34. Rae
34
RAE
Then
“ M aybe you should go back home,” Dee says, frowning at me through the phone. “You look miserable.”
“Thanks, Dee.” I manage to laugh even though the last thing I feel is amused.
“I mean, you’re beautiful, of course,” she says, strolling through the aisles of the grocery store. “But you don’t smile anymore, Rae.”
I lean my head back against the headrest of Hunter’s truck and give her a sad smile. “Zoila said the same thing.”
Everybody has been saying it to me lately, and I haven’t been able to argue back or even take offense because it’s true. I don’t smile anymore. I don’t laugh anymore. All I do is cry and try to figure out why Hunter and I can’t seem to get along. All I do is sit around with my stomach in knots, grieving the loss of my brother and the apparent end of my relationship, wondering how everything fell apart so quickly.
“Well, when you’ve got two of your friends saying it, it’s got to be true.”
“I guess.”
“Where have you been?” She asks, adding several pieces of fruit to the basket hanging from her arm. “Or, where are you going?”
“Same place you are now,” I tell her. “I’m going to make dinner for Hunter.”
Dee pulls a face but she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t have to. I know that she’s not a fan of Hunter right now. She’s mad at him for spending all of his time at the gym when I’ve been home alone. I’ve defended his choice, reminding her that he took a lot of time off when he was taking care of Will, even though it hurts that I see him less now than I did when I was in New York.
“Toothpaste, air freshener, tampons,” Dee mutters under her breath, repeating the list of random items over and over again until they’re stuck in my head.
“Why don’t you just make a list?”
“Because I have a system and it works for me.”
“Sure, that’s why you just walked past the aisle with the tampons on it without picking any up.”
“Shit.” She turns around, nearly running into someone as she does. “Damn, why are they always out of super plus?”
I open my mouth to make a joke about her heavy flow but stop short when the image of the box of tampons in Dee’s hand makes me think about how I haven’t bought any since I’ve been back in New Haven. Usually, Dee and I start our periods just a few days apart, with me starting first, and if she’s buying tampons now then that means I’m late.
Shit.
My mind is suddenly flooded with images of Hunter and me on the night I came back to town. Him, insisting on a condom. Me, telling him not to stop. That was over two weeks ago, and now I’m late.
“Dee, I’m late.”
“Late? You got a certain time you need to have dinner on the table?”
“No.” I cut the engine and grab my purse, hopping out of the truck. “Late like, my period is late.”
Dee’s eyes bulge as she watches me rush inside the store, but I can tell she’s trying to stay calm for me. “Don’t panic, Rae. I mean, you’ve been under a lot of stress lately. Stress can throw your hormones all out of wack.”
I want to be comforted by her words, but as I buy the test and take it in the grocery store bathroom, I can’t shake the feeling that she’s wrong. Confirmation of my gut instinct comes in the form of two pink lines that make Dee’s mouth drop when I show them to her.
“Holy shit, Rae.”
“I’m going to be sick.”
Dee frowns. “Call me back after you’re done vomiting.”
Since she’s known for compassionate vomiting, I don’t take offense when she actually hangs up on me. I don’t call her back when I’m done, though. Because as soon as I’m done purging what little food I had on my stomach, all I want to do is go home to Hunter.
As I make my way back to the house without a single grocery item, I convince myself that this could be a good thing. I tell myself that things have been hard lately, but they’ll get better now that we have something good to focus on. A baby. A bright spot in the dark cloud that has been our lives lately. A gift from Will. Another reason for Hunter and I to hold on to each other.
“This will be good,” I say to myself as I stand outside the door of Hunter’s bathroom. When I got home, I heard the shower running upstairs, so I came up with the positive test in my hand and a smile on my face, ready to share the good news.
My heart is pounding, slapping against my ribcage as I place my hand on the doorknob and turn it. Steam greets me first, making it hard to see for a second.
“Hunter?” I look to my left towards the shower and come up empty. The water is still running, but the shower curtain is pushed back, so droplets are bouncing off of the bathtub and onto the floor, wetting Hunter’s shirt.
I frown as I take in the scene in front of me. It’s hard to make sense of it. Of the way Hunter’s large form is slumped against the side of the bathtub. Of the way his head is lolling back and his eyes are closed. Of the way the needle I assume was in his hand is still sticking out of his arm even though he’s no longer conscious enough to hold it.
The pregnancy test slips from my fingers, and it cracks under my feet as I run into the bathroom and fall to my knees beside him.
“HUNTER?!” I scream, slapping his face repeatedly with my right hand and pulling out my phone to call 911 with the left. “Come on, baby. Wake up. Please, wake up.”
Tears stream down my face, familiar and foreign all at once. I’m no stranger to crying, not even to crying over Hunter, because I’ve been doing a lot of that lately, but I am a stranger to this pain, to this worry.
Despite my brother being an addict and me being in love with one for so long, I’ve never seen anyone high like this. I know that Will OD’d once, but Mommy went to great lengths to shield me from everything having to do with his drug use. She protected me as best she could. I wonder what she’d think if she could see me now, pregnant and afraid, trying to pull the father of my child out of a drug induced slumber.
“HUNTER!” I’m still screaming, and I strike him hard enough to make the palm of my hand burn with pain. His eyes flutter, but they don’t focus. I don’t think they can, but at least he’s alive.
That’s the first thing I tell the operator when I finally get someone on the line. And I repeat those words to myself in the minutes it takes for the paramedics to get there. They invade the bathroom, urging me out of the way as they administer Narcan and ask me questions like what he took and how long he’s been using.
I don’t know the answer to either of those questions, so I just stand there and cry, not speaking a word until they load him into the ambulance and ask if I want to ride with him to the hospital.
My eyes are wet.
My throat is dry.
And my heart hurts. It hurts so fucking bad I don’t know how I’m ever going to recover from the pain. How we are ever going to recover from this.
We.
God, that word doesn’t just include Hunter and me anymore. There’s a whole other person in this equation now. Someone else I have to consider. Someone else I have to love more than I love Hunter, more than he loves the drugs that almost claimed his life.
“Ma’am?” The paramedic holds a hand out to me. “Are you riding to the hospital with him?”
I shake my head first because I know it’ll hurt to say it, but then I find my voice, knowing I have to verbalize it to make it real for me. “No. I think he has to do this alone.”