Pieces of You(36)

She drops me off in front of the emergency entrance then sets off to find parking. I stand outside the sliding doors under the red emergency sign for a moment, unable to move. This is exactly how it happened when I went into labor.



“Are you in labor?” the nurse with the blue cardigan and the straw-colored hair asks.

“Yes. Please put me in a room. Now, please.”

I’m more afraid of running into someone I know than anything else. I just want to get into a delivery room where no one but the doctors and nurses, and Senia, will see me.

“We’ll get you into a room right now, sweetie.”

Another nurse comes up behind me with a wheelchair and I’m hit with another contraction right as I sit down. It’s the worst pain I’ve ever felt and I’ve been suffering through it for the last three hours in Senia’s bedroom while waiting for the contractions to come less than four minutes apart. It’s 2:30 a.m. now and I can hardly keep my eyes open. My eyes roll back in my head and I feel as if I might actually die from the pain.

I’d rather be dead than be here right now.

Finally, the nurse wheels me away and it feels like it takes an hour before she finally arrives at the Women’s Pavilion. They set me up in a spacious room and hook me up to a zillion monitors. Every beat of my baby’s heart is like a hammer driven into my heart, breaking it into a million pieces. I finally ask the nurse to lower the volume on the heart rate monitor and she does it, but not without a judgmental scowl.

“Have you decided on any names?” another dark-haired nurse asks, putting on some gloves as she gets ready to probe my cervix for the third time since I arrived.

Senia throws her a look of disgust before she pulls the nurse outside. I don’t know what Senia says to her, but the dark-haired nurse, Sybil, is overly nice for the rest of my two-night stay. The entire staff is overly nice after that. Sybil must have shared the news about the adoption with everybody. But their kindness doesn’t soothe my anxiety or my guilt. I almost wish they would tell me what an awful person I am. Just confirm what I know they’re all thinking about me.

She’s just a stupid college student who got knocked up by having unprotected sex with some guy who probably wants nothing more to do with her.

If they knew the truth, if they knew that I kept this whole pregnancy a secret from Chris, they wouldn’t be this nice to me.



“Claire?”

Senia places her hand on my back and leads me toward the emergency entrance. The doors whisper accusations as they slide open. Unfit. They slide shut behind me. Liar.

“It’s okay,” Senia whispers.

“Nobody knows what happened. That’s between you and Chris.”

Chris. Oh, God. Where is he?

I break away from Senia and race to the long counter where a woman in a black cardigan watches wide-eyed as I approach.

“Can I help you?”

“I’m looking for Chris Knight.”

Her eyebrows knit together as if she has bad news for me, but then she points at a set of double doors. “Go through there and you’ll find the nursing station. They can help you.”

I powerwalk across the lobby to the double doors and shove my way through them. The hospital smell is more intense in here. The woman in the lobby didn’t say they would tell me where Chris is. She didn’t say he’s okay. She just said they would help me at the nursing station. Maybe that’s her standard response after dealing with so many people who come in frantic looking for loved ones who’ve…. I have to stop thinking like this.

The nursing station is a huge L-shaped counter with Plexiglas panels stretching from the counter to the ceiling. A woman with short red hair is standing behind the counter wearing a midnight-blue nursing uniform and staring at the inside of a manila file folder.

“You looking for someone?” she asks as she looks up from the folder.

“Yes. I’m looking for Chris—Christopher Knight.”

Everyone knows him as Chris Knight, not Christopher, but there’s no way she doesn’t know I’m talking about the Chris Knight.

“Are you family?”

I hesitate. Am I family? Technically, Chris was my foster brother, but Jackie never adopted me. And I haven’t lived with her or Chris for more than two years.

“No. I’m….” Senia watches me as she waits to hear exactly what I am to Chris. “I’m his wife.”

Senia’s eyes widen, which doesn’t go unnoticed by the nurse. Senia drops her gaze to my hands as I tuck them behind my back. The nurse cocks an eyebrow before she closes her folder and picks up the phone to dial an extension.

“I have Chris Knight’s… wife here.” She looks up at me. “What’s your name, honey?”