Seduced by Moonlight

by Janice Sims

  “So sorry, Dr. Pedersen,” Cherisse said, laughing softly.

  David actually winked at her. “And I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t tell the others I’ve softened. I like having them fear me. I don’t get invited to all those endless birthday parties they’re always throwing throughout the place. Any excuse to have cake.” With that, he left.

  Cherisse sat back down.

  She phoned Harry at lunch and found out that he was in Vail. “I’ll be back before you get home,” he told her. “I’ll cook for you and rub your feet.”

  “This doesn’t sound like the same Harry I left this morning,” Cherisse said.

  “That Harry was a horse’s ass,” said Harry with a chuckle. “This Harry knows you were right. It’s your career and you mean to end it on a positive note. You have integrity. I admire that in you.”

  “Thank you,” Cherisse said. She then went on to tell him about her day so far. Harry asked her if the little boy with HIV had family or if he were alone in the world.

  “His chart shows that he has family,” she told him.

  “Good,” said Harry. “I would hate for him to be alone.”

  By the time February 26 rolled around, Cherisse’s official last day at work, Harry had gotten a good taste of what it was like to be married to a nurse. He’d listened to her days, held her at night and comforted her when the little boy with HIV died in his sleep. She’d cried herself to sleep that night, and he’d lain awake watching her face in repose.

  He didn’t understand why she’d put herself through such agony, because that’s what her job was in his opinion—sheer agony. He wouldn’t have lasted a month, let alone eight years.

  The next morning when he’d asked her why she had stayed for so long, she had answered rather glibly, “Somebody’s gotta do it.” But one look in her eyes told him she was not nearly as detached as she pretended to be. He saw pain in her aspect, pain and a kind of helplessness that clutched at his heart.

  But that morning, she had had to go to work and he hadn’t had the time to pursue it.

  At work on her last day, everyone gathered in the employee lounge to give her a send-off. David was there in spite of his dislike of such gatherings. And he ate cake alongside the rest of them.

  Sonia got up and made a short speech. She was definitely showing by then, her smock unable to hide her baby bump. But she had accepted David’s offer of the head nurse job after he had promised her a sufficiently long maternity leave.

  “I’m a little biased,” she said, “because Cheri has been my BFF, best friend forever, since we were in second grade. You all know her history, she married her childhood sweetheart and moved to Philadelphia but wound up coming back home. I was the one who told her she should try nursing. I had been a practical nurse for years. Then she came home, got into nursing school, became an RN then had the nerve to go for her master’s degree, leaving me in the dust. So, jealous heifer that I am, I went back and got my bachelor’s degree. A few years later she goaded me into going for my master’s. So, thank you, you interfering busybody. Because of you I’ve nearly got my master’s degree and that crazy man over there—” she pointed to David “—has offered me your job, which I took in a moment of madness. I’ll never be able to replace you, but I’ll do my best.”

  Cherisse got up and hugged her. “Girl, you’re gonna set this place on fire.”

  “Before it’s over, she might try to out of frustration,” David said. “But I won’t let her.”

  Everybody laughed. Cherisse believed that was the first time any of them had laughed at something David had said.

  He didn’t take it well. Not used to their benevolence, more used to their acrimony, he looked slightly embarrassed and beat a hasty retreat after telling her, “You were an excellent head nurse, Mrs. Payne.”

  “Thank you, David,” she called to him before he disappeared into the corridor.

  So she left Mercy Hospital unbowed and with her dignity intact as she’d promised David Pedersen she would.

  About three weeks after becoming a woman of leisure, Cherisse awoke after three in the morning, her breasts throbbing painfully. She had noticed some tenderness in them perhaps two weeks ago, but had not thought anything of it because she and Harry were sometimes overly enthusiastic when they made love. This morning, however, she was certain that she was experiencing pregnancy symptoms.

  She climbed out of bed. Harry’s big hand felt for her as soon as she got up. He could detect her absence even in his sleep.

  The urge to go to the bathroom had struck her upon awakening, and she had to go.

  He was wide-awake when she walked back into the room. “Is something the matter?”

  She started to say she’d only had to go to the bathroom but thought better of it. “My breasts are really sore. The pain woke me.”

  Instantly concerned, Harry’s first thought was cancer because his mother had recently fought the disease. He leaped from bed and pulled her into his arms. “Who’s your doctor? Oh, hell, I don’t even know my wife’s doctor’s name!”

  “Harry, calm down,” Cherisse said, smiling up at him. “I don’t think it’s anything you need to be worried about. I’m pretty sure I’m just pregnant.”

  Harry was floored. He had to sit down. After sitting on the bed, he peered up at her with a confused expression in his dark brown depths, and said, “You think you might be pregnant?”

  Cherisse sat on his lap. “It’s a distinct possibility,” she said. “We have been making love practically every day for weeks now, without birth control.”

  Harry hugged her tightly. “Let’s not guess. I want to know for sure. Can you get an appointment with your doctor for today?”

  “Probably not,” said Cherisse truthfully, “but over-the-counter pregnancy tests are about ninety-seven percent accurate. We can buy one of those and find out. I can make an appointment to see my doctor later. I’m a nurse, Harry, I know these things.”

  Harry grinned broadly. “I’ll go buy a couple right now.”

  He got up, nearly dropping Cherisse onto the floor in his eagerness to get dressed and find an all-night pharmacy.

  “It’s three-thirty in the morning, Harry!”

  Harry was in his closet pulling a pair of jeans from a drawer. “I think there’s a Walgreens near here that stays open twenty-four hours a day,” he said, not hearing anything she had to say about it being pitch-black outside.

  “Harry, it can wait until daylight.”

  He already had one leg in the jeans. “It’s only a few miles from here,” he said.

  Jeans and sweatshirt on, he wiggled his feet into athletic shoes sans socks and went to plant a kiss on her cheek. “Lie down, baby, I’ll be back in no time.”

  Cherisse got back into bed. Let him go out there if he wanted to. It was probably thirty degrees with the wind chill factor off the scales. “Harry,” she called, “don’t forget your coat.”

  “Okay, sweetheart,” she heard him say. Then she didn’t hear anything else in the big house on the hill. In the Patterson house she could always hear doors closing. She knew where every creak was on the stairs. This house was like a mausoleum, deathly quiet. No creaks in its stairs or hardwood floors. Everything looked new and perfect. Eventually, she knew she and Harry would turn it into a home, but for now it was just an expensive place where she could lay her head.

  Lying on her back, she placed her hand on her stomach. “What will you be?” She didn’t need a home pregnancy test to tell her that Harry’s child was growing in her womb. She knew it with her heart.

  Soon, she drifted to sleep. The next thing she knew, Harry was back and sitting on the bed, waking her. He had a huge bag with him. Sitting up, she said, “What did you do, buy every kit on the shelf?”

  “I got different kinds,” Harry explained, “in case we get fuzzy results.”

  “Fuzzy results?” asked Cherisse.

  “I stood there and read the instructions on the boxes. Sometimes results can be incon
clusive.” He emptied the bag’s contents onto the bed.

  “I see,” said Cherisse, reaching for one of the boxes. She quickly read the instructions, which basically said all she had to do was pee on the strip provided.

  “This one looks simple enough.”

  She got up. Harry got up. She turned. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to do this in private.”

  “But, baby, I was there at conception, I want to be there every step in the process.”

  “No!” said Cherisse. “Now stay here and read some more boxes and I’ll be back as soon as I get the results on this little strip.”

  Harry acquiesced, but unwillingly.

  In about five minutes, Cherisse returned with the strip held aloft. “Okay, now we wait.”

  It was the longest wait in the history of waiting. Harry nervously paced. Cherisse tried to lie down and close her eyes, but Harry’s constant pacing was getting on her nerves.

  She was relieved when the timer went off and they could read the results. She read the instructions again to make sure she hadn’t misread it before. She peered at the strip. If she was reading it correctly, she was definitely pregnant, although the instructions said to make an appointment with her doctor as soon as possible.

  “We’re pregnant,” she told Harry.

  Harry yelled, picked her up and spun her round and round until he got dizzy and had to stop, then he got nauseous and had to run to the bathroom where he threw up.

  “Oh, God,” Cherisse said to herself as he left the room in a hurry, “looks like I won’t be the one in the family to have morning sickness.” Her stomach felt just fine. Her breasts were still aching, but that was something she’d experienced with Danielle. It wasn’t hard to get used to. Vomiting, on the other hand, was something she had always avoided if she could. When she was pregnant with Danielle she hadn’t had it. She hoped she’d be as blessed with this pregnancy. Harry could have it for her. She thought that was fair seeing as how she was going to be the one to push the baby from her body when the time came.

  She stood at the bathroom door. Harry was at the sink, rinsing his mouth out.

  “What was that?” he asked, seeking her medical opinion.

  “Excitement,” she said, smiling. “Don’t worry, Harry, you’re going to be a wonderful father.”

  She went to him and hugged him. “I’ll phone my doctor’s office in the morning. Maybe you should see yours, too, just in case. He can tell you more about why some men have sympathy symptoms when their wives are pregnant. It’s a stressful time. A happy time for the most part, but it does make you worry about whether or not you’re going to step up to the plate when the time comes and be a good father and a supportive husband. Some men worry about that.”

  Harry suddenly got a whiff of his breath and turned around to go brush his teeth. “Go to bed, sweetheart,” he said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  In her fifth month, Cherisse was having a routine sonogram when her doctor, Edie Warren, a young black woman who wore her black natural hair in a short afro, said excitedly, “Did you see that?”

  Cherisse was lying flat on her back. She had difficulty seeing the screen. You could barely make out the images on the screen anyway. Cherisse sometimes thought Dr. Warren didn’t know what she was talking about when she pointed out the baby’s heartbeat or when she said the baby was sucking its thumb. Cherisse just saw dark globs on the screen.

  “What!” she said, just as excitedly as her doctor.

  Dr. Warren laughed. “Cheri, it looks like you’re having twins.”

  Cherisse sat up. “Twins?!” she shouted.

  “Well, because of your age,” explained the twenty-seven year-old, “you are more likely to have twins.”

  “I understand that,” Cherisse said testily. “And thanks for calling me an old crone.”

  Dr. Warren continued to laugh. “I didn’t call you an old crone, my dear,” said Dr. Warren, in her clipped British accent.

  “Would you take another look?” Cherisse asked. “Harry’s going to faint when I tell him. I’d like to be positive I’m delivering the right news.”

  “Very well,” said Dr. Warren. “Lie back down.”

  Cherisse lay down and Dr. Warren once again ran the cold instrument over the surface of her distended belly. “Mmm, huh, twins,” the doctor confirmed. “Do you want a second opinion? I can get one of the nurses to come in and have a look.”

  “No, that’s all right, thank you,” Cherisse said as she sat up on the examination table.

  “Did you see any interesting appendages while you were looking?”

  “I can’t tell whether they’re male or female at this point,” said Dr. Warren.

  Cherisse pulled the paper gown as far over her belly as it would go, which wasn’t very far. Her body was getting rounder every day. Thank God, she hadn’t experienced morning sickness. But her ankles were swollen half the time and she was already having back pain. No wonder since she was carrying twins!

  Harry was waiting for her outside the examining room. He grinned when he saw her. Cherisse grimaced. The man thought she was a goddess. He loved her blossoming body. He doted on her. If she weren’t careful she could easily turn into a beached whale, as much as he waited on her hand and foot.

  Sometimes she went to bed early just to give him a rest from his constant vigilance to make sure her feet were raised, or her back was rubbed. She would tell him to stop, but she was afraid she would hurt his feelings.

  “Well, how is our little one?” he asked expectantly.

  Because Cherisse thought it might be unsafe to spring the news on Harry when he was behind the wheel of their car, she thought she should tell him here in the office.

  “Honey, maybe you ought to sit back down,” she said, taking him by the arm and gently prodding him toward the dark purple upholstered chair he’d gotten out of a minute ago.

  He hadn’t had any more sympathy symptoms since the night he’d thrown up, so Cherisse didn’t think he was going to react in a similar fashion here in Dr. Warren’s waiting room.

  She sat down beside him and took his hand in hers. Taking a deep breath, she said, “You know those twin brothers who were professional football players at the same time? I can’t think of their names.”

  “You’re talking about the Barbers,” Harry said.

  “Yeah, the Barbers. Um, baby, we’re going to either have a couple of football players or a couple of skiers. Dr. Warren can’t tell the sex just yet but we’re definitely having twins.”

  Harry didn’t say anything for a solid two minutes. He sat there staring into space.

  Cherisse squeezed his hand. “It could be worse, it could be triplets.”

  Harry focused in on her again. He smiled. “I wanted two kids, so this is perfect. You’ll have both at the same time.”

  “They usually come out one at a time,” Cherisse pointed out, making sure he knew she was in for double the labor, double the pain. She had a mind to make him work extra hard today to pay for that comment.

  But she couldn’t look at that happy expression on his handsome face without loving him a little more.

  “Come on, big daddy,” she said as she took his hand, “let’s go home.”

  The projected due date of the twins came and went. Dr. Warren had told Cherisse that it was difficult to predict with any accuracy when a woman of her age would give birth, especially if she was carrying twins. The babies might come early or they might come late, although if the due date had come and gone, it was important to monitor the mother closely for signs of fetal distress.

  It had been more than a week since she was due to deliver and Cherisse was at her mother’s house helping cook for the family reunion that was going to be held that weekend. Everyone was coming here this year.

  Harry had decided not to go to his family’s reunion in Kentucky to be near Cherisse’s side so close to her giving birth. But he was driving her crazy with his constant pampering, both at the resort and at the house in De
nver. Cherisse needed a calming influence and there was only one place she could get it—at her mother’s house.

  Sonia was there with her three-month-old baby, Joy Renee. Harry and Ken were outside getting the grill started because they were going to barbecue some chicken and ribs for dinner.

  Cherisse was standing at the sink washing red potatoes in preparation for peeling them with a potato peeler. Her mother liked to add them to the pole beans, a big pot of which was simmering on the stove.

  Suddenly, her water broke. It gushed down her legs, wetting the floor and forming a puddle around her feet.

  She surprised herself with the calmness she demonstrated when she turned to her mother, who was taking something out of the refrigerator, and said, “Ma, would you go tell Harry my water just broke and the babies are on the way?”

  Jo screamed and ran out the back door to the yard.

  Danielle came running downstairs and straight to the kitchen when she’d heard her grandmother’s blood-curdling screams.

  When she got to the kitchen, her mother was standing wide-legged at the sink, holding on to it. Danielle ran to her.

  Cherisse forced a smile, although right after her water had broken, she’d been hit by a hell of a contraction that was twisting her up inside. “Sonia went to my old room to put Joy Renee down for her nap,” she said. “Would you get her for me, baby?”

  She didn’t have to because Sonia had also heard Miss Jo’s screams and had stood stock-still for a moment, afraid that the sound would awaken Joy Renee. When Joy Renee did not move an inch, she made sure the sides of the portable crib were secure, then she left the room, pulled the door closed behind her and hurried downstairs.

  She entered the kitchen now and quickly assessed the situation. To Danielle, she said, “Help me get her to the couch in the living room. She needs to lie down where her head can be raised and her feet lowered.”

  They were headed in that direction when Harry burst through the back door, followed by Ken and Miss Jo.

  “Has anybody called nine-one-one!” he yelled.

  No one had. Danielle took care of that and afterward went to her grandmother, who was looking quite pale, and made her sit down on a chair at the kitchen table. The action was in the living room and she didn’t think her grandmother needed to be in the thick of it.