Page 13 of My Monster, My Choice

Loretta’s wails stopped as she slumped down in the bed, her face as white as the sheets.

“Get the doctor!” Lyle barked to Sheila, and she wailed as she lifted her skirts to flee the room.

I kissed the top of Tera’s head and stood, easing her into the vacated seat to keep her out of the way, then gently deposited the baby into the bassinet next to the chair. I quickly made my way to Loretta, using two fingers to check her neck.

Nothing.

My own pulse raced through me. Surely, I couldn’t find hers because of my panic? Carefully, so Lyle wouldn’t get the same idea the others would jump to, I placed one shaking finger under her nostrils to feel, instead of cupping my hand around her nose and mouth to be sure.

I couldn’t feel air.

She had no pulse, no breath.

Shocked, I looked up at him. His face was placid. Expressionless.

He knew.

Sheila and Loretta had a screaming match once, when I was first married in. Loretta fought tooth and nail for her place as first wife, but Sheila had bragged that she was the one to bring in healthy babies. That with Loretta’s weaker disposition, she shouldn’t be allowed to try.

But Loretta got pregnant anyway. Deliberately.

To be fair, I never saw anything weak about her. A vicious woman, her tone as cold as the biting wind, she could asphyxiate you with a glare.

When the doctor burst in—he lived just two doors down, but Lyle hadn’t wanted to pay him to deliver their son—he took one look at Lyle and calmly, methodically, went to work. There was no rush. No sense of urgency. He was just here to do a job.

A mediocre job.

Like most things do, it dawned on me suddenly that both Lyle and the doctor thought this might be a way to bring some peace to our dramatic household. One less wife to bicker with.

Lyle Garrett had chosen his first wife for the second time in his life.

A shiver ran through me.

Males stuck together in this world. Why did females fight each other? But then I remember the woman doctor at the hospital where I recovered. She’d patted my hand after the surgery, two of her nurses with her. She’d told me that there were countless women who couldn’t conceive after the wars. That I never had to tell anyone of my surgery. The way she’d stressed anyone, I knew she meant because I was young enough to marry. That I could trick a man into a good marriage, maybe be first wife.

Is that what Loretta had done? Did Lyle find out after the marriage that she shouldn’t have children? Was she okay with not having them as long as she was first wife, but the fights with Sheila became so much to handle, she decided to do it against the doctor’s advisement?

Then the nurses stepped in, telling me Dr. Elizabeth Minert was the best in the industry. That I would have no scar to mark my body. That as long as I pretended to need a week off to bleed each month, no one need ever know.

Lyle and the doctor begin whispering and I don’t want to know what they talked about. Hurriedly, I pushed the bassinet out of the room, holding Tera’s little hand anchored onto it so she wouldn’t have to witness what was happening to Loretta. Sheila, the ever-neglectful natural mother that she was, didn’t even bother to deal with her daughter, she just wailed at the foot of Loretta’s bed, carrying on as if they’d been best friends.

“Momma Chwisthina.” Her fingers, so small in mine, felt like a balm to my soul. She had a wonderful vocabulary, this smart little girl, but the recent loss of her two front teeth caused the most adorable lisp that I would never forget.

“Yes, sweet one?” I tapped the tip of her precious nose.

“He’s a beautiful baby bwother. Whath’s his name?”

“I don’t think he has one yet, my love.”

“Maybe Mutha Lowetta will give him one when she wakes?” Tera peered into the room where the doctor was lifting the sheet over Loretta’s face.

Casually, I angled her away.

“Your brother likes you,” I said. “See how he quiets and watches you? He knows you’re special to him. He already knows you’re his big sister and he loves you.”

Footsteps echoed briskly on the polished floors, stopping a few feet from us.

“Let me see this one,” Dr. Brown said, the fuzzy wispy hair on the top of his head flapping under the ceiling fan of the parlor. His no-nonsense tone and his brusque demeanor set Tera to bristle.

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