Maggie's Baby

by Colleen French

  Zack looked at Jarrett as if he’d grown another head. “Are you crazy? She’d kill me if she caught me.” He winked. “So I just have to be careful I don’t get caught, eh?”

  Jarrett watched Zack saunter off, weaving and bobbing in his drunkenness. Maybe Jarrett would just wait a while till the beers wore off and head for home. These guys wouldn’t even notice he was gone, as drunk as they were.

  “How about a shot of tequila?”

  Jarrett looked up from his beer to see a girl throw her leg up on the bumper of the truck. She was a thin girl with bleached white hair cut short and spiky. She had a pretty smile, but her eye makeup was so heavy she looked like a prizefighter. Jarrett preferred the way Maggie did her face; he could barely tell she wore makeup at all.

  The girl waved a bottle at him. “You up for it, big guy?”

  It was hard not to stare; she wasn't wearing a bra under her tank top. “I don’t know. I’m not really into tequila.”

  “Ah, come on. Just one? Got a saltshaker and a lime.” She held up her hand. “Just a little taste?”

  Jarrett exhaled. He’d had just enough beer so as to not to be thinking clearly. “Why not?” he heard himself say.

  “Atta boy.”

  The blond poured him a shot into a plastic cup, and he drank it in one swallow. He couldn’t help grimacing as it went down. It tasted like paint thinner smelled.

  She laughed, rubbing his arm with her breast as she reached for the cup. “The next one goes down better, I promise.”

  She poured herself a shot, salting the lime and then licking it before she downed the drink. “Wow.” She smacked her red lips. “Good.” She grinned, wiggling her butt down beside him on the tailgate. “Another?”

  He was already feeling the effects of the straight alcohol. His head was buzzing. “Maybe in a minute.”

  She kept touching him. First she just touched his bare arm. Then she rested her hand on his thigh. Jarrett knew he ought to leave before he got into trouble. He kept thinking he’d stay just another minute and then join the other guys.

  They shared another shot, and after she swallowed hers, she surprised him by pressing her tequila-wet lips to his. “How about a little something else?”

  She whispered in his ear and Jarrett knew he must have blushed. Thank God it was dark out. He’d have been embarrassed otherwise. Now he didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t think clearly. She tasted different than Maggie. Her kiss was harder. She smelled different, too. Her perfume was heavy, musky.

  “That’s quite the invitation.” He tried to sound cool. Right now he was just hoping he wasn’t going to fall off the bumper. “Especially coming from someone whose name I don’t even know.”

  She got up off the bumper and straddled his knees, climbing onto his lap. Jarrett didn’t know what to do.

  He’d never had a girl come on to him like this before. He kind of liked it.

  “Lisa,” she purred.

  She was right in his face, running her hands down his legs.

  “Oh, Lisa. Lisa what?”

  She lifted her shoulder and stared him straight in the eye. Her breath smelled of cigarette smoke and tequila. “Doesn't matter. All I want to know, big guy, is if you’re ready for a good time?”

  Chapter 5

  The Present

  Maggie stumbled to the bathroom, flipped on the light, and used the toilet. She wasn’t due at the hospital until seven a.m., but she liked to get in early, have a cup of coffee, and get her head straight before her day began. She’d been offered a leave of absence for bereavement, but she’d refused.

  She needed to work right now. She needed to order X-rays, to suture, to call for consults, to follow as normal a routine as possible. She needed to keep from thinking about babies and coffins, about her little Jordan and the incomprehensible thought that she would never hold him in her arms again, would never smell his cookie breath or feel his duck-down hair against her chin.

  Maggie groaned and leaned against the sink, staring into the oval, antique mirror. She looked like Frankenstein’s Bride. Her hair stuck out in spikes, her skin was pale and splotchy, and her eyes were red and puffy from all the crying last night.

  “Perfect,” she murmured, reaching for her contact case. “I’ll be scaring off my patients with this mug.”

  After putting her contacts in, so she could find the kitchen, she shrugged into a terry robe hanging on the back of the bathroom door and went down the hall. The coffeepot was already making chugging, spewing sounds as it spit out her morning dose of caffeine.

  She poured a cup and went to the adjacent living room, drew open the curtains, and curled up on the leather couch she’d bought just for that spot. Here in her second-story living room, she could peer over the dunes and watch the sun come up. It was her own piece of heaven on earth—or so she had thought until two weeks ago.

  Maggie drew her bare feet under her and sipped her black coffee. She swallowed the bitter brew, though she didn’t even like coffee. She’d started drinking it when she married Stanley. He thought it silly to make both tea and coffee every morning, so he’d tossed out her old teakettle from her undergrad days. He’d bought a fancy new appliance that could be programmed to make coffee in the morning, tell the time, and maybe even set the DVR, she didn’t know.

  She took another sip of the coffee, irritated. “You shouldn’t have thrown out my kettle,” she said aloud. “You knew I liked it, even if it was yard sale and had a broken handle.”

  The moment the words came out of her mouth she was ashamed. Stanley was dead. How could she be angry over a teakettle?

  But she was angry. She was angry with Stanley for all the ways he had managed her life. She was angry with herself for letting him. She was angry with him for leaving her. Most of all, she was angry with God for taking Stanley and her baby away and leaving her with nothing.

  She went back into the kitchen, dumped the coffee into the sink, and chose a small saucepan from the rack over the island. She filled it with water and put it on the stove to heat. She took teabags from the cabinet.

  “I like tea,” she said aloud, glad she’d built the more costly single-family dwelling and not the town house Stanley had suggested was a better investment. This way no one could hear her ranting as she slowly went stark raving mad so early in the morning.

  “Don’t like coffee. Don’t like it, Stanley. I told you that, told you a hundred times. I don’t like ketchup on my hot dogs, either.”

  She slammed the tea box on the counter. Somehow, slamming things—hearing the sound, feeling the resistance—made her feel better.

  “If you’d just listened to me once in a while, if I’d made you listen,” she said, tapping her bare foot as she waited for the water to boil.

  If . . . then what? What was she saying? She wasn’t making any sense. She really was going crazy.

  She fought the hot tears welling in her eyes. She couldn’t keep crying like this. She couldn’t cry for the rest of her life.

  She reached for a clean mug in the cabinet and her fingers brushed a Sippy cup with a lid on it. Jordan’s.

  She smiled and swallowed the lump in her throat. “Oh, Jordy,” she whispered.

  She popped the lid off, added a teabag and hot water. The plastic cup was hot on her fingers, but she didn’t care. It was Jordan’s. His hands had once held this cup; his little mouth had touched the rim of it. Feeling a strange sense of comfort in the thought, she returned to the couch. The sky was just beginning to brighten with the light of dawn.

  Another day.

  And now what? What did she have to get up for now? What reason did she have to ever want to see the sun rise again?

  Jordan was gone.

  Good old Stanley was gone.

  But still the sun rose.

  The thought of the other baby popped into her head out of nowhere. She hardly ever thought of that baby—her daughter, the baby girl she’d given birth to when other girls her age were midway though the their freshman year
of college.

  Maggie closed her eyes and tried to remember the baby. But all she could see was Jordan, all pink and wrinkled, with Stanley's forehead. She hadn’t actually seen more than a glimpse of the first baby. She’d been drugged for the birth. It had all been a haze of blurred sights and strange sounds, as if it hadn’t happened to her, but to someone else. Yet it was true. It was all true. At the age of eighteen, she had given birth to a daughter. Jarrett’s daughter.

  Maggie closed her eyes, cradling the blue kid's cup as memories flooded her. She never had a chance to tell Jarrett. The cheating jerk had confessed he’d had sex with Lisa, and Maggie had broken up with him. He’d gone off to Spain. A few weeks later, she had realized she was pregnant—the typical story of young love gone wrong. She’d forgiven Lisa years ago. It was too much work to hold onto the grudge. But she hadn’t forgiven Jarrett. She’d held onto that betrayal stubbornly. It was his fault she’d lost her baby.

  Maggie's cell rang and she picked it up. She didn’t wonder who was calling her at dawn. She knew.

  “Kyle.” She sipped tea from her Sippy cup.

  “Maggie.”

  “How’d you know I wasn’t asleep? You could have wakened me.”

  “I know better.” His sleepy voice was comforting. “I was just calling to say good morning before you slipped off to work.”

  “Liar. You were calling to see if I’d OD’d or something.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yup.” She finished her tea and left the cup on the antique farm table behind the couch, then padded barefoot to her bedroom to find clothes. “Ibuprofen. 600 milligrams. Cramps.”

  “The joy of womanhood,” he teased.

  She gave a little laugh that came out thick. There would be no more joy of womanhood out of her womb. It was thick with non-life-sustaining tissue. Dead, like her babies.

  When she didn’t comment, he picked up the conversation for her. “What are you doing?”

  “Finding clothes. Going to take a shower and head off.”

  “What to wear,” he sighed. “The white slacks and lab coat or the white slacks and lab coat?”

  She pulled a pair of white cotton uniform pants out of the closet and yanked off the plastic dry cleaner’s bag. Remnants of Stanley. “I was thinking I’d go with the white slacks and white lab coat.”

  “Tonal. I like tonal.”

  Their conversation was utterly frivolous, and yet it was Kyle’s superficial conversation that had been keeping her from shattering these last two weeks. He knew how fragile she was right now and how to handle her.

  “How about lunch today?”

  She went to the bathroom and turned on both showerheads. “Right, me with time for lunch. By midmorning, our vacationers will have woken from their drunken slumber. They’ll be out cutting their bare feet on glass, frying their skin on the beach, and throwing their backs out on boogie boards. I don’t think so.”

  “A girl’s got to eat,” he chastised.

  She dropped her robe, her panties, and her T-shirt on the bathroom floor. “Cafeteria food suit you?”

  “I’ll pick something up,” he said dryly. “One?”

  “Ish.”

  “Cíao.”

  She smiled, thankful for his friendship. “Adìos.”

  She left her phone on the sink, and stepped into the shower. The steamy water beat rhythmically against her bare back and she mentally switched gears. She’d think about work now, about the hospital and her patients. She’d table her tragedy, neatly placing it in a separate compartment in her mind. She’d table the past and the thoughts of the baby she’d never held in her arms. It was the only way she could deal with her son and husband’s deaths right now. It was the only way she could go on.

  ~~~

  At one-forty, Maggie folded a piece of romaine lettuce into her whole-wheat roll and took a bite of the veggie and cheese sandwich Kyle brought her from the deli near his store. “Did I ever tell you I had a baby before Jordan?”

  He choked on his tuna salad. “B-baby?” He wiped his mouth with a napkin.

  They were eating in the physicians’ lounge, empty except for them. Most of Maggie’s colleagues were still steering clear of her. When people didn’t know what to say, she found they preferred to say nothing at all. In fact, they preferred to pretend victims of tragedies such as hers didn’t exist at all, as if she had died, too.

  “No,” Kyle said when he found his voice. “No, I don’t recall your saying you’d had another baby, Maggie dear. Must have slipped your mind.”

  She put down the sandwich. She wasn't very hungry. “I didn’t tell you because, honestly, I never thought much about it. It was one of the things in the past that I just kind of chose to forget.”

  He reached for his diet soda. “I take it you want to tell me now?”

  Without preface, she gave him a brief account of the whole sordid affair with emotion that frightened her. She hadn’t realized how raw the wound was until now—now that Jordan was dead.

  She ended the story and sat staring at her sandwich.

  Kyle spoke without a tone of judgment in his voice. “So where is she?”

  She watched him move his hand as if he wanted to take hers, then pull it back. He knew if he touched her she might fall from the cliff’s edge she teetered on.

  “I don’t know,” she said simply.

  The door to the lounge opened and one of the other ER physicians walked in and stopped short at the sight of Maggie. For a second she thought he might turn around and hightail it out. Instead he nodded, grunted a greeting, and made a beeline for the coffeepot. He was out in under a minute.

  Kyle waited until the door closed behind him. “Do you want to know where she is?”

  She opened her hands, staring at the sandwich in front of her. “In the past, I always thought I didn’t. She’s adopted, has a mother and a father who love her. Brothers and sisters. But now . . . I think I'd like to know if she’s all right.”

  He studied her face. “You just want to know if she's all right? This isn’t some crazy grief-induced idea of finding your long-lost daughter and suing for custody, ripping her out of the only home she’s ever known, from the arms of the only parents she’s ever known?”

  Maggie rose from her wobbly chair, crushing the half-eaten sandwich in her napkin. “You’re brutal.”

  “Truthful.”

  She walked toward the garbage can. “I just want to know where she is. I don’t even know that I would try and contact her ...family.” She glanced at him. “I just want to know.”

  Having apparently lost his appetite, too, Kyle neatly rolled his sandwich in its paper and placed it in the brown bag to eat later. He rose from the chair, looking completely out of place in his Calvin Klein suit in the shabby lounge. “You could be opening a bag of worms here, Maggie love. You might think this could be cathartic, but it could be devastating.”

  She eyed him. “I’m a strong woman.”

  “I know you are. But even the strongest can only take so much. You find her, if you find her, and it could be like losing her all over again.”

  When he said those words, she realized her mind was already made up. “I’ve needed to do this for a long time.” She folded her arms around her waist. “Put the whole thing with Jarrett to rest. I should have done it before I married Stanley.”

  He nodded, and she was thankful he understood. Having voiced her desire to know about her daughter, she realized she was afraid her teenage affair with Jarrett McKay and the illegitimate baby that union had produced had come between her and Stanley. She knew by Kyle’s expression he understood she felt guilty about it. He understood her need to forgive herself.

  “I suppose doing a little research would give you something to do,” he said. “Something else to think about.”

  She leaned against the counter. “Beats sedation.”

  He walked over to her and kissed her on the cheek. “Go for it, toots.”

  She lifted her gaze to meet his with
a new sense of hope. Hope for what, she didn’t know, but it was buoying just the same. “Thanks.”

  “Let me know what you find out. I’ve got a lawyer friend who might be able to help you if need be.”

  “Friend?” She lifted an eyebrow.

  He shrugged. “Hoping for more, but just a friend right now.”

  “Thanks for the lunch,” Maggie called as Kyle stepped into the hall.

  “Sure. Next time maybe you’ll eat it.”

  She was almost smiling when the door closed behind him.

  Chapter 6

  “I certainly understand that, Mrs. Baker.” Maggie tapped her pen on her desk, trying unsuccessfully not to sound terse. After all, the woman was just doing her job. “I’m not interested in invading anyone’s privacy. I’m simply trying to—”

  The hospital administrator in Tucson interrupted her again. This time Maggie heard the woman’s voice, but she didn’t really absorb what she was saying. The answer was clear. It didn’t matter that Maggie had been the one who gave birth to the baby. Maggie had given the baby up for adoption. According to Mrs. Baker, Maggie had signed the adoption release. She no longer had any rights.

  Before Mrs. Baker could offer her apology for being unable to give her any further assistance, Maggie cut the conversation short. “Thank you for your help,” she said. “Have a good day.” She punched the off button on the cordless phone and dropped it on the eighteenth-century French writing desk.

  Another dead end.

  For two weeks, Maggie had been trying to get information about the baby she gave birth to fifteen years earlier on the seventeenth of November. So far, she’d hit nothing but obstacles and hadn’t obtained one smidgen of information. Each hospital administrator she spoke to, each court representative, even the secretaries of private adoption agencies in the area, were quite sympathetic. They were also closemouthed, refusing to give Maggie any information.

  Mrs. Baker, the administrator of the hospital since 1998, wouldn’t even acknowledge Maggie had been a patient on the maternity ward or that private adoptions took place inside the walls of her domain. That information was confidential, protected by various privacy acts—as Mrs. Baker had repeated numerous times.