The Proposal

by R. R. Banks

  The time will pass. I just have to keep telling myself that. The time will go by and then I can go in and meet with the midwife and by that point we’ll get to hear your tiny little heart beating. That amazes me more than I will ever be able to tell you. Right now, you are there. You exist. You are alive. But your heart isn’t beating yet. My heart is literally beating for you. But in just a few weeks you will have a heart all your own that is beating. You have only existed for a couple of weeks, but you are already amazing.

  Christmas is coming soon. I know that you won’t be able to enjoy it this year, but I promise you next year is going to be incredible. I can’t even imagine what types of magic your parents will cook up for you. I can promise you that I will always think about you at Christmas. I’ll never forget this one Christmas that we got to spend together.

  Grow well, little one. There are people who already love you and can’t wait to meet you.

  Rue

  ****

  “Sip slowly.”

  “Christopher, I’m fine.”

  “You’re not fine, you’re pregnant!”

  “Pregnancy is not a disease. I’m fine. I’m so fine they don’t even want to see me at the medical center again until January. That’s when I’ll meet my midwife.”

  “Midwife?” Tessie asked, her voice suddenly slipping back to a time in her life when she wasn’t quite as cultured as she was now. “What do you mean midwife?”

  “You know what a midwife is,” I said. “I’ve decided that that’s the type of care that I want during this whole experience.”

  It had been a little more than a week since I got official confirmation that I was pregnant, and I was sitting in Tessie’s living room stringing cranberries and popcorn for her tree. She had opted for an old-fashioned Christmas this year, completely casting aside the silver, black, and white scheme that we had used the year before in favor of cozy plaids, handmade ornaments, and a live tree that was making her sneeze so much I could only imagine that she was going to be dead by New Year’s. Christopher had just handed me a mug of egg nog, a distinct departure from the stemmed glasses of last year’s festivities, and was urging me to imbibe gradually as to not drown the baby, or something. I hadn’t fully followed his logic.

  “You’re going to go through all of that?” he asked.

  “What did you think was going to happen? I was just going to lay there, and they were going to squish my belly and make the baby come out?”

  “Not exactly,” he said. “Maybe more like they were just going to knock you out cold and when you woke up the baby would be gone.”

  “That’s a depressing thought,” I said.

  “Why?” Tessie asked. “I would think that would be easier. No pain. No tearful goodbye.”

  “I’m going to have a tearful goodbye right now if you don’t stop talking about this,” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” Christopher said. “It’s just that I can’t imagine going through so much, especially the whole natural birth approach, for a baby that isn’t even yours.”

  I felt tears spring to my eyes and set my mug down, turning my attention back to the strand of fruit and popcorn on my lap.

  “It’s what’s best for the baby,” I said. “I’ll be more in control and it won’t get any of those drugs in it during the delivery. Women who have midwives recover faster, too, so I’ll be able to go on afterwards much sooner.”

  “Is Richard going to be there in the room with you when the baby is born?” Tessie asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “We haven’t talked about it.”

  “Do you want him to be?”

  “I don’t know. Can we stop talking about this?”

  I was suddenly overwhelmed and didn’t want to be sitting there anymore. I stood up sharply and immediately felt my head start swimming. Everything around me blurred and I reached out to grab something to stabilize me, but didn’t feel anything. Somewhere in the distance I thought I heard Tessie scream, but the darkness was closing around me too quickly to know what she was saying.

  The next thing I knew my eyes were fluttering open to the bright, flashing lights of an ambulance. I could feel myself sliding and it took a few seconds for me to realize that I was on a gurney being rolled toward the back of the ambulance by two emergency responders. I tried to sit up, but straps across my legs and shoulders kept me in place, immediately starting a feeling of panic in my chest.

  “Let me up,” I said.

  “Just lay back, Miss,” one of the EMTs said. “We’re going to help you.”

  “Let me up,” I insisted.

  The gurney bounced over the edge of the ambulance and suddenly I was in the back surrounded by gleaming metal and bright lights. I looked down and saw Tessie and Christopher standing outside, their eyes wide with fear.

  “Richard,” I shouted to them. “Get Richard.”

  “Who’s Richard?” one of the EMTs asked.

  “The father of her baby,” Tessie said.

  “Well, it’s not really her baby,” Christopher interjected. “It’s definitely his, and I mean technically, technically, biologically, it’s her baby, too, but…”

  Tessie slapped her hand over Christopher’s mouth to muffle him and he fell silent.

  “Do you want to be brought to the hospital?” another EMT asked. “We need your consent now that you’re awake.”

  Not something a woman ever wants to hear when she’s tied down to a bed.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t want to be brought to the hospital. I’m under care at a private medical facility. I need to go there.”

  “I’m sorry, we can’t transport you anywhere but the hospitals that we have contracts with. If you want to go somewhere else, you’re going to need to get out of the ambulance.”

  “Then I’m going to need you to untie me.”

  Part of me thought that I might be making a mistake, that I should probably just let them bring me wherever they could, but I knew that Richard had gone to extensive trouble to create the medical facility so that I would get the best of care. Even though I had only been there for two appointments so far, including the procedure itself, I felt strangely accustomed to that care and as though I couldn’t really trust anyone else with his baby. So, after the EMTs released me from the bed, I climbed carefully down and into Tessie’s waiting arms, allowing her to support me as she guided me back into her house.

  “What are you doing?” Christopher asked. “You need to go to the hospital.”

  I shook my head.

  “I’m alright. I think I just stood up too fast. I’m going to call Richard and tell him what happened, and then if he wants me to be seen, he can come get me and bring me to the medical center.”

  We went back inside, and I excused myself to the restroom. Moments later the need to call him felt far more urgent.

  ****

  Richard

  Please no. Please no. Please no. Please no.

  I had never felt so helpless as I did in that moment. I hadn’t even bothered to try to get Abraham, preferring instead to save the time and drive myself to the medical center, but even being behind the wheel of the car myself wasn’t enough to make me feel in control of what was happening. The call from Rue’s friend Tessie had been so frantic that I had barely been able to understand what she was saying, but I had gotten enough out of her to understand that Rue had passed out and was now bleeding. She had refused an ambulance, but I insisted that Tessie take her directly to the facility rather than wait for me. Now I was trying to get there, desperate to be at her side, terrified of what I was going to find out when I got there.

  The traffic around me was infuriating and I found myself wanting to ram the people in front of me to get them out of my way. The drive from my house to the medical center was less than five miles but it felt like it was taking an eternity to arrive. When I finally did, I pulled my car right up to the entrance and jumped out, not even noticing if I actually turned off the ignition and not really caring. If someone wand
ered by, noticed the car, and wanted to take it, they were welcome to it. There were plenty more where that one came from and I had no issue replacing it.

  I burst through the doors and was met by a nurse who escorted me toward an emergency examination room without greeting. When I got to the door, she paused, and we stared at the closed door for a beat. There was no sound coming through and I didn’t know if I was relieved about that or if that made me more afraid. Finally, I lifted my hand and knocked.

  “Come in.”

  I followed Dr. Morgan’s voice and entered the room. He was standing at the end of the bed where Rue lay, her knees bent up and her body covered with a pink blanket. She didn’t turn to look at me. Instead, she seemed focused intently on something in front of the doctor. I walked up to the side of the bed and noticed that his hand was tucked beneath the blanket and that he was staring at the same thing that held Rue’s attention. It was what looked like a computer screen and on it was a fuzzy grey image. I took a step to the side to get a better look, my heart pounding in my chest as I tried to understand what I was seeing.

  “What is that?” I asked. “What’s going on?”

  “That,” Dr. Morgan said, reaching up and touching a finger to something white on the screen that looked vaguely like a Tic-Tac. “Is your baby.”

  “My baby?” I asked, leaning against the bed. “Is it alright?”

  I felt my hand touch Rue’s and her fingers shifted, causing mine to intertwine with hers. I squeezed them lightly, wanting to find as much comfort in her touch as I wanted to give her in mine.

  “It is,” the doctor said. “What Rue experienced is frightening, but it’s not all that out of the ordinary for early pregnancy. In fact, some women experience so much spotting in the early weeks that they think that they have had their period and don’t actually realize that they are pregnant until they are in their second trimester. As for passing out, I’m guessing that’s just a good old-fashioned case of nerves and some dehydration. I’m going to give her some fluids and let her rest here for a while, then she’ll be just fine to go home.”

  The doctor withdrew an instrument from under the blanket and brought the blanket down further to cover Rue the rest of the way. The image on the screen disappeared and I felt a hint of sadness that I couldn’t look at it anymore. The doctor walked out of the room and I waited until the door closed to look down at Rue.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “Don’t be sorry.”

  “I worried you and brought you all the way out here so late and it was for nothing.”

  “You didn’t worry me,” I told her. She looked up at me. “You scared the living hell out of me.” Her head hung, and I reached over to take her chin in my hand and turn her face toward me. “But I’m glad that you had Tessie call me. You’ve never been through this before, neither of us have, how were you supposed to know that everything was fine? If you hadn’t called or come in and I found out later that you had passed out and then had bleeding, I would’ve be really upset.”

  We looked at each other and the fear that had been in the room dissipated. I stroked her cheek softly with my thumb and Rue turned her face slightly into the touch. My heart was pounding again, shivering in my chest, but for a completely different reason. I could feel my mouth watering and I licked my suddenly dry lips. Rue did the same and I felt myself leaning toward her almost involuntarily, as if magnetized to her. Behind me the door opened, and I jumped away from her, the appearance of the nurse with Rue’s IV snapping me back into reality.

  I stepped out of the room to draw in a few breaths and when I went back in, the IV was in place and Rue was resting back against the pillow, her eyes closed. I walked up to her side again and looked down at her. She was so beautiful. Even lying there looking so vulnerable, her makeup streaked down her face carried with tears that she undoubtedly cried out of fear as she made her way here, not knowing what was happening, unsure of what she was going to find out when she arrived. She opened her eyes and looked up at me.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said.

  “Of course,” I said. “I’m here. If you ever need me. For anything. Ever. I’m here.”

  She smiled, but then let out a long sigh.

  “I am not looking forward to the drive back home tonight.”

  “Then don’t go.”

  “I have to. Tessie and Christopher both have to work tomorrow. It’s too late for me to go back to either of their houses. I guess I could get a hotel, but finding one with vacancies this late is going to be a hassle.”

  Suddenly her face scrunched up and I felt a stab of panic go through me.

  “What’s wrong? Are you alright? Does something hurt? Do you need the doctor?”

  I was getting ready to call out to Dr. Morgan when Rue shook her head, her face relaxing.

  “No. Nothing’s hurting. I just realized that my car is still at Tessie’s. I drove it over there, but she drove me here. I don’t even have a way to get to a hotel even if I could make a reservation.”

  “So, come with me,” I said.

  “That would work,” she said. “You can bring me to the hotel and then tomorrow Tessie can meet me there in my car and I’ll bring her back home on my way home.”

  “No,” I said. “I mean come home with me.”

  Rue looked at me sharply, some of the color draining from her face.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Come home with me,” I said. “Like you said, it’s late. The hotels might be booked, and even if they aren’t, that would mean finding one, going through check-in, dealing with other guests. That’s a lot of fuss to go through when you could just come back to my house and stay in the guest wing. You wouldn’t have to check in, the room service is exceptional, and I promise you can have late check-out without any of the maids knocking on your door.”

  I meant it as a joke, but it fell flat as Rue looked at me with an expression in her eyes that said she imagined that might actually happen and I was going to have to make special arrangements with the staff to make sure that it didn’t.

  Which was actually true.

  “I don’t know,” she said, sounding uneasy. “Do you think that’s appropriate? I wouldn’t want to impose.”

  “It’s no imposition,” I insisted. “You wouldn’t even have to interact with me at all if you didn’t want to. The guest wing has all of its own facilities and features, so you could completely relax, and no one would bother you. Stay just the night or stay for a few days. Please? It really would make me feel better.”

  Rue still looked uncertain, but finally she nodded.

  “Alright,” she said. “Thank you. I really appreciate this.”

  “It’s my pleasure,” I said. “Don’t mention it.”

  Especially to Flora. Let me take on that fallout myself.

  “The nurse said that I might be here for another couple of hours,” she said.

  “Perfect. I’ll go home and get everything ready for you and then I’ll be back to pick you up. Try to relax some. Everything is going to be alright now.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Rue

  What the hell did I just agree to?

  I watched Richard walk out of the room and let my head fall back against the pillows, reaching up with the hand that wasn’t attached to the IV to rub my forehead.

  Why did it seem like every time this man opened his mouth I went along with something that I knew for damn sure was a bad idea?

  I closed my eyes, trying to concentrate on relaxing and letting my body absorb the fluids gradually dripping into me. I felt ridiculous ending up in the hospital because I hadn’t had enough to drink and had gotten myself so worked up about the whole situation that I passed out. At the same time, though, the fear that I had felt when I started to get dizzy and then when I saw the blood was unlike any fear that I had ever experienced. It was a sense of terror and dread that reached all the way inside me and made me feel like I was turning insid
e out. I couldn’t describe the emotions that coursed through me or the thoughts that raced in my mind as Tessie herded me into her car. My fingers were shaking so hard that I couldn’t dial the phone and my brain was so frantic that I couldn’t remember how to find his number even if I had been able to dial, so she had to call Richard. All I could do was sit by and listen as she tried to form the words, tried to tell him what had happened and ask him to get to the medical center.

  It had been only days. Only days since we found out that I was pregnant, and I had seen that look of joy on his face, and I was terrified that something horrible had happened. Now as I lay in the medical center trying to let my body recover, I felt a tremendous sense of gratitude, both toward the doctor and nurses that had been here for me to help me through this situation, and for Richard. I could only imagine the chaotic, hectic environment that I would have found myself in had I had to go to a normal hospital. This medical center meant that I didn’t have to wait, I didn’t have to contend with the prying eyes and straining ears of anyone else around me, and I got the full, undivided, and unrushed attention of literally everyone in the building. Though the entire concept of building a private medical center for me to use during my pregnancy had seemed outlandish when I first heard about it, I was indescribably thankful for it now. This baby deserved nothing short of the best, and that is what this center would provide for it.

  Now all I had to do was figure out how I was going to handle being in Richard’s home.

  I couldn’t believe that I had accepted his offer. I knew when Tessie brought me to the center that she wasn’t going to be able to stay with me, even though she wanted to. It was already late, and she needed to get some sleep so that she could go to work the next day. I had insisted that she leave, and she had reluctantly complied, though I had felt a hint of regret almost as soon as she walked out of the door. This wasn’t something that I wanted to go through alone, but at the same time I didn’t really feel like it was appropriate to be sharing it with Tessie, either. I was stuck in a strange, awkward position and didn’t really know how to move forward until Richard arrived. Now he wanted to bring me back to his house to rest and though I knew that Tessie going back home had left me without my own transportation and that I was not up for the hour drive back to Grammyma’s house, the tingling of my fingers where Richard had held them was still enough to make me question whether entering his private world and spending even a few hours in it with him was a good idea.