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From the direction of Co
“Something’s wrong with her!” Lili screeched.
“No…” I tried to tell them it was fine.
“She fucking pissed herself and then dropped to the floor!”
“Shut up, Lili!” I growled through the cramps. “I’m…I didn’t piss myself.”
“Then, what?” she screamed.
Kneeling in front of me, Co
I shook my head. “There was something wrong with it. I didn’t want Phil to know.”
Lili sucked in a sharp breath. “You’re pregnant?”
Not anymore, I thought. It hit me so hard that it had to be released by way of a wretched sob.
“How far along?” asked Co
“Little less than ten weeks. I don’t need to go to the hospital. They’ll just send me home again. I knew when I woke up this morning. That’s why I came home. Phil—” Another cramp tightened through my belly, and I breathed deeply and evenly to get through it. “I forgot my shot. I forgot it for four fucking weeks, and when I’d found out, I had the gyno at the hospital in Saskatoon check it, and the heart—” Another cramp, and a warm rush of blood flooded my underwear. The first wave of wetness had been amniotic fluid.
“Co
So much blood, a smear of it stained my i
“Put her in the tub!” commanded Lili.
My brother set me on my feet, and with my best friend, they stripped the soiled shorts and underwear off me. Then, Co
Co
“I know,” I replied through the pain.
“We should find Alys,” said Lili.
“No. She doesn’t need to know.”
“You didn’t even tell Alys?” asked Lili.
“I didn’t tell anyone!” I snapped.
“Damn it, Ke
I laughed bitterly.
“What?” huffed Lili. “She wouldn’t.”
With hurt, fury, and jealousy, I told them how I’d found Alys and Phil this morning. Feeling petty and sorry for myself and perhaps a bit spiteful, I needed Lili to be outraged with Alys and Phil to feel justified in my reaction.
“You know neither of them meant for that to happen,” said Co
“I KNOW!” I roared, seized with the hardest cramp yet. My uterus tightened beyond belief, and something huge worked its way down.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” whispered Lili.
“Then, get out!” shouted Co
Lili smacked him upside the head. “Fuck you!” she snapped before storming out.
“Squeamish little fucker,” he said under his breath. “How the hell did you think you were going to deal with this on your own, Ke
“Phil can’t know, okay? If I told a single person, then the danger of it would get out, and Phil would have been destroyed. More than anything, he wants to have children, has been asking me practically from day one. When I found out that it wasn’t going to make it, I just left it at that. He’d just lost his best friend. To lose X and then have this taken from him, too…” I couldn’t finish, taking a few minutes to breathe through the next round of contractions.
“Why didn’t you just get rid of it when you found out?” he asked gently.
“I couldn’t,” I sobbed. “We made Little Zephyr together. I couldn’t willingly destroy a part of him like that.”
“Okay,” he said softly. “I get it.”
“Don’t tell him, Co
“There’s nothing for him to forgive.”
Another cramp blazed through me, making me cry out and grunt with it, and Co
After a few more minutes, I was ready to get up and lie down. More was to come, and I would need the hot water when it did. When Co
Armed with an ancient pair of gra
“What the hell?” she asked when I told her to grab an after-birth pad from under the sink. “What sort of size is this?”
Somehow, I found that hilarious. “Gigantore.”
“You don’t say…”
The three of us piled into my bed. Lili had already prepared several blunts to pass the time and pain.
Exhausted, hurting in body and soul, I got seriously ripped off the first blunt and fell asleep.
Phil
“Ke
“Yeah, she said she was feeling sick. You…you didn’t know?”
I wasn’t going to answer that.
Enduring two hours of physical-therapy torture with Gavin had me sweating, shaking, and reeking like the inside of a bottle. He finished up with a thirty-minute massage and acupuncture in my ass and groin.
“You know, if you quit drinking—” he started saying.
I waved him down. “It ain’t like it’s permanent, man. Right now, I just need somethin’ to shut my head up.”
“Weed won’t fuck up your healing process,” he told me.
“Yeah,” I replied, not committing to anything.
After he finished with my treatment, Gavin left, and a light knock came from the panel door.
“Yeah?” I called out.
Alys came in. “Phil?”
“What’s up?” I asked before chugging back a bottle of water.
Shit, she looked ready to cry. I didn’t think I could handle much more.
“D-do you remember what happened last night?”
“Um…we watched TV and drank a few bottles of whiskey?”
She nodded. “Do you remember passing out?”
“No. That’s why they call it passin’ out, Muffin.”
She really looked bad, going all pale. “Nothing happened, but I fell asleep on you. You were holding me. Ke
“And what?” I asked weakly. Panic and terror pounded through me. “And what?”
“She’s gone, Phil.” Her voice trembled, and her face quivered. “I tried to stop her. She looked…” She sucked in a deep breath, wringing her hands like she could squeeze the answers from thin air.
“You need to fuckin’ tell me what fuckin’ happened, Alys, or so help me God—”
“She was furious and told me that, last night, you showed me more compassion than you had given her in months…” The woman laid it all out there in great detail. “She said that maybe it would be for the best for her to walk away now instead of letting both of your misery drown her.”
My head was having a hell of a time processing this shit. “Where did she go?”
“I don’t know. She ran out—”
“You didn’t follow her?” I shouted, struggling to get off the stupid fuckin’ bed. “Fuck, Alys! She had to know that nothin’ happened!”
“Phil, what would you have done if you’d found Ke
Fuck, I was about to flat-out fuckin’ lose it. “I would’ve kicked his ass. I would’ve lost my fuckin’ shit.”
“Ke