Fall

by Katherine Rhodes

  He had calmed considerably from the moment I started talking. He stared at me, sniffling.

  “Can you tell me why you keep acting out?”

  He sniffled and wiped his nose on his sleeve, then looked utterly terrified that he had done something every seven year old boy did. The tears that followed were the most genuine I’d seen from him, and full of complete despair. “You locked me up.”

  “We didn’t lock you up—”

  “You locked me up!” It was a scream this time. “You took me out of the room I’d been locked in at Master’s, and locked me in another room! It doesn’t matter if they let me out during the day. It doesn’t matter! Master fed me, too. Master let me out, let me have free time. But everyone locks me in after dinner!”

  We screwed the pooch with this kid.

  “Oh, Ben.” I sighed. “I’m so sorry. I don’t think that any of us realized how much you wanted out. Why didn’t you tell the therapist.”

  “He smells like eggs.”

  Now, my hackles went up. “Eggs?”

  “Bad eggs. Rotten eggs. I don’t want to tell him anything. Not what I’m scared of and not what I like.”

  “Brimstone…” I whispered.

  Was there anywhere the After wasn’t intruding? Ellie, the twins…and now Ben? If Lily was right and we all had these memories locked, we were going to need them. I wanted to know what the hell was going on.

  “Ben, you’re going to come home with us. With the twins, Wren, Fischer, and Ellie. There’s no door on your room there—your sister insisted we take it off. You’ll never be locked in a room again. But you have to talk to us if you feel scared or uncomfortable. If anyone makes you feel that way, you need to tell us.”

  A few tears fell from his eyes, and I brushed them away.

  “I don’t know who is safe.” His voice was a torn, sad whisper.

  I pulled him in close and hugged him carefully. “That’s easy, Ben. Ellie. Me, Fischer, Wren, Bastian. Tabi, Tim.”

  He pushed me back a bit and studied me. “All them?”

  “All of them.” I nodded, confirming my answer. “We all want the very best for you, we all want you safe. Why on Earth do you think we rushed here when we had even the slightest hint that you were here?”

  “To lock me away. Doctor Devlin says there’s something wrong with me and that’s why you keep me locked up.”

  Devlin? Really? Couldn’t even be more original than that? “Something we’re trying to help you fix, kiddo. We want you out of there. If we bring you home, you have to promise that you’re going to talk to us. Not bottle this up. You’ll talk to Wren or Sebastian, or your new therapist.”

  “I don’t have to see Deviled Egg again?”

  The cops around us all snorted and tried to cover it up. I smirked. “No way, man. Maybe we’ll even send him a bar of soap and tell him to stop smelling like bad eggs.” As long as the bar had lye and holy water in it.

  “You promise you won’t lock me in.”

  “Not like that. If there is a locked door in our house, it is for your own safety. If you’re home with Ellie and the twins, outside doors are locked. If our bedroom doors are locked, you have to stay out. You can learn safety as we go along. And you may be sent to your room for being bad, but no locks. But you will not be locked in again.” I held up my pinky. “Pinky swear.”

  A moment went by and he held up his hand, then his pinky, and I wrapped mine around his and tugged on it.

  “Pinky swear,” Ben repeated.

  “Now, we might have to go back to the hospital to get all this sorted—” He was about wail, but I put my finger over his lips and stopped him. “Please let me finish. We might have to go back, but at no point will you be locked up or without one of the adults. Good deal?”

  His eyes cast down. “Sorry.”

  Tipping his chin, I caught his eyes. “No sorry needed. You’re worried right now, and it’s okay to be that way.”

  The little seven year old lip quivered and he threw his arms around me in the next instant. I wrapped my arms around him, and hugged him tight.

  “Daddy! Did you get Ben to calm down?” Tim yelled down the hall.

  I nodded and released the boy a little. “Hey. I think Tim, Tabi, and Masin brought something back for you.”

  Turning shyly to face them, Ben’s face lit up when he saw the hot cocoa in Tim’s other hand. He turned back to me and smiled. “They brought me hot cocoa?”

  I leaned in close. “They’re going to be your brother and sister, and they just want to be your friend.” Leaning back, I pointed him off. “Go ahead. I know you’re dying for the drink.”

  Happily, Ben trotted off to stand with Tim, Tabi, and Masin. I watched as he took the cup of cocoa and smiled at Masin’s mother and Ogilvy.

  She walked over to me and crossed her arms. “Good job. He’s so calm now.”

  “He’ll have another episode,” I answered. “I expect it when we get him back to St. Chris’. He’ll lose his shit when we’re in there. We just can’t leave him alone.”

  She shook her head. “Good call. I have to take Masin back as well. I wish I didn’t.”

  “What’s he in there for?”

  “Radiation treatment. He has a large benign tumor on his spine. It’s been shrinking, but I can only afford three treatments a week for him. They want five, and say that it will work faster, and that’s ideal since the overall treatment is slowing down his growth.”

  I put my hand on her shoulder. “Schedule the five. It’s all taken care of now.”

  “What?”

  I held my hand out. “Lincoln Foster.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “The billionaire investor?”

  “Am I worth a billion now?” I scratched my head. “Maybe. It comes and goes. I make sure it flows out to charities and worthy groups.”

  “You’re serious about the treatments?” She glanced back at her son. “His father and I have been…”

  “Very serious about it.” I grinned. “No more taking doubles, okay? He’ll have everything he needs.”

  She started crying, and covered her face with her hands.

  “What the hell have you done now, Linc?” Wren asked, walking over.

  “I paid her son’s medical bills?”

  “Oh, happy tears.” Wren grinned. “Good. Where’s Ben? We need to get him back to—”

  “No.” I cut her off. “We can take him back, but we’re going to take him tonight. This morning. Whatever. He’s not going to spend another minute in there without us.”

  “He’s not ready,” Wren said.

  “He is,” I said. “He was acting out because we kept him locked up.”

  “Oh,” Ellie said.

  “Shit,” Wren said.

  “Then we’ll just get that gotcha party together sooner,” Ellie said.

  I shrugged. “We screwed up with him. But we’ll fix it.”

  The cops had all walked away, heading back for their cruisers. The sergeant was all that was left, and he adjusted his glasses and flipped open the notebook. “You’ll take him back to St. Chris and get this all straightened out?”

  “Yes, sir. They need to see that we have him,” Wren said. “Then we’ll take him home.”

  “Excellent. I hope that—”

  Bastian gasped, “Paige?!”

  Paige

  “Ma’am, this is really quite a bad injury,” the nurse said for the ninth time. “Are you sure you fell?”

  I laughed, ignoring the pain in my ribs. “Since I was the one on the ground covered in blood, yes, I’m pretty sure I fell.” I wanted to reach for the cut, but I managed to stop myself. “How many stitches?”

  “Ten,” the nurse repeated. “And you should have that cold pack on your nose and cheek. It helps the bruising.”

  Carefully, I laid the ice back on the huge bruise I could feel blossoming. “It was just such a stupid thing to do, trying to go down the stairs with arms full of clothes. I wasn’t a hundred percent on the stairs. I did
n’t know I’d dropped a washcloth and the next thing you know...” I gestured at myself.

  One cut on my forehead, from the brick corner. A laceration that went across my nose and down my cheek from where I’d hit the edge of the stair. Two bruised ribs from where I had landed on the laundry basket wrong, and one twisted ankle that just needed some rest.

  When, I didn’t know. I had things booked all week and there was no way I could stay home with my feet up. That was just insane. I had to be at work and I had to keep helping these kids find places to stay. There were five more folders on my desk at the end of the day, and being here wasn’t putting me in a good mood.

  I hissed at the contact of something on my hair line.

  “Just some topical numbing cream,” the nurse said. “We’ll have this stitched up. I’m tempted to tell the doctor to keep you overnight for observation.”

  I gasped, “No! God, no! You can’t. I have too much to do in the morning.”

  She grunted, “Mrs. Domingues. How many hours of sleep have you had?”

  “Today? Or all week?”

  Inhaling sharply, she schooled herself. “All week, ma’am, if you can remember.”

  Thinking for a moment, I let her examine my head a bit more. I finally decided on a number. “Twenty. I think.”

  “Twenty hours? All week?”

  “Most of it on Sunday and Monday night,” I answered. “I really don’t need a lot of sleep to function. I’m pretty good at handling things and catching up later.”

  “Lost sleep is gone, Mrs. Domingues. You can’t make up sleep. That’s a falsehood. Your body will make you sleep longer to recover from your deprivation.” The nurse let out a sigh.

  An aide walked in, and she glanced at the computer, and then did a double take. I watched her as she walked over to the urine sample.

  “Nurse, did you check this already?”

  “Hmm. Ran the test…” the nurse answered, absently. “Mrs. Domingues said she has no cause for concern.”

  “It’s positive.”

  My heart stopped in my chest.

  “Is it?” The nurse stopped what she was doing and walked over to the station. “It is indeed positive.”

  I tried to breathe. “I just finished my period like two days ago!”

  “There are occasions when a woman can have her period throughout an entire pregnancy, but it’s rare,” the nurse said. She tapped something in to the computer and looked at the test. “Let’s get a blood test, and an ultrasound tech in here and see what’s going on. This could be a false positive.”

  Oh, God in Heaven, please let it be a false positive. Please. I couldn’t be pregnant. Not again. Where had I fucked it up this time? I’d been good with my birth control, I stocked every nook and cranny in the house with a spermicidal lube, and if I had time, I also used the diaphragm. I couldn’t, I just couldn’t be pregnant.

  Alain would make me terminate.

  Again.

  I sat in the bed, terrified as the nurse finished her cleanup of my stupid injuries, and yelled at me again for not getting enough sleep. She took one last vial of blood, a small one and walked away as the ultrasound tech and a new doctor walked in.

  “Mrs. Domingues,” she said, schooling her features. “I’m Doctor Guthbert, a gynecologist and obstetrician here. We’re going to do an ultrasound to see what’s going on. It’s possible there are a few other scenarios here, so let’s cut to the chase and have a look. It’s our most direct way of getting answers.”

  I nodded and the aide came back to have me sign a dozen consent papers. The tech and the doctor fired up their machine and before I knew it, there was warm KY in places I didn’t want to think about.

  The nurse and the doctor stood behind the screen of the device and the aide had my hand. “You okay, ma’am?”

  I shook my head. “I can’t be pregnant. I just can’t be. I took precautions. More than were necessary. God, I just…”

  She sighed and nodded. “Don’t want kids?”

  “Desperately want children, but my husband says no.”

  Looking me up and down once, she paused. “Does he know you might be?”

  “No! I didn’t even know I might be!”

  “No hints that you might be? At all?”

  I stopped. The vomit the other day. It had come out of nowhere, and I’d felt dizzy. There were a few evenings where it had taken everything I had not to puke up dinner. “Shit.”

  “Mmm,” the aide said, ambiguously.

  The doctor and the nurse ‘hmm’ed’ and ‘mmm’ed’ at things on the screen, with the occasional “click there” and “capture that” while pressing on my cervix and making me see stars. Had no one invented a numbing gel?

  “Well, Mrs. Domingues, it appears that you are pregnant,” Doctor Guthbert finally said. I wanted to break down in tears. “Approximately twelve weeks from the measurements.”

  “What?” I gasped. “That’s three months! I’ve been getting my period!”

  The doctor turned the screen before I could tell her no.

  There, on the screen in black and white and shades of gray, was a small bean shaped baby, two little arms, two little legs and big fat head. And I could see the little flutters of the heart in the center of the chest.

  Christ almighty, I was pregnant. And not just a little pregnant. Full on, twelve weeks of it.

  Alain would make me terminate.

  But there, on the screen was the only thing I’d ever wanted in my entire life. A child. One I could love and raise and teach and never, ever, ever abandon to the system that churned out fucked up head cases like me. The system that I fought every day to help kids like me survive and thrive into adulthood.

  The nurse swished around to the other side of me, and turned the screen so I couldn’t see the baby anymore. “Paige. I have to ask you this. Did your husband throw you down the stairs?”

  I shook my head, hard. “No. He didn’t throw me. I tripped. I tripped on the laundry I dropped.”

  I felt Alain’s foot tug on my ankle before the world spun around me—

  “Are you sure that’s the story you want to go with?”

  “Alain loves me,” I said, my voice quiet. “I tripped on the laundry and fell.”

  The nurse nodded and looked up at the doctor and the aide. The aide shook her head, then let out a breath. The doctor spoke next.

  “All right, Mrs. Domingues.” Her eyes were fixed on the screen. “I’ll set up an appointment for you at my office and you’ll come in and discuss this with me.” She clicked a few more buttons and then came around to me on the side of the bed. “I do not want you to bring your husband. Bring a girlfriend, a sister, someone to support you, but I do not want you to bring him. I know that’s asking a lot, but please…”

  I nodded. If I had to terminate, I wouldn’t even bother telling Alain again. I didn’t want to have him angry at me that I had fucked up the birth control.

  “Good. Go ahead and get dressed. The nurse will be back with all your discharge papers in a few minutes, and we can release you. Do you need a ride home?”

  “I drove…”

  I went into autopilot. I got dressed and waited listlessly on the bed for the nurse to come back. She had me sign a few papers, and handed me a massive manila envelope. She helped me into the coat and into the wheelchair.

  Even as she wheeled me through the building, I didn’t feel the motion. I felt numb.

  Every other time I’d found I was pregnant, it had been a line on a piece of paper that told me. There wasn’t a connection to what I wanted—I was heartbroken for each of the five terminated pregnancies I had. I’d begged Alain on number three to let me carry to term. He’d put forth his ultimatum: If I had a baby, I lost a husband. He didn’t ever want children.

  This time, though…I didn’t know how I was going to be able to end this. There was a little life I desperately wanted growing inside of me. For all the indications, it—she was healthy.

  She.

  I kn
ew it was a girl.

  A little girl.

  The elevator jerked to a stop and spewed me and the nurse into the main entrance were there was an odd collection of people standing around at two in the morning.

  “Paige?!”

  That voice—I looked up and found Sebastian Mederos staring at me.

  “Holy shit, Paige.” Fischer stepped out from behind him, and was quickly followed by Ellie, Wren, and Lincoln.

  Oh, God. They were all here.

  Fischer walked forward and knelt down in front of me, brushing the hair out of my face. “Holy fuck sticks, Paige. What is this?”

  “I…I fell,” I managed. The thin, vapid laugh I gave sounded fake to even me. “I slipped on a sock and tumbled down the stairs, if you can believe.”

  Fischer slipped the envelope out of my hands before I could tighten my grip. He passed it to Sebastian and started examining what was going on on my face.

  “Nurse?” He was quiet, and she walked around. “Can you give me a run down? I’m Doctor Fischer Skillman. I’m an associate doctor…”

  “Of course, I know your name,” she said. “How do you know Mrs. Domingues?”

  “She’s a friend,” Wren said.

  “Is it all right if I tell him, ma’am?”

  I wanted to scream no! Don’t tell them anything. Make them all go away until I can sleep for ten hours, shower, make up the lies I needed and start to figure out my baby—

  Lies.

  Make up the lies I needed.

  My heart gave up.

  “It’s fine.”

  “She fell down the stairs,” the nurse answered, and went into details about what I had done, what I had hurt, cracked, twisted, and split open.

  She didn’t mention the baby.

  I almost wished she had.

  Fischer was kneeling in front of me again. “Paige. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen you beaten to shit like this. You’re not this clumsy, both Wren and I know you. You’re quite the opposite of clumsy. What’s going on?”

  “I slipped,” I said, my voice dead.