Chapter 12 – Skylar #2
“Yes. I’d appreciate that.”
Before he can say anything else, I fly out of the apartment and back into the elevator. The flight down takes forever, but I can’t catch my breath, so it might as well take days. I’m not even making sense. Because holy shit. Holy freaking shit! I might be pregnant.
I make it outside into the freezing February afternoon. Snow is coming down a bit heavier, and I know we’re supposed to get a few inches or so. I don’t know what to do. I just know I can’t do it alone.
With a tremulous hand, I slip my phone from my purse and call Braelyn.
“Hey,” she answers on the third ring. “How’d it go? Did you find a place?”
“Are you working?” I ask instead of answering her.
She’s silent for a beat. “Yes. Why? Are you okay? You sound…”
“Can I come see you?”
“Always.”
“Is anyone else there right now?”
By anyone else, I mean anyone else in my family or our extended network of people who are more or less like family. A lot of them work at MGH, which is her hospital, and a lot of them also work in the ER, where she’s a nurse.
“Jack and Wren are here.” Wren is my cousin on my mother’s side, and Jack is her husband and also my cousin, but on my father’s side. It’s confusing as hell. Welcome to my life.
“Is there a way I can get in without them knowing?”
“Come to the ambulance bay and text me when you get here. I’ll have a room waiting. Is there anything I need waiting in it?”
I gulp. “I threw up just now. After not having anything to eat or drink. Not even coffee.”
Another long silence. “I got you. Just text when you get here.”
She disconnects the call, and since I’m nowhere near her hospital, I Uber over there and text as I walk along the hospital toward the back entrance of the ER. Braelyn is here waiting for me, a nervous look on her face.
“I have a room, but things are starting to pick up in there, so we have to move fast. I’m technically on my lunch break, so I shouldn’t be bothered.”
I pull my dark-haired friend in for a hug. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. You have to pee in a cup.”
“Right.” I hiccup a half-sob and swallow it down.
She takes my arm and pulls me inside straight into the bathroom. “Pee and bring it back with you. You know the drill.”
She shuts the door behind me, and I lock myself in, staring down at the small, clear plastic cup in my hand.
I might not be pregnant, but in my gut, I know I am.
My breasts are a little tender, and I threw up.
Then in the Uber over, I realized I was due for my period two weeks after I moved into Micha’s, and I never had it.
I remember writing it off as stress at the time.
Now here I am.
I pee into the cup, wash my hands, and open the door to find Braelyn waiting for me.
“When was your last period?” she whispers as we walk down the hall, my head cast down and my body angled toward the wall. I don’t come here often. Hardly ever, actually. But that doesn’t mean someone couldn’t recognize me.
“About two months ago, I think. I’m due this week for it.”
“So, you missed your last?”
I nod as we enter a room, and she closes the glass door and the curtain for privacy.
“I thought it was the stress of leaving Josh and trying to crawl out from all of the emotional damage he did. Honestly, I didn’t really track it.
I was on the pill forever, but then shortly before I left him, I stopped the pill for that cycle because I kept missing days.
I think it was stress. I think I knew I was going to leave him, and my head was too full.
But we used condoms. Every fucking time. ”
“Shit, Sky. Okay. Do you want to do the dip, or do you want me to?”
“You.”
“I have three sticks.”
I swallow and sit on one of the chairs in the room instead of the gurney. I don’t want her to have to change the sheets for me, and I can’t handle the notion of being the patient and not the provider.
Braelyn gloves up, and the sticks go in, and then we wait. But it doesn’t take long. The moment the control shows, a second pink line forms immediately below it. On all three sticks.
“Well then.” She disposes of the sticks and her gloves and comes to sit beside me. She takes my hand, and my head falls to her shoulder, and the first of my tears comes.
“I’m pregnant.”
“Do you want to discuss options?”
“I know my options.”
“We can still talk about them if you want. There’s no shame or judgment.”
“Thank you for that. That’s why you’re an incredible nurse. I can’t yet, though.”
“We’re here for you. All of us. No matter what you decide.”
I can’t speak, so instead I squeeze her hand. Because I know and I love her, and I love my friends, and I love my family. I’m so blessed with them.
“Are you going to tell him?”
“I…” A sob escapes. “I left him for a reason.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want him to be the father of my child.
” That’s when I lose it. Because Josh was a monster.
He was verbally and emotionally abusive with the threat of physical abuse.
For over a year, practically from the moment I moved in with him, he was like that.
And I lived with it for far longer than I should have.
I was the girl no guy had ever wanted to date.
Who had been teased and ridiculed because I wasn’t pretty.
I had big, thick glasses and bad teeth that needed two rounds of braces, and I was short and chubby and awkward with hair so blonde it’s practically white that never sat right on me and a face with features that never quite fit together.
I was the ugly duckling. A very late bloomer.
By the end of college, I felt better about myself, and then when I started as a nurse at Children’s and caught the eye of Dr. Josh Wesley, I was over the moon. Incredulous, too. I thought he was after my money or family, but he assured me it was me he wanted. And for six months, it was incredible.
He was everything. And the things he wasn’t, I overlooked or ignored or explained away.
He tried to make me have an orgasm. I couldn’t.
I was still that duckling with a lot of self-esteem issues that I was working on, but they weren’t all gone either.
Anytime we’d have sex and I wouldn’t finish, he became angry and resentful and mean.
I started faking orgasms so he’d feel better about himself.
I started wearing more makeup, even to bed, so I’d wake up with some on because he told me I wasn’t pretty without it.
He’d be stressed from work and come home and take it out on me, complaining and belittling everything I was doing.
Everything I was. My music was awful. My cooking sucked.
My clothes were hideous and made me look fat.
He’d rage if another guy talked to me. He’d call me any bad name he could think of whenever he drank a little too much or even when he didn’t.
Stupid. Ugly. Fat. Frigid. Useless. Embarrassing.
And any synonym for those he could conjure up.
Then it progressed. He’d take my neck in his hand, sometimes he’d squeeze, sometimes he’d just threaten to.
But the threat was real, and it was there.
He had all the power over my life, and I had none.
I couldn’t sleep. I hardly ate. I was scared all the fucking time.
Terrified one wrong move or word would throw him over the edge.
I distanced myself from the people in my life because I was afraid they’d see what I’d become.
When I’d build up enough courage to call him out on his behavior, he’d tell me I was being crazy or overly emotional or find another way to brush it off and gaslight me.
Naturally all of this was interspersed with loving moments.
With tender moments. With good days. Enough so that I’d rationalize his behaviors.
I’d tell myself it’s just a bad day at work or he’s just a little stressed, and if I loved him, I’d take the good with the bad.
That’s what people in relationships do. He loved me, right?
And I wasn’t perfect. Maybe he was right about some of those things. A lot of those things. After all, I’d heard them most of my life from other people who didn’t claim to love me. So maybe he was right. Maybe I was lucky he loved me, and I should accept the bad for the good.
Those were the horrible, toxic, destructive thoughts I’d have.
I never told anyone. Not until after I left him.
I felt so much shame and humiliation, I couldn’t bear for anyone to know.
He was the first guy to ever want me, and maybe this was just how it went for girls like me.
I didn’t really get what was happening or what he was doing.
Not fully. Not to the extent I should have.
Not till we had an in-service on spotting signs of abuse in our patients, and then I saw it all, clear as day.
I called Micha in Africa and sobbed to him for an hour.
I don’t know why I called him. Maybe because he was so far away and couldn’t do much other than listen.
He told me if I didn’t leave him immediately and start demanding better for myself, he was going to fly home and make me.
I packed my things and moved them into his place before I went home and told Josh that I was leaving him.
I was afraid that if my things were still there, he would be able to convince me to stay.
I left him, and for the last seven weeks, I’ve made myself believe that I am beautiful.
That I am special. That I am deserving of every incredible thing this world has to offer me.
I’ve become more of the woman I want to be.
The one with confidence. The one living her life for herself and no one else, while not taking the shit men like to hand out.
It’s a work in progress, but I’ve been working it, and fighting for it, and really starting to own it.
Now I’m pregnant with his baby. And I have no idea what I’m going to do about it.