The Girl He Used to Know(55)
And in the case of the pills, I had forgotten enough times that we made a baby.
* * *
My parents stayed at the hospital from sunrise to sundown and then retired to a nearby hotel rather than make the daily four-hour round trip home and back. Jonathan stayed by my side and only left briefly when he would run home to shower and change. He spent the nights sleeping in a recliner by my bedside as I drifted in and out of a painkiller-induced haze. The first night, after my parents had finally left after receiving enough assurances from the doctor that I was no longer in danger, he clutched my hand tightly in his and there were tears in his eyes. “I was so scared, Annika.”
“Me too,” I whispered. But what I didn’t tell him was that my grief over what had happened outweighed the fear of what had not. During my more lucid moments, I’d thought about the baby growing in my fallopian tube. The doctor had told me that with an ectopic pregnancy there was no way to save the baby, and it was true that I was in no way equipped to have one.
But that didn’t stop my heart from breaking for the tiny living thing that never had a chance.
* * *
Janice brought a pair of my pajamas and helped me change into them in the bathroom, leaving my parents and Jonathan to make small talk in my room. “I know you must hate wearing these,” Janice said as she slipped the hospital gown from my shoulders and replaced it with the long-sleeved top to my pajamas. She held open the waistband of the bottoms, and I stepped into them—gingerly, because even the slightest movement caused a painful, pulling sensation in my incision.
I didn’t mind the gowns, actually. They were loose and somewhat soft, probably from the repeated washings. What I hated the most about being in the hospital was the noises and smells. The sharp smell of the antiseptic and the repeated announcements over the intercom interfered with whatever semblance of calm I had been able to achieve. All I wanted was to stay asleep, to escape from this nightmare in the only way I knew how. But that didn’t keep the nurses from coming in hourly to poke and prod me, to take my temperature and blood pressure. My wound needed its own care to make sure there was no infection. I had caught a glimpse of the angry line of stitches when the nurse helped me go to the bathroom for the first time after they removed the catheter, and I made sure never to look down again.
Janice opened the door and put her arm around my shoulders to help me walk out of the bathroom. I was still light-headed and the nurses warned that I should not get out of bed unless someone was at my side to make sure I didn’t fall.
“I told your mom I’d go around and talk to all your professors and see what they wanted to do about keeping you in the loop for these last few weeks of school,” she said. “I’m sure they’ll allow you to turn in the work late and make some other concession for the final exams.”
I didn’t say anything, because I could only focus on one thing at a time, and at the moment all I really wanted was for Janice to put me back in bed.
* * *
“I’ll leave as soon as classes are over on Friday,” Jonathan said on the day they allowed me to go home.
“Leave to go where?”
“Your house. I want to be with you.”
“Okay,” I said. I was still tired and weak, and all I wanted to do when I got home was go back to sleep, but it would feel good to have Jonathan with me.
My parents arrived and while we waited for the discharge paperwork, Jonathan said, “Is it all right if I visit Annika this weekend?”
“Of course,” my mother said.
When the nurse said it was okay for me to leave, my dad left to bring the car around.
“I’ll just be out in the hallway,” my mom said.
Jonathan pulled me close, crushing me in his hug. I didn’t mind, though. When he let go, he kissed my forehead. “I love you. Everything’s going to be okay.”
“I love you too,” I said. I didn’t address the second part of his statement, because I didn’t believe that anything would ever be okay again.
I climbed into the backseat of my parents’ car, lay down across the seat, and went to sleep.
* * *
“What can I get you?” my mom asked after she tucked me into my bed like a child. The perfume Jonathan had given me for Christmas and I’d callously left behind was directly in my line of vision, and I asked her to give it to me.
I clutched the perfume bottle in my hand, and I cried myself to sleep over the sadness of what I’d done, and for the baby Jonathan and I had made and lost.
* * *
He came on Friday just like he promised, and he was there when I woke up from one of my many naps. He brushed the hair back from my face. “How’s my Sleeping Beauty?”
I smiled, because his face was one of the few things that still brought me joy. He pulled back the covers and climbed into my bed, and I settled my head in the small crook between his neck and shoulder. “I’m fine,” I said, though I had never lied to him before.
The first lie made the ones that followed so much easier to tell.
The door opened late on Saturday night. “Annika?” Jonathan said, his voice only slightly louder than a whisper.
“I’m awake,” I said. My mom had put Jonathan’s things in Will’s room when he arrived, but my parents weren’t overly strict about that sort of thing, and I knew my mom wouldn’t care if she found us together in my bed or Will’s. The reason I was awake when Jonathan came in was because I’d slept so much of the day away that for once, I couldn’t sleep. Instead I’d been lying in bed ruminating over the state of my life. Other people’s mistakes seemed small in comparison to the ones I’d made. Mine seemed to be getting bigger, and now they were hurting other people.