Dirty Red (Love Me With Lies)(16)

“Aren’t you the mother?”

The mother. Not her mother or the baby’s mother — just the mother.

I look at her frizzy hair and her eyebrows, which are in bad need of plucking.

“Yes, I am the uterus that carried the child,” I snap. I walk through the emergency room doors without waiting for an answer.

I have to peek into several curtained partitions before I find them. Caleb does not acknowledge my presence. He’s watching a nurse hook Estella up to an IV while she explains the risks of dehydration.

“Where are they going to put the needle?” I ask, because clearly her hands are too small.

She gives me a sympathetic look before telling us that the IV needle will be inserted into a vein in Estella’s head. Caleb’s face drains of color. He won’t be able to watch this, I know him. I straighten my back importantly. At least I can be of some use. I can stay with her while they do this procedure while Caleb waits outside. I am neither squeamish nor prone to tears, but when I suggest this, he looks at me coldly and says:

“Just because it makes me uncomfortable doesn’t mean I’m going to leave her by herself.”

I shut my parted lips. I can’t believe he said that. I didn’t leave her by herself per se. She was in the care of professionals.

I sulk in my hard, miserable chair while Estella wails down the emergency room. She looks pitiful and tiny beneath the beeping machines and wires that are snaking out from her small head.

Caleb looks like he’s on the verge of tears, but he has her in his arms, careful not to disturb the wires. Once again, I am struck by how natural he is. I thought it would be this way for me — that the minute I laid eyes on my baby, I would know what to do and feel an instantaneous connection. I bite my lip and wonder if I should offer to hold her.

It is sort of my fault that she’s here. Before I can stand up, the doctor pulls aside the curtain that separates us from the busy ER room beyond. He is middle-aged and balding. Before he greets us, he consults a clipboard in his hand.

“What do we have here?” he asks, touching Estella lightly on the head. Caleb explains her symptoms, and the Doctor listens while examining her. He mentions that she was taken to daycare, and I shoot him a dirty look.

“Her immune system needs time to develop,” he says, removing his stethoscope from her chest. “In my opinion, she’s too young for daycare. Usually women take a short maternity leave before putting their child into full-time care.”

Caleb shoots me a look. Seething. He is absolutely seething.

I focus on a box of latex gloves. He’s going to yell at me. I hate when he yells at me. I can guarantee my skin has already erupted into a splotchy mess; a telltale sign that I’m shitting myself.

“I’m going to admit her so we can monitor her for forty-eight hours. She could dehydrate otherwise. Someone should be in to take her up to pediatrics in a few minutes.”

As soon as he leaves the room, Caleb turns to me.

“Go home.”

I stare at him with my mouth open.

“Don’t you take that self-righteous tone with me,” I hiss. “While you go traipsing all over the country, I’m stuck at home — “

“You carried this little girl, Leah, in your body.” He makes a motion with his hands that makes it look like he’s holding an invisible ball. Then just as suddenly, he drops his arms to his sides. “How can you be so calloused?”

“I — I don’t know.” I frown. I had never thought of it like that. “I thought it was a boy. I would have felt differently if — “

“You were given something … a life. That is so much more important than shopping and drinks with your f*cking girlfriends.”

I jerk at his ‘f’ bomb. Caleb hardly ever uses profanity.

“I’m more than that,” I say. “You know I am.”

His next words spear through my soul, laying me out in the most profound hurt I have experienced.

“I think I’ve fooled myself into believing you are.”

I spring to my feet, but my knees fail me. I have to lean against the wall for support. He’s never spoken to me that way.

It takes a few seconds to coerce the words from my tongue. “You said you would never hurt me.”

His eyes are frigid. “That was before you f*cked with my daughter.”

I leave before I explode.





Forty-eight hours later, Caleb returns from the hospital with the baby. I saw him twice while he was there — both times to drop off breast milk. I am sitting at the kitchen table, reading a magazine and eating green beans straight from the freezer when he walks in carrying her car seat. He has more hair on his face than I’ve ever seen him with, and his eyes are dark and tired. He takes her up to her room without saying a word to me. I expect him to come right back down and give me a rundown of what the doctor said. When he doesn’t, I sneak upstairs to see where he is. I hear the shower running, so I decide to wait on the bed.

When he comes out of the bathroom, he has a towel wrapped around his waist. My first thought is of how gorgeous he is. I want to jump his bones despite what he said to me. He kept his facial hair. I kind of like it. I watch him drop the towel and pull on his boxer briefs. The best thing about Caleb is not his perfect body, or his half smiles, or his even sexier voice ... it’s his mannerisms. The teasing, the way he runs his thumbnail across his bottom lip when he’s thinking, the way he bites his tongue when he’s turned on. The way he makes me look at him when I have an orgasm. He can undress you with one look, make you feel like you’re standing naked in front of him. I know from experience, it’s a pleasure to be naked in front of Caleb. I think of the angles I could go with — an apology and make up sex ... a slap to the face and angry sex. I am extremely proficient at seducing him. It’s likely that he won’t believe any apology I try to offer. I go for something new.