Mistakes I’ve Made by Jordan Marie

45Reed

I just can’t do it anymore.

It’s one in the morning and I’ve been hiding out in the garage’s office. I would have slept there, but I need a damn shower. I’m taking Chas to the doctor tomorrow. I’ve been pushing her for over a month. There’s just something off. She keeps saying the baby is moving, but every time I check I haven’t felt shit. I should have already dragged her ass to the doctor, but that would mean dealing with her.

To be honest, ever since that day on the street when Callie’s car went by with Mitch driving and Callie flipping me off, I’ve lost interest in doing anything. That ends in the morning, though. I’ll take Chasity to the doctor and find out what’s going on there. Then, I’m going to go see Callie. It may not do me a bit of good. I figure I’ve lost my shot there, but I want to see her. I want to tell her she was right all along and I’m an idiot. If she’ll give me a shot, I’ll beg on my hands and knees. I have money to put Chasity up in a cheap ass apartment for the remainder of her pregnancy and I’ll keep putting it back. Fuck, I’ll buy my kid, if given the option.

If there even is a kid.

She is gaining weight and she has a baby bump. So, maybe I’m worrying for nothing. Hell if I know anymore. I get to the door and frown because it’s not even locked. Jesus, I know I’m just downstairs, but I tell Chas over and over that she needs to lock the fucking door. I walk in and Jesus Christ!

There is shit everywhere, plus, liquor bottles galore. It looks like she’s had some wild frat party. Anger burns in my gut. If my baby is still inside of her, what kind of damage has the bitch done? I jog into the room, my heart hammering in my chest.

“Chas!” I growl, my voice barely recognizable. If she’s done anything to hurt my child, I’m going to kill her. I stomp through the chaos of what used to be a home and is now just a place filled with misery. I open the bedroom door, but she’s not in there. Fuck! Is she even here? As I walk back into the living room, I notice the window above the sofa is broken. I walk to it and see she’s thrown the fucking lamp through the window. The lamp that Callie bought the week she moved in here. She wanted to make the house “homier”, she said. She had no idea that for me she was home…. “Chas!” I cry out again. I look out the window, just to make sure she hasn’t done something stupid like climb out of it. My heart was thundering so loudly, my pulse echoing in my ears that I didn’t notice the faint sound of running water until just now. I take off for the small bathroom. The door is locked. Jesus. I bang my fist into the door. “Chasity!!!!” I cry out, screaming by this point. When she doesn’t answer, I heave my shoulder into the flimsy wooden door and break it way from the frame. I barely right myself before my gaze turns to the running shower. The curtain is open, Chas is under the spray of water, fully dressed, white foam coming out of her mouth, slumped down in the corner, completely unconscious.

“Jesus,” I hiss. “Oh, Jesus.” My voice is raw as I pick her up, cradling her limp body to me. I don’t check for a pulse, I don’t stop for anything. All I can think is that I need to get her to the hospital. I’ve got to try and save my baby. I have to….

* * *

I never realizedhow dingy hospital waiting rooms were before. Everything is a dull beige that looks more like gray with the overhead, filtered lighting. I’ve been here for an hour. They haven’t told me a damn thing. I wring my hands together. I started to call someone, but I realized that I’m really all alone. Jake is in Wyoming. He’s making a name for himself riding bulls. We tried to keep in touch, but last time we talked he was high on life, and I was about at rock bottom. It made talking to him next to impossible. And it makes me a shit friend, but I haven’t told him Katie is pregnant. She begged me not to, that if Jake knew he’d give up his dream just to come back and she didn’t want him like that—she didn’t want him to resent his child. I can’t say for sure Jake would have felt like that, but I know that I’ve spent some time since finding out Chas was pregnant resenting my child.

Calling Mitch never was much of an option—it’s less so now. There’s no way Callie wants to hear from me—and especially about this. So, here I am, sitting alone in the hospital waiting room, waiting to hear if my child and Chas survived. Chas never regained consciousness on the way over here. I don’t even know if she was alive. I think I felt a pulse, but I can’t be sure. My own was hammering so hard that I could feel it in my fingertips. That made it next to impossible to check Chas’s.

“Mr. Lane?”

I stand up, my legs shaky as a man in blue scrubs and a white overcoat approaches me. He has a mask pulled off one side of his face, his hair covered in a blue scrub cap.

“I…I’m Mr. Lane.”

“Mr. Lane, I’m afraid your wife didn’t make it—”

“She’s not my wife,” I correct him. I’m not sure why that feels like it’s so important to correct, but it does. “Doctor, how is the baby?” I don’t comment on the fact he said Chas wasn’t alive.

“Mr. Lane, Mrs.—”

“Doctor, it’s Miss Newberg. We’re not married. I need to know about the baby.”

“The baby,” he says. “The nurse said you mentioned she was pregnant, but Mr. Lane, there was no baby.”

“She lost it?” I ask, going numb.

“No.”

“Doctor you’re confusing me. Did she or did she not lose our baby before she died? She’s far enough along, you could keep her alive right, machines or something—anything until you could—”

“Mr. Reed, Mrs.—Miss Newberg was never pregnant. She had no signs of a pregnancy and in fact when we looked at her medical records, it was discovered she couldn’t have children because of an accident she had when younger.”

“I… She was never pregnant?” I squeak.

“Never. Mr. Lane, I’m not sure what you were told, but—”

I don’t let him finish.

I’ve been played for a fucking fool. Chas was never pregnant. She was never having my child. I broke up with Callie, put her through hell—put myself through hell and it was all for fucking nothing.

Nothing.

I slap my hand against the glass hospital door and open it wishing Chas was alive so I could choke the life out of her.