[The Forever 01.0] Forever Innocent

by Deanna Roy

  “I hadn’t been around stirrups in a while. Might be a bit of post-traumatic stress involved.”

  “Makes sense. But you know what happened to the baby was not your fault.”

  I couldn’t meet his gaze. He had no idea.

  “It’s natural to think something you did caused a problem in the baby. But I assure you, it didn’t.”

  Something cracked in me. If I couldn’t tell Gavin, if I had crossed the line in the sand with him, I could still tell his man. Maybe saying the words out loud, dispersing them into the air, would release the poison.

  “I smoked pot when I was pregnant.”

  He nodded again, no different from the gesture he’d made all along. “The whole pregnancy?”

  “No, just before I found out.”

  “How far along were you when you stopped?”

  “Seven weeks. I didn’t know until then, not until I had real symptoms, since I hardly ever bled anyway.”

  “Smoking anything — pot or legal cigarettes — can harm the baby’s lungs, but doing it that early isn’t going to cause a heart defect. What did he have? Do you remember?”

  “Hypoplastic left heart syndrome.”

  “I’ve never done a neonatal rotation, but I do know that heart problems are usually genetic. Did you talk to the hospital doctors about this at the time?”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t tell anyone. I’ve never told anyone.”

  “All these years?”

  “No.” My voice had lost its force, so it came out as barely a whisper.

  I teetered, the room swirling, and the doctor steadied me by my shoulder. “Slow down, Corabelle. Take a deep breath in through your nose, and exhale it through your mouth.”

  I realized I was breathing fast. I brought it down, forcing myself to be calm.

  He let me go, waited to see if I was steady, and said, “We have a speaker who comes to campus every year who talks about suicide.”

  “I’ve never been suicidal,” I choked out.

  “But it’s her story. She lost a baby when she was seventeen. He was born and lived a few hours.” He snapped his fingers. “I think she was here last night. I wonder if she’s still in San Diego.” He stood up. “I’m going to ask the nurses. I think you could benefit from meeting her.”

  I didn’t want to talk to some stranger about our dead babies, but I nodded.

  “I’ll see what I can find out.” He stood up. “Are you doing okay in school? Is this anxiety affecting your work? I can refer you to the mental health clinic. In fact, I’ll write it up. You can decide if you want to use it.”

  “But I’m doing fine.” A lie, and we both knew it.

  “You are. You really are. I’ll send Missy back in. We’ll have the lab results back in a couple days, but I think you’re fine.”

  He strode out, but I didn’t move for a while, trying to pull myself together. When the nurse returned, I still wasn’t dressed.

  “So I found Tina,” she said. “She’s heading to the airport tonight. We were thinking —” she held on to my arm like she did before —“that maybe you could drive her out there. Give you a chance to talk. Do you have a car? Could you do that?”

  My brain screamed no, but Missy looked at me with so much earnest concern that I couldn’t say it.

  “Okay.” I didn’t think I’d talk about anything important, but I could take her. Sure. Why not? If she once was suicidal, maybe there was someone out there who had a story worse than mine.

  Chapter 40: Corabelle

  Tina wasn’t anything like I expected. She waited in the lobby of the hotel, flipping through a magazine full of glossy images of nature photographs. Missy had told me I’d know her by her tiny pigtails, coming off either side of her head like a little girl’s.

  She wore a short denim skirt, frayed at the bottom, and a crazy set of over-the-knee stockings with blue and black stripes. A couple mismatched suitcases sat by her legs. Her face was pixieish, and she lounged with her feet on a coffee table like she owned the place. By looking at her, you wouldn’t think for a minute that anything ever got to her, but as I approached, the red jagged scars up her wrists peeked out from her sweater sleeves, which were pushed up due to the oven-roasting heat that blasted across the lobby.

  I came up behind her. “Tina?”

  She looked up, her gray eyes merry, but still, I could see the sadness in the corners, lines around the edges from harder days. “You must be my ride.”

  “I am. I’m Corabelle.” I stood awkwardly behind the sofa as she gathered up her suitcases. “I can carry one of those.”

  “I’m good,” she said. “I travel light.”

  We exited to the parking lot. “It’s still blistering hot in Texas,” she said. “I’m almost sad to be wrapping up this tour and going back.”

  “You in college there?”

  “I’m done, actually, but I haven’t found a job yet, so I kept my speaking tour going while I figure things out.”

  So this girl was older than me? I opened the trunk of my car for her bags, studying her. Her petite frame didn’t seem sturdy enough to hoist even her smallish suitcase, but like most of us with baggage under our belt, she was tougher than she looked. “When did you graduate?” I asked.

  “Just last spring.” She walked around to the side door. “Finished out my internship at an art gallery over the summer, but nothing permanent has turned up.”

  We got inside the car. “What sort of art do you do?”

  “Digital photographic manipulation. I was a black-and-white snob for the longest time, but I had to change my attitude if I wanted to get a job. I have worked for some photographers, but removing zits wasn’t my thing for the long haul.”

  We headed out of the parking lot. “What is your thing?”

  “Well, on the art side, I create fantastical images, mainly of night-sky scenes with mythical creatures, like Pegasus. Sometimes angels, if I’m feeling sentimental.”

  I gripped the steering wheel a little tighter, wondering if the doctor’s office had told her to bring up the subject of our shared history.

  “I could stick my work all over the web and sell a print here and there, but I was getting nowhere.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  Tina settled back in her seat. “I’d love to find a sugar daddy so I could live in a mansion with a huge room full of windows and every art supply in the world, with a high-end New York gallery waiting breathlessly for my newest work.”

  I laughed. “I think there are dating sites to help with that.”

  “Don’t think I haven’t looked. Those millionaire types want eye candy, and these puppies take up negative space.” She pointed at her chest. “Besides, I only had money for tuition or silicone. Couldn’t have both.”

  We pulled onto the freeway and immediately got waylaid by Friday afternoon traffic. “When’s your flight?” I asked.

  “Not for two hours. We’ll be fine. The airport’s not far, right?”

  “No, right on the water. If the freeway stays too jacked up, I’ll take side streets.”

  “You must love living by the ocean,” Tina said.

  I swallowed hard, remembering the images Gavin and I used to draw of our school by the sea. “Growing up in New Mexico, I can definitely appreciate it.”

  “When did you move to California?”

  “Just last year. I had to wait to be eligible for in-state tuition benefits, then I started up again.”

  “Ah, so this is your second college.”

  “Yes, I did three years at New Mexico State.”

  She turned to me, her pigtail smashing into the headrest. “That’s unusual, leaving with only a year to go.”

  I shrugged. “School with a view.”

  We sat in silence, the knot of traffic easing forward only a few yards at a time.

  “I could live here,” Tina said. “This is my third time to come to UC San Diego. It’s a cool campus.”

  “I’ve liked it.”

 
“What do you study?”

  “Literature.”

  Tina shuddered. “I’m not much for reading dead white guys.”

  I laughed. “It gets more diversified after high school.”

  “It was all so dramatic. Heathcliff. Romeo. Gatsby. Fools for love, the whole lot of them.”

  “You’re not dating anyone then?”

  “Ha!” Tina said in disgust. “My high school boyfriend ditched me in the hospital when I was in labor. By the time it was all over, premature birth, baby dying, hospital stay, go home, he’d moved out!”

  My knuckles were white with my death grip on the leather wheel. “I imagine that would put you off men.”

  “Not right away, actually. I tried my damnedest to find a man to knock me up again.”

  I whipped my head around to look at her. “Really?”

  “Hell yeah. I got kicked out of the pregnant-teen school and sent back to a horrid public one. Misery. They called me baby killer. When they weren’t calling me a slut.”

  “Wow. I didn’t have it nearly that bad.”

  “I kinda draw the foul,” she said. “I was always pretty out there.”

  “Everyone was really nice to us. We got an apartment and everyone furnished it for us. Our whole town seemed to chip in.”

  She hesitated and I realized I had brought up my own pregnancy.

  “Big town, small town,” Tina said. “Houston wasn’t kind.”

  The cars inched forward, and it looked like we might loosen up, but then the brake lights all lit up again. I leaned back in the seat. “I’ll bail at the next exit.”

  “So what was your baby’s name?” Tina asked.

  “Finn.”

  “We called mine Peanut.” She flipped her purse around and showed me a picture on a key chain tied to the strap. “I guess I never gave him a proper name. He was always just Peanut.”

  “They do sort of look like that in those early sonograms.”

  “Exactly. He lived for three hours.”

  My stomach turned. “Finn lived for seven days.”

  “Seven days. I can’t imagine. They didn’t try to save Peanut. He was too early. We just waited for his heart to stop.”

  My eyes burned. I was sitting right next to someone who had been through exactly what I’d been through. “We did too. We had to shut off the ventilators. He had a heart defect, and they wouldn’t fix it.”

  “Hell of a thing, isn’t it?” Tina said. “You think modern medicine knows everything but then these babies come, and they can’t save them.”

  “I agree there.” I pictured the doctors in the conference room, telling me they wouldn’t operate. I’d never forget that scene, seared into my memory like a scar.

  “Is that why you left school?” she asked. “The baby?”

  “No. That was three years later.”

  “But it’s related, isn’t it? I find that everything goes back to the baby. Do you?”

  I had to swallow hard to reply. “Yes, it was related. I — I punched my professor.”

  Tina’s eyebrows shot up. “You did what?”

  “I hit her.”

  “Oh my God. Why?”

  “She was pregnant.”

  “Jesus!”

  The explanation tumbled out. “She was smoking pot behind the building. I didn’t even mean to really hit her. I was trying to knock the stupid joint out of her mouth.” I was glad traffic had stopped because I didn’t think I could navigate anymore. My vision was gray, and my head pounded with my hammering heart, thundering like a stampede.

  “I assume you got arrested and expelled.”

  “They suggested I leave, but they didn’t put it in my permanent record, at least not the parts I’ve seen. I had to do community service. I had to apologize.”

  “Shit, Corabelle. Why did her smoking get to you so bad? I mean, stupid women do it all the time.”

  I pictured the line in the sand and the waves crashing at my feet. I didn’t answer.

  “Sorry, too personal. I get it,” Tina said.

  “No, no. I mean, yeah. I just…” I stopped.

  “So I’m guessing you feel some sort of guilt. That’s natural. But you know, women smoke crack and their babies don’t die.”

  “I smoked pot.”

  “I’m sure you’re not the only pregnant woman to do it. Obviously your professor did.”

  “Finn had a heart defect.”

  “Did anyone say it was caused by the pot?”

  “No.”

  “Then let it go. All the way. Otherwise you’ll end up with some beauty marks like these.” She held up her wrists.

  I’d do anything to shift the conversation away from me. “So what happened there?”

  “Oh, hell, I don’t know. I mean, I do this circuit, and I say a lot of things about life getting better, and feeling suicidal isn’t a failure, just a condition, one to treat and fight, not to fall prey to.” She tugged her sweater sleeves over her arms. “But honestly, I did it just because I felt like I should be scarred. This big thing had happened. My baby had died, and my boyfriend had ditched me. Those things should leave a mark.”

  “So you made the mark yourself.”

  “Yes. I didn’t realize at the time that these marks weren’t the ones to worry about. It’s the one in here.” She drew an “x” over her heart. “I sabotage my own happiness a lot. It’s obvious from looking at me. It’s why my talks work. I swear half the people leave thinking, ‘Hell, I’m not half as fucked up as her.’ Whatever works.”

  “So you don’t date?”

  She shook her head. “Nope. I’ll screw anything with a functioning dick. But they are out the door before the clock strikes one.”

  “I haven’t dated either, not since Gavin left me.” I paused. “Except, he’s here. In San Diego. We ran into each other.”

  “Did you know he was here?”

  “No. He walked out of the funeral and I never saw him again.”

  “Holy shit. I thought ditching me in the hospital was bad.”

  “That’s pretty bad.”

  She laughed. “We sure can pick them, can’t we? So have you talked to him?”

  “He’s hell-bent on us getting back together.”

  Tina frowned. “You going to do it?”

  “I was. I have been. But then, God. He’s different. I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”

  “Did he blame you? Back then, I mean. Is that why he left?”

  “He didn’t know I smoked pot.”

  Her eyes grew wide, taking up so much of her doll-like face that she looked like one of those caricatures that artists draw of people at theme parks. “Does he now?”

  I shook my head. “I can’t tell him now.”

  “But how can you be with him if you don’t? It’s screwing you up, plain as day. Can you carry that secret to your grave? Should you?”

  The exit was coming up and I started fighting my way over. Anger started to build. Who did she think she was, lecturing me about this? “We’re nearly there,” I said. “You should make the flight if security isn’t long.”

  Tina reached over to touch my arm. “I’m sorry, Corabelle. I don’t mean to upset you. I’ve been in all the bad places. I remember when the blood started coming out of my arms, thinking, ‘Yes, this is the right thing. I can be with my baby and no one can take him away again.’ I’m not sure we ever fully recover from thinking that way. It’s like we always have a last resort that’s way way beyond what other people consider.”

  We pulled up to a red light. The signs for the airport loomed ahead. “Gavin drew a line in the sand and said we should just step over it, and let the past be the past.”

  “I think that’s a good philosophy, if you can do it. I have the bad habit of dredging up the muck, over and over again, ad infinitum.” She tugged on her stockings where they were curling at her knees. “I should stop wearing these now that I’m a proper grown-up.”

  “They’re cute on you.”

  “I wore them
when I was pregnant. They’re like a basketball player’s lucky socks. Sometimes I think a bit of Peanut is in them, since I sweated like a pig when he was cooking.”

  The light turned green. “We’re here. I’ll just pull up wherever I can find curb space. It’s pretty crazy here.”

  “That’s good. Thank you, Corabelle. I know you were probably coerced into doing this for your own good. I hope I didn’t piss you off forever.”

  I shook my head. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I have to own up to the past after all.”

  “Each of us has to find our own way. I’m hoping to figure it out before I kick the bucket for real.”

  I had to focus for a while, dodging taxis and cars pulling out. A red truck left a gap near one of the terminals and I whipped into it.

  We ducked out of the car and into the mayhem of honking cars and a stern security man blowing his whistle and smacking his hands on car hoods, making them move along. “No waiting!” he shouted. “Circle back around.”

  I popped the trunk so Tina could grab her bags. “Thanks again. Good luck,” she said and passed me a business card. “Feel free to look me up if you need something. Not like I’m doing anything anyway.”

  The security guy started eyeing us, so she entered the fray heading into the terminal. I jumped back into my car and fought my way out of the curb lane.

  Only after I’d gotten away from the melee and into the calm of the cars leaving the airport at a leisurely pace did I realize what had just happened. Tina had undone all of Gavin’s work to make me let go of the past. If I wanted to keep him, I had to tell him what I had done.

  Chapter 41: Gavin

  A lone couple walked along the ocean’s edge, kicking into the spray, sending water droplets flying. I banged my shoes together, knocking out the sand, wondering where Corabelle and Jenny might be. Jenny had texted me over an hour ago, simply saying, “Meet us at the end of the path between campus and the shore.”

  Pretty much everyone who went to UCSD knew how to access the path that cut through a swanky neighborhood and led out to the sea. Usually it was pretty busy here, being the easiest access for students living in the dorms, but the day had dawned chilly, and the winds had been howling all day. Not beach weather by any stretch.