Chapter 34: CHAPTER 33 NOAH

After running into Michael, I spent several days nervous and afraid. I tried to push my feelings down, though. I was busy anyway, trying to pack up my things and move to my new apartment. I'd finished my last midterm the day before, so I finally had time to deal with the move. I'd found a loft off campus. It was an open space with a small kitchen, a living room, and a bedroom. The bathroom had a tub. It wasn't anything too special, but it was enough for me. Unfortunately, there was a problem with the water, and I couldn't move till the end of the week. I asked Jenna if I could stay with her and Lion for a few days until the problem was fixed. She didn't hesitate and even said she'd help me take my boxes to the new place. What I didn't expect was that she would come with Lion in tow. I hadn't seen him in ages, but he was a sight for sore eyes. "What's up, Noah?!" he said, bear-hugging me. "Thanks for coming, Lion. You didn't need to." "Oh, he did," Jenna replied, showing me her new nails, which were manicured with wild red gel. I rolled my eyes and started picking up the boxes that were light enough for me and taking them to Lion's truck. He took care of the heavier ones, and soon Jenna and I were taking down everything fragile. There was more fragile stuff than heavy stuff, so we didn't get to relax. At one point, I bent down to pick up a box of books, and I felt something like a dagger stabbing me in the back. I couldn't move. "Are you okay?" Lion asked, coming over. Jenna seemed not to worry until she saw my face, which I guess had gone blank. "Noah!" I took a deep breath to see if the pain would go away, sitting back on the floor. "I think I just fucked up my back. I'm okay, though," I said, my voice trembling. "Why were you picking up that box?! That's Lion's job, dummy." I ignored her as the pain kept radiating, slowly becoming tolerable. Lion bent down and looked me over with those green eyes that glowed so bright, it was no wonder Jenna had spent half her wedding speech talking about them. They were hypnotizing. "Can you get up?" he asked. "Uh…" I wanted a few seconds. "I'm not really sure." Jenna shook her head while Lion wrapped his arm around my back. I tried to get up on my own, but the pain was now in my stomach, and I bent over, almost paralyzed. "You've thrown your back out, doll," Jenna said, while Lion leaned over and picked me up. "I'll take you to the car, and you can lie down and rest. It'll pass. You just pulled a muscle, that's all." I nodded, unable to make a sound. The pain…the pain was horrible. Lion left me in the passenger seat and finished loading boxes in the back. When we finally left, I prayed for the trip to be short and to be able to lie down somewhere soft and warm."If you want, I'll call my massage therapist. She's the best—she'll know exactly what to do for you," Jenna said, sitting in the back and shoving M&M's between her lips, which were coated in purple gloss. I couldn't say a word. I just wanted to lie down. When we got to Jenna's place, I still could hardly move. Lion was worried as he carried me back to the small guest room they had prepared for me. When he laid me on the bed, a jolt of agony shot through my body, and I had to close my eyes. "Noah…are you sure you're okay?" Jenna came in then with a glass of water and a muscle relaxer. I downed it immediately. Lion seemed to doubt whether I was well, but he had to go to the airport in a couple of hours. He had a meeting in Philadelphia and wouldn't be back for four days. "I'll take care of her," Jenna said, lying down next to me. Lion leaned down to kiss her softly on the lips. "I'm going to head out, then. If you need help for the move, Luca's willing to lend a hand, like I said. Take care, Noah, and feel better," he said, rubbing the top of my head. When he was gone, I fluffed up the pillows and started counting in my mind to distract myself. "You sure you don't want to go to the hospital?" Jenna asked for the eighth time. I had been saying I thought it was stupid just to go there for a pulled muscle, but the pain was getting worse again, after diminishing just a little, and I was about to faint. So her idea was starting to appeal to me. "Let's just wait for the pill to do its thing," I said, aware that the mere thought of standing up and walking to the door would probably leave me seeing stars. Two hours later, I knew something was wrong. "Noah, you're scaring me," Jenna said, watching me writhe."Take me to the hospital," I said, terrified. Just getting to the car was torture, and the trip to the emergency room was even worse. After we parked, I walked as best I could to the waiting room while Jenna filled out all the paperwork the nurse on duty had given her. Then we waited. I got more and more nervous, especially once I felt something strange between my legs. I looked down and saw a red spot extending through my pajama bottoms. Jenna shrieked. The next thing I knew, I was in a wheelchair being taken to a room where someone hurried to attend to me. Jenna had to wait outside. "Honey, can you hear me?" a nurse said, helping me out of my clothing and giving me a hospital gown to put on. "The doctor is on his way, but first I need you to answer some questions." I looked at her. She had red hair and reminded me of Tweedledee or Tweedledum from Alice in Wonderland. Except she was a woman, and she wouldn't shut up. "How many weeks along are you?" she asked. "I mean, this just happened…" Her brow wrinkled, and then the question…that fucking question brought me back to reality, like hitting the ground headfirst after jumping out of a tenth-story window. "Wh-what are you talking about?" She looked at me with surprise, then with pity. "Honey… I'm pretty sure you're having a miscarriage." What the hell was she saying? Everything seemed to freeze, and the word miscarriage struck me like a giant hammer. Miscarriage, miscarriage, miscarriage… It didn't matter how many times I thought it, it was impossible, impossible, because a miscarriage meant you had to be pregnant, and I wasn't."The doctor will be here soon… You just relax; I'm sure everything will be fine." Everything will be fine? How could she say the word miscarriage and then tell me everything would be fine? My mind started spinning. I tried to count on my fingers, remember numbers and dates, and the conclusion was always the same: it couldn't be. It was impossible. That eased my mind. The nurse had to be an idiot. I hadn't mentioned trying to pick up the box. I'd Probably torn something trying to pick up the box and I was having a hemorrhage and it was making it look like I was… Because that was impossible, right? It had been way too long since the last time I… The door opened, interrupting my tormented thoughts, and a middle- aged doctor greeted me stiffly. "How are you feeling, Miss Morgan?" he asked as he came closer. I didn't answer, and he motioned for me to lie back. "I'm going to do an ultrasound, okay?" he told me, lifting my gown and touching my belly gently. "I'm not pregnant," I said, repeating the phrase over and over in my head like a mantra. I'm not pregnant, I'm not pregnant, I'm not pregnant. The doctor observed me for a few moments with surprise. "We'll find out in a few seconds," he said, sitting next to me and pulling over a rolling table. "This gel is going to feel a little cold, all right?" I shivered as he rubbed it on my belly. Struggling to control my breathing, I watched what he was doing. He dragged some kind of machine over my belly, hit a button, and turned the screen to show me what he was seeing. "I think this is proof you're mistaken, no?"On the screen, in black and white, blinking a little, was the image of a baby… Not some tiny fetus, a real baby with a head, feet, and hands, taking up most of the screen. "Oh my God!" I shouted, bringing my hand to my mouth in terror, pure, unadulterated terror. "You're around sixteen weeks," the doctor said, turning toward the machine, unruffled after dropping that bomb on me, and sliding the handpiece around while he hit various buttons. He looked a bit worried at first. Then, after a few seconds that dragged on painfully, I heard a noise, constant, loud, echoing through the room. He sighed and turned to face me. "We have a pulse, Miss Morgan." So it wasn't a miscarriage. But this new reality made me feel like I was falling again. Only this time, I might never hit the ground. "Am I going to lose it?" I asked, my voice quavering. The doctor turned the screen and showed me a black spot around the baby. I didn't need to be an expert to know it shouldn't have been there. "This is an intrauterine hematoma. A big one. Since you told me you weren't aware you were pregnant, I'm assuming your period has been coming regularly. Or am I wrong?" I tried to understand what he was getting at. "I'm not especially regular, but yeah… I've had my period the past few months. I guess it was maybe shorter than usual, but…" "Do you take birth control?" "Yeah. To control my periods, actually." "Do you ever miss a pill?" Shit! "I've forgotten one before; I usually just take it the next day…" "That explains why you might have gotten pregnant, but that isn't what matters right now. The thing is, your body's been on the verge of miscarrying several times."I looked back at the screen. Jesus. That was a baby… A baby I didn't even know was growing inside me… I hadn't been careful at all. My God! I'd even drunk alcohol… "Doctor…I didn't know. I literally had no idea… I mean, you can't even tell…" The doctor remained calm. "Let's relax, okay? We're going to do all the tests we need to be sure you and the baby are both fine. You'd be surprised how frequent cases like yours are. Often you don't really notice the changes until the third or fourth month. For the first twelve weeks, the uterus remains entirely within the pelvis. You may not even see the pregnancy until it moves into the abdomen. Since you're bleeding, we're going to check you in and keep you here until everything goes back to normal. We don't want you experiencing any unneeded stress or strain. I know you just found out about this, and it must have come as quite a shock, but you need complete rest. When the bleeding stops, we'll do a cervical assessment. If everything looks all right, then I doubt we'll need to worry about premature birth." Premature birth. I felt like I was in a bubble, trying to understand what all these words meant: baby, premature birth, intrauterine hematoma, miscarriage… What the doctor had just said hadn't even registered yet. I was just trying to assimilate what I'd seen on the screen. "The nurse is going to come ask you a few questions. We'll also do some blood work, just to rule out any additional complications. The most important thing for now, though, is for that hematoma to go away. I'm going to guess your progesterone is low. We'll take care of that till you reach the levels you need to hold on to that baby. Sound good?" His tone was weirdly buoyant—I guessed he was trying to calm me down? But I was in a panic; I was having a legit panic attack. I wanted to take off running, disappear, go back to my life from just a few hours before."Doctor…I'm only nineteen. I'm not ready to be a mother." He nodded gently. "You weren't planning on this…I understand," he said tactfully. "But the baby exists now, and so does the risk you'll lose it. You're young, and you've got some tough months ahead of you. You're going to need the support of the people around you. Do you know who the father is?" The father. Nicholas Leister was the father of that baby…and he was on the opposite side of the country, with another woman, and had made it utterly clear he didn't want to be a part of my life. "I…I know who it is…but I can't tell you." Just then, the nurse came in, and the doctor outlined all the tests that had to be done. Then he smiled and turned away. Once he was gone, the nurse sat close to me and patted the back of my hand. "You need to relax, honey," she said as another nurse came in and the two of them went to work on me. "We're going to put an IV in to administer some vitamins and a sedative so you can rest. When you wake up, you'll have plenty of good news to look forward to." "No, no, I don't want a sedative. You don't understand! This shouldn't have happened. I'm not ready to be a mother. I shouldn't be a mother, okay? They told me there was almost no way I could get pregnant, that it was basically impossible, and now…" "And now you're four months pregnant, honey, and according to your medical history and the state you were in, it's a miracle." A miracle. I closed my eyes, trying to relax and take it all in. Four months… Fuck. Damn you, Nicholas Leister!