by Lexie Ray
“When you’re outside of Mama’s body and out here in this big, beautiful world,” I began, gritting my teeth as my ankle rolled over a stone painfully, “you’re going to learn about lots of things. You’ll learn what foods you like and what foods you don’t. You’ll learn how to sit up and laugh and walk and run. And you’ll learn how to use the potty instead of your diaper. There will be mistakes, of course. Mistakes are how you learn things. And even after you’ve learned from those mistakes, you’ll sometimes make them again. Take right now, for example. Your mama’s been potty trained for many, many years. And yet she still pissed her pants like a little child after just a little fall. How do you like that? Isn’t your mama silly?”
I began to shiver and hoped it wasn’t shock. Surely I wasn’t injured that badly. The air was just chilly, that was it. The air was chilly, and I was in wet jeans. I looked forward to getting back to the cottage, turning every single light on, stripping off my ruined clothing, and taking the hottest shower that I could stomach.
“And after we get all cleaned up, your mama’s going to get a doctor to come out and visit us,” I told the baby, not pausing in my slow march back toward the clearing. God, I’d run far and fast. I didn’t think I’d ever run like that before. I guessed it was to be expected when my life was ending right before my eyes.
“The best thing, though, is while we’re waiting for the doctor, Mama’s going to fix a nice supper,” I grunted, clutching at a tree as a cramp nearly ripped me in two. It had emanated from deep inside my belly, and I had no explanation for it. Could it have been some sort of shockwave from my broken ribs? There was no way to tell. I needed a doctor. I forced myself forward.
“My biggest regret, baby, is that you’re not going to get to meet Mama’s parents,” I said, the words being the only thing urging me forward. I had to be close to the cottage by now. I just had to be. “I wish you could’ve met your grandparents, baby. They would’ve loved you so much and spoiled you so rotten. I wouldn’t have been able to deal with you, make you mind, nothing. You would’ve been so loved by them. But they’re watching over you and me in heaven. I know they are, and you’ll know they are, too. I’m going to tell you all about them.”
I gave a long moan at the next cramp. I hated it. It hurt so much, much more than my pounding head or my aching ankle.
“Your grandparents were good people,” I groaned, pushing myself to continue. I remembered feeling like I couldn’t go on when I was hauling Jonathan back to the cottage and reminded myself that I could do this. I had made this journey under duress before. I could do it again. “Your grandparents wanted to protect everyone else from the bad people of the world. They were kind of like superheroes, really, both of them swooping in to save the day whenever there was a bad person. You’ll understand better one day. They were both activists, which means that they acted on things they believed in. Their company — the place where all the superheroes gathered — helped defend the weak and defenseless. The bad guys were these big corporations who walked all over people like giants who didn’t know where they were going. Your grandparents always set them right. They always saved the day.”
Thinking about my parents in any way, shape, or form was usually so painful, but right now, it was giving me comfort to talk about it. I’d never even told Jonathan what they’d done for a living. For whatever reason, it was important for me to tell my child just what kind of people they were.
“Your grandparents were saints,” I said, coming to the edge of the woods with no small degree of relief. “That’s why I know they’re in heaven. They would never let anything bad happen to anyone. You know what? I come from them, and you come from me. We’re a part of that goodness, you and I. We’re going to be just fine.”
The cottage was in sight. I knew that my gait and appearance now resembled a zombie more than a drunk, and was thankful there wasn’t anyone around to scream at a monster staggering toward a little cottage in the woods.
“Look at that,” I said, grinning and feeling a little light-headed. “We’re home now. Just like I told you. We’re going to get all cleaned up and see a doctor. We’re going to get some food in our bellies. I’m hungry, aren’t you?”
I wasn’t hungry at all, but I knew I needed to eat for the baby’s sake. I reached the front door, flung it open, and turned on the light.
Red. That was the first color I saw.
Red, red blood.
I hadn’t pissed my pants when I’d fallen. I’d started bleeding, and I’d been bleeding this entire time.
“Don’t panic,” I told the baby. “It’s nothing.”
My panic gave me new strength. I got my phone and my purse, which still contained the car keys. I was thankful that Jonathan hadn’t insisted on collecting his stolen car. It was my only way out. My only way to safety.
Another cramp hit me hard, and I had to hang onto the doorframe to ride it out. It was all I could do not to collapse on the floor, weeping with fear and pain.
“Don’t you worry,” I said, heading straight back out the door. “Mama’s not going to wait for a doctor. Mama’s going to go right to the source.”
Chicago was too far away for what remained in the convertible’s gas tank. I sat down heavily in the driver’s seat, the blood making a sick splashing sound as I did so. I’d probably just ruined the interior and giggled a little bit. Jonathan would be super pissed.
The convertible sputtered to a start, and I sagged a little. There was less than a quarter tank of gas left. It was entirely possible that I wouldn’t even make it to the nearest small town — let alone Chicago.
“You know what?” I said, reversing carefully and pulling out onto the gravel road. “All I need to do is get to somewhere where I have phone reception. That’s the most important thing, baby. Once we have that, the doctors will come to us.”
I just had to get somewhere to call 9-1-1.
I went as fast as I dared on the gravel road, the bits of rocks and pebbles flying up at the passage of the tires and dinging against the undercarriage of the convertible. When the wheel shook so hard I was afraid I’d spin out of control, I slowed down a little.
“That’s another thing you’re going to learn when you’re outside of your mama and exploring this big, beautiful world,” I said, fighting to keep my eyes open. “I’m going to teach you to drive, but it’s probably not going to be in this car. I think I’ve messed up the insides. You’re going to learn how to drive, and then you’re going to go places, baby. You’re going to go anyplace you want to go. You’re going to do anything you want to do.”
Another cramp nearly rent me in two, and I nearly swerved off the road in response to the pain. I felt like I was fighting to stay awake, and I knew now it was because I’d lost so much blood. It was starting to scare me.
“Don’t be afraid,” I commanded both my child and myself. “We’re going to get through this. This is just a bump in the road. Do we have any bars yet?”
I checked my phone and cursed viciously. We were still far enough from civilization to be in the dead zone of reception.
“That’s all right,” I said, feigning cheerfulness. “That just means we get to drive this beautiful car a little bit farther.”
I just didn’t know how much farther we were going to get on this amount of gas. I felt like I was sitting in a bowl of warm water, and I didn’t dare look down. I didn’t want to see how much blood had collected. I was pretty sure I’d pass out.
I caught myself nodding again and again, my head dipping down and the car listing across the road. It was dangerous, but I needed to keep going. Stopping to rest or, God forbid, falling asleep, would probably mean the deaths of both of us.
“Let’s sing a song to stay awake,” I said, my voice hoarse from so much talking. “Do you have a favorite one?” My vision swam, and I clutched at the wheel. “Of course you don’t. You’re just a baby. Let me see if I can remember the words to my favorite song.”
But as I searched my brain for lyr
ics, my head nodded and stayed down. God, it felt so good just to give in, to give up. I didn’t need to drive anymore. I didn’t have to do this.
Then, something inside me shifted. I was so sure that I was feeling my baby move inside me that I jerked my head up — and jerked the wheel to the side just in time to avoid crashing into an enormous tree head on.
I tried to thank my child for saving us both, but my jerk of the wheel across the loose gravel of the road spun us out of control. I felt dizzy and horrified as I realized we were airborne — and then upside down — the smell of hot metal and rock making me grit my teeth. I hit my head again and went away to someplace different for a little while, serenaded by the sounds of scraping and tumbling until we finally came to rest right side up.
The roof was crumpled above me, but there was still space for me to be. I was thankful for that, thankful that I hadn’t been crushed to death or flung out of the car.
“Did you see that?” I asked my baby. “Stuck the landing.”
There was so much blood everywhere. So much blood.
I needed help, I realized. I needed a doctor. There was too much blood, and I knew the car was totaled.
With the last strength I possessed, for the sake of both my life and the life growing inside of my body, I made a desperate grab for my phone. The screen was cracked, but it was still powered on — with two bars of service, to boot.
Thanking whichever gods were still interested in my continued existence, I dialed the first person I could think of: Ash Martin. Sure, he was in cosmetic surgery, but he was still a doctor. He was a doctor, and the last friend I had left. He would know what to do.
“Hi, Michelle!” he gushed. “I’m so glad to hear from you! What’s been going on? Are we going to have another lunch date, or what?”
“Help,” I managed to squeak out, and everything went dark.
-----
“Michelle? Michelle, sweetie?”
I opened my eyes, my surroundings gradually coming into focus. I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t recognize the walls or framed art on the walls.
The man in front of me, leaning to take a closer look at me, I knew I recognized from somewhere. I was just having a little trouble remembering right now. I was awfully tired.
“Michelle,” he repeated. “It’s me, Ash Martin. Do you know who I am?”
“Of course,” I croaked, my voice hoarse from disuse. “What are you doing here?”
“Do you know where you are?” he asked, his face the friendliest thing I’d seen in a while. I stared at it for a while, noting how nice he looked with the teal eyeliner he was wearing, before shaking my head.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Are we going out for lunch?”
“No, sweetie,” Ash said, his face falling a little bit. “We’re going to have to wait until you get a little bit better before we go out to lunch again, but I’ll clear my schedule for you any time you want to go.”
“Better from what?” I asked, curious. I felt just fine. “Where am I?”
“You’re in the hospital,” he said gently. “You’ve had a car wreck.”
Everything came rushing back — the fall in the woods, the long, horrible crawl back out, the lack of gasoline, the blood.
God, the blood.
I pressed my hand to my stomach, trying to caress the precious speck of life there, and witnessed the strange spectacle of Ash’s face crumpling and a tear leaking out of one of his teal-lined eyes.
“Honey, you lost the baby,” he managed to choke out, grabbing for my hand. “I’m so, so sorry Michelle. I didn’t even know you were pregnant.”
I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding and held on to Ash’s hand. It was the only thing that kept me tethered to this world. I wanted to drift away, get as far away as I possibly could.
“I fell in the woods,” I said, some need to explain myself propelling the words out of my mouth. “I’d seen my husband, and I was upset, and I fell in the woods. I wasn’t used to being out there or else I never would’ve fallen. I hurt myself falling, and the blood started. I thought it was my period, except I was pregnant. Then, I knew it wasn’t my period.”
“It’s all right, Michelle,” Ash said, even as his shoulders shook with sorrow. “Everything’s going to be all right. Can I call your husband for you? Jane, maybe? Isn’t there anyone I can get a hold of to be with you here?”
I shook my head slowly. “No,” I said. “There’s no one. Just me and — well, just me now. Just me.”
“I’ve consulted with the doctors who helped stabilize you,” Ash said, seeming to get a hold of himself. “They said that you hit your head pretty hard during the wreck. Are you having trouble remembering anything? There’s a possibility for memory loss. A concussion, at least.”
I laughed. Wouldn’t that be something? The wife of Jonathan Wharton, the man who lost his memory, loses her own in a car wreck.
“Michelle?”
“No,” I said. “No, I remember everything. I wish I could forget it all. I wish I could start with a blank slate. Everything wiped clean, even my memories.”
I wish I had hit my head harder than I apparently did. I pressed my stomach to try to impart some small bud of comfort to the life that grew in there, but remembered that it had been uprooted.
“Ash?”
“Yes?”
“Was it a boy or a girl?”
“I don’t think you want to dwell on that,” he said, forcing a small smile to cross his face. “I think you should just focus on feeling better again. You’ve had quite a scare.”
“Boy or girl?” I asked again, feeling like I was at the bottom of a well, looking up and out. There was a girl standing at the top of that well, but I couldn’t access her. She had all of my thoughts and fears and feelings. She was screaming, but I just couldn’t deal with her right now. I’d retreated to the bottom of the well to get away from her.
She was screaming so terribly.
“It was going to be a little girl, sweetie,” Ash said softly.
I expected to feel something, to be angry at Jonathan for making me feel the way I had, upset at my own reaction to him, disgusted with the terrain out in the woods that had made me fall in the first place, saddened by the fact that just when I was wrapping my mind around the idea that I was going to be a mother, the little life that I was starting to protect was taken from me.
I felt nothing. There weren’t any feelings at the bottom of my well. There was just a girl who spoke and saw and heard and breathed. That was all she could do.
A little girl. I was going to be the mother of a little girl, only that wasn’t my future anymore. Maybe she’d never existed. It was a good thing, even, that it had never happened. She’d never know the level of tragedy that I had. She would never know heartbreak and betrayal. She would never lose the love of her life.
She would never lose her own baby while it was still growing inside her.
God, I didn’t want to be me anymore. I wanted to be someone else, anyone else. I couldn’t do this.
“Ash,” I said suddenly, jerking a little in the bed. He was still holding my hand. “I want the surgery.”
“The surgery?”
“The one you said you would still do. To fix the scarring.”
“Honey, you’ve been through a terrible shock,” he said. “Right now, I want you to rest up and get better. Once you’re back to normal, we can talk about what you want to do. It’s a big decision, remember?”
“I want this scar gone,” I said, mashing my hand against the ugly side of my face. I hated touching it, so I rarely did. The scarring felt like fleshy folds beneath the palm of my hand. I was a monster both inside and out. I’d been too monstrous for my baby to survive.
“You need to get better first,” he insisted, squeezing my hand meaningfully. “That’s all you need to worry about right now. He used his free hand to try to take my other hand away from my face, but I seized hold of it, feeling pressure but no pain as I clawed at i
t.
“I want it off of me, out of my life,” I said, pulling at the dead, waxy skin. The well was getting shallower, and I was getting closer to that screaming girl. I still didn’t feel anything, even though I was grabbing my face as hard as I could.
“Michelle, stop!” Ash shouted. “You’re going to hurt yourself! Nurse!”
“I want it gone,” I said, looking up into the panicked eyes of my friend as he tried to extricate my face from my hand. The world was getting brighter and brighter, and I knew I was about to meet that girl standing at the top of the well. I dreaded it. She was screaming and screaming.
