“We made it to nine weeks.”
“Oh my God, Christine. I’m so sorry.” I couldn’t fight back the tears filling my eyes, which in turn made my head pound harder. But I pushed it away because Christine was more important.
“This is why I didn’t want to say it here. There’s no need to cry, honey. We’re okay. We’ve made it through each and every time.”
The world stopped spinning. “What do you mean…each and every time? How many times?”
“Enough to know there’s something wrong.”
“Which is…?”
She wiped away the errant tear from my face. “Doctors have no idea. All the tests have come back inconclusive. No one knows why my body rejects pregnancies. But don’t say anything to anyone, please. We’ve never told your sisters about any of it, even though I wouldn’t be surprised if they knew something. Your parents know about the first two, and I’m pretty sure Holden knows about the third. But since then, Matt and I haven’t said anything to anyone—not when we’ve found out about being pregnant, and not after we’ve lost it. We’ve dealt with this together. We’ve made it this far, and I know we’ll make it all the way.”
Had I not been sick and practically knocking on death’s door, I would’ve probably come up with something better to say. But unfortunately for me, I didn’t have that luxury. So I squeezed her hand and gave her all I had. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here for you guys. And I hate that there’s nothing I can do. I just hope you and my brother know I’m here for you any way you need me, anytime you need me, no matter where I am.”
“We know.” A single tear tracked down her cheek before falling from her chin. “We’ll be okay, though. There’s no reason to worry. But right now, we need to focus on getting you well. And I’d like to point out something huge—Holden called me to go check on you. You may not see the importance of that, but I do. And I’m going to tell you.”
I loved how she effortlessly switched gears, as if she hadn’t just dropped a bomb the size of the Atlantic into my lap.
“You may or may not know, but he couldn’t leave the office today because of meetings. I guess he tried to call you several times to see how you were feeling because you went to bed early last night, and he didn’t hear a peep from you. Then when you weren’t answering the phone today, he got concerned.” She lifted one eyebrow and tilted her head, giving me feigned attitude. “I doubt basic friends would do that, but I’m sure you already know that by now. And who does he call to check on you? Me…knowing full well if it was as bad as he thought, I’d have to take you to the doctor. And he knows I avoid this place like the plague. And that means something. Something you can’t deny.”
“Yeah, it means he needs me to get better so I can continue making his dinners and doing his grocery shopping.” Even as those words came out of my mouth, I knew they weren’t true. They didn’t even taste right on my tongue. But I wasn’t about to tell her that. Even if Holden fell at my feet right now and confessed his undying love, I still wouldn’t tell her.
Probably because if that did happen, it would be a sure sign of my untimely death. And if I were no longer walking the earth, I couldn’t tell her, even if I wanted to…for obvious reasons. Just knowing I even entertained these thoughts troubled me and made me even more concerned over whatever horrible disease I’d contracted. Thinking of Holden falling in love with me and all the reasons I couldn’t tell Christine had me worried this wasn’t some normal illness, and there was a real chance I wouldn’t make it to see the next day.
“It makes no sense, though. I never even told him I didn’t feel well. We had dinner, started to clean the kitchen, and when I complained about being tired, he told me to go to bed. I don’t recall at all saying I felt sick or that I was coming down with something. I don’t even think I was running a fever. I only had a headache when I went to lie down.”
“You can deny it all you want, Jelly, but you two will end up together. I can feel it.” For the first time all morning, I noticed a genuine smile spread across Christine’s perfectly painted pink lips. “I knew your brother was the one for me when he stopped by my apartment early one morning before a test. His class started at eight and mine didn’t start until almost nine, so he came knocking on my door at seven fifteen with flowers and a cup of coffee fixed just the way I like it.”
“Why did he do that?” I was intrigued, having never heard this story before.
“No one else noticed, but I was terrified of the test I had that day. I didn’t feel prepared enough because I hadn’t had much time to study. But I’d never told anyone because it was my fault. I chose to do other things than study, so I wasn’t about to complain. Needless to say, Matty knew. He recognized how stressed I was and somehow knew it was about the test. So he came over early in the morning to tell me how confident he was that I’d pass it.”
“Well? Did you?”
“With flying colors. But that’s not the moral of the story. What I was trying to say is he knew me well enough to pick up on things others overlooked. So if you didn’t mention to Holden last night that you weren’t feeling good, that means he saw it. He picked up on it.”
I wrapped my arms around my shins, pulling my legs tighter to my body while curling into the awful waiting room chair, and closed my eyes. I was convinced they put these seats in clinics to will people to get better. The longer you had to sit in these, the higher the probability was that you’d take the chance with your cough, hoping it didn’t turn out to be life threatening, because you just couldn’t take it anymore. There’d probably be less deaths if they spent a few extra dollars on real chairs that weren’t made of hard plastic to place in waiting rooms.
“Yeah,” I mumbled. “That means we know each other well. It doesn’t mean we’ll end up together. Considering we’ve been in each other’s lives for eighteen years, I would hope that he could pick up on a few things others didn’t.”
“Say what you want, but you won’t change my mind.”
Luckily, she dropped the conversation, and we waited in silence until someone called my name—which felt like a hundred years later. Christine walked back with me, and maybe it was my fever causing me to hallucinate, but she seemed lighter, less anxious about where we were. Either that or realizing she wasn’t the patient and wouldn’t be the one getting horrible news settled her nerves some. Whatever it was, she sat in the room and entertained me while we waited for the doctor to come in. Which, by the way, only lasted approximately ninety seconds. A hundred years in the waiting room to see an old man in a white coat for less than a hundred seconds. It took the nurse longer than that to scrape my throat.
Nevertheless, at least I no longer had to sit in the waiting room.
I now had a pint-sized bed lined with crinkly paper.
I wasn’t sure which was better.