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“No.” Her mind was too scared to think of any.
The doctor touched Rae’s shoulder and smiled. “It shouldn’t be too long before we can get you moved, so hang tight.”
It took another two hours to get Rae moved up to the labor-and-delivery unit. By the time it was evening, Ben still wasn’t back, and she assumed he had gone home to rest or get something to eat and would come later on. The next day was a blur of discomfort at first and then hours of excruciating pain once they started the inducement process.
Ben never came back, and Rae realized she’d have no one familiar with her as she gave birth. So many things could go wrong. Shecould start hemorrhaging and die, and then what would happen to Lily? Would Ben and Marilyn take her, or would the hospital call Rae’s mother? She didn’t want either option. The horrible possibilities kept piling up in her mind until she broke into sobs.
A kind older nurse noticed Rae crying alone in the hospital room, and she parked herself by the bed with a cup of crushed ice for Rae and murmured soothing words. The nurse stayed by her side during the entire labor process. Just as Rae thought there was no way she would survive the pain, she felt a rush of fluids from her body, and the doctor placed Lily on her chest.
A nurse swooped in and took Lily to check her over and get her lungs cleared out. The first time Rae heard Lily’s lusty cry was the most surreal, beautiful moment she’d ever experienced. All she could think of as she felt the weight of Lily’s body against her chest and tried to get her baby to latch on to her breast was one of the words on the GED test:kismet. All the hell she’d been through leading to this moment of fate. Her Lily. Her rebirth.
At some point, she fell asleep with Lily in a hospital crib next to her bed. She woke up to the sounds of a woman cooing. As her eyes focused in the dim light of the hospital room, Rae saw Marilyn holding Lily, rocking her. Ben wasn’t in the room. Rae reached for the red nurse’s call button and pushed it.
“Put my baby down,” Rae said, punctuating each word with loathing.
Marilyn looked over at Rae and smiled, but her eyes were like ice. She placed Lily back in the crib and came over to the side of Rae’s bed. “I came to drop off your things.” She motioned to the recliner in the room, which was covered in Rae’s belongings—her luggage and a couple of garbage bags filled with items. Even the crib Viv had bought had been broken down and was leaning against a wall. “I know what you’ve been doing with Ben. Manipulating him, trying to seduce himinto leaving me. It didn’t work, and now you have nowhere to go, and no one to support you. I hope it was worth it.”
It couldn’t be true. Ben wouldn’t do this to her. But then she looked at the heavy suitcases and the crib and knew Marilyn didn’t bring them up to the room on her own.
An older nurse responded to the call button. “What do you need, sweetie?”
“I woke up and saw this woman holding my baby,” Rae said. “She threatened to take her.”
“I know her,” Marilyn said to the nurse.
The nurse turned to Marilyn. “Ma’am, you need to come with me. I’m calling security to have you escorted out.”
Before leaving with the nurse, Marilyn looked down at Lily. “I’m so sorry you have a sick pervert for a mother.”
The two days following Lily’s birth, Rae couldn’t rest and recover. There was no time. Instead, she called the apartment complex about the available unit, only to find out they’d already rented it. She couldn’t afford the deposit on any of the other available apartments she’d found online, so she started scouring Craigslist, which she knew was a gamble. So many creeps used the site.
She lucked out and found a listing for a garage apartment in an older neighborhood near the Plaza District. She called the number and left a message on the voice mail with her cell phone number.
If there was one piece of positive news, it was seeing the email confirming she had passed the GED test. She wanted to feel proud of her achievement, but the truth was she was too tired. She felt like she’d been on a journey, and every time she thought she was done, that she could finally live her life, something else happened, and she’d have to start over. All she really wanted to do was to rest.
Rae had finished breastfeeding Lily when she had a call on the hospital phone in her room. She answered it, sure it was some hospital administrator calling to tell her the crazy amount she would surely owe for the birthing costs.
“Rae?”
It was Ben, one of the last people she wanted to speak with.
“Please don’t hang up,” he said. “I ... I need you to know it wasn’t my idea to kick you out. Mare found the GED guide I got for you and saw the notes I’d made in it for you. I told her I was just helping you study, but she didn’t believe me. She also found your dolls when she went through your things, thinking I was cheating on her, and I tried to explain to her what they were for, that it was for your work, and it only made things worse.”
“You said you would help me, but you’re just a coward. And now Lily and I have nowhere to go.”
Ben was quiet on the line before he said, “You’re right, I am. Mare threatened to use the emails I’d written to Scott—the ones she found during the affair—against me if I proceeded with a divorce and if I didn’t help her move your things out of the house. You know how this state is. No court is going to give custody, even shared custody, to a queer man.”
Rae hadn’t thought about that possibility, but it didn’t mean she forgave him. “I’m sorry she did that to you.” She wasn’t sure what else to say to him. “Well, you said what you wanted to say, and I understand why you did it, so ...”
“Wait. Mare doesn’t know about the funds I was going to get for you. I’ve been depositing small amounts into a secret account I’ve had for the last three years, in case I ever left her. I need your PayPal account, and I’ll send it over.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to do it.”
As angry as she was with him, she couldn’t afford to reject the money, so she gave him the information.
“I’m sorry, Rae. I wish I could do more.”
