Giftchild (27 page)

"You're not old enough," I said.

Rodney rolled his eyes, his tone dry. "That's what she said. And I said the evidence states otherwise."

I wouldn't have thought it possible, but that actually made me blush. This time, I tried to sound like I meant it. "No, really, though. You should go."

"Because of your mom?" he asked. He studied the monitor, like he was trying to decipher it. "Athena said it's bad." Rodney took a step closer to the monitor. "Is that the heartbeat?" he asked.

I pointed to the blue line. "The fast one," I said. "The slow one is mine."

Rodney's mouth hardened into a thin line. "They have you on a heart monitor." He looked at me, appraising the situation, and I could tell by the hollowness of his eyes that he was coming to the right conclusions.

"I'm—" I said. "It's not that—"

He tensed and looked down at me, waiting for the lie.

I shut my mouth. If I told him the truth, he'd worry. If I didn't, he'd know, and then I'd be hurting him by not being honest with him, again.

A scream balled up in my throat and lodged there, and from the look on Rodney's face, I figured he felt the same. Rodney stood there, his whole body tense. What happened to my relaxed Rodney, the guy who talked me down from my stress?

I
happened to him, that's what. I'd dragged him through hell for months, and it was slowly eating away at him from the inside, leaving only a tired, worn-out shell. And he still loved me, so he couldn't walk away. But if I was willing to drag him through this, how could I claim that I loved him back?

I couldn't.

"Rodney," I said. "You don't need to worry about me, okay?" I'd have added this conversation to the list of wrongs that I'd done him, but I was pretty sure the end of that list was in China by now. "Seriously. You can go."

Rodney put his hands in his pockets. "Is that what you want?"

Blood pounded in my ears. Was that what I wanted? No. What I wanted was for him to lie down next to me and hold me and tell me that even though this was all my fault, he still loved me, and that everything would be okay.

My body went numb. I wanted him to take away the pain, to make it easier to bear. To bear it
for
me, so I could keep marching forward with things that hurt him.

I wanted him to do for me what Dad and I did for Mom. I wanted to drag him through hell, the same way Mom dragged me.

If this was love, it was a sick, twisted kind.

"It'll be better for everyone," I said, "if you just go." And it would be. For everyone but me.

Rodney's chest seemed to sink in. He shuffled his feet. His voice was so quiet, I could barely hear him. "Okay," he said. He turned toward the door, but as he did, a sharp pain cut right through the pain killers and tore up my back. I winced, and drew a sharp breath, and Rodney wheeled back around, eyes wide.

"It's fine," I squeaked. But I wasn't fooling anyone, especially him. I shut my eyes, but I heard the legs of the chair next to me scrape against the ground. And then Rodney had my hand in his, his fingers knotting through mine, holding onto me like he thought I was going to slip away. "Should I get a doctor?" Rodney asked.

I eyed the nurse call button. But the cramp began to subside. And there on the monitor was the baby's heartbeat, and the flat line that indicated I wasn't having contractions. They were watching my numbers from outside; they'd know if something really bad was happening.

When I was a child, I'd always been afraid that cuts and bruises would never heal. I'd peel back Band-Aids to peek at them. What if they didn't get better?

But they did. They always did. And this was just an internal cut, a tiny tear, bleeding inside rather than out. I couldn't peek; I couldn't cover it with a Band-Aid. But it would heal.

It
would
. "I'm okay," I said. "Really."

But Rodney put his other hand on my forearm. His face had gone pale.

He didn't believe me.

That's when Mom opened the door. And I had this horrible, selfish thought:
Good
. If I didn't have the courage to make him leave, at least she would. He'd listen to her when she told him to go.

From the red rims of Mom's eyes, I could tell she'd been crying, though now she seemed to be all dried up. Rodney's hand actually shook as he looked at her, and I remembered a moment months ago, when he'd said goodnight to me on my front porch while Mom sat in the swing, just after Lily decided to keep her baby. I'd had this thought about Rodney then: he was never awkward with anyone. And I flattened onto the bed, wishing I could erase the misery I'd put him through since then.

I held my breath, waiting for the blow up. I expected her to scream at me, to scream at Rodney, to get dragged out of the room by hospital security, possibly by her hair. Rodney would leave and never come back. He'd find someone else and be happy, and someday I'd get over that. I'd learn how to breathe again. And even if I didn't, at least I wouldn't have to watch him hurt and know that it was all my fault.

Mom eyed Rodney's hand in mine. She drew a slow, deep breath, and even though I was staring right at her, she refused to look me in the eye. But she and Rodney looked at each other, and I could feel his hand tighten on mine as he, too, braced to be kicked out.

But Mom just sighed, wearily, and her shoulders drooped. She walked across the room to the sectional and sat down. Dad followed behind her and joined her on the couch, but neither of them said a word.

Mom still wouldn't look at me, but after three or four minutes of quiet, she turned to Rodney. "Thank you for being here for Penny," she said.

Rodney and I both let out a breath together. His shoulders dropped in relief. I closed my eyes and lay back on the pillow, hating myself for being glad that he stayed. It meant I was already the same sort of person that Mom was—the kind who took all the support she was offered, without caring who it hurt.

And at that moment I was certain: if I lost this baby, I was going to turn out just like her: sad, sick, and irrevocably broken. I tried not to move. I tried not to breathe.

I had to hang onto this child for all of our sakes.

An hour later, a nurse came in. Rodney had let go of my hand, and sat with his elbows on the bed, twiddling his thumbs like he was playing an imaginary video game. The scant air between us shifted with each flick of his thumb, and I wished he'd reach out and touch me again, but I couldn't reach for his hand. I couldn't deliberately tie him to me any more than I already had.

I'd done enough.

As the nurse approached the bed, he got up and moved to the end of the sectional, next to my mom. And Mom actually reached out and put a hand on Rodney's shoulder, and squeezed.

What planet was she from? I couldn't even watch. The nurse bent over me, adjusting the sensors.

"Did I move too much?" I asked.

"I'm just checking," she said. "The numbers are a little off, so I wanted to make sure."

My skin went cold. I looked up at the monitor. There was my heartbeat, and the baby's. Still no contractions. No alarms, no odd beeps, nothing.

"What's off?" I asked.

"It's probably just the machine. You haven't felt the baby move yet, have you?" she asked.

"No," I said. "Is that bad?"

"Not at all," she said. "I was just asking."

"So did that fix it?"

"I'm going to send the numbers to the doctor," she said. "He'll come by and talk to you."

The nurse put the sheet back over my belly and left. Mom walked over and looked at the monitor, her face stretched thin. I was pretty sure she couldn't read it any better than I could. Still, it looked to me like the blue line representing the baby's heartbeat rippled against mine differently than it had before. I looked for the actual number on the side, and though I found something I thought was it, that value didn't tell me anything more. I had no idea what a normal fetus heart rate was, let alone a sick one.

I put my hands over my belly, careful not to disturb the sensors. The baby had been moving during the ultrasound, so he was okay then, wasn't he?

"What's it feel like when a baby moves?" I asked Mom.

Mom wouldn't meet my eyes, but she did answer. "Hard to describe. Kind of like a fish swimming around inside you."

My hands shook. I focused on my abdomen, trying to feel any changes. How would I distinguish the movement of a baby from the gurgling of my stomach, or the squishing of my other organs? The inside of a body moved as it processed—these weren't sensations I paid a lot of attention to.

But what if I couldn't feel it because it wasn't happening? "If there's no movement, that's bad, right?"

"Don't worry about it," Mom said. But I could tell that she was.

Sure. No problem.
Jeez. Was that what I sounded like when I told people everything would be fine?

By the time Dr. Kauffman came in, Mom was pacing again, walking back and forth in the little space at the foot of the bed.

How are you feeling?" the doctor asked me.

"Scared," I said. "Something's wrong, isn't it?"

"The baby's heartbeat has slowed."

My hands and feet went cold. I looked up at the monitor. Which one of those numbers was the heartbeat? I'd known something was different. If an adult's heartbeat slowed, you'd take them to the emergency room. It seemed like a lot could go wrong with a person before their heart started to react. "So what do we do?"

"There's not much we can do," Dr. Kauffman said. "Do you mind if I examine you? Just your stomach this time."

Rodney was already up and by the door. "It's okay," I said to him. "You can stay." But he took the chair farthest from me, and focused on the corner. Doctor Kauffman pulled back the sheets over my abdomen and prodded the flesh over my hip bones. When he pressed to the side, a dull pain spread through my stomach.

"Ouch," I said. As soon as he removed pressure, the physical pain stopped. But the ghosts of it radiated into my limbs. I was supposed to be getting better. I was supposed to be healing, and that meant it should hurt
less
.

His face grew concerned, and he prodded more, asking me to identify the exact spot of the soreness. Then he sat down and put his elbows on the bed next to me. "We can do another ultrasound," he said. "But I'm not sure we'd see anything we haven't already. Your vitals are still okay. Are you having any dizziness? Feeling light headed?"

I took a deep breath. I hadn't been feeling that way until he suggested it. I shook my head.

"This problem may still reverse," he said. "You can have more time if you want. But you're young, and not very far along. I just want to make sure you understand that you have options here. At this stage, complications are a real possibility. If you continue bleeding, you could experience shock, and you run the risk of needing emergency surgery to terminate the pregnancy. You don't have to wait. We can do surgery now, if you'd prefer."

My heart skipped. Terminate now? End the life of a little boy who might be just fine? Seal in stone my fate of becoming a wreck just like my mother?

I put a hand on my belly, just below the sensors, feeling how firm my skin was. A lump formed at the back of my throat. I couldn't swallow. I couldn't breathe. I looked up at Mom, who clung to Dad's arm. She wasn't speaking up. She wasn't telling the doctor that of course I would never terminate. She wasn't speaking on behalf of her unborn child. She just watched me quietly, waiting for me to decide.

Rodney looked at the floor. And I wished I could ask him what he wanted, but I couldn't. Not in front of my mother.

Gah. Why was I
still
trying to spare her feelings?

"Penny?" the doctor asked. "Do you understand?"

"Yes," I said. "We can end this now, and if I don't, there are risks."

He nodded. "Do you know what you want to do?"

I looked up at the monitor, at the large arcs of my heartbeat, and, superimposed, at the tiny, rapid arcs of the baby's. Not as rapid as it had been, apparently, but still there. A boy. Biologically Rodney's son. In the future, my mother and father's son. But right now, definitely mine.

I steeled myself. I wasn't going to give up on him. I wasn't going to let them take away his chance that everything would still be all right. I wasn't going to break my mother's heart again, and I couldn't accept the breaking of mine. Mom's pieces might never come back together, but this baby and I still had a fighting chance.

"No surgery," I said. "I want to wait it out."

From the way Dr. Kauffman's lips curled in, I could tell that wasn't the answer he wanted. But if the risks had been high, he would have insisted, wouldn't he? He was a doctor. He wouldn't let me put my life in terrible danger.

My chest muscles tightened. Except, he needed patient permission for surgery, didn't he? And if my mother wasn't insisting, and I said no . . . . Would he let me die, rather than interfere?

"That's okay, right?" I asked.

Dr. Kauffman nodded. "If things get worse, we'll have to revisit this."

I pulled in a deep breath, trying to send healing oxygen into every part of my body. Once, I sliced my finger open with a kitchen knife. It had barely hurt at the time, but days later, as it began to heal, pain shot from my knuckle to my fingertip. Sometimes healing can hurt worse than the injury.

I looked at my mother, and I saw in her red-rimmed eyes the consequences for all of us if it didn't.

When Athena came back, Dad told her to go home. "We can't all crowd in here over night," he said. "We'll call you if anything happens."

Fear ran over me like an icy hand.
Anything
. Like what? My death?

Athena stole a glance at me. "If I'm going to go home," she said, "you and Mom have to at least run home for a change of clothes first. You don't want to stay here all night without any kind of a break."

I smiled. Athena was taking care of me, in her own way, by getting Mom out of my face. Was that why she was always the one to confront Mom? I'd always thought it was because she couldn't help herself, but for the first time, I wondered if maybe it was more about protecting me.