Pregnant Pause (21 page)

I come out into the clearing, and I stare out at the lake. The thing I thought was a raft now looks more like a shirt. Another chill runs up my spine, all the way to the top of my head. It's a Camp WeightAway shirt, and it looks all puffed out—bloated, almost as if...

I hurry now to the far end of the lake, near the boys' camp. "Banner!" I call to her, because now I'm sure that's who it is. "Banner! Please, no. Banner!" I hold my baby from underneath my protruding belly and I run. "Help, somebody!" I call out. "Somebody help me!" I keep running, and as I get closer I can see the hair, all that beautiful hair fanning out around her head.

"Eleanor?" I hear somebody call, and I look up. It's Leo. I wave, then point at Banner. "It's Banner," I say. "Help! I think she's..." I can't say it, but I don't have to. In a flash Leo's in the water, swimming out to her, and other counselors and campers are coming out of their cabins to see what's going on. One of the counselors thinks to go ring the big bell, and suddenly people are streaming out from every direction.

Leo reaches Banner, and he rolls her over onto her back while someone from shore tosses him one of those orange rescue tubes. I'm standing on the edge of the lake watching and crying and feeling hysterical. I can't believe what I'm seeing. I keep saying no, and I can't shut up. "No! Banner, no! No! Please, no. Come on. You're all right. Please, you're all right." I'm slobbering all over myself with my tears and snot, and Leo's got his arm across Banner's chest and he's pulling her in while other counselors are diving in and swimming out to them. People on my side of the lake join me, and I hear the FIL's voice behind me and he's calling out orders, and then Banner's on the shore and we can hear sirens, and everybody crowds in while Leo, Ziggy, and Jen take turns doing CPR and mouth-to-mouth. It's obvious by the colorless tone of her skin and her open stare that she's dead, but they keep trying because otherwise we'd all just be standing around staring at a dead body, waiting for the ambulance.

The MIL is ordering the counselors to get their campers back into their cabins, and I realize I don't have campers I have to take back to a cabin. I don't have the excuse of leaving, but I can't take it. I can't stand looking at her. I don't know what to do. I want to leave, but I can't make myself move. I don't know where to go, back to my cabin to sit there by myself? No, I need to stay. Stay put. Stay still. Stop crying. I wipe my eyes. I've got to stay. I've got to see the ambulance come and hear the medics say it, that she's dead, because I can't believe it. It just doesn't make sense. She was smiling when I said good night to her. She wasn't that unhappy, was she? Everybody loved her dance, and she could do the splits. Why would she do this? I hugged her good night, and she was smiling. I had made her feel better. I had showed her I was her friend. How could she do this? I just can't believe it.

A police car arrives with the ambulance, and then it's hustle-bustle while they get out all their life-support stuff and a stretcher or whatever it's called, and rush over to Banner and check her out, but they shake their heads, and I know it's hopeless; Banner is dead. Campers are crying, and little ones are screaming and want their mommies, and counselors are yelling for the kids to go back to their cabins, but nobody is listening. It's all so crazy and surreal, and I just have to get away. I have to get out of this place. I look around for Lam and find him leaning against the camp flagpole, chewing on his thumb. I scramble up to him, calling to him as I climb, but he doesn't hear me until I'm almost in his face.

"Lam, I've gotta get out of here. It's almost time to go, anyway. Can you take me now? Please? I've got to go now!"

Lam sees that I'm a wreck. I can't stop crying and I'm shaking all over. He puts his arm around me and guides me back down the hill toward the parking lot. Everybody's so busy watching the medics that nobody notices us slipping behind the ambulance and getting into Lam's car.

"Get me out of here, Lam. Fast!"

Lam backs out slowly, but as soon as he's clear of the ambulance and the other cars, he floors it, and the tires spit out rocks and dirt and we tear out of there, down the narrow dirt road leading out of the camp and onto the paved streets—away, away from that terrible, horrible scene.

I CAN'T STOP crying. Lam drives all over town, up one back road and down another, and we say nothing to each other. I cry and he drives.

It's all my fault. I know it is. I review our talk in the break hut, and I remember how I told Banner to show 'em. I meant for her to get mad and get even, but I didn't say that, did I? No. I said show 'em. Well, she showed them all right—her way, not mine. I'm a murderer. I killed her. I cry harder, and Lam pats my leg and tells me it's okay.

I scream at him. "No, it's not okay. It's never going to be okay. She's dead. She's dead and I—I..." I can't even bring myself to say it. I lean forward into my hands and cry harder.

Lam pulls into the Bethel movie theater parking lot and stops the car. He reaches across me to the glove compartment, rifles through the junk he's got in there, and pulls out a joint. "Come on, you need to calm down," he says.

I rock side to side and keep crying, and I'm crying so hard I can barely breathe. Lam reaches into his pocket and pulls out a lighter and lights up. He takes a pull, then hands it to me.

I stop crying and take the joint. My chest is still heaving. My face hurts. I've got snot running down my nose. I wipe my nose on my shirtsleeve and stare at the joint. I try to calm myself.

"Go on, you need it," Lam says. "It can't hurt the baby now. It's coming out today, right?"

I don't know what to do. It's tempting. It's so tempting. I try to clear my head and think. Would it be okay? Would the baby be okay? The nurse practitioner said not to have anything to eat or drink after midnight the night before the C-section. Would this count as eating? Would I have to tell them that I smoked a joint? Would it make me throw up when they give me anesthesia? I bring the joint closer and remember the good old days when Lam and I used to get stoned. Wait. No. What am I thinking? It's crazy. I can't. I'm going to have a baby. I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want my life to be about getting stoned anymore.

There's a rap on Lam's window and I look over, and wouldn't you know it, it's the Bethel police.

"Shit!" I say, flicking the joint on the floor.

Lam swears, too, while the policeman motions for Lam to roll down his window.

Lam rolls it down and the policeman steps back. "Very aromatic in there. Can I see your license?"

Lam digs in his pocket, pulls out his wallet and gets his license, and hands it to him. The guy looks at it for two seconds. "Would you get out of the car, please?"

"It's not what you think."

"Get out of the car, please. Both of you."

This cannot be happening. The very first time I've held a joint in months, and I get caught. And we know better than to park in an empty parking lot. Police always come check that out. We're so stupid.

I climb out of the car and come around to where Lam and the policeman are standing. Lam is cradling the back of his head with his hands. I put my hands behind my head, too.

"Oh, brother, would you look at this?" the policeman says when he sees I'm pregnant.

"I didn't have any. I was holding it, but I didn't smoke it."

"You can tell your story over at the station. Get in the car." He gets behind us and herds us toward the car. Lam gets in, but I stop. I'm crying again. I turn to the policeman.

"I've been good to my baby. I've been so good and I'm scheduled to have a C-section this morning. I'm supposed to be at the hospital, and they said don't be late."

"Yeah? Then what are you doing here? This is not the hospital parking lot."

"A girl—A girl—I can't—and Banner's—Banner's..." Now I'm really crying, because it's like my whole life is flashing before my eyes. I see my parents' angry faces, and the juvenile detention center, and the judge, and me sniffing cocaine and dancing on a table, and the camp, and the MIL's angry face, and Kenya, and me with dysentery, and the orphans and their crying, and my crying, and the whole world crying.

Lam leans out of the car and speaks for me. "A girl at the camp where we're working just committed suicide. Elly was close to her. I just wanted to calm her down, but she didn't smoke it. She's clean. You can test her."

The officer nods. "Yeah, I heard there was something going on up there, but that's no excuse. You're both in possession." He looks at me. "What time are you due at the hospital?"

"Eight o'clock."

He checks his watch. "You've got twenty minutes. Get in the car."

I get inside and Lam slides over. The policeman slams the door, then goes over to Lam's car, fishes around for the joint I threw on the floor, takes the keys out of the ignition, closes up the car, and walks back over to his cruiser.

"Sorry, Elly," Lam says, and I think of how many gazillions of times Lam has had to say that to me. I get arrested while I'm in the middle of breaking into his parents' basement, and while I'm getting hauled away, Lam steps out all groggy and hung over and says, "Sorry, Elly." I get suspended from school for having a pocketknife in my backpack—Lam's pocketknife that I didn't even know he had put there—"Sorry, Elly." I get stopped by the police for erratic driving and fined $150 because Lam was picking on the way I was driving and kept trying to take the steering wheel out of my hands—"Sorry, Elly." I get pregnant because the condom Lam used was like five years old and it broke—"Sorry, Elly." Finally, I'm waking up and realizing for the first time that as long as I'm with Lam I'm going to keep ending up riding around in police cars and hearing his voice, his sickening voice, saying, "Sorry, Elly."

The policeman gets in his car, talks into his radio in some kind of code, but I hear him mention the hospital, and I hope that's where he's taking us. He starts up the car and we speed off—and I mean speed. The guy should be arrested.

I arrive at the Rumford hospital just in time. It's a long brick building that's always reminded me of an old high school—so it's like the hospital and high school, the two things in the world I hate the most, rolled into one. I wait for the policeman to come around to the door to let us out. He opens the door and we start to scoot out, but the officer shakes his head. "Just the girl. You're coming back to town with me."

I get out, then turn around and look at Lam. "Sorry, Lam."

THE OFFICER walks me into the hospital lobby, this rotunda kind of place with big picture windows, and checks to make sure I really am scheduled for a C-section. Never have I been more glad that I was actually telling the truth. Before he leaves, he warns me, "You stay out of trouble. You've got a baby to think of now."

"Yes, sir," I say. "I know that."

I don't have my driver's license or the insurance card my parents left with me, and that slows everything down, but the admitting lady calls the camp, and the MIL agrees to bring it down. That's all she needs on top of what's going on at the camp. I don't have to wait for her to get here, though. They admit me to the hospital, and they lead me to this room where I get undressed and tie on a gown. A nurse helps me onto a bed and puts these monitors all around my belly to "check my vi tals" as the nurse says, and to check the baby's heart rate and stuff, and then I wait a long while, and while I'm waiting, Sarah shows up. I start crying again, and she comes over to me, and she's so sweet.

"Hey, baby, what's wrong? It's okay. It's all going to be okay. I'm here." She gives me a hug. "Mom and Dad are on their way. They'll be here in about an hour."

"Good, 'cause—oh, Sarah, this is the worst day of my life. Really. I don't know how I'm going to make it through all this today. Banner's dead, and Lam's at the police station, and—and I'm going to have a C-section." I'm really wailing now, and Sarah keeps shushing me and patting my head, and I like the comfort of her patting me, but I know I don't deserve her comfort. Nobody can comfort Banner ever again. I thought I had comforted her, but I hadn't. She was just pretending. "'Show 'em.' I told her to show 'em, and she didn't understand."

"Shhh. It's okay. It's all right, baby. It's going to be fine. It's all right. Honey, you've got to calm down. This can't be good for the baby. I'm going to go see if they can give you something to calm you down."

I think of Lam trying to calm me, and the joint I almost smoked, and I cry even harder.

A few minutes later, Sarah comes back with a nurse who wants me to sign some forms, and she makes Sarah sign them, too. Then she hooks up an IV that she says will shoot fluids and medication into my veins during the surgery. I've never had an IV before, and I'm so grossed out, I cry about that, too.

Sarah sits close to me and pats my hand. Eventually, even without a sedative, I start to calm down some.

"I'm glad you're here, Sarah," I say. I grab a tissue off this little tray-thing they've got by my bed, and I blow my nose.

"Me, too. You look well, Elly. You look like you've gained enough weight and everything."

I nod. "Yeah, I read how teens who get pregnant don't always gain enough weight and that's bad for the baby, so I made sure I gained weight. The doctor says everything looks good."

Sarah nods, and we're silent for a while. I try not to think of Banner, or Lam, or the C-section.

"So," Sarah says, "have you made your decision about the baby? You said something about Lam being at the police station?"

I nod. "Yeah, he got arrested for smoking a joint."

Sarah shakes her head. "I've always said he was bad news, Elly."

"I know, but so am I. I'm bad news, too. I'm really, really bad news. I'm like the black widow of bad news."

I sniff, but I don't cry—well, just some slow tears rolling down my cheeks, nothing dramatic this time.

"So? About the baby?"

I look in Sarah's eyes. She's so hopeful, expectant. "I love this baby, you know," I say.

Sarah nods, and I see a bit of a frown forming at the edges of her mouth. She controls it, though, and pats my head. "I'm sure you do, El. I'm sure you want what's best for it."