She walked into the 7-11 as she talked to him, moving directly back to the churning slush machine as they spoke. The ice cold air-conditioning washed over her like a wave, adhering to her slightly damp skin. She inhaled deeply, enjoying the temporary reprieve from the sticky heat.
Maybe this was why she liked walking here for a drink every day. The air-conditioning. It certainly wasn’t for the dingy floors or the company of the hairy guy behind the counter. He had ‘Chuck’ scrawled on his nametag in faded blue marker. She greeted him every day by name and he had never once asked for hers.
“I don’t know. I just thought maybe you wanted to stock up or something.”
Christian sounded offended, as though her refusal had hurt his feelings. She sighed. She had to admit that he was living up to his promise and the baby wasn’t even here yet.
“Look, I told you. It was my decision to keep it, even though I knew you didn’t want to. It’s perfectly fine with me if your parents want to draw up papers for you to sign away your rights. Then you wouldn’t be legally obligated, either. Send them over to me and I’ll sign them. I can raise her myself.”
“How, Sydney? You can’t earn enough money to live on your own, much less feed a baby and you don’t have any job skills. And what about college?” He sounded just like her parents.
For all she knew, they were trying to get information from him, too. That way they could keep tabs on her while still pretending like they didn’t care. And maybe they actually didn’t anymore. She wasn’t sure.
“I’ll worry about college later. Right now, I just want to concentrate on having the baby. That’s all I can do.”
She could practically see him shaking his head through the phone. She had been just like him once- not too long ago. Impatient, entitled and slightly self-absorbed. It really wasn’t his fault, it was just a by-product of their upbringing. But she realized now that she didn’t know anything back when she was like him.
“I need to go, okay? My hands are full. I’ll talk to you later.” She flipped her phone closed and carried the two giant slippery cups to the counter to pay for them.
“$2.11,” Chuck grunted.
That was it, not another word. No Please, Thank-you or Come Again. Of course, he knew that she would. Come Again. Every day that she had enough money, she came. It was the only thing she could do to treat herself. She didn’t have enough money anymore for a massage or a mud wrap.
She had $1.62 left, which was more than enough to buy the neighbor kids some snow cones. They were only a quarter each at the little Dairy Barn down the street. Not many people were nice to those kids. No one else saw past the annoyance of their noise. Besides, she knew that when she went to work tomorrow night, she would replenish her stash with tips. On a normal weekday, she usually made 20 or 30 bucks. People felt sorry for the pregnant young waitress with the swollen, Herman Munster feet.
Juggling the oversized cups carefully, she pushed the cool glass door open with her hip and stepped out into the sun, squinting into the bright light. It was always such a drastic difference walking from the cold interior of the building into the sun beating down on the scorching concrete. She took a second to acclimate herself to breathing the muggy air again. It was so humid that it was like inhaling a glass of water.
She had only taken a few short steps before the loud revving of an engine and the sound of squealing tires commanded her attention. She turned to locate the source of the noise but barely had time to register the smell of burning rubber or to focus on the car tearing into the parking lot before it hit her. The old black Trans-Am drove straight into her as though it was on a zip-line attached to her chest. As though it had purpose.
The impact threw her forcefully against the bricks of the convenience store wall before she slid limply to the ground, her legs splayed around her and her Big Gulp cups splattered onto the hot pavement. As her eyes fluttered closed, she saw the battered car back up and spin around, speeding back in the direction that it had come from. And then nothing.
CHAPTER FOUR
If she had seemed delicate before with her swollen little belly and bird-like arms and legs, then she was excruciatingly fragile now. She was beyond pale. Every drop of blood had leached from her face until she almost blended into the white blanket beneath her. The dark fringe of her closed eyelashes was striking in contrast with the pale cheeks that they rested against.
Everything hurt-she couldn’t get away from it. All around her- up, down, right, left… there was pain everywhere. It raged from the tips of her fingers to the arches of her feet. Her stomach was spasming uncontrollably, wrapping around to convulse in her back. It was so excruciating that it stole the breath she was trying to take. She knew there was a lot of blood. She could feel it gushing between her legs. Her face was also wet- but she wasn’t sure if it was tears or blood. And she was afraid to open her eyes to find out.
She wasn’t dead. She knew that because there was a siren wailing in the background somewhere. And surely there weren’t any sirens in Heaven. Or pain. She took a deep breath and it smelled strange, medicinal. She struggled to open her eyes and it took her a second to realize that there was an oxygen mask strapped to her face. She raised her hand to pull at it and someone gently pushed it back down.
“No, sweetie. You need that. Leave it be.”
A fuzzy female face blurred back out of her vision, but Sydney felt her moving beside her. Poking, prodding. They were moving. She focused harder. There were medical supplies hanging from the walls and she was strapped to a gurney. She was in the back of an ambulance. She definitely wasn’t dead.
But what about her baby?
She yanked off the mask before the woman could stop her.
“Is my baby okay?” she asked urgently. Her voice was hoarse. Her throat felt gummy and she didn’t know why. She could taste the metallic, rusty flavor of blood on her tongue.
Another wave of pain wracked her body and she curled upward with it, trying to absorb it, to cushion it. It didn’t work. She couldn’t breathe- and the oxygen wasn’t helping. She fought to breathe so that she could scream. The kind female face hovered over her, replacing her mask and holding her arm tightly. There was a quick pinch and then warmth spread through her body. Everything blurred into nothingness.
* * *
“Syd?”
She opened her eyes to stare at a blank white wall. She struggled to focus, to figure out what had happened. The oxygen mask was gone. So was the pain. Well, the excruciating pain, anyway. She could deal with the piercing aches that she felt now. Her hands immediately flew to her stomach. It was flat, in an unbaked dough kind of way. Empty.