Chapter 13 #2
Becky must have figured the same thing, because she smiled and said thank you as well. Then, she got up and hugged her sister. She whispered something in her sister’s ear that made her sister laugh, but Rodney noted that when Becky stood, there were tears in her eyes.
He leaned over and hugged Rita as well. He wished he had something fun or funny or cute to say, but he didn’t have anything other than, “I’m praying for you.
I’m going to see you later.” He made it sound like he meant every word.
But there was an expression on the nurse’s face that made him think that maybe he was dead wrong.
“All right, you two. You can follow me, and I’ll point down the hall to where you can go. Someone will get you as soon as she’s prepped and ready.”
“All right,” Becky said, and she sounded as uncertain as she had all day.
He wanted to put an arm around her. Wanted to give her his strength and draw from her.
Two people were far stronger than one. It wasn’t a matter of one plus one.
It was a multiplication that went on when two people were together.
Ford had talked a little bit about that.
Mostly in terms of business, but a couple of times when Ford’s wife had been in the room, he could see it in Ford’s relationship.
Ford was more than the sum of the two of them.
Ford was a multiplication of the two of them somehow.
That was not going to be Becky and him. In order to multiply, two people had to like each other and work together, and right now, he and Becky repelled each other.
Actually, it was him repelling Becky. Becky was doing no such thing to him. He was just as attracted to her as he had always been. Just as intrigued, just as pulled. It was an effort to try to move away from her.
Still, before he knew it, Rita was gone, and he and Becky were standing awkwardly together in the hall.
“I’m sorry you missed the meeting on Wednesday.”
“Yeah,” Becky said. Sounding preoccupied, like she was still thinking about her sister.
But maybe she felt his eyes on her because she seemed to shake herself out of it and was the back-to-business Becky that he knew.
“All right. Rita gave me a list of the things that she had ready for the babies. It’s basically two car seats, and that’s it.
She has a list of the things that she needs, and it’s pretty much everything.
I tried to go over it with her this morning, and she really wasn’t thinking very well at all.
I… I tried to look online in several different places to get this figured out.
What we need immediately, and what can wait.
I have no experience in this, and I’m assuming you don’t either?
” She lifted her brows at him, although her eyes stopped about the height of his throat and didn’t quite meet his gaze.
If he wanted to start things out right, despite the fact that it would be a total subject change, it was the right time to tell her that he had a child. But he didn’t really know it for sure, and he couldn’t get the words to come out.
As though the very thought conjured it up, his phone chimed, and without answering Becky, he looked down. It was his lawyer. He didn’t read the whole text, just what came up on the notification.
Sorry to bother you this early, but it’s an emergency.
He didn’t need to read any more. It could be a business emergency, or it could be an emergency as in Stella’s lawyer reaching out and letting his lawyer know that he had a child and she was filing a paternity lawsuit.
“No. I have no experience,” he finally said. He didn’t need to make things harder. He would work on at least winning back her friendship before he confessed all the sins of his past.
There weren’t that many, but there was one big one. And that was enough.
“All right. I don’t either.” Was that relief on her face?
Had she wondered if he was with someone else?
How he wished he had a completely clean slate and he could tell her that he’d never loved anyone but her.
It was the truth, but…love didn’t have anything to do with sex, at least that’s what he found out with Stella.
He was ashamed to say it. Ashamed to think it, and it was all he could do to try to focus on what she was saying as she went through the list and talked about things that they needed to buy.
“I was in the process of trying to price things out and figure out what would be an even split. I guess, I could buy the bottles for Marley, and you could buy the bottles for Kevin?—”
“Wait a second. Marley and Kevin?”
“That’s what Rita wants to name them. It’s a boy and a girl, and she wants to name them Marley and Kevin.”
Wow. He hadn’t even thought about names last night, and here was Becky, talking like she knew the babies already, and they hadn’t even been born yet.
“The doctors are ready. Rita is prepped.” The nurse appeared and motioned for them to go on down the hall.
“You can stand here and look in the windows. You should be able to see the babies arrive and get some pics, but after they’re taken, the curtains are going to shut.
Don’t panic. This is normal. That’s what they’re going to do, because they have more than just the babies to take care of. ”
“Got it,” Becky said, and he murmured, “Thank you.”
The nurse disappeared behind a door that clicked shut behind her.
They looked through the window where Rita lay on a table. There was a sheet between her head and her stomach, and Rodney assumed that that was so she couldn’t see when they were cutting her open.
Then, he realized that her eyes were not open, and he wondered if they had put her out.
If he and Becky had a normal relationship, he might talk to her about it. As it was, he just stood, watching.
“Anyway. I was trying to figure out how to make it even. It seems silly for us to both go and buy the exact same things. But I want it to be fair.”
“I’ll buy everything. I’ll pay for it, you shop for it. That’s how we can split it.”
He didn’t mean to command it. He was just watching as the surgeon used some kind of sharp-looking things to pinch Rita’s stomach, which looked extremely painful to Rodney, but Rita didn’t move at all. Then, one of the assistants opened up a cloth-wrapped tray, and the surgeon picked up a scalpel.
“Does blood bother you?” he asked.
And then he realized that Becky hadn’t responded to him.
He glanced down, and she seemed mesmerized as well.
“No. It never has.”
He knew that about her. But the question had come out without him thinking about it. Blood did kind of bother him. He felt himself getting a little lightheaded.
He took a breath and looked away.
“Do you want me to ask for a seat for you? I do recall you passing out at least twice in biology class in high school.”
So she remembered. Of course she did.
She didn’t wait for him to respond but walked down to the nurses’ station and asked if he could have a seat.
They seemed concerned, and there was a buzz of activity, but Becky being Becky, she came back with the chair and no extra nurses.
“Thanks,” he said, sitting down. His eyes were just high enough for him to see through the window, and he felt a lot better now that he wasn’t standing. Plus, the blood had been wiped away, and the surgeon seemed to be searching for something. A baby? The uterus? He wasn’t sure.
“It’s unfair that you pay and I shop. That’s not equal.”
“Parenting isn’t equal. People do what their strengths are.”
“Well, I’m not a strong shopper.” Becky’s voice held irritation. She didn’t want to do the shopping.
“All right. You pay, I’ll shop.”
“I already said that’s not fair.” Her voice held more irritation and was slightly louder.
“If you’re going to yell at me in this hallway, I am not going to talk to you. We are not going to have a fight right here in the hospital as our babies are being born.”
She flinched when he said “our babies,” and he almost smirked. There. Take that. Because they were going to be their babies.
And she knew he was right. It wouldn’t be a good look for the two of them to be fighting in the hospital.
They were supposed to be a loving couple getting ready to take care of the babies of a poor patient overcome by cancer.
They were hardly poster people for parenting if they couldn’t even get along long enough for the babies to be born.
“All right. What do you suggest?” he said when she didn’t say anything.
The surgeon seemed to be pulling something out of a hole that looked way too small for anything human to fit through.
But the next thing he knew, the surgeon was holding up an infant in his hands, still connected by the umbilical cord, and then he turned around and held it up to the window. The surgeon was smiling, but the baby looked purple and wasn’t breathing.
“I don’t see the baby breathing,” he said.
“Me either. The surgeon seems pretty happy. Surely he wouldn’t be happy if he thought there was a problem, right?”
“Right. So this must be normal.”
“Yeah. This is normal.” Becky seemed to be trying to reassure herself of that, and him too, possibly, and then the surgeon turned back around, and they started working on the child.
“I think that was the girl,” Becky murmured. “Marley.”
He hadn’t even noticed. Leave it to Becky to note something like that.
“So the girl’s older. Interesting. I suppose they’re timing this now.”
“They must be,” Becky said.
And then after a short pause, she said, “All right. I’ll buy everything, you pay for it. I’ll text you my info on several common electronic money transfer sites. You can take your pick which one you want to use.”
“That’s fair.”
When she didn’t reach for her phone, he said, “Aren’t you gonna text me your info?”
“Right now? I’m watching the baby be born.” And then she gasped. “I should have been recording it!”
“I see a nurse recording it over there. Maybe they’re going to show it to us later.”