HE NEEDED MOREbabies.
Lee had been at the hospital for more than six hours, and he’d delivered one baby. Just one. When Wren told him she needed space, Lee couldn’t wait to go into work so he could think about something besides his failure to protect the woman he loved, and the sickening feeling in his gut that told him he’d lost her for good.
But dwelling on his misery seemed to be his fate. Lee knew the odds were against him. February was statistically the slowest month in maternity wards nationwide, but May pulled a close second.
Still, one baby in six hours was downright odd. Any other night, and he would have welcomed it. He would have camped out in the bunkroom and relished the chance to sleep, but tonight, lying on the bottom bunk in the darkest corner of the room brought him no relief. Sleep had abandoned him.
Because Wren was hurting, and he hated it.
Space. That’s what she wanted, so he had to give it to her. Even if it drove him nuts. He’d rather have kept calling her, exorcising his guilt onto her voicemail and maybe nailing the chance to actually talk to her. But she’d have thought him crazy — if she didn’t already.
Still, Lee dug out his phone in the off chance she’d texted him in the last ten minutes and he hadn’t heard it. Of course, there was nothing, but he found himself opening his camera roll instead.
It held three pictures of Wren. He hadn’t looked back at any of them after snapping each one. It wasn’t much, but, at the moment, Lee gave thanks he’d taken any. He was in love. He had it bad. And when he tapped the thumbnail of the first, his breath caught at her beauty.
There, in the front seat of his Jeep, Wren sat with Victor in her lap after they’d come off the lake. Lee remembered the moment he’d snapped it. He’d just finished securing the kayak, and he was about to take Wren home for the first time. In the picture, her chin angled down toward Victor, but her piercing green eyes were tilted up to him. She wasn’t smiling, but her face was soft, her eyes knowing. They were going to make love. It was inevitable. And her look held a welcome.
The second picture he’d taken hours later. The image made him laugh. Victorious, Wren took a celebratory bite of pizza and raised her ping-pong paddle in triumph after besting him the first time. Even mid-bite, she was laughing, looking carefree and at home in the new world they’d created. A world he wanted to live in for the rest of his life.
Lee was about to flip to the next shot when the phone rang in his hand, and her name filled the screen.
“Wren?” Lee bolted up, smacking his head on the top bunk. “Ow!”
“No, it’s Cherise,” the unfamiliar voice whispered.
His breath stilled. “Is she all right?”
“Yes,” she said, still whispering. “She’s asleep in my room. I shouldn’t be doing this. I shouldn’t be calling you. I’m violating every commandment in the Best Friend Bible, but…”
Cherise sounded desperate, and Lee’s felt his armpits prickle with fear.
“But what?”
“She’s… she’s a mess. I’ve never seen her like this. She feels like it was her fault.”
“What? No!” Lee protested. “It was totally my fault. My dad—”
“No, no,” Cherise hissed. “Notthat. The shit that happened to her when she was a kid. Darryl the Dick.”
Lee got to his feet, his jaw clenching at the sound of that name. “Darryl — the pedophile?” he growled.
“Yes. She feels like she’s to blame in a way. Like she could have stopped it.” Cherise’s voice sounded pinched as if she might cry. “She keeps saying she’s unclean.”
Shock washed from his forehead to his gut. “But that’s…” Crazy? Messed up? Wrong?
Normal.
Sexual-abuse-survivor-guilt was normal, not just normal, but almost universal. Lee slumped back down onto the bunk with a sigh. He should have known. He should have seen it as soon as she’d told him. Lee wasn’t a psychiatrist, but he’d covered it in his psyche rotation. Survival guilt manifested for all sorts of reasons — some that even helped to protect victims — but it could also be destructive.
But when she told him what happened to her, Lee hadn’t been thinking about Wren as a patient. She was his girlfriend. His love. And he’d responded viscerally. Vomit and violence… in that order. Easing her fears and helping her build trust with him had been his biggest concerns.
“It’s common,” he muttered finally. “It happens a lot.”
Cherise blew her breath out in disgust. “Well, it’s ruining her life. That’s why she bolted on you. She said the way your folks looked at her only reflected how she sees herself. That she’s not good enough for you.”
Lee felt punched in the stomach.
Cherise groaned in frustration. “She needs help. That’s why I’m calling. That’s the only reason I’m going behind her back.”
