He stops where he is. He walks toward me. The look on his face is gentle and compassionate. I don’t want gentle and compassionate. I am so goddamn sick of gentle and compassionate. “Hannah,” he says.
“Don’t,” I say. “I get it. I’m sorry.”
He looks at me and sighs.
“I probably misinterpreted everything,” I say finally.
“OK,” he says. And then he leaves. He actually leaves. He just turns on his heels and walks out the door.
I don’t fall asleep, even though I’m tired. It’s not that I can’t fall asleep. I think I can. But I keep hoping he will check on me.
At two a.m., a woman in pale blue scrubs comes in and introduces herself as Marlene. “I’ll be taking care of you at night from here on out,” she says. “I’m surprised you’re awake!”
“Yeah,” I say somberly. “Well, I slept all afternoon.”
She smiles kindly and leaves me be. I close my eyes and tell myself to go to sleep.
Henry’s not coming. There’s no reason to wait up.
You know what? I don’t think I misinterpreted a goddamn thing.
I like him. I like being around him. I like being near him. I like the way he smells and the way he never shaves down to the skin. I like the way his voice is sort of rocky and deep. I like his passion for his job. I like how good he is at it. I just like him. The way you like people when you like them. How he makes me laugh when I least expect it. How my legs don’t hurt as much when he’s looking directly at me.
Or . . . I don’t know. Maybe that’s all nursing stuff. Maybe he makes everyone feel that way.
I turn off my side light and close my eyes.
Dr. Winters said earlier today that I might try to walk tomorrow.
I try to focus on that.
If I can survive being hit by a car, I will get over having a crush on my night nurse.
Hearts are just like legs, I guess. They mend.
It’s not yours,” I tell Ethan. He knows this, of course, based on timing alone. But I have to make it crystal clear.
“It could be, though, right?” he asks me. “I mean, maybe last week . . .”
I shake my head. “I’m eleven weeks. It’s not yours.”
“Whose is it?”
I breathe in and then out. That’s all I have to do. In and then out. The rest is optional. “His name is Michael. He and I dated in New York. I thought it was more serious than it was. He and I were careless toward the end. He doesn’t want another child.”
“Another child?”
“He’s married, with two children,” I tell him.
He sighs loudly, as if he can’t quite believe what I’m saying. “Did you know he had a family?”
“It’s sort of hard to explain,” I say. “I didn’t know at first. For a long time, I assumed I was the only one he was with. But then I should have known better and, let’s just say, I . . . made some mistakes.”
“And now he doesn’t care that you’re pregnant?” Ethan stands up, furious. His emotions are just starting to set in, reality just starting to grab on to him. It’s easier for him to be mad at Michael than it is to be mad at me or at the situation. So I let him, for a moment.
“He doesn’t want the baby,” I say. “And that’s his right.” I believe in a man’s decision not to have a baby as much as I believe in a woman’s.
“And you’re just going to let this asshole treat you like this?”
“He doesn’t want the baby. I do. I’m prepared to go it alone.”
That word, the word alone, brings him back down to earth. “What does this mean for us?” he asks.
“Well,” I say, “that’s up to you.”
He looks at me. His eyes find mine and hold on. And then he looks away. He looks down at his hands, which are placed firmly on his knees. “Are you asking me to be someone’s father?”
“No,” I say to him. “But I’m also not going to tell you that this doesn’t change things. I’m pregnant. And if you’re going to be with me, that means you’ll be going through this with me. My body will be going through a lot. I’ll have mood swings. When it gets time to have the baby, I’ll be scared and confused and in pain. And then, once the baby is born, there will be a child in my life, at all times. If you want to be with me, you’ll be with my child.”
He listens, but he doesn’t speak.
“I know you didn’t ask for any of this,” I say.
“Yeah, you can say that again,” he snaps. He looks at me with remorse.
“But I wanted you to know so you could make a decision about your future.”
“Our future,” he says.
“I guess,” I say. “Yeah.”
“What do you want?” he asks.
Oh, boy. How do I even begin to answer that question? “I want my baby to be healthy and happy and have a safe, stable childhood.” I suppose that’s the only thing I know for sure.
“And us?”
“I don’t want to lose you. I think you and I really have something, that this is the beginning of something with huge potential for us . . . But I would never want to put you in the position to do something you aren’t ready for.”
“This is a lot,” he says. “To process.”
“I know,” I say. “You should take all the time you need.” I stand up, ready to leave, ready to give him time to think.
He stops me. “You’re really ready to be a single mother?”
“No,” I say. “But this is the way life has worked out. And I’m embracing it.”
“But I mean, this could be a mistake,” he says. “What if you just made a mistake one night with this guy? Are you ready to live with the consequences of that for your entire life? Do I have to live with the consequences of that for mine?”
I sit back down. “I have to think that there is a method to all of this madness,” I tell Ethan. “That there is a larger plan out there. Everything happens for a reason. Isn’t that what they say? I met Michael, and I fell in love with him, even though I can clearly see now that he wasn’t who I thought he was. And one night, everything happened just so, and I got pregnant. And maybe it’s because I’m supposed to have this baby. That’s how I’m choosing to look at it.”
“And if I can’t do it? If I’m not ready to take all of this on?”
“I suppose it would follow that if you and I come to a place we can’t get past, then we aren’t meant to be. Right? Then we aren’t right for each other. I mean, I think I have to believe that life will work out the way it needs to. If everything that happens in the world is just a result of chance and there’s no rhyme or reason to any of it, that’s just too chaotic for me to handle. I’d have to go around questioning every decision I’ve ever made, every decision I will ever make. If our fate is determined with every step we take . . . it’s too exhausting. I’d prefer to believe that things happen as they are meant to happen.”
“So you and I finally have the timing worked out, we can finally be together, be what we suspected we always were. And in the middle of that, it turns out you’re pregnant with another man’s baby, and you’re saying que será será?”
I want to cry. I want to scream and shout. I want to beg him to stay with me during all of this. I want to tell him how scared I am, how much I feel I need him. I want to tell him how the night I reconnected with him, the night we spent together, was the first time I’ve felt at ease in years. But I don’t. Because it will only drag this thing out further. It will only make things worse. “Yeah. Que será será. That’s what I’m saying.”
I get up and walk out into the living room. He follows me. I can smell dinner. I wish, just for a moment, that I hadn’t told him. Right now, we’d be in his bedroom.
And then I think, if I’m wishing for things, maybe I should wish that I’m not pregnant at all. Or that it’s his baby. Or that I never left Los Angeles. Or that Ethan and I never broke up.