Chapter Eleven
Bellefonte, Pennsylvania
Rose Terraces Nursing Home
Four months later
Briley walked down the hall pushing the medicine cart, and smiled at the front desk receptionist as she passed. She slowed her pace a bit, enjoying the air conditioning in the entrance area as long as possible. It was the end of August and it was crazy hot, and although Briley had never really minded the heat before in her life, for some reason she was suffering badly that summer.
With a small sigh, she carried on down the hallway, popping in and out of the patients’ rooms, handing out their medication. As usual, a few protested and she cajoled and coaxed them until they took their pills; she always hated having to force anyone to take drugs, but she knew well enough that it was a real necessity in these people’s cases.
The last room at the end of the hall was Ada Washington’s, who was secretly Briley’s favorite resident. The woman was ninety-two, from Georgia, and an absolute terror: her great-grandchildren were constantly sneaking in mini-bottles of whiskey to her, and at last twice a week, she got caught blowing cigarette smoke out her room window. She was unrepentant and unapologetic, and she made Briley laugh every single day.
“Hey, Ada,” she greeted the woman now. “Have you still got some water in that cup?”
“A little bit, honey,” Ada replied, her drawl making even a simple reply warm and almost musical. “You got my drugs?”
“You know it.” Briley handed her the tiny paper cup, watched as the older woman tipped her head back, swallowed the pills. “How are you feeling today?”
“Oh, honey.” Ada smiled, her face so open and lovely. “I’m good, as always. Thanking God for another day, enjoying my stories on TV, and happy to see you. But how are you , dear girl?”
“Good. A bit overheated, but that’s it.”
“Mmmm-hmmm.” Ada stared unblinkingly at Briley. “You know that you’re looking a little bit peaky, right?”
“Am I?” Flustered, Briley ran a hand over her warm face. “I mean, I’m not feeling fantastic, but I’ll get some cool water, sit under the air-con for a few minutes. I’ll be fine.”
“Huh,” Ada huffed. “Some nurse you are!”
“Sorry?”
“Honey, don’t you know you’re pregnant?”
“I –” Briley blinked at her. “I’m – what ?”
“Knocked up,” Ada said crisply. “Up the duff, up the spout, you have a bun in the oven, you’re expecting. Uhhhh, maybe something classy. Oh! You’re enceinte .”
“I’m –” Briley opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. “I’m not. I mean, it’s not possible.”
“Why not?” Ada demanded. “If you’ve had sex in the past… ummm, let me take a guess here, just based on what I’ve noticed over the past couple of weeks… maybe three or four months ago, then honey, you absolutely can be.”
“I –” she started again, then suddenly, she was whirring and whipping through a mental calendar, counting backwards and forwards, remembering her time with Dux and Drake, realizing that her period was, actually, quite late. But she’d been under so much stress for so long with fucking Gideon, and her periods had become so erratic and irregular, and she’d been so focused on her new job and new life, so she hadn’t even noticed. As she stood there now, though, she felt how swollen and tender her breasts were, and she also felt an odd kind of solidity in her stomach, like something settling or growing, taking hold and blooming. “Oh, God .”
“So?” Ada said. “Is it possible , honey?”
“Ada,” Briley said, feeling faint and sick and terrified and utterly, utterly sure. “Not only is it possible, I think it’s highly probable.”
“Well, what are you waiting for, then?” the older woman asked. “Take that cute little ass over to the medical wing and get yourself checked out.”
“I will,” Briley said numbly. “After work.”
“No, honey, now .” Ada smiled at her, her brown eyes twinkling with genuine excitement, even in the face of Briley’s shock. “And if it’s a girl, maybe consider naming her Ada, after the woman who clued your beautiful but clueless self in.”
**
Briley burst into the medical area of Rose Terraces, and Delilah Robinson jumped in shock at her friend’s noisy and dramatic entrance.
“ Jesus !” Delilah put a hand to her ample bosom, shook her dark head. “Why are you trying to kill me, girl?”
“I need an ultrasound, like right now , because Ada said I do, and anyway, she’s right,” Briley babbled. “I need to be sure that Ada’s right, even though I know she is, but I need to see . To be sure. Even though I am, and Ada is too. I mean, she’s ninety-two, so there isn’t much she’s wrong about, right? Right ?”
“Ummmm. OK,” Delilah said slowly, looking at the other woman’s crazy eyes and backing away. “Come on over here and lie down. Maybe take a few deep breaths, because you look like you’re about to pass out where you stand.”
“I’m not going to pass out.” Briley practically ran across the room to the examination table, launched herself on to it with a graceless thud. “Well – maybe. Maybe not. I haven’t decided yet.”
“Ohhh-kaaay,” Delilah repeated, picking up the ultrasound wand and some gel. “What am I looking for here?”
“A fetal heartbeat.”
“Ohhhhhh.” Delilah nodded, totally getting what the actual hell was going on here. “It suddenly all becomes clear.”
“Not yet, it doesn’t. I need to see it to believe it.”
Briley lifted her white nurse’s tunic, exposing her stomach, and stared down at herself in dismay as her friend squirted some cool gel on her skin. How hadn’t she noticed that gently swelling bulge before now? She’d thought that maybe she was gaining a bit of weight from finally eating properly and regularly again; now that she was away from Gideon’s revolting touch, she could keep food down once more. But really, Ada was right: what kind of nurse was she, that she had completely failed to notice what these little individual things all added up to?
“Breathe, girl,” Delilah murmured, slowly running the wand over Briley’s stomach. “Just breathe. You got this.”
“I do not got this,” Briley said between gritted teeth. “Most definitely not.”
Delilah stared at the monitor, moved the wand around a bit, then stared some more. Briley watched her gaze grow fixed, really intense, and suddenly she felt worried.
“What?” Briley asked, afraid of the answer, but still twisting a bit to look at the screen. “What do you see?”
“How far along do you estimate you might be?”
“Ummmm… about sixteen weeks. Maybe a bit less.”
“Mmmm-hmmmm.” Delilah cocked her head. “Do I have your permission to do a vaginal ultrasound?”
“What? Why? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t think anything’s wrong , Briley.” Delilah picked up the other wand, started putting on a bit of gel. “It’s just that I need to check something and the transvaginal scan is way more accurate and sensitive, and picks up way more. You know this.”
“I do, yeah. You’re right.” Briley finally sucked in a deep breath, then another, and wriggled out of her uniform slacks and underwear. “OK, I’m ready.”
“Here we go.” Delilah slid the wand inside Briley’s tense body, gave her friend a smile. “Another breath, hon. Come on. You’ve got to relax a bit.”
“Not so easy,” Briley said, trying to will her muscles to release. “I’m trying.”
“OK, look here.” Delilah pointed at the monitor, and Briley squinted. “There’s a heartbeat.”
“Oh. Oh, shit.” Briley felt her own heart judder to a stop, even as she watched the baby’s rhythmically pulse and throb. She stared at the screen, mesmerized by the little, thudding, black-and-white blob, that undeniable sign of new and ferocious life inside of her. “I’m actually pregnant. Like, for real .”
“You really, really are.”
Something about her friend’s tone gave Briley pause, and she looked at the monitor again, more carefully. What she saw made her heart suddenly start up again, now beating double-time, triple-time.
“Is that – is that what I think it is?” she said. “Am I seeing what I think I'm seeing?”
“It sure as hell is, and you sure as hell are.”
“Holy fuck.” Briley didn’t know if she was going to laugh or cry. “You have got to be kidding me.”
**
“Twins!” Cheryl said merrily, lifting her glass to Briley in a toast. “Twins courtesy of the twins!”
“ Stop saying ‘twins’, and I’d kill for a drink right now,” Briley grumbled, cradling her glass of sparkling water. “Goddammit.”
“It is a bit weird to drink my birthday wine all alone for once in all our years of friendship,” Cheryl conceded. “But Bee, I’m really glad that I’m here this weekend… it was a bit of luck, huh?”
“It is great timing,” Briley agreed. “If I had to be here tonight all alone, I think I’d go crazy.”
“OK, look. I know it’s a lot to process, and it’s a total shock, and I have a million questions. But I guess the one that I really want to start with is: are you going to tell Dux and Drake?”
“Yeah, that’s the big one, right?”
“And?”
“And…” Briley sighed. “And yes. Yes, I think that I have to.”
“ Good ,” Cheryl said emphatically. “I mean, I know you guys have been in touch a bit since they went back to Denver, right? Calls or texts or whatever?”
“Sure, a bit of both.” Briley pushed her hair off her forehead. “But it’s all really casual, maybe a bit flirty, but we don’t talk about anything much. I’m not sure how I go from something like, ‘Ada was drinking whiskey sours all afternoon again’ to ‘hey, one of you knocked me up! LOL’.”
“Oh. Oh, God.” Cheryl gave her a startled look. “I didn’t even think about that part of it. Which one is the father? Is there any way to tell? I mean, they’re twins .”
“It is possible to find out who the father is, with some really advanced and specific DNA testing. Personally, I don’t need to know, but the guys might have different ideas.”
“You think the biological Dad might take the lead, while the other one stepped back?”
“Honestly, Cee?” Briley bit her lip. “No. No, I don’t think so. I think they’d be in it together, all the way. They’d see it as their equal responsibility.”
“Well, that’s great. Isn’t it?”
“It could be, I suppose,” Briley said slowly. “But we’re assuming they’ll be happy about the babies.”
“You don’t think they will be?”
“I honestly don’t know. We used condoms – every single time, no matter what – so we all had protection and birth control in mind the whole time. I mean, these are middle-aged guys who’ve never been married, they have no kids so far. They have this whole badass MC lifestyle with women crawling all over them, and hordes of regulars lining up for one-night-stands. Do men like this really want to change diapers and clean up vomit off the carpet? These guys are all about freedom and living for the moment, and a kid is the exact opposite of all of that. Two kids are doubly so.”
“But you’re going to tell them anyway?”
“Yeah. I mean, we have all these weird shared experiences together, and I can’t imagine keeping this from them. It’d be the worst kind of lying that I could imagine.”
“‘Weird shared experiences’?” Cheryl echoed pertly. “You mean a bunch of hot threesomes all over this house?”
Briley gave her a narrow look. “No. I mean when they witnessed me kill Gideon in cold blood, then helped me escape and start a new life partly on their dime. Don’t get me wrong , OK… the sex was great , but it didn’t even scratch the surface of what Dux and Drake did for me, and what we shared.”
Cheryl immediately sobered. “I’m sorry, Bee. That was really dumb of me to say.”
“No, it’s OK,” Briley reassured her, took a deep breath. “I’m just feeling really emotional and confused, and really really freaked out, and it’s making me snappy. I’m sorry.”
“So,” Cheryl said softly. “When are you going to tell them?”
“I’ll call them tomorrow.”
“To hell with calling them!” Cheryl exclaimed. “This is the kind of news where you get your doubly-pregnant ass on a plane !”
“You think?”
“Hell, yes , I think.” Cheryl smiled at her friend. “I just wish that I wasn’t starting this new job in New York in two days. I’d fly to Denver with you in three seconds flat, just to be there if you needed me.”
“I know you would, Cee,” Briley said quietly. “I’d have loved that.”
“Well.” Cheryl put down her barely-sipped glass of birthday wine, in solidarity with her temporarily teetotal best girlfriend. “Let’s get you a ticket for tomorrow as early as possible, and then we’ll pack you a light carry-on bag. We can go to the airport together tomorrow morning and get on our respective flights to our new lives. OK?”
“Yes.” Briley felt her spirits rise as a plan started to take shape with her friend; she realized that she needed to move forward now, to do something. Sitting here paralyzed with just not knowing was what she was actually tetchy about. “OK. Let’s do it.”