Chapter 33
33
TEGAN
Little Tuna hasn’t moved in a while.
Usually, she’s a super active baby. So the fact that an hour has gone by and she hasn’t moved once is cause for concern. It could be that I’m not drinking enough. Polly mentioned this morning that it was important for me to drink more water. I know she’s right, but if I drink a lot of water, it means I’m going to need the bedpan more frequently. And that is not a pleasant experience.
And not only that, but I wonder if it’s possible Hank might slip something into my drink before Polly brings it down. It wouldn’t be the first time such a thing has happened to me.
I massage my abdomen, trying to wake her up. “Come on, Tuna. Give Mama a kick.”
Finally, I get a little poke in my rib cage. I’m still here, Mama. But I don’t feel very good.
“Me either, Tuna,” I whisper.
By the time Polly comes back down to the basement close to noon, I’m ready to leap out of bed, if only that were possible. I recognize Hank will have to help me out of bed and into the car, and the last thing I want is that terrible man touching me again, but it’s my only choice if the phone lines really are down.
“Is the road all cleared?” I ask Polly.
She hesitates, clutching a bowl of food in her right hand—my lunch, I assume. “Yes. Mostly.”
I almost can’t believe the stupid plows finally cleared the road and I’ll be able to get out of here. It seems too good to be true.
“Okay.” I sit up straighter in bed, which sets off another white-hot jolt of pain in my left ankle. “When can we go?”
“Well, Hank had to go to work,” she explains. “And I can’t possibly manage to get you up the stairs all by myself.”
“I could do the stairs,” I protest. “I’ll just hold on to the railing.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “Can you? Every time I move you the slightest bit, you cry out in pain.”
That is not untrue. I would have hoped the pain in my ankle would have subsided by now, but if anything, it’s getting worse by the day. Getting up those stairs, even with Polly helping, would be a challenge. But I’m so eager to get out of here, I’m willing to try.
Just as I’m about to suggest this, a loud groan echoes from the ceiling above us. “What was that?”
“That?” Polly fluffs a pillow at the foot of the bed. “Oh, nothing. Just the house settling.”
The house settling? Really? “It sounded like footsteps.”
“How could it be? Nobody is upstairs.”
Is that really true though? It occurs to me that Hank might not really be at work and that this is just a lie he forced her to tell me. What if he’s right upstairs and just doesn’t want me to leave?
I knew it was too easy.
“I want to try the stairs,” I insist.
“I can’t support your weight on the stairs,” she retorts, her voice frustratingly calm. “And the banister isn’t very stable either. If you were to take a fall down those stairs… Well, you don’t want to risk your baby’s life.” She pauses meaningfully. “Do you?”
I look over her shoulder at the steep staircase to the main level of the house. If I fell down those stairs, that might be the end of me and Tuna. I’m still itching to try, but I reluctantly admit that she’s right.
“What about the phones?” I say desperately.
“Sorry. The phone service is never very good out here, and I still can’t get a dial tone.”
Of course she can’t.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “We’ll leave as soon as Hank gets back.”
“And when will that be?”
Polly puts down the bowl of what looks like rice and vegetables on my tray. “Six or seven?”
“ Six or seven? ” I want to cry all over again. “That’s hours from now!”
“Well, you’ve been here two nights. What’s a few more hours?”
“No.” My right hand clenches into a fist. “If the road is clear, maybe you can drive to a store that has a phone that works. I can’t stay here another six or seven hours . I just can’t.”
She’s quiet for a moment, as if considering it. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. You’re better off staying put for now.”
Is she kidding me? “I’m sorry, but I really need to get to a hospital. I appreciate all you’ve done for me, but I need hospital-level care right now.”
“If you’d just drink a little more water, you’d be fine.”
“Don’t tell me what to do!” I shoot back. “I need to get to a hospital! Now . You’re a nurse, for God’s sake. Shouldn’t you know better?”
Polly stands there, her body rigid. I’m sorry I yelled at her, but I’m also not sorry. She needs to know that I’m not just going to lie down here in the basement, twiddling my thumbs.
“You can get out of bed if you want,” Polly offers. “We have a wheelchair that my mother used to use. I’m happy to help you get into it.”
She gestures at the corner of the room, where there is indeed a wheelchair tucked away in the shadows. It looks like it’s been sitting there a long time. A string of cobwebs decorates the gap between the armrest and the wall. The footplates at the bottom are brown with rust.
I don’t want to get into that wheelchair. Polly claims she’s trying to do what she can to help me, but it’s not enough—all I want is to leave this house. “I just want to go to the hospital.”
“But you know what they’ll do at the hospital, don’t you?” she says. “They’ll pump you up with the drugs, especially if they’re going to do surgery. That’s the worst possible thing for your baby.”
She keeps saying that. But I’m the one in pain. She has no clue how awful this is. And anyway, it’s not her decision to make. “So what am I supposed to do? Lie around with a broken ankle?”
“What do you care more about—walking or your own child?”
She says it like I would be selfish to even consider the former. But she’s wrong. The hospital won’t do anything to hurt me or Tuna. I care about my baby more than anything in the world, but I can’t believe that going to a hospital is the wrong thing to do. And it’s hard to imagine that as a nurse, she would think so either.
I think she’s telling me exactly what Hank told her to tell me.
“I want to go to the hospital,” I say firmly.
She nods slowly. “Okay, I think you’re making the wrong decision, but I understand where you’re coming from. Why don’t you finish your lunch, and then we’ll talk about it more. But I truly think it’s best for you to stay put until Hank gets back.”
I start to protest, but Polly has already turned away from me and is walking up the stairs.
As soon as she’s gone, I grab my purse. I rifle through it one more time, making good and sure that my phone isn’t inside. It’s not. It’s definitely not.
I can accept that I might have forgotten to put my phone back in my purse. But I am feeling more uneasy about the fact that my pepper spray isn’t in my purse anymore. That was definitely in my purse when I started my trip. And now it isn’t.
Where did it go?
One thing I do locate in my purse is a gold lighter. This lighter was a present from Jackson on my birthday last month, even though I hadn’t even told him it was my birthday. He must have figured it out from the paperwork.
Dennis was starting to get into the busy season at the ski resort, and I had grown apart from my friends since I was working around the clock to save money for when the baby came. I resigned myself to spending my twenty-third birthday alone. And then Jackson showed up with a chocolate cake—my favorite. A little birdie told me it was your birthday.
We left the cake at my house, and he took me out to dinner rather than chowing down from Chinese food cartons in my living room. We went to a nice restaurant a thirty-minute drive away, and we had a great time. The waitress in the restaurant didn’t give me the stink eye for being a pregnant girl without a wedding band. In fact, when speaking to Jackson, she referred to me as “your wife,” and he didn’t correct her. For a moment, it felt like I was in a parallel universe where Jackson really was the father of my baby and the two of us were going to raise her together and live happily ever after.
When we got back to my apartment , Jackson whipped out some candles to put on the cake, although thankfully not twenty-three of them. He teased me when I didn’t have a lighter to light the candles.
How do you not own a lighter?
Well, I don’t smoke, I explained.
Everyone should own a lighter. You never know when you’ll need it.
When he said good night, the two of us lingered in front of my door, and for a split second, I was sure he was going to kiss me. But then the moment passed, and instead, he reached out and squeezed my hand in his. Happy birthday, Tegan. This time next year, you’ll be celebrating with your daughter.
I thought that was the end of it. But then two weeks later, he showed up with a cupcake, a single candle, and a lighter engraved with my name on it. Now we can do this properly, he said. And I laughed as he lit the candle on the cake and told me to make a wish and blow it out.
My wish was that when he said good night that night, he would kiss me.
It didn’t come true.
The lighter is beautiful. He had it engraved. You don’t just pick up an engraved cigarette lighter on your way home from work. He ordered it in advance just for me.
My eyes fill with tears at the memory. I don’t think I realized until now how deeply I had been falling in love with Jackson. I was such an idiot. I had no idea who he really was. I didn’t realize that all he was doing was “handling me” for his boss. I was hurt that he didn’t believe me when I told him what Simon really did to me, but maybe he knew it all along. Maybe Simon told him what happened, and he was pretending to be my friend to keep me from going to the police.
I have no idea what the truth is. All I know is that Simon assaulted me and Jackson betrayed me.
But whatever his motivation was, thanks to Jackson, even though I don’t have my pepper spray, I do have a cigarette lighter. I still have a chance.