Chapter 35: CHAPTER 34 NOAH

I didn't know when I'd finally fallen asleep, but when I opened my eyes, I found Jenna sitting in a chair next to me, looking pale and sick with worry. When she noticed that I was awake, she stood and leaned over me. I saw a blanket was covering me, and an IV was sticking out of my arm. "Noah? How are you?" she said with fear in her voice. Seeing her there, and remembering everything, I felt as if we were in a different dimension, as if my life weren't mine and what they had just told me had closed all the doors that had been open to me before. As if there were just one door left, and I would be forced to pass through it. "Fine, I think…" A baby… I mean, having a baby at all had only ever been a theoretical possibility for me. When I'd thought about having a child, I'd always imagined myself adopting one. Maybe. I'd been told the damage I'd suffered as a child could cause problems. That if I wanted to conceive, I'd need to go to a fertility clinic and be monitored the whole time. I never thought it was possible that I could get pregnant naturally…especially not if I was on the fucking pill! Nothing, absolutely nothing had ever suggested this could happen.I sat up and uncovered myself, carefully lifted my gown, and looked at my belly. "So it is true… I can't believe it." Jenna's words, not mine. "What am I going to do?" I asked, resting my hands on my stomach to see if there was anything there that told me I was pregnant, and had been for four months. Jenna shook her head and sat down again. "Noah, who's the father?" I'd assumed that was obvious, but now that I thought about it, I'd told no one what had happened at Thanksgiving. No one knew except Nick and me. "Nicholas," I whispered. Just saying his name made my heart ache. Her eyes opened wide, and a huge smile appeared on her face. "Nicholas? Our Nicholas? But…when? How?" What the hell was she so happy about? "It happened during Thanksgiving, after Nick found out about his mom being sick. He was so sad, and things just…" "Oh my God, Noah, this is fabulous! Wait, did you say Thanksgiving?" She looked at my belly, then at me. Then she seemed to be counting backward. "Four months, Jenna," I said without a trace of happiness in my voice. "Did the doctors not tell you?" "Are you kidding? I didn't even know if my suspicions were right until five seconds ago when you lifted your gown and stared at your stomach like you had an alien in there." "You really just found out?" Jenna nodded. "I'm not family; they wouldn't tell me anything. I even had to fight the nurses to get them to let me in here." I sighed. Never in my life had I felt so lost. Jenna took my hand and placed it on my slightly bulging belly. No one would ever have guessed I was that far along."Noah, I was scared the baby could belong to some random dude you'd hooked up with in a bar. But it's Nick's! Your Nick! It's wonderful!" I let go of her hand and scowled at her. "What's so wonderful, Jenna?" I replied, realizing just then that the constant beeping of the machines I was plugged into was driving me crazy. "Me being pregnant at nineteen years old by a guy who is with another girl? What the hell's so wonderful about that?!" "Noah, relax, I just meant—" "No!" I shouted. "Don't say anything, don't be happy for me, because this isn't good news—it's shit. I don't want a baby, I don't want to raise a baby alone, and certainly not Nicholas's." Tears started to roll down my cheeks. I wiped them away impatiently. "I didn't even know I was pregnant! What mother doesn't know she has a kid inside her? What kind of mother will I be? I don't have anything to offer." She was lost. She didn't know what to say. She was scared to even open her mouth. "Noah, when Nick finds out—" "Don't even think about it!" I cut her off in a panic. "Don't you dare tell him anything, Jenna. Not him and not anyone else!" Not only was she surprised, it was clear she didn't agree at all. "Noah, you have to tell him." Goddammit. I wanted to stand up and walk out, to be alone and think, but every time I imagined myself leaving, I remembered the image from that ultrasound. Before I could argue with Jenna, the door opened and the doctor came in. "I've got good news, Miss Morgan," he said. He had a folder in his hand. He looked at it, took off his glasses, and focused on me. "You don't have any illnesses or complications, and the baby's heartbeat is normal, strong." I felt something warm in my stomach. "You're in the second trimester. This is when doctors usually recommend telling the family, but you're what we call a high-risk pregnancy. That sounds more alarming than it is. In two or three weeks, we can do another scan, and we'll be able to learn the baby's sex, if you'd like to know. You'll probably also start feeling some movement." Jenna gawked at him like he was saying I had a Hello Kitty in my uterus. But I was feeling strange, too, something like vertigo…and I was utterly speechless. Since we didn't respond to him, he went on talking, apparently unable to notice that we were both completely freaking out. "It looks like we're out of the woods as far as the hemorrhage, but we'll still want to schedule another ultrasound to make sure the hematoma has fully healed. I'm going to put you on progesterone. The tests show your levels are really low. It's important for you to closely follow all the directions on the sheet I give you, okay?" I nodded, overwhelmed by so much information. "Complete rest, Miss Morgan. 'Complete' means getting up to go to the bathroom and nothing else, understand?" I nodded again, wondering how in the hell I'd tell my professors I couldn't get out of bed without revealing I had a living person growing inside me. "I'm scheduling you to come back in two weeks. If you have any more bleeding, you need to come straight to the hospital. Brown discharge is normal. You should expect some of that as the hematoma heals." I nodded a third time, even though there must have been a million things I should have asked him. "Have you spoken to the father?" he asked. Jenna pursed her lips as I said no. Why the hell was he asking that? It wasn't his business! "It would be good if he could be there for you, especially these next few weeks, when you need to stay in bed." I was about to speak, but Jenna interrupted me:"My husband and I will take care of her, Doctor, no worries." I felt infinitely grateful to her then and regretted being mean to her a few minutes before. She was the one person who could help me with this if I really planned to keep it secret. And I did. This was going to be my secret…mine and mine alone. When I got home, there was nothing to do but go straight to the guest bedroom. I was scared as I took each step. I didn't want to harm the baby. And when I got to the bed, I climbed in. Only then could I rest easy. Lion would be gone for another three days, but Jenna and I would be fine on our own. Every time she came to see me and ask if I needed anything, I had the sense she was biting her tongue. At first, we didn't even mention the baby; it was like I was bedbound with some mysterious illness, and Jenna respected my silence, even if I knew it was torture for her not to talk about it. I was in total denial, but I followed all the doctor's orders, took my medicines, tried not to stress out, slept a lot, drank lots of liquids. Only when Jenna left me in peace did my mind go crazy seeking a solution. I'd be lying if I said I didn't consider an abortion: that would have been the easiest option, the one that would allow me to keep living as I had, the one that would keep me from having to see Nick again and admit what we'd done in the light of day. But just imagining that, just imagining hurting the baby… I couldn't choose that road. Everything crumbled, everything I thought I knew, believed, or felt had stopped mattering the moment I'd seen the image of that baby on the screen. Not my baby—I still couldn't say that. I would get there, I guessed. For a time, I kept thinking back to the moment of conception, the moment when I made the biggest mistake of my life. I blamed Nick for my sorrow, my anger, my rage…and now I blamed him for this. He hadn't forgiven me for what I'd done. Well, he'd sure as hell remember the moment he'd decided not to use a condom for the rest of his goddamned life. If I even decided to tell him. Which, for now, I wouldn't. After this, I passed into a phase of thinking of all the things I wouldn't be able to do from that moment on. What would I do about school? How would I tell my mother? The same mother who'd gotten pregnant with me at eighteen and had given me endless talks about condoms and the pill; the same mother who thought getting pregnant so young had been the height of irresponsibility and idiocy… Sure, she always said she loved me like crazy and that one thing had nothing to do with the other. She had even gone so far as to forbid me from getting pregnant until I was twenty-five. Then there was money. I didn't have a Swiss bank account or anything like it… My entire financial worth was twenty-five hundred bucks, if I was lucky. I thought about where I was going to live. I'd rented the loft for a year, but it was no place to raise a kid. Shit—raising a kid? I was actually going to raise a living being? Me? I'd have to work like crazy just to pay for the baby's things. I surfed around on the Internet and saw strollers that cost a thousand bucks… I could afford approximately two fancy strollers, or maybe five to ten normal ones…it was pathetic! I was going to have to turn to my mother—me, who hated asking for money. On the fourth day, Jenna came to my room. She'd told Lion I'd been diagnosed with sciatica, but she was looking at me pensively, and finally, she seemed to reach a conclusion. "You have to tell him," she said dryly. If I could have gotten up, I'd have walked away from her, but since I couldn't, I ignored her and went on reading the book in my hand. "Noah, are we going to talk about this, or are we going to go on pretending you don't have a baby in your belly?" I set the book down and glared at her. "There's nothing to talk about. I'll take care of it."She laughed bitterly. "Oh yeah? How?" she asked, pointing at me. "You can't even get to the bathroom on your own." I scowled. "This is just for a few days… In a week, I'll go to the doctor, and he'll tell me everything's fine. This craziness will be over, and I'll be able to get on with my life." That plan didn't hold water for any number of reasons, but I tried not to think about that. "Are you listening to yourself?" Jenna shouted. "This is only going to get worse, Noah! I mean, not worse, but people are going to realize! You're already showing a little bit." We looked down at my belly. It was swollen. Not a lot, but still. "I read about some moms who could conceal it till the eighth month almost. I'll have to buy some baggy clothes, but I can do it…" She shook her head and looked at the ceiling, searching for the magic words that would make me listen to reason. "I don't get it. This is your child we're talking about! Why don't you want to tell Nick? Why?!" I could feel myself heating up inside, and that was a bad sign. I was a walking time bomb, and I didn't want to take it out on Jenna. But I couldn't stop the following words from coming out: "Because I begged him to come back to me, and he said no!" I screamed, trying to hold in my tears. "He said he couldn't forgive me, that what I had done had ended what we had forever. I gave him an ultimatum; he didn't care. He left!" Jenna passed almost instantly from surprise to indignation. "I told him I loved him, Jen, and he didn't care. I asked him to stay, and he didn't." I choked back a few sobs. "And now you want me to go tell him I'm expecting his child? Why? So I can tie him to me when he's made perfectly clear he never wants to see me again?" "But I promise you, when he finds out about the baby…""He's going to want to take care of it? Take care of me, take me home with him, give me everything he has and more? You think I don't know that? But I don't want anyone to be with me because they feel obligated. I don't want to force him into forgiving me, and if I tell him I'm pregnant, that's exactly what I'll be doing." Jenna shook her head, unsure of what to say. "Nicholas loves you," she told me after a minute's silence. "I know he does. He's insanely in love with you, and when he finds out about the child, he'd going to be the happiest man on earth, Noah. What happened between you was awful, but have you considered that maybe this child is what you needed to put aside your differences and try again? I can't imagine a better reason to do it." I saw the image she was trying to create in my mind: Nick and me, together again, with a precious little baby to take care of, both living the lives we had always wanted, even if I hadn't planned on being a parent for several more years. Yes, that was what I wanted: a life with Nick. But I exhaled a long breath and shook my head. "I don't want to keep talking about this, or about Nick, or about the baby. Just let me finish taking it all in before I have to face the rest of it, him, what we had…" She leaned down and gave me a soft hug. "You're going to be a wonderful mother, Noah, and this baby is going to be the prettiest little thing in the world." I blinked, trying as hard as I could not to cry again as the image of a little child with Nick's traits formed in my head. Jenna put a hand on my belly. "I'll be your favorite aunt." That made me crack up. Jenna left to see what Lion was up to, and I covered myself with blankets and tried to rest, but I was so scared of having to tell Nicholas what had happened that I couldn't sleep a wink.