Too antsy to decide or even to think straight, Kim continued walking to the bus stop, but turned around twice to catch a cab instead. The second time she stuck with that decision, figuring Rick wouldn’t know about it until he looked at the bank statement, whereas he’d know a lot sooner if she didn’t have dinner prepared on time. She flagged down a cab as it pulled away from the curb heading towards her, and almost cried with relief when it pulled over.
She gave the driver her address, then sank back into the cracked leather seat and gulped deep breaths as she thought about how to put together a quick dinner. She mapped out a plan of attack for chicken parmesan, hoping she’d be at least half done by the time he came home. She’d just tell him she’d fallen asleep without setting an alarm.
When the taxi pulled into the parking lot, Kim pulled out her wallet and gave the driver her credit card. She gathered her bags, signed the sales slip, and was just closing the door to the car when she saw Rick pull in an hour early. Her mind raced for an excuse, but there was no explaining away the bags in her hands and the fact that she was just getting home. She mustered a smile as his eyes met hers, waved, and tried to look unconcerned as she leaned against the wall next to the security door.
“Hi sweetheart,” she said as he approached. “You’re home early—how was your day?”
“Where have you been?” Frowning, he smacked the bags so he could see the names. “This all baby crap?”
“Some of it, yes, and some clothes I needed. All necessities, I promise.”
He opened the door and she followed him in, a glimmer of hope igniting in her chest. Mild annoyance—all that worry and all he showed was mild annoyance. He could be so unpredictable sometimes.
He shut the door behind them and grabbed the bags out of her hands. He upended them each in turn, spilling the contents to the floor. “Receipts?”
“In my purse.” She pulled them out, fumbling them with fingers that didn’t want to work properly, then handed them over before kneeling to straighten the mess.
He cursed and the receipts fluttered to the floor beside her. “You spent over three hundred bucks!”
Her breath caught in her throat. “I—I did? I didn’t realize—”
He hauled her to her feet, his fingers a vice on her arm. “Of course you didn’t. Because you don’t think. You never think.” The crack of his hand against her face rang in her ears. “You think I work all day just so you can go spend my money on crap like this?” A fist this time. “I knew that baby was a mistake—three hundred bucks!”
His fist found her solar plexus. Her breath was gone, an explosion of pain doubled her up and sent her to the floor. She hugged her middle, her mind screaming words that her mouth couldn’t form and her voice couldn’t create. “I can’t believe I thought I could trust you.” His foot kicked at her shoulder, then her abdomen. Her breath returned and she howled, writhing. “I should have known you were too stupid to trust with a credit card.”
Kim curled on the floor, sobbing. Her entire body was rigid, waiting for the next blow, but it never came. She heard the zipper on her purse, the unsnapping of her wallet, and then both fell to the floor beside her. She peeked through squinted eyelids. The spaces where her credit card and bank card had been were empty.
He walked away, muttering to himself, and she forced herself to her feet and limped into the office where she locked the door behind her and sank to the floor.
It’s my own fault. It’s my own stupid fault.
Pain pulsed all over her body, and nausea roiled in her stomach. She shuddered with pain and fear, waiting for Rick to bang on the door and demand she come out. Her eyes locked onto a digital clock that sat on the desk. She watched the minutes pass and felt the panic leaving her body, replaced by the leaden weight in her stomach of adrenaline and tension settling out of her system.
Her hand drifted from cheek to jaw to shoulder to stomach, assessing the extent of each injury. Nothing was broken as far as she could tell, but she ached all over and knew it would be days before she could sleep comfortably.
She inched to her feet, straightening slowly, and pulled a blanket from the closet shelf. The office chair wasn’t the best place to curl up, but it was the only option besides the floor. With her legs crossed on the seat, she wrapped the blanket around her body and closed her eyes after checking once more that the door was locked.
She was almost asleep when her abdomen twinged. It was just enough to make her sit up straight and unfold herself in the chair. She rested her hands on her belly.
What’s going on, baby?
Another twinge, stronger this time, with the familiar ache of a menstrual cramp. She froze, fingers spread over the baby, willing it to move, to tell her somehow that she was alright.
Another twinge. And another. Each stronger than the last.
She stood and opened the door. Rick was coming out of the bedroom, remorse etched in his features. “Kim, baby, I don’t know
what came over me.” “I think I’m in labor.” It was the first time she’d ever seen fear on his face. “What?
How do you know?”
“I just do. We need to go to the hospital.”
“Are you sure? Maybe we should just wait and see if—”
Another cramp, strong enough this time to make her gasp. She grabbed his arm. “Now, Rick. We need to go now.”
K
IM HAD NEVER BEEN TO A HOSPITAL
. She’d watched enough episodes of
ER
to have an idea of how they worked, but the unfamiliarity combined with her fear made her want to run back to the car and hide. The thought of her precious girl being born too early was the only thing that kept her at the admissions desk.
Rick stood beside her, his hand clenching hers. They’d said nothing to each other on the way to the hospital, but the look he gave her as they walked up to the emergency entrance said plenty.
Keep your mouth shut.
She’d practiced her story in her head while Rick drove—
I was cleaning the baby’s room and the closet organizer collapsed on me
—until she began to believe it had actually happened. All her stories ended up that way. Figments of an imagination so desperate she forgot they were empty lies.
“How can I help you?”
“I think I’m in labor, but I’m only seven months.”
The nurse handed her a clipboard and nodded to the dingy plastic seats in the waiting area. “Someone will come out for you real soon. Just sit over there and start filling out that paperwork.”
They sat together, and Rick took the clipboard as another contraction made her wince. “Here, let me fill it out.” She closed her eyes and pictured her baby.
Stay in, sweetie. Stay in, it’s too early to come out. Stay in for Mama, okay?
A nurse called her name from the doorway into triage. They stood, but the nurse shook her head. “Just Kim for now, sir. When we’re done checking her out we’ll bring you back.”
“But I’m the father. And Kim’s fiancé.”
“I know, but that’s the policy. She’ll only be back there a few minutes.” The nurse plucked the clipboard from Rick’s hand and ushered Kim into the hallway where a wheelchair awaited. Kim sat down, suddenly scared.
The nurse wheeled her into a room with cubicles curtained off from each other. She rolled Kim into one of the cubicles and helped her onto the table. “We’re just going to take a look with the ultrasound, see what’s going on, take your vitals, that sort of thing, okay?”
“Okay.”
The sonogram showed the baby healthy and moving, a sight that brought tears to Kim’s eyes. The belt wrapped around her abdomen showed the contractions were in fact the real thing, however, and the nurse called to the maternity ward that she had a patient to admit. After hanging up she turned to Kim and fixed her with an unwavering stare. “Tell me about your bruises.”
She feigned confusion for a brief moment, then appeared to catch her meaning. “Oh, right—we were working on the nursery. The closet has so much junk piled in it, and I was trying to pull something off the shelf and the whole stupid thing collapsed on me. Rick told me I should have just let him do it, but you know how it is, you can never trust a guy to do it the way a woman would. Their idea of cleaning—”
“Okay, okay.” The nurse waved her hand, impatient. “Look, this is your chance to protect yourself and your baby. Just tell me you don’t want him in the ward with you and we’ll take care of it. You won’t even have to see him. We won’t blame it on you, we won’t tell him you said anything, we’ll just tell him it’s policy.” The nurse glanced at Kim’s left hand. “You’re not married yet, right?”
“Right. But—”
“Perfect.” The door opened and another nurse stood waiting for Kim. The triage nurse looked back to Kim, eyebrows raised. Her voice was soft. “I know you’re scared, sweetheart. We can help you through it, though. Just give me the word.”
For a brief moment, “yes” was on the tip of her tongue. But she just couldn’t seem to say it.
Her gaze faltered, falling away to the chart the nurse held. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She heard the nurse sigh, then she detached the belt from Kim’s waist and helped her off the table. “The fiancé is in the waiting room,” she told the maternity ward nurse as she handed off Kim’s chart. Then, to Kim, with resignation in her voice, “Good luck, sweetheart.”
The nurse pushed Kim’s wheelchair back to the waiting room and called for Rick to join them. He jumped from the chair and was beside Kim in a heartbeat, clutching her hand in his and staring hard into her eyes. She knew the question they were asking, and she tried to silently convey reassurance as they entered an elevator.
The nurse brought them to a laboring room, and the doctor on call came to give her an exam. “Seven months, eh? Taking your vitamins?”
“Yes, every night.”
“Good girl.” He studied the monitor where the contractions were measured and made a note on her chart. “The baby is checking out fine. We’ll give you some terbutaline and see if that helps with the contractions. If we can’t get those under control we’ll need to keep you until we’re confident they’ve stopped.”
He patted her leg and left and was soon replaced by a nurse who brought in the syringe of terbutaline. “Hello there,” she said, chipper in spite of the circumstances for Kim’s visit. “Have you ever had a terbutaline shot?”
“No.”
The nurse made an apologetic face as she swabbed Kim’s thigh with iodine. “It burns, I’ll warn you right now. And it might make you feel sort of jittery—racing heart, that sort of thing. That’s normal.” Without ceremony or warning she jabbed the syringe into Kim’s leg. “We’ll keep an eye on you and see how this works. If it doesn’t help in the next thirty minutes we’ll do another one.”
Kim tried to smile despite the fire in her leg. “Sounds great, I guess.”
The nurse returned a smile of her own. “Are you hungry? Can I get you a snack?”
“That would be great, thanks.”
The nurse left and Rick walked to the door, checking left and right into the hall before coming back to the bed. “So now what?”
She sighed, her head beginning to throb. “I don’t know.”
Rick’s eyes caught hers. “How did you get those bruises?”
Her jaw dropped. “How did I—oh.” Why was her mouth suddenly so dry? “That—that shelf in the nursery closet fell on me.”
“Right. Right.” He nodded slowly, as though the memory was coming back to him, then released her gaze and stared stonily out the window. Her mind picked up the story again, shoring it up.
That stupid shelf. I should have known it would come down on me. It’s been hanging on for months; it’s a miracle it took this long. It’s just my luck that I’d be under it when it finally let go.
The nurse returned with a giant plastic mug of water and a handful of packaged saltine crackers. “Here you go. And if you need anything you can page me with this little button right here.” She pointed to the remote that hung off the bed. “Or just holler down the hall. The nurse’s station is two rooms down. I’m Jill, by the way.”
“Thanks, Jill.”
“No problem. Be back in a bit.”
Kim took a deep breath and pressed her head back into the pillow. “Could you open the crackers for me? My hands are shaky.”
“Yeah, sure.” Rick tore open the package and handed her the crackers. “So what do you think—are you going to be alright?”
“Sure.
I’m
not the one we need to worry about. It’s the baby that is at risk here.”
Not that you care.
Despite the story she’d drilled into her memory, Rick’s words came back to her.
“I knew that baby was a mistake.”
She chewed the crackers with more force than necessary, calling on the pain it kicked up in her jaw to help drive away the thoughts that were trying to get her attention. She couldn’t deal with them right now.
Rick took a package of crackers for himself and sat in a chair near the window. “Want me to turn on the TV?”
“Sure.”
He located the remote and began to flip through the limited stations, finally landing on a football game without asking if she cared. She tried to concentrate on the game and ignore the warnings her heart was trying to send her. More crackers, more water, more contractions on the monitor, though less frequent and intense than when they’d first arrived. When Jill came back in with the doctor, she brought Kim a Styrofoam container of red Jell-O. “I know none of this is very filling, but if this next shot works then you can have something more substantial. Until then we need to keep you on easy stuff like this. How are you feeling?”
Kim took another deep breath. “Jittery, like you said I would. My hands are sort of shaky and I feel really anxious.”
Jill nodded as the doctor made notes on her chart. “Par for the course, I’m afraid.”
“I’m encouraged by how much things have slowed down here,” the doctor said. “Hopefully it’ll only take one more dose. I’ll be back in another thirty minutes to see how you’re doing.”
After the second injection lit her leg afire once more, Kim found it harder to keep at bay the thoughts that had been creeping into her mind since arriving at the hospital. She stared at Rick, oblivious as he watched television, and wished he would leave. If only the options the triage nurse had given her hadn’t been so extreme—if only she’d offered to send him home and tell him to come back tomorrow, so she could have some time alone. That would have been perfect. It wasn’t that she wanted him to leave completely. She just needed time to think, and it was getting harder and harder to do that with him around.