Spiral of Bliss 03 Awaken (32 page)

I wipe my face on my sleeve and walk toward Dean. I feel Maggie Hamilton watching me, feel the triumph radiating from her.

Dean lifts his head. At first, he just looks at me, as if he’d forgotten I was there. Then his gaze scans the café, the abandoned grounds, the people still staring.

I stop in front of him and put my hand on his chest. His heartbeat races against my palm, his anger still burning.

“You’re Mrs. West?” the officer asks.

I nod, my eyes still locked with Dean’s. “Olivia West. I’m Dean’s wife.”

“We need to take him to the station, Mrs. West. Officer Randall will need your statement as well, and those of other witnesses.”

A shout comes from near the other police car. I turn to see Edward Hamilton bolting toward Dean again. The only thought that registers in my brain is that Dean is handcuffed and Hamilton is barreling toward him like a battering ram.

I step forward into the space between them, shouts of warning ringing in my ears, Dean a blur in the corner of my vision. Hamilton slams into me. I hit the ground, my skull cracking against the sidewalk, pain shooting through me.

My mother’s face appears in front of me. Noise fills my head.

A bright red balloon, broken from its anchor, floats above the street.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Olivia

m I what?” I feel like the nurse is speaking a foreign language.

“Pregnant,” she replies, a touch impatiently. “Or is there a
possibility
that you are pregnant?”

“Uh… well, I guess… I mean, yes. There is a possibility. That I am. Pregnant.”

The realization is a shock to my system.

“We’ll do a blood test to find out,” the nurse says.

She asks me more questions before telling me they’ll have a bed for me shortly. After I register, a phlebotomist draws blood from my arm, I change into a hospital gown, and am directed to a bed.

I press a hand to my belly and take a deep breath. I’d had visions of discovering a pregnancy the usual way—by peeing on a stick in the privacy of my own bathroom—then telling Dean over a romantic, candlelit dinner.

Instead I’m in the ER with a splitting headache, fluorescent lights glaring from overhead, no-nonsense nurses firing questions at me, and a husband who is currently in a holding cell at the Mirror Lake police station.

Which, admittedly, is more like the police station in
The Andy Griffith Show
than
NYPD Blue,
but still…

Before the doctor arrives, I fumble for the phone to call Kelsey.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Liv, he’s like a caged tiger in there,” she tells me. “He’s furious that they wouldn’t let him go with you to the hospital. The officer said he won’t release him until Dean calms down, but you know what a stubborn ass he is. Dean, not the officer.”

“Can I talk to him?” I ask.

“They’re not letting him talk to anyone,” Kelsey says. “What about you? Are you okay?”

“They’re running more tests, but everything looks good. Where are the Hamiltons?”

“No idea about the girl. They held Hamilton for a while, but let him go.”

“How much longer before Dean is released?”

“He’s been processed, and they’re willing to release him on his own recognizance since they verified all his info, but first they want him to dial it down a notch. Or ten. I’m just sitting here waiting for him. I’ll bring him over as soon as I can.”

I end the call as the doctor returns and conducts a thorough exam. He tells me I don’t appear to have a concussion, but he’ll do an MRI to make certain. As he’s telling me about the MRI procedure, the nurse returns with the lab report.

“Your hCG levels indicate that you’re pregnant, Mrs. West,” the doctor tells me, studying the papers. “You didn’t know?”

Since I can’t speak past the constriction in my throat, I just shake my head.

“Though chances are your accident didn’t harm the fetus, we’ll do an ultrasound and connect you to a fetal monitor to assess the viability of the pregnancy,” the doctor says, and the businesslike tone of his voice as well as the words
viability of the pregnancy
bring up a wave of old fear.

A bustle of activity follows. Allie, Crystal, and Marianne come in from the waiting room to see how I’m doing. The nurse shoos them out before bringing in the ultrasound machine and setting up for the exam.

When she turns to the machine, I grab my phone again. “Kelsey, you need to get him over here.”

“They’re letting him go since they need the cell for a couple of drunk college kids,” she tells me. “He’s getting his wallet and phone returned to him right now. He still has steam coming out of his ears. We should be there in about fifteen minutes. I told him you’re okay.”

“Kelsey. Hurry.”

“On our way.”

After getting off the phone, I sit back and watch the clock. Minutes pass. I’m not about to tell the doctor to hold off on the ultrasound, but the nurse tells me I need to drink more water before they can conduct the exam.

I down another glass of water, my stomach zinging with nerves. I wait. I look at the clock again. The second hand ticks.
Hurry, hurry…

“Liv?” Dean’s voice breaks through my anxiety.

My heart leaps as he runs into the room, his eyes burning with concern, a bruise marring his unshaven jaw, his shirt torn and stained with blood. He careens to a halt beside my bed, his chest heaving.

“You’re okay?” He grabs my shoulders, looking me over, his voice tight. “Are you okay? Goddammit, I almost lost my mind when they wouldn’t let me come with you, and then they stuck me in a damn cell—”

“Because you were disturbing the peace.” Kelsey hurries into the room after him. “And if you don’t calm down here, they’ll throw you out again. Is that what you want?”

Dean inhales and makes a visible effort to regain control of himself. He tightens his hands on my shoulders.

“Liv, are you okay?”

“Yes. Take another breath.”

He does. Behind him, Kelsey scans the room, her sharp gaze stopping on the ultrasound machine. Her eyes widen a little behind her glasses. She gives me a questioning
does he know?
look. I shake my head.

Kelsey gets a chair and shoves it behind Dean.

“You’ll want to sit down for this one, Professor Marvel.” She backs away, shooting me a smile. “Aunt Kelsey’s orders.”

She turns and leaves the room. I squeeze Dean’s arm.

“She’s right,” I tell him. “Sit down.”

He sits, dragging a hand through his hair. “Liv, I’m so sorry I—”

“Hey. Be quiet. I have something to tell you.”

“What?” Concern darkens his eyes again.

“Last February, I stopped at a baby boutique downtown,” I explain.

He blinks. “Oh.”

“I bought two cotton baby hats, one pink and one blue. They’re wrapped in a box under our bed.”

Dean searches my gaze. I grip his arm harder.

“We’re going to need one of those hats in about seven or eight months,” I tell him.

Shock registers in his expression. Before he can get a word out, the doctor and nurse return.

“Ready, Mrs. West?” the doctor asks, setting a clipboard beside my bed. “I’ll do the ultrasound first, then hook you up to the fetal monitor.”

All the color drains from Dean’s face. I grab his hand, my own apprehension kicking into gear again. Our eyes meet, and a thousand hopes, fears, and wishes pass between us.

“You and me, professor,” I whisper.

He leans closer to me, putting his other hand against my cheek. “You and me, beauty.”

He straightens when the doctor approaches to prep me for the exam. Dean doesn’t release my hand. Silence descends as the doctor spreads gel over the wand and starts a slow scan of my belly. My heart is racing. We watch the monitor.

For a second, there’s nothing. Even the nurse seems to be holding her breath.

Then a grainy swath of black and gray appears on the screen, a light flashing rhythmically.

“There it is,” the doctor says, sounding pleased. “A baby with a heartbeat.”

The screen blurs in front of my eyes. I blink hard because I don’t want to miss this. It’s a little, peanut-shaped blob on the screen. The light continues to flash as it bounces around. A baby with a heartbeat.

“Want to hear it?” The doctor flips a switch on the computer, and a thumping noise fills the air. “One-twenty beats per minute. Looks good and sounds good.”

Dean presses his hand to my hair. He’s watching the screen. I can’t read his expression.

The doctor is talking again, but I’m only half-listening. After I hear that I’m about six weeks along and everything looks normal, my entire body loosens with relief. The doctor inputs the data into the computer and tells me he wants to keep me overnight for observation.

Dean and I look at each other. He reaches out to put his warm hand against my neck, right where my pulse beats. He smiles that beautiful smile that makes his eyes crinkle at the corners and fills my heart to overflowing. And then there just aren’t any words.

The hospital seems quiet the following morning as I get ready for Dean to come and pick me up. After the doctor conducts another exam and proclaims me “all set to go home,” I dress in my clothes from the previous day and wait for the nurse to come with the discharge papers.

“Hello, Liv.”

I look up at the sound of my mother’s voice. She’s standing by the door, beautiful as ever with her silky gold hair, dressed in a floral wraparound skirt and a peasant blouse with an embroidered design on the bodice.

“Hi, Crystal.”

“They said I could see you since I’m family,” she tells me. “Everything’s okay?”

The lingering tightness in my chest loosens even more. “Everything’s okay.”

“You got your wish, I guess,” she remarks.

I can only nod, thinking of that little bouncing ball on the ultrasound screen whose heartbeat echoed my own.

“I remember when I found out I was pregnant with you,” Crystal continues. “Scariest day of my life.”

Something twinges beneath my heart. She’d been alone when she found out about me, and shortly afterward her parents would kick her out of the house.

I press a hand to my belly. I think of going home to our Avalon Street apartment with its blue-and-white curtains, overstuffed chairs, seascape paintings and photographs of me and my husband. Dean’s office lined with books, my desk beside the windows with a view of the sky-blue lake, the little white table where we have breakfast together every morning.

“I came to tell you that I’m leaving,” Crystal says.

“Oh. Where are you going to go?”

“Phoenix, I guess. Maybe head up to Las Vegas.”

“What will you do?”

“What I’ve always done.”

I know what that means. She’ll find places to stay, men to stay with. She’ll sell her jewelry, find odd jobs, meet people and then leave again.

“Thanks for your help at the café,” I say. There is an odd tightness in my throat.

Crystal moves closer to me. The smell of lavender clings to the air around her. Fresh, clean, a mixture of floral and musk. That scent was the only solid ground I had in all the places we lived. In dismal motel rooms, squalid apartments, strangers’ houses… whenever I smelled lavender, I knew my mother was near.

And because I had no one else, I
needed
her to be near me.

Behind her, someone else approaches the doorway. Dean pauses, his hand on the doorjamb, taking in the scene with one glance.