12. Clark
TWELVE
CLARK
It wouldn’t take a jailbreak to get Olly out of the hospital, but it would take time.
When it registered to both Shepard and me that she was conscious again and talking, we both reached for the call button at once, only to find it in Olly’s hand.
She’d already pushed it. That woman. She looked like death warmed over, but she wanted to be in command of the situation.
A voice came over the intercom, and Olly waved her hand at us to stop being idiots and sit down, while she replied, “This is Olive Elaine McLeod, and I’m awake.
I’d like to discuss the results of any labs or tests done with a doctor please, get an update on how my pregnancy is going, and then go home.
I’m rather tired, and I’m sure you want this bed freed up. ”
The intercom voice chuckled, and said, “Just a moment, Olive. I’m sending down staff to take you for an MRI. We can’t be too careful when it comes to a pregnant person with a previous head injury,” then clicked off.
“I’m sorry, Olly. I had to tell them something, so I went with the brain injury.
I didn’t say anything about—” We were interrupted by the aforementioned staff, who I must say got here at record speed, and they told us only one of us was allowed to accompany her.
I told Shepard to go because he looked like a kicked puppy every time he looked at the now awake Olly.
I sat back in my chair and didn’t know what to do with myself.
I fished my phone out of my pocket, connected to the free hospital Wi-Fi, checked my email a dozen times over, and then played some Final Fantasy VI to occupy my time and stay awake.
I thought I slept reasonably well last night, but I kept nodding off as I was mindlessly walking through one forest or another, when the door to the room swung back open, and looking a bit worse for wear, Olly was wheeled back in.
“What happened?” I said, trying so hard to keep the panic out of my voice. “Is she okay?”
“She almost puked in the MRI. They had to yank her out of there pretty fast so she could go in one of those kidney-bean-shaped containers.” Shepard explained.
“I’m right here. I can answer for myself,” Olly said, trying to sound playful as she reached to swat him in the arm.
“I don’t know if they had to start the test over or what, but it did take a little bit longer than they originally said.
I had headphones and listened to BTS the whole time, which was awesomeness.
” She smiled at me, and I could feel her trying to be brave but failing a bit.
“We just have to wait here for the results, and then they’ll let me go home if everything is okay.
Which it will be.” She said that last bit with a finality that brooked no argument, and I wondered if she actually knew for a fact that was going to happen or if she was just trying to positively manifest the situation.
Part of me thought that she could actually know because she had this something...
extra about her. The more time I spent with Olly, the more I had to admit that she was not normal—I mean, most people’s definition of normal, because what in the hell is “normal” anyway?
I then noticed her hand outstretched toward me, so I practically leapt out of my chair and stood by her bedside, bringing our hands together.
I had meant to hold it softly, like I could hurt her or something, but she gripped my hand like it was the only thing grounding her to the hospital bed, so I let her.
I tried to give her a reassuring look whenever she looked at me, as Shepard and I both listened to her talk about her favourite podcast. It was a true crime investigative one, and I was a bit surprised, I guess because she didn’t exactly scream “true crime junkie,” though she did tell me that people are fascinated by other people’s tragedies.
About a half an hour later, the door opened and in walked Dr. Tompkins and his resident, Dr. Cole. They both were professionals with a good bedside manner, even tolerating the barrage of questions Shepard quickly asked in a slightly higher than normal voice.
Finally, Olly said, “Enough, Shep,” and he backed off, his whole presence seeming discombobulated, as if he were genuinely scared about what the doctors were about to say.
Hell, I knew I was, anyway. I reached out to Shepard, and he slipped his hand into mine, and I could feel it slightly shaking.
Hell, his whole body shook a bit. However, I realized that if I could hold it together by being the one to offer comfort, then I was doing Olly a service.
We probably looked like a strange trio: Olly in the bed holding my right hand, me standing and holding Shepard with my left.
I squeezed both of their hands when Dr. Tompkins started talking.
Olly was informed that based on the tests, it sounded more like an intense panic attack followed by a seizure, especially since Olly disclosed that she had just had a large personal shock.
Perhaps the biggest one of her life. She refused to elaborate on what that was, but it wasn’t medically necessary that she do so.
She was also seriously dehydrated when the paramedics had picked her up, and the bloodwork showed she had anemia and low B12.
She was given instructions on what type of supplements to take and when, and firmly told that she needed to drink more water.
There were some exercise sheets in the info packet Dr. Cole held out for her, and I was sure Olly would stick to them, now that she seemed to have accepted the fact that she was having a baby, not being taken over by a parasite.
The lecture ground to a halt when Dr. Tompkins started in on the baby, and how while it was perfectly healthy now by all the tests they had run, its health depended on her health, and how her weight was a possible complication in a healthy pregnancy.
Instantly, I knew Dr. Tompkins had fucked up.
I had discovered that when Olly’s face went from carefully neutral to looking like she was going to start spitting venom in the eyes of someone like a dilophosaurus, it was time to bail on whatever you were saying to her.
This time, it was about her BMI and her diet.
Olly, who ate healthier than anyone I knew, maple syrup this morning notwithstanding, hadn’t said anything, but she very swiftly removed the IV from her own hand, much to the doctor’s protests, threw back the sheet she was under, and practically ordered,
“Clark, where are my shoes?” I saw them peeking out from under the edge of the bed, so I let go of her and Shepard to grab them and helped put them on, one by one.
She was already wearing leggings, so the shoes were the next logical step.
She wordlessly held out a hand, and Dr. Cole forked over the instructions and list of the supplements she was supposed to take.
Dr. Tompkins simply said, “Good afternoon, Ms. McLeod,” before storming out of the room.
Dr. Cole lingered a moment, telling her that if she needed help at any time, she was welcome to come back to the ER, and that she should definitely come back if there were any further seizures.
A slightly roundish woman herself, Dr. Cole looked mortified at what her superior had been saying, and she said in a low voice, “It serves the old coot right. Nobody around here stands up to him, and I won’t even get started with the problems with the BMI as a measure of health.
And you are healthy, Ms. McLeod. A lot of people need a vitamin or mineral supplement.
Would you mind if I took a quick look at your hand and then you can be on your way? ”
Olly looked like she was going to lose it, and I jumped in perhaps where I was unwelcome, but I had to.
Surely, a spiking blood pressure would be bad for the child, and I could tell Olly wanted to leave now.
“Dr. Cole, I promise to bring her back right away if something is seriously wrong, but right now I think it would be in her best interest to let us help her get dressed the rest of the way and go home. I can put some polysporin and a Band-Aid on her hand there.”
“Is that what you want, Olly?” Dr. Cole asked, and Olly muttered in affirmation, cursing more than a little bit, and asked for some privacy to get dressed.
I handed her the plastic bag with her personal things, and she thanked me.
Then I shut the curtain around her bed. I was in this zone where I was oscillating between being totally calm, because hospitals were where I had spent a chunk of my childhood healing, and terrified, because this was Olly and her baby, and nothing bad could happen to them.
I refused to believe in anything else. Finally, I feared hospitals a bit when I thought about the clinic whose doctor had assisted Rosie through her death.
Shepard moved over a few feet to be closer to me, and said in a low voice, “Thank you, for earlier. You’re alright, Clark.” I had no idea how to take that, so I nodded and gave him a pat on the back.
“You’re not so bad yourself,” I replied. “I think she would have been a wreck if you hadn’t been here.” Shepard gave me a slow smile and dipped his head.
“The same goes for you.”
“Go team?” I said, grinning.
After a few minutes of the sound of clothes being put on, I was about to offer to help her, but then Olly’s voice floated out from behind the curtain.
“Finally. Good god, why was that bra so difficult?” The curtain opened, and a normal-looking Olly looked back at me.
She also had an almost sad-looking smile for Shepard, and as she tugged on her jacket, Shepard snagged Olly’s hand and pulled her close to his side, his arm around her.
It was impossible to miss that they made a striking pair, even if Olly was still just getting her colour back.
And she was pregnant, with their child. I knew she hadn’t even bothered to crack open the information the adoption agency had given her, and I had seen her feeling her belly more often this past week, and not really talking about giving the baby up as much as she had even the week before.
Just yesterday she had casually mentioned that Rose Financial had on-site daycare at headquarters, where the Information Complex was located, just two floors below where we worked.
When we reached the elevator bank, Shepard pushing Olly in one of those wide, almost comfy wheelchairs, I offered to give Shepard a ride home, or a ride to the apartments with us, depending on where he was going.
But to my surprise, he shook his head, leaned down and gave Olly a kiss on the cheek, and walked out into the late afternoon, snagging a taxi that had just dropped someone off.
With that, he was gone, and Olly’s face crumpled.
She took one heaving sob and quickly became the woman I knew by wiping her eyes and swallowing the rest of her cries. Cries for what, her and Shepard?
She looked at me and said, in a low but firm voice, “Can we wheel and wail at the same time? I really do want to get out of this place.” So did I.
I started pushing her chair, and we made it up the elevator and across the pedway with minimal foot traffic, so Olly continued, “It’s complicated.
We love each other. We have for a dozen years.
But he can’t even contemplate settling down with this baby and me.
He proposed you know. When I told him I was pregnant, but his heart and his mind were so at odds with each other that there’s no way I could enter a marriage like that.
” He proposed? I was gobsmacked and felt as though I had just been slapped across the face, but then realized of course he did.
Shepard was someone with a lot of integrity and honour, from what I knew of him.
He didn’t want to be a father, but he wasn’t going to leave Olly twisting in the wind, either.
“He’s really thinking of England, and his adopted folks who are quite old now, and the complicated feelings he has for them.
And India, where his biological parents gave him up.
He wants to take time and go to Mumbai and search for them.
And I think I hurt him deeply, leaving so fast for my new apartment, and now he thinks I’m choosing the baby, and maybe even you, over him.
It’s kind of fucked up, but he had a kind of fucked-up childhood, and his future isn’t...
” She swallowed a sob again, and I reached out and placed my hand on her shoulder for a moment while getting the wheelchair to my car.
She grabbed it, as I was hoping she would.
“His future isn’t very long. He deserves to do whatever he wants with what years he has left.
And something in him knows it, because he’s just piling on the distance between us.
Maybe I talk in my sleep or he saw my one sketchpad with the drawings of him inside.
Or maybe he’s a little psychic, too. The point is, I’m not his keeper, and he’s not mine.
There was a time in our lives when we really needed that from each other. But not anymore.”
I helped her into the car, then stashed the wheelchair by the elevators and jogged back. When I got in, I touched Olly on the arm and said, “About you and Shepard—"
“Hey, can we get takeout on the way home? I have a craving for dumplings.”
Huh. I guess that would be the last time I brought up the two of them—for a while, at least.