words made me cry harder. Maggie was in there, too young to be enduring this alone, yet she was alone. Very much alone. I felt an empathy for her I had never felt for anyone in my life.
“This is the very reason why I questioned majoring in psychology in the first place. This . . . It . . . How in the world can I do this day in and day out and not fall apart all the time?” I looked at him, and if I weren’t on the verge of crying again, I would have laughed.
“Um, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You know, the getting too involved thing. I mean, I’m a volunteer counselor! All right, I get college credit and all, but still. This”—I motioned around the hospital—“is not part of the job description. And what happens when I’m working full-time at a center like this, having random people come in all the time that I might never see again? I will worry myself sick over them. I know it!” I dropped my head back into my hands. “I’m so in over my head here.”
Colt drew a breath, buying time, like he wanted to work through his response before saying it. “I think you’re putting too much pressure on yourself. You’re human. By nature we get too attached. I think that’s also one of the things that make you so amazing. You are unabashedly you. But you need to realize, too, that we’re just starting our college years. You don’t have to know what you will do just yet. You don’t have to become a counselor at a nonprofit center. There are other fields in psychology that could be perfect for you.”
I thought of Rose, of how effortlessly she worked her magic—even on me. Maybe Colt was right. Maybe a one-on-one setting would be better for me, even something at a hospital like this. I turned to him, wishing more than anything that I could kiss him. “Thank you. I like having you around,” I said, again unable to hide my true thoughts from him.
He smiled. “I hope you’ll allow me to stay here a little longer.”
My heart did a little dance, and I rested my head on his shoulder, allowing his strength to hold me up for a while. Finally, after day had turned into night, I pulled away and peered around for a clock. Before I could find one, a middle-aged man with dark brown hair sprinkled with gray walked over to me. He stopped just in front of Colt and me, rocking back on his heels uncomfortably.
“I’m sorry, I . . . The person at the front desk said you brought my daughter Maggie here?”
I stood up, anger ripping through me, but I tried to keep my voice even. “You’re Maggie’s father? Where have you been? We’ve been here for hours and she’s been back there all by herself. They wouldn’t let me go back with her. They won’t tell me anything. She’s all alone and you just left her here. How can you even stand there and look at me like that, when you’ve left your little girl alone for all this time.”
Colt stood behind me and pulled me against him. I closed my eyes to keep myself from saying more, and when I looked up there were tears in the man’s eyes.
He shook his head. “Look, you’re right and I’m sorry. No one can tell you how hard this is. Being a parent. They don’t tell you how sometimes it feels like you could break from the worry. And sometimes, it gets so intense, you just . . .” He shook his head again. “I didn’t mean to leave her,” he said, tears now streaming down his face. “I don’t want to leave her. I don’t want to be a bad father.”
I swallowed through the thickness in my throat. “Then don’t be. She loves you. And she needs you right now. I can’t imagine how hard this is for you, but try to remember that it’s even harder for her.”
He nodded, his body jerking as he fought back a sob. “I’m going to go check on her now. I’ll come back and tell you how she is and see if I can get you back there to see her. If you’d like?”
Tears pricked at my eyes, this time from relief. “Yes. I’d love that.”
Her dad disappeared through the Labor and Delivery doors, and I slumped back into my original chair, exhausted in every way, but also petrified of what I was about to learn. Had Maggie gone into early labor? Was she okay? Was the baby? Or was this all a false alarm, as I’d hoped? The worry was enough to make me understand, if only for a moment, why Maggie’s dad had checked out. It was hard to process this much worry. But still, she deserved to have a father who was there. Hopefully after this scare, he would be from now on.
Colt reached over and took my hand, gently moving his thumb back and forth over my palm, but he never said a word. We sat like that for another half hour before Maggie’s dad came back out, worry lines etched into his face. I stood up quickly as he started over.
“She’s okay,” he said. “She went into early labor, but they gave her some fluids and are prescribing some medication to stop the contractions. She’s better now. She wants to see you.”
I reached around for my bag and then wrapped my arms around Colt. “Thank you so much. I don’t know . . .”
“I’m here. I’ll be here when you return. Take your time.”
I pulled away to look at him, at a loss for words. No one had ever been so selflessly there for me. I rose onto my toes and kissed his cheek, wishing I could do or say more to let him know how thankful I was for him. He smiled down at me. “I’m fine, Kara. Go.” I nodded to him and then followed Maggie’s dad through the doors and down the hall to Maggie’s room.
“I’m Clark, by the way. Maggie tells me you’re Kara. That you work at a counseling center? I didn’t even know she was going there.”
“I think you’d learn a lot about what she’s going through if you’d ask her. She’s afraid. And she’s thinking of giving the baby up for adoption. She said you want her to do it.”
Clark stopped walking. “What?”
My eyebrows threaded together. “She said you kicked her out.”
“I would never. I love her. I just have no idea how to deal with any of this. Her mother . . .” He swallowed. “She was the one good at this stuff. The girl stuff. She was . . . Anyway, Maggie and I got in an argument about school. She said she wanted to drop out now, and I said absolutely not. Well, it ended with my saying if she’s going to live in my house, she will abide by my rules. I guess she took that as my kicking her out. I would never abandon my daughter.”
I wanted to tell him that he had abandoned her. That she just wanted him to reach out, to give her a hug, to tell her that everything would be okay. To be a freaking dad. But clearly I didn’t know the full story, and I didn’t want to make any more assumptions. “She’s very torn about what to do, but she could use your guidance and support, either way.”
He nodded slowly and then directed me farther down the hall and to the left, to Maggie’s room. When I pushed through the doors, she had her eyes closed, and I tried to quietly make my way to her side, but she woke up quickly.
“Kara,” she said, her voice filled with relief.
“Hey there,” I said, reaching for her hand. “You gave me a scare. How are you feeling?” The sounds of a monitor beeping drew my attention and Maggie smiled.
“That’s her. Addie. That’s her heartbeat. She sounds strong, doesn’t she?”
I clamped my mouth shut to keep from crying and nodded to Maggie. “She does, but I’m not surprised. She has a strong mommy.”
Maggie smiled. “They said I’
m having early labor symptoms. They’re giving me something to stop the contractions. I was worried about what the drugs could do to my baby, but they say it’s better to let her cook a little longer.” Her smile became a laugh, and I wondered if whatever they gave her also made her loopy. “Cook. Isn’t that the silliest way of describing it?”
I grinned back. “I guess she’s like a little chicken, and she just isn’t quite done, yet.”
Maggie leaned back into her pillow, her eyes closing. “I’m tired. I’m so tired.”
I stood up and ran my hand easily over her forehead and down her hair. “Then rest. I’ll stay here with you.” I thought of Colt waiting for me outside, how he had said the very same words to me. Somehow along the way, I had become Maggie’s support system . . . and he had become mine.
She peeked over at me. “Do you promise?”
“I promise. Now sleep.”
And she did.
Chapter Fourteen
I pushed out of the ER doors, exhausted, but relieved that Maggie was doing better. Clark, her dad, agreed to take her home, and I gave Maggie my cell phone number to call me if she needed anything, which was perhaps against every single rule at Helping Hands, but I did it all the same. Some rules were meant to be broken.
Colt stood as soon as he saw me and walked over, pulling me to him. “Are you okay?” I nodded. “Is she?” I nodded again and he released a breath.
I smiled at his obvious care and linked my fingers with his. “Do you think you could take me back to Charleston Haven instead of to my car? I don’t feel like driving. I can just ask Olivia to take me to get it tomorrow.”
“Of course.”
We rode the entire way in silence, no radio, no talking, just the sounds on the streets and our breathing to keep us company. It was three in the morning now, and I was starving, but I didn’t know if I could actually eat. All I knew was that I didn’t want to be alone.
Colt veered off before our normal turn, and I peered over at him, my eyebrows raised. “There’s a twenty-four-hour Macca’s over here. Junk for sure, but you’ve got to be starving.”
