Part III: Chapter 7

12/25/12

Louisville

It could have been the spirit of the season in my veins, or maybe just the spirits I’d imbibed, but I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so content. I leaned against the counter, draining the last of my wine, and surveyed my domain. No, not yours, a little voice in the back of my head reminded me, not yet.

But I’d had a hand in all this, hadn’t I? In the ham whose remains still sat on the kitchen island, the potatoes I’d probably eaten too much of, the birthday cake for Jesus that sat in the fridge, candles waiting to be lit. Christmas with my mother was always a small affair, a quiet meal for two, a bottle of wine and a sappy old movie. This year, we were caught up in chaos, in cooking and children and church and so much love! I could picture Mom and Jackie sitting on the couch, talking about painting or sewing or childrearing or God knew what. I could hear someone plinking out Christmas carols on the piano, the kids singing along in a hilarious variety of keys. In this solitary moment away from it all, I could almost taste the joy in the air.

I fairly danced over to the kitchen island, bopping from one foot to the other as I refilled my glass of merlot. “You will get a sentimental feeling when you hear,” I half-sang, half-whispered along, “voices singin’ let’s be jolly, deck the halls with boughs of holly…” I took another deep swig of wine, shaking my booty and whistling along with the music.

Behind me, I heard a barely stifled snicker. I looked over my shoulder to see Brian leaning against the doorframe, smirking, not unkindly. Seeing him on Christmas flooded me with warmth all over again. I didn’t miss a beat, pointing at him as I sang, “Everyone dancing merrily, don’t hate, ‘cause I’ve had some wine.”

Brian laughed. And then, in the midst of his laughter, he blurted out, “Marry me.”

The glass of wine slipped out of my hand and hit the floor, shattering and splattering merlot everywhere. I ran to the pantry and searched for a broom, but I knew I was too late to hide the shock on my burning face. My mind was empty. I could hear Brian ripping paper towels off the roll.

“Uh-oh!” Mom chose that moment to walk into the room, Jackie’s arm looped through hers, both carrying empty wine glasses. “Is it time to cut you off, Maggie May?” she crowed.

I didn’t know which was more shocking, her obvious camaraderie with Brian’s mom or that she was obviously hammered. If either of them noticed the disbelief I couldn’t keep off my face, they didn’t bat an eye. They looked at each other and giggled like teenagers. Jackie grabbed a half-empty bottle of chardonnay off the counter, and they walked out again.

“What did I just see?” I murmured, half to Brian and half to myself.

Brian was down on the floor, wiping up the spilled wine. I bent down next to him, picking the larger pieces out of the puddle. “Here, don’t cut yourself. I might as well add to my Christmas injury tally.”

“Don’t say that.” Brian was quiet for a moment, blotting up dark red liquid. The elephant in the room loomed over us. “Guess I said that out loud, huh?”

“You sure did.” I focused on the glass, sweeping up the sparkling little pieces into the dustpan.

“Well…” He paused, and I could feel his eyes on me, waiting for me to say something.

My heart was in my throat, and I could barely speak for the lump it created. Yes. A thousand times yes. But not like this. Not wine-drunk on Christmas night. Not when he had to be back in England in a week. Not like this.

Before I could answer, Baylee swept into the room. He’d gotten Heelys for Christmas from his mother, and Brian had been mad at her since making that discovery, I suspected at least a little because Brian didn’t have his own.

“Dad!” he greeted Brian. “Hank and Hunter want me to go home with them tonight. Can I go?”

“Tonight?” Brian echoed, his voice dripping with disbelief. He grabbed the edge of the island and hoisted himself up. “C’mon, you can stay with your old man on Christmas night, can’t you? You have a whole ‘nother week to go out to see your cousins.”

Baylee slouched in misery, curling his lip, rolling one foot back and forth. “Daaaaaad,” he whined, his voice sliding up and down. “They got all this super-cool archery stuff for Christmas. Weren’t you listening?”

“You’re not gonna be out shooting at targets when it’s 25 degrees out tomorrow,” Brian pointed out.

Baylee grinned and winked at me, a specter of his dad. “Nope. Raccoons.”

“Sorry, raccoons?” Brian sighed and gently shoved his son out of the room, watching him glide away on his new set of wheels. “You tell your cousins I’m being a mean old dad. Go ahead and throw me under the bus.”

“Raccoons?” I repeated, straightening up, as Baylee disappeared toward the bathroom.

“He’s a mess.” Brian walked over to me and slipped his arms around my waist, grinning ruefully down at me. “A mess like his old man.”

“At least you own it.” I ran my hands up and down his arms, over his ridiculously soft green sweater, which came close to matching mine, making me wonder if we should have consulted on our outfits this morning. I kissed his chin.

He looked down at me, and I saw expectation lingering in those blue, blue eyes. A nervous twinge had started in my stomach. Still stalling him, I kissed his lips this time, briefly. I didn’t quite know what to say, but eventually, I opened my mouth, and out came “Ask me again sometime.”

He sighed, a long breath escaping through his nose. A bit of the light went out of his eyes, a bit of the air out of my holiday joy. I couldn’t believe what I’d just said, but now I was fully committed to, well, it would seem, not committing.

I rubbed his arms again. “Brian, this is the third time I’ve seen you since I moved here.” We had, miraculously, been able to meet up for about a day at Thanksgiving. It took all my energy to keep a dirty smirk off my face at the memory of that particular day and night. “This week is the most time I’ve spent with you in, like, a year. And you have to get on a plane again next week.”

Brian pressed his lips to my forehead, and another sigh escaped into my hair. “I know. My timing sucks.”

“With all your family around and my klutzy drunk ass? Yeah, kind of.” I smiled up at him. His eyes, where disappointment and love still fought, still never failed to make me smile. “I love you, though.”

“I love you, too.” He reached into his back pocket and, with a flourish, pulled out a crumpled sprig of plastic mistletoe.

“You’ve just been waiting to do that, haven’t you?” I teased him.

He winked down at me, tweaking my nose with the mistletoe before he held it over our heads. “Maybe.”

I pinched his stomach. “You were gonna do that no matter what I said, weren’t you?”

He smiled, again a bit wistful. “Probably.” He bent his head and brushed his lips against mine, teasing. My toes curled in my shoes as he pulled me tighter against him, his mouth a breath away, suddenly ready to devour mine. I could feel a buzzing low in my belly.

No, wait, that wasn’t me.

“Damn it.” Brian broke the kiss and reached into his pocket with his other hand. We both looked down at his vibrating phone’s screen to see a picture of a lion under Kevin’s name.

I let go of Brian as he answered the phone. “What up, cuz?”

“Hey, Brian, what’s going on?” Kevin drawled on the other end.

“Oh, life, family, Christmas.” He held out the phone to me.

“Hi, Kevin,” I said as brightly as I could, considering he’d interrupted a heck of a kiss.

“Oh, hey, Meg. Merry Christmas,” came the easy response from the other end.

Brian returned the phone to his ear, holding up a finger as he walked away. “So what’s happening?” His voice faded into the hallway.

In the silence, I could still hear caroling from the other room, this time a cheery rendition of “White Christmas.” There was still a bit of wine on the floor, and I ran a paper towel under cold water and wiped up the rest of it. I poured myself a glass of water, suddenly sober, and leaned against the island.

What had been a break from the action now felt like I’d broken off from the group. Before I could stop myself, I wondered if, in my drunken shock, I’d irretrievably broken something besides a glass. My stomach twisted again in nervousness.

Mom walked back into the kitchen, this time alone and sans wine. She stopped in front of me, shorter even than I was, and patted my hand. “You OK, sugar?”

I snapped back to reality. “Sure. Just taking a little break. You and Jackie are sure hitting it off.” Not to mention hitting the bottle, I almost added.

Mom smiled. “She’s nice. It’s nice to be included.” She reached out and hugged me. I patted Mom’s back, trying not to spill water on her. “Thanks for getting involved with such a neat family. It’s been a long time since we had a Christmas like this.”

“And you,” Mom went on in my ear, suddenly loud. I turned to see Brian walking back into the room. Mom left me and walked over to Brian, enveloping him in the same hug. “Your family’s so sweet. Thanks for including us.”

“Please.” Brian smiled down at Mom. “The pleasure’s all mine, all ours, Miz Fuller.”

Mom pinched Brian’s arm, but she was still smiling. “Stop calling me that, kiddo.”

She walked out of the room, leaving us. The smile dropped off Brian’s face as her footsteps faded.

“What’d Kevin want?” I asked.

Brian blew out a long sigh and shoved his phone into his pocket. “Couple of the guys want to go back early.”

“Back? Back to London?” He nodded. “How early?” I went on.

“Fly out Thursday morning,” Brian mumbled.

It was already Tuesday night. My stomach hurt like the dickens. “What’d you say?”

Brian just looked at the floor, and I looked at the ceiling as anger flashed through me. “There’s this guy we want to get in there on the piano,” he said quietly. “He’s available Friday.”

I didn’t say anything. Our sweet kiss before his phone call, his fake-or-maybe-not-fake proposal, felt forgotten.

“This album’s a big deal, Meg.” Brian’s voice was heavy, careful. “We need to get it right. We need to get all of this right.”

I dug my nails into the palm of my hand, struggling to keep my voice even. “Brian, you just told your son he can’t go to his cousins’ house an hour away because you want to spend time with him. Now you’re flying to another continent?”

Brian sighed again. “Look, I—”

“And what are you going to do with him?” I plowed on. “Did you forget you have Baylee until Friday?”

“He’ll go to my parents’ for a day or two. Leighanne will be pissed no matter what I do. Meg, don’t you think I feel bad enough?” Exasperation had crept into Brian’s voice.

“I’m not sure.” I set down my glass of water, with a louder thunk than I’d intended, and crossed my arms. “Wasn’t the whole point of this album that y’all were going to be your own bosses?”

“Nobody’s ever their own boss.” Brian mirrored my stance. A muscle ticked in his jaw. “I need to do this, and I need you to not fight with me about it on Christmas.”

The tone of his voice made the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I’d never heard him talk like that before. My loving jokester was nowhere in sight.

I stared him down. I tried to focus on his eyes, not to be angry at him. He had a point. He had a lot of points. But all I saw was my boyfriend disappearing in the middle of a hard-won, longed-for week together. The joyful singing in the background felt at odds with the thick tension in the air between us.

“I love you, sweet girl, but I need to do this.” Brian’s soft voice, a little gentler now, was barely audible over the caroling.

“Don’t ‘sweet girl’ me right now, Brian,” I mumbled, shifting my gaze to the wall behind him.

“I had to try.” A smile crept into his voice.

“You’re a pain in the ass.” It came out with a lot less mirth than usual. But I crossed the kitchen and kissed him on the cheek anyway.

As I walked out of the room, I couldn’t help but wonder if he would have agreed to go back to London early if I had agreed to marry him.

12/31/12

Louisville

“Michaels?”

I snapped back to reality. Dave was staring at me as I stood next to the conference table, my train of thought lost. We were the only people left in the room.

“Sorry, what?” I shook my head as I closed my notebook and walked toward the door.

“I said you’re looking a little green in the gills there.” Dave stepped back to let me walk out first. “And you were awfully quiet in there.”

The short walk out of our meeting had riled up my tender belly, and I paused and took a deep breath to try to settle it down. It hadn’t stopped hurting since Christmas night. I’d thought it was a byproduct of the evening’s weird tension and argument with Brian, but as that night had faded, the pain had only intensified. My period had arrived with a vengeance the day before yesterday, but I didn’t think it was just that. I’d thrown up four or five times in the last 24 hours, once in the public restroom downstairs on my way into the office a few hours ago. It would be charitable to say I’d been anything more than a warm body at today’s weekly powwow.

“I’ve been better,” I said finally, pressing a hand to my stomach.

“Still not feeling great?” Kate said from her desk. She was wearing a hot pink cardigan over an orange dress, a middle finger to the colorless winter day, and the color combination made what was left of my breakfast threaten to return. I shook my head, and she went on, “You know, my boyfriend works…”

“…in the ER at University,” the entire newsroom finished, almost in unison.

“Yes. We know. Jesus,” Scott scoffed.

Kate made a disgusted noise. “Well, if you’d just let me finish.” She stood up and dramatically threw her earbuds down on her desk. “I was going to say that he just had a patient over the weekend with a ruptured appendix. Her stomach hurt, and she waited too long to go in, and…” Her hands shaped a tiny, invisible mushroom cloud. “Boom.”

I winced at the notion. Pain knifed through my stomach again, as if to say, Hey, that’s an idea. “Has your new boyfriend ever heard of HIPAA?”

“Kid does have a point this time,” Dave said. “What I’m about to suggest may be shocking, but have you thought about stopping by” – his voice dropped to a loud, ominous stage whisper – “the urgent care?”

“Forget urgent care,” Mikey chimed in. “I went in there when I had appendicitis, and they sent me straight to the ER as soon as they heard my symptoms. She might as well just go to University after all. ”

Across the room, Dori was already gathering up her purse and her coat. “I’ll drive you.”

“What makes you more qualified than anyone else?” Scott protested. “I literally just filed my Keep It Weird Fest story.”

Dori paused by Scott’s desk to glare down at him. “She pukes in your car, she hears about it for the next five years. You know I’m right.”

I sighed. “Well, if you’re all kicking me out of here…” I walked over to my desk and closed up my laptop, shoving it into my old red messenger bag.

Dave got to my desk at the same time as Dori. “Take care of yourself, Michaels. You have sick days for a reason. Keep me posted.”

“They use lasers to get your appendix out now,” Mikey said. “She’ll be working from home by tomorrow.”

“Not if it explodes.” Kate was back in her seat, typing without looking up. “If it explodes, they still cut you open and keep you.”

“Glad we don’t run a medical journal here.” I grimaced as I shrugged into my coat, the slight twist tugging at the most painful spot in my belly, and followed Dori out of the newsroom.

“Margaret Michaels?”

I stood up slowly. “That’s my ride.”

Dori stood up with me. “Do you need me to stick around?” I shook my head. “Is there someone you can call?”

I shrugged. “Brian’s in England. My mother’s in Illinois. I guess if worse comes to absolute worst, his brother can be here in an hour.” I didn’t say that in the definitive ranking of awkward things, calling his brother would rank only slightly behind walking into the ER in a purple chicken suit.

Dori screwed up her mouth in thought, and it didn’t take rocket science to know she pitied me, all alone in this mean city. “Take care, sister.” She patted my shoulder, and I could feel her eyes on me as I walked across the empty ER, slowly, to meet the nurse.

The nurse was stocky, pallid-skinned and all business, her mouth a straight line unaccustomed to smiling. I remembered Mom’s stories of her ER rotations in nursing school. This night, I knew, must be a true gallery of rogues, a tribute to human idiocy and an after-school special on the perils of binge drinking.

“Any chance you could be pregnant?” she muttered in a monotone. I shook my head, guzzling the water she’d given me for the urine test. She made a mark on her chart. “Do you remember the date of your last period?”

“Uh, I think I’m on it now?” It was the worst period I’d had since I’d gone on birth control a million years ago, and it was two weeks late, but better late than never. Even as these thoughts occurred to me, a sickening, cold nail turned in my stomach, adding nerves to the pain.

“OK, before that,” the nurse said impatiently.

I did hasty math in my head. Shit.

“The middle of November?” I said tentatively.

“Uh huh.” The nurse’s expression screamed “bullshit.” She handed me a plastic cup. “Bathroom’s down the hall on your right.”

I eased my way off the bed, perhaps too suddenly for my stomach’s taste. The rest of my breakfast suddenly rose in my throat. The nurse grabbed a pink bucket, a hair too small, and shoved it violently into my arms, a hair too late. I vomited most of my breakfast into the bucket, but didn’t entirely miss my shoes.

I looked down at my befouled feet. “Can I just walk to the bathroom barefoot?”

The nurse’s withering glare made me decide against it, and I shuffled off to the toilet, hoping I wasn’t creating a biohazard in motion. That old movie Outbreak kept replaying in my head as I peed. I was patient zero. I was one sick old bitch. A bitch, for sure.

Christmas night had faded, but not the tension between me and Brian. Something had changed. Something was missing. He and I had had one 10-minute conversation since he’d gone back. I couldn’t stop thinking about all we could have enjoyed together if he’d been able to stay behind. But I also couldn’t stop wondering if I was being too hard on him. This was what I’d signed up for, wasn’t it? This had been part of the package when I’d agreed to move here, this idea that big things were happening and we weren’t really going to be any less long-distance. I was selfish if I didn’t want him to have his best life.

Well, so be it. Maybe I was selfish. But I was beginning to suspect that he agreed.

He’d been right, though. His timing had sucked. And he didn’t seem any less convinced than me that he couldn’t have it both ways.

My reverie was interrupted by a knock on the door. “Everything all right in there?” It was Nurse Ratchet.

I held up the smelly vial to inspect it. Good enough. “Yep. We’re good.”

Back in the room, I changed into one of those glamorous, backless, chilly gowns with the dated, faded print. A few stabs at my arm later, I was settled into a bed with a morphine drip. The rush of salt and drugs made my head feel as though I’d splashed the inside of my skull with boiling water, but it was a welcome distraction from my belly, which still throbbed.

Judge Judy was showing on the TV. I flipped through the channels. Football. Soap operas. A Burn Notice rerun. I gave up and tried to play Candy Crush on my phone. The minutes stretched interminably before me, my year slipping away in a hospital room.

No answers. But at least I had painkillers. They settled around me like a blanket, blotting out all my thoughts. I lowered my phone and closed my eyes.

I jerked awake to the sound of an ultrasound cart rolling into my room. Cold gel, a wand pressing into my belly for several minutes, then into my… Yeah, that part wasn’t fun.

The ultrasound tech probed deeper with the wand, swirling it around as if stirring soup. I didn’t see how my day could get any worse. I focused on the speckles in the drop ceiling and tried to breathe. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her press her lips together and push a button on her machine.

“What do you see?” I craned my neck around in an attempt to see the screen. She looked down at me and calmly turned the screen away from me. I made a face at her and went back to studying the ceiling.

Alone again, I stared down at my phone. It was after 3 now. The night was still young in London. I had no idea what the guys were up to tonight. I wanted so badly to text Brian, but the chasm between us felt wider even than the ocean.

Where had we gone wrong? I pressed the morphine button to avoid thinking about it.

I woke again to footsteps. A doctor walked into the room. He was tall and lanky, with a salt-and-pepper beard and faded blue scrubs under his lab coat. He said his name, but his Southern accent was so thick that, still not totally accustomed to Kentucky-speak, I didn’t quite catch it.

“We got your labs back,” he drawled, “and your ultrasound results.”

I took a deep breath. “So is it my appendix? It’s my appendix, isn’t it?” I flexed my fingers. “Let’s get this overwith.”

The doctor didn’t say anything. He looked down at me from the end of the bed. Maybe it was the morphine, but he looked very small and very far away as my world narrowed to him. His eyes were sad, tired, like a hound’s.

Then he took a deep breath and, in a careful, even voice, spoke the loneliest and most shocking four sentences I thought I would ever hear.

“It’s not your appendix. You’re pregnant. The baby’s not going to make it. We need to operate now.”