“It’s natural to think something you did caused a problem in the baby. But I assure you, it didn’t.”
Something cracked in me. If I couldn’t tell Gavin, if I had crossed the line in the sand with him, I could still tell his man. Maybe saying the words out loud, dispersing them into the air, would release the poison.
“I smoked pot when I was pregnant.”
He nodded again, no different from the gesture he’d made all along. “The whole pregnancy?”
“No, just before I found out.”
“How far along were you when you stopped?”
“Seven weeks. I didn’t know until then, not until I had real symptoms, since I hardly ever bled anyway.”
“Smoking anything — pot or legal cigarettes — can harm the baby’s lungs, but doing it that early isn’t going to cause a heart defect. What did he have? Do you remember?”
“Hypoplastic left heart syndrome.”
“I’ve never done a neonatal rotation, but I do know that heart problems are usually genetic. Did you talk to the hospital doctors about this at the time?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t tell anyone. I’ve never told anyone.”
“All these years?”
“No.” My voice had lost its force, so it came out as barely a whisper.
I teetered, the room swirling, and the doctor steadied me by my shoulder. “Slow down, Corabelle. Take a deep breath in through your nose, and exhale it through your mouth.”
I realized I was breathing fast. I brought it down, forcing myself to be calm.
He let me go, waited to see if I was steady, and said, “We have a speaker who comes to campus every year who talks about suicide.”
“I’ve never been suicidal,” I choked out.
“But it’s her story. She lost a baby when she was seventeen. He was born and lived a few hours.” He snapped his fingers. “I think she was here last night. I wonder if she’s still in San Diego.” He stood up. “I’m going to ask the nurses. I think you could benefit from meeting her.”
I didn’t want to talk to some stranger about our dead babies, but I nodded.
“I’ll see what I can find out.” He stood up. “Are you doing okay in school? Is this anxiety affecting your work? I can refer you to the mental health clinic. In fact, I’ll write it up. You can decide if you want to use it.”
“But I’m doing fine.” A lie, and we both knew it.
“You are. You really are. I’ll send Missy back in. We’ll have the lab results back in a couple days, but I think you’re fine.”
He strode out, but I didn’t move for a while, trying to pull myself together. When the nurse returned, I still wasn’t dressed.
“So I found Tina,” she said. “She’s heading to the airport tonight. We were thinking —” she held on to my arm like she did before —“that maybe you could drive her out there. Give you a chance to talk. Do you have a car? Could you do that?”
My brain screamed no, but Missy looked at me with so much earnest concern that I couldn’t say it.
“Okay.” I didn’t think I’d talk about anything important, but I could take her. Sure. Why not? If she once was suicidal, maybe there was someone out there who had a story worse than mine.
Chapter 40: Corabelle
Tina wasn’t anything like I expected. She waited in the lobby of the hotel, flipping through a magazine full of glossy images of nature photographs. Missy had told me I’d know her by her tiny pigtails, coming off either side of her head like a little girl’s.
She wore a short denim skirt, frayed at the bottom, and a crazy set of over-the-knee stockings with blue and black stripes. A couple mismatched suitcases sat by her legs. Her face was pixieish, and she lounged with her feet on a coffee table like she owned the place. By looking at her, you wouldn’t think for a minute that anything ever got to her, but as I approached, the red jagged scars up her wrists peeked out from her sweater sleeves, which were pushed up due to the oven-roasting heat that blasted across the lobby.
I came up behind her. “Tina?”
She looked up, her gray eyes merry, but still, I could see the sadness in the corners, lines around the edges from harder days. “You must be my ride.”
“I am. I’m Corabelle.” I stood awkwardly behind the sofa as she gathered up her suitcases. “I can carry one of those.”
“I’m good,” she said. “I travel light.”
We exited to the parking lot. “It’s still blistering hot in Texas,” she said. “I’m almost sad to be wrapping up this tour and going back.”
“You in college there?”
“I’m done, actually, but I haven’t found a job yet, so I kept my speaking tour going while I figure things out.”
So this girl was older than me? I opened the trunk of my car for her bags, studying her. Her petite frame didn’t seem sturdy enough to hoist even her smallish suitcase, but like most of us with baggage under our belt, she was tougher than she looked. “When did you graduate?” I asked.
“Just last spring.” She walked around to the side door. “Finished out my internship at an art gallery over the summer, but nothing permanent has turned up.”
We got inside the car. “What sort of art do you do?”
“Digital photographic manipulation. I was a black-and-white snob for the longest time, but I had to change my attitude if I wanted to get a job. I have worked for some photographers, but removing zits wasn’t my thing for the long haul.”