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An EMT comes to me and I brace myself, knowing he will tell me that the hemorrhaging was too severe, that Sienna lost so much blood she couldn’t be saved.
“She’s okay,” he says.
“What... I...” I stammer. “But the blood. There’s so much.”
“She isn’t hurt, nothing life-threatening anyway. Some cuts and bruises, a busted-up ankle. But the blood,” he says. “It isn’t hers.”
We go to the hospital anyway. The EMTs want Sienna assessed by a doctor because, if nothing else, she has a bruised and swollen ankle from falling in the dark inside the house and will need X-rays to see if it’s broken or sprained. She lies on a hospital bed in the emergency room, waiting for the doctor to come. I stand beside her, finding it hard to believe she’s alive, and mostly, physically okay, though emotionally is another story.
Before we left for the hospital, a police officer told me that Penelope called the police. That after giving it some thought, she remembered the home, Luke’s preoccupation with it, and thought it might be somewhere he would go to hide.
Now Sienna says, “He said something happened to you.”
“Who did?”
“Luke,” she says, the blood on her face and in her hair hard to look at, and I have to remind myself that it’s not hers, it’s Luke’s. “He said that you were hurt, like really bad. He told me to come with him and that he’d take me to you.” There are tears in her eyes as she says it. Of course she would have let Luke in when he came to the door. Sienna knows Luke. They’ve met a handful of times, but I talk about him all the time. If Luke came to our apartment door, if he buzzed up and said something bad had happened to me, Sienna wouldn’t have hesitated to believe him. “I was so scared. I thought I’d lost you. I kept thinking about all those mean things I said and what if they were the last things I ever said to you?” Her face crumples and she sobs, shoulders heaving, having trouble getting the words out. “I don’t hate you.”
“I know, honey, I know,” I say, pulling her into me, grateful when she doesn’t resist but gives in, surrendering and sagging against me. “I was just as scared,” I say, running a hand over her hair. “When I found out about Luke, about who he was and what he’d done, and then I realized you were with him.” My voice catches. It’s hard to get the words out, to think how close I came to losing her tonight. “I’m just so sorry, Sienna. About everything. About Luke. That I let a man like that into our lives. And about your dad.”
Sienna pulls away to look me in the eye. She says, pleading, as if she’s been thinking about this for a while and has decided, “Can we keep that just between you and me, Mom? Please? It will only hurt him if he knows. No good can come of it. It’s not like I ever want to find my real dad, and if Dad knows, then it will be weird. Nothing will ever be the same again. What’s that saying? Innocence is bliss?”
“Ignorance,” I correct her gently, wondering if Sienna and I could really keep this secret from Ben, if Ben doesn’t need to know that he’s not her father. Sienna is right; no good can come of him knowing. It will only hurt him. He’ll feel like he’s lost a child, and then there will be past custody payments to pay back, and it will all be a big mess. Feelings will be hurt. Everyone will suffer in some way, all of us, but especially Ben.
“Do we have to tell him?” Sienna begs.
“Tell him what?” I hear from behind and I spin around as Ben slips through the curtain, a nurse with him, showing him where we are. He turns and thanks her, and I take him in, wondering how long Ben was standing on the other side of the curtain before he came in and how much of Sienna and my conversation he overheard.
I haven’t seen Ben since that night in my apartment. I know now that it was going too far to think he was there to hurt me or worse. I know the truth now, that Sienna asked him to come and he came only out of concern for me. He came because he was worried about me, because he wanted to see if I was okay, and maybe, just maybe, because some small part of him still loves me.
I think what it would do to me if, however impossible, I were to find out right now that Sienna wasn’t mine. It would break me.
“The doctor,” I breathe out, trying to keep my voice level. I swallow, biding time to think, feeling Sienna grip my hand from behind. “She was talking about the doctor. Sienna is worried about needing a tetanus shot. She asked if we need to tell the doctor about this scratch, and we do. There were exposed nails all over that house.” I look back to Sienna and say, “You can’t be taking any chances with tetanus,” and she nods, an understanding, a secret pact, in our mutual gaze. We won’t tell Ben about Sienna’s real father. Not now. Not ever.
Ben steps past me to go to her, taking her into his arms. Tears prick my eyes as he says, “I’ll be right here when they do it. I can hold your hand. It won’t hurt at all,” and I know that even if he isn’t her biological father, he’s her father and always will be.
Thirty minutes later, Ben and I sit in the waiting room alone as they take Sienna for X-rays of her ankle. “About the other night,” Ben says shyly, and as I look him in the eye, there is something earnest in them, something hopeful and practically begging. I think of all the times he’s called me since that night. All the texts and voice mails, asking me to come over, offering to make dinner. He genuinely thought we could get back together.
I think of that night in my apartment, how solicitous he was, how he held and consoled me when I was upset. I think of his hand slipping under the hem of my shirt, his body weight pressing me into the sofa, and the way I felt, wanting him.
But I think too of the way he reacted when Sienna texted, how he was put off, inconsiderate, how his temper flared, how he reacted like a child and how his own needs trumped hers.
Both of these men is Ben.
“I love you, Ben. I will always love you, but not in that way,” I say, stopping the conversation short. “I don’t know what got into me that night, but I’m sorry that I led you on.”
He nods, reaching for my hand in a way that is familiar, comforting.
“Hey,” he says, very pally, smiling humbly, hat in hand, “it was worth a try.”
He wraps an arm around my shoulders and I lean into him, knowing that despite everything we’ve been through, despite our differences, we are family.
Epilogue
It’s my first day back to work in almost a month.
It’s February now. The days aren’t any warmer or less gray, but the promise of spring on the horizon makes it easier to bear.
I follow my usual route to the hospital, feeling nostalgia mixed with anxiety and nerves, wondering how my coworkers will react now that I’m back.
