Chapter 39
Chapter
Thirty-Nine
Sirens.
Beeps.
Unfamiliar noises reverberate in my ears and thoughts. There’re ones that don’t fit, ones I can’t identify. Wakefulness comes in small snippets, each time a bit longer, until the world outside my body makes itself known.
I try to move, yet I can’t. I’m no longer floating in someone’s arms but tethered to the earth.
Time means nothing.
An hour.
A day.
A week.
Pain remains my complacent companion. Present yet satisfied to simply be.
Dreams like memories fill my thoughts. I’m a voyeur, unable to stop what is about to happen.
My period is late.
I’m never late. I confide in my best friend.
With my graduation approaching, I go to someone else, the one woman who was always there for me and my siblings, completely judgment free, our grandmother.
Grandma Sue hugs me, encourages me to follow through with the pregnancy and consider adoption.
I don’t want that, not at first.
She sits me down and holds my hand. We talk...and as we do, she too confesses a secret.
I didn’t know, but now I do. I’m watching and I can’t make her stop.
I want to shout, “Stop, Grandma.” But the words don’t form.
We’re being overheard.
My father is listening.
Nearly half a century old, Grandma Sue’s story is of a young girl facing a similar yet different situation.
The result was the same, a surprise pregnancy.
Times were different over fifty years earlier; abortion wasn’t an option, not in Michigan.
Her answer came in the form of a good friend, not the baby’s father but a man who loved her and whom she grew to love.
I stare helplessly at the face of my father. His emotions have never been so obvious. There’s hurt and anger. He’s been deceived for all his life. In that moment he learns that the man he knew, loved, and respected, the one we buried a decade earlier, wasn’t his biological father.
Tears form as I watch my father storm out of his mother’s home, knowing what the future holds. I reach out, but I’m not there.
This was long ago.
Grandma Sue tells me she loves me. She tells me that times have changed. She believes in me. I can follow through on my college plans, give birth, and ensure my child a home with someone as good and kind as the man she married, the man I knew as my grandfather.
I fight the scene, the memory, as life and pain return.
The sensations return.
A fluttering.
Movement.
The way my stomach stretched.
The real reason I didn’t return for Becky’s wedding—I was eight months pregnant. I couldn’t go back to Blue Gil like that. I hadn’t told my best friend that I’d carried on with the pregnancy.
More pain.
Artificial light assaults my vision as I force my eyelids to open.
“Jillian.”
Voices.
Sadness overwhelms me with the realization that Grandma Sue is gone. She passed away the night of our talk. My dad still blames me for his loss of not only his mother, but also the man he knew as his father.
I blink as my torso is moved upward.
I don’t look beyond myself, seeing my own body, arms, hands, a blanket covering my legs.
Yet I know with certainty it’s me. I’m viewing myself in a strange, detached reality.
As voices around me grow into a chorus, I wiggle my fingers, feeling the strange sensation of an IV attached to the top of my hand.
I see the small tube. Yet my attention goes lower.
The blanket moves as I wiggle my toes.
Synapses ignite like the flow of electricity. I don’t know where I’ve been or what happened, yet I know I’m here. Wherever here is.
I lift my chin to the blue eyes staring my way.
“Mom.” The title comes out in a hoarse and crackling voice that I don’t recognize. I lift my hand to my throat, realizing it’s sore and tender.
“Shh,” my mother soothes.
She’s with me, as she was when I brought a healthy baby boy into the world, and as she was when I signed away my rights, praying I’d chosen a loving home.
Mom was with me, as she was until I pushed her and my past away.
“Mom,” I try again.
It’s then that I see the face behind her. Liv’s smile is wide, yet her blue eyes are tired with dark circles.
“What...hap...pened?” I ask.
“You’re safe,” my mother says. “You scared us.”