Page 89 of This Love
I didn’t know what she meant. My shoulders shook with frustration. “I want it to stop.”
She held my hand while I breathed. Everyone stood around watching me. The woman in green. The man from the house. Another smaller woman with short hair in the back of the room.
Then, it finally stopped. I fell back onto the pillow. I was so tired. Tired of pain. Of fear. Of this confusion. I wanted to sleep. Tears squeezed from my eyes.
“Can you make it stop for good?” I asked her.
“I can. And you can rest.” Kenisha held up a tiny glint of silver. “This is the needle. It pokes through your skin. It connects to this bag.” She showed me a pouch suspended from a tall pole. “We can’t get you an epidural for the pain until we have you hooked up to this.”
I didn’t understand epidural, but I nodded and held out the other arm, the one not already hurt by the lady in green. Kenisha ran a cold cloth over the back of my hand instead of the inside of my elbow. The prick was brief, and soon, the needle was taped to me.
Kenisha tucked a thick white blanket around me. “Does anything hurt?”
“Here.” I lifted my hand to the corner of my eye.
Kenisha turned to the man who had stood by the window while she poked me. “You want to explain this bruise on her face?” She sounded mad, like maybe he was the enemy.
He moved toward us, but Kenisha swiftly stepped between him and the bed. “Answer me from over there.”
He went still. “She probably hurt it when she fell. I need to talk to her now that she’s finally calm.”
“I think you need to sit down.” Kenisha pointed at the sofa.
“Can I at least make sure she knows who I am? She needs my help.”
Kenisha glanced back at me, then over at the man, as if sizing us both up. “If it’s your baby, why doesn’t she already know?”
He hesitated. “She seems confused and lost.”
Kenisha’s eyes narrowed. “You can talk to her from over there.”
He nodded, his mouth in a frown. “Okay.” He sat on a gray cushion with his elbows braced on his knees. He rubbed his hand over his eyes. “Ava, I’m not sure what you understood when we were back at the house. I’m Tucker. I’m your husband. The baby in your belly is our son.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know you.”
His face contorted, his eyebrows drawn together. “Ava, I promise. We’re in love. We met almost ten years ago.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He blew out a long breath, as if he were in pain, too. “I understand that you don’t remember me. This has happened before.”
Kenisha straightened up at that. “What do you mean it’s happened before? I need some explanations before I call social services and, quite possibly, the police. I have a woman here, in labor, clearly in distress, with bruises on her face and a fear of other people like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
She looked over her shoulder at the first woman who poked me. “Do you have the ER report? They’re sure she doesn’t have a concussion?”
The green nurse turned the screen she was holding to Kenisha. “They checked her out. No head trauma, just the bruise on her face.”
“Do we have any records on her?”
Tucker tried to speak, but Kenisha held up a hand. “You wait a minute.”
The green nurse said, “She’s preregistered. Here’s her diagnosis.” She ran her fingers across the screen and passed it to Kenisha.
Kenisha turned to me. “You have epilepsy?”
I understood the word. “I don’t know,” I said.
Kenisha turned to Tucker. “So, she has seizures. I still don’t read anything here that explains what I’m seeing.”
