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When we get there, I’m immediately wheeled into a treatment room by myself, and a team of people come rushing in behind me. They’re snapping out questions so fast, I can barely register them as they’re hooking me up to monitors and machines and IV bags.
“When was your last prenatal visit?” One question finally gets through to me.
I shake my head. “I’ve never had one. I don’t have medical insurance and couldn’t afford it.”
The woman frowns as she wheels a machine closer to me. “We’re going to get an ultrasound. We have to know what’s going on, all right?”
I nod, and wince as the cold jelly squirts onto my stomach. The technician begins moving the wand across my abdomen, searching for my baby. I know from reading and watching movies that you are supposed to hear a heartbeat during an ultrasound, and my ears strain to find any noise. Time passes, but the room remains silent as everyone is listening for a sound that isn’t there.
“Why . . .why can’t we hear a heartbeat?” I ask in a shaking voice.
The doctor steps forward, pity welling in her brown eyes. “I’m so sorry. Your baby passed away in the fall.”
“No,” I whisper. “No, no, no, no, no!” With each word, my voice rises, coated with hysteria. Tears stream down my face. Oh god, oh god. No.
A nurse pushes into the room and quietly tells the doctor that my husband is in the ER causing a disturbance and demanding that someone bring him to see me.
“Let him in,” I say dully. “Let him in. He needs to know.”
In less than two minutes, Fist is by my side, looking down at me with worried eyes. He picks up my hand. “Are you all right? What’s going on? I’ve been worried sick about you, sweetness.” He brings my fingers to his lips and kisses them.
“Nothing will ever be all right again,” I tell him, the tears still running down my face. I can feel my eyes beginning to swell from the salt. “I was pregnant, Fist. I was pregnant, and the baby died when I fell.”
9
Fist
What the fuck did she just say? Pregnant? Is she joking? She can’t be serious. I didn’t know shit about her being pregnant.
“What the fuck did you say?” I grate out. Mindi cries harder, her body almost convulsing with sobs. The way she’s grieving lets me know she isnotlying, and she isnotjoking. I inhale deeply and take a step back, letting her hand fall back onto the sheet. “Why wouldn’t you tell me something like this?”
She looks up at me and says brokenly, “It wasn’t the right time.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
Mindi bites her lower lip. “It wasn’t the right time,” she repeats. “Oh, Fist, things were just going so good between us again, and I didn’t want to add any more pressure to make our relationship work. All I wanted was for it to flow nice and easy, and now this. I’m so sorry, Fist.”
“Were you even planning on telling me you were pregnant?” I demand.
She nods. “Yes. I was going to tell you next weekend, when we were alone in Whitefish.”
“I see,” I reply woodenly, like it matters. But it doesn’t. It doesn’t matter at all. She was pregnant with my kid, and I never knew about it. She never gave me that opportunity.
Does she really think the lowly of me? Does she really not think I’d step up and take care of my kid? Of her? Why would anyone keep that kind of news from the father of their child? Wouldn’t they want that person to know so they could have someone who would be there for them?
I’m furious. My temper is flaring. I’m trying to rein it in, trying to see things from her point of view, but I just can’t. I don’t have it in me to be compassionate right now. I run my fingers through my hair and pace the length of the room. I know if I start talking, I’ll start yelling. That's how upset I am.
I could have rejoiced in the life we’d created together, but she robbed me of my chance to celebrate the baby . . . my baby. Now, all I have is pain. Again.
The same kind of pain I felt when Misty fucked me over. She cost me a kid, too. The heartless whore had adopted our baby our instead of coming back home with it. She didn’t put my name on the birth certificate either, which pretty much left me without rights—especially considering she had a private, closed adoption.
It’s not the same thing, a tiny part of me whispers. Mindi fell; losing this baby was an accident. But the rest of me is ice cold with fury. Is Mindi any better than Misty? I don’t think so.
I look at her and feel nothing but white-hot anger. “I can’t believe you’d do this to me. I can’t believe you kept my child a secret, like it was something you were ashamed of. Like I was something you were ashamed of.”
There’s a brisk knock on the door, and the doctor strides into the room. “I’m terribly sorry to interrupt your grieving time,” she says in a soft voice. “But we really need to get Mindi down to surgery.”
“Surgery?” I question.
