Authors: Michelle Love
“I’ve been really sick, Al. I can’t keep anything down. I feel really tired and weak,” she tells her.
She takes the straw she put into the bottle of water and puts it up to Laura’s lips. She takes a sip of it. “Kyle, bring down a blanket,” Alyssa directs him, and he dashes off.
After a very brief conversation with my doctor from home, I tell them what he told me. “We need to go ahead and take her to the hospital. She’s most likely dehydrated, and they need to get an IV in her and start giving her fluids as soon as possible. One of our doctors will meet us there. He said there’s a small hospital right here in town.”
Kyle comes back down the stairs with the blanket. “We have to take her to the hospital, Kyle,” I say.
“What? It’s that bad?” he asks.
“The doctor said since she’s been unable to keep anything down she’s probably dehydrated, and we need to get that taken care of as soon as possible,” I tell him.
Kyle wraps the blanket around her. “Let’s take her car, Eden. You drive, and I’ll ride in the back with her,” Kyle says, then he picks Laura up, and walks to the door.
Alyssa follows behind us. “Don’t worry Laura you’ll be feeling better in no time,” she tells her.
***
We pull up at the hospital’s emergency entrance. Kyle gets out, picking her up. “Go with them, Alyssa. I’ll park the car and be right in,” I say.
When I come in I see them all still sitting in the waiting room. “They should be taking you straight back,” I tell Kyle.
A nurse opens the door. “Laura Stevens?” she calls out.
Kyle looks at me. “Stevens?” he asks.
“Take your wife and follow the nurse, Kyle,” I tell him.
Kyle stands up, taking Laura, and following the nurse. Alyssa and I walk behind them only to be stopped by the nurse. “Only her husband can be back here, for now, sorry guys, hospital rules,” she tells us.
Alyssa looks at me as the nurse shuts the door in our faces. “Now I see why you lied when you took me to the hospital,”
I smile at her. “I know she’ll want someone in there with her. It should be him.”
She nods in agreement, but I feel the pain in her heart.
She’s not ready to let him go.
ALYSSA
Just as Eden and I sit down, I realize I need to let Laura’s mother know we found her. “I need to call her mother.” I tell Eden, “I’ll be right outside.”
I take out my cell phone and walk out the sliding glass doors. “Hey Joan, I know it’s late. I just wanted to let you know we found Laura, and it’s a long story but she’s okay,” I tell her.
“I want to talk to her,” Joan says.
“She’s sleeping right now. I’ll get her to call you in the morning,” I say.
“Ally, please. I am worried sick,” she says.
“Look, Joan, I don’t want to wake her up. Please know she’s okay. I’ll have her call you first thing in the morning,” I say.
“You better, Ally, you have no idea how hard this has been. You’ll never understand until you have children,” she tells me.
“I’m sorry. Just know she’s okay, and she’ll call you as soon as she wakes up,” I say to her before I hang up.
Eden comes out just as I turn to walk back in. “We should go home and rest. The nurse came out and told me they’ll most likely be moving her to a room later. She’s severely dehydrated. They’re going to run tests on her to find out what’s making her sick.”
He puts his arm around my shoulders and moves me towards the parking lot. “I feel bad about not being able to tell her mother everything. She told me I would never understand how she feels until I have children. I hope we’re doing the right thing for Laura,” I say.
Eden opens the car door for me, I sit down, and he leans across me and fastens my seatbelt. “She’s being taken care of, don’t second guess things,” he tells me, then shuts my door.
I look at Eden as he drives me back to their house. “Do you think that they were poisoning her?”
“I don’t know. God help them if they were,” he says.
“God won’t help them if they were,” I say. “Then we can kick ass and take names.”
***
The little ducks quacking in the box next to the bed, wake me up from a dreamless sleep. I rub my eyes and look over to see Eden sleeping next to me, his leg draped over mine. I gently move his leg off of me, so I can get the ducks something to eat.
I pick up the box and take it downstairs to find their duck food. Each little ducky eats like they were starving when I put the feeder down for them. I stroke each one’s little head as they quack and eat, leaving the box on the table as I go to get ready to go up to the hospital.
“You’re up,” I say as I walk in to find Eden sitting up in the bed.
“Yeah,” he groans, then stretches.
“Meet me in the shower,” I tell him as I walk into the bathroom.
I hear him get out of the bed, and walk to the bathroom. I turn on the water in the rather small shower. Then stand under the water as it helps me to clear my head.
Eden steps into the shower with a smile on his face. “I noticed you slept dreamlessly,” he says.
I smile back at him as I put a dollop of shampoo in my hand. “No dreams,” I say as I raise my eyebrows. “I had a quiet night in my head for a change.”
He presses his body up against mine, holding me back against the wall, his forehead touching mine. I feel his hands moving over my wet skin.
“I suddenly feel very happy to be awake,” he tells me.
“You’re making me pretty happy too,” I tell him, then his hands pull me closer to him, and I am lost.
***
I button my shirt as Eden walks past me, delivering a slap to my bottom as he does. “Let’s get a move on, Alyssa. It’s almost time for visiting hours,” he says.
“Eden, you are very promiscuous this morning. What has gotten into you?” I ask him.
“I don’t know, maybe the fact a whole twenty-four hours has gone by since I’ve had to watch my wife making love to her dream husband has perked me up some,” he says.
I smile at him, but inwardly I feel sad. “I hope the dreams are over for good. I hate you have to see that.”
“I hope they are too,” he admits. “I don’t like to share you, even in a non-existent reality.”
I walk to take his hand. “I love you, Eden. You understand even the craziest things. Now let’s go see how Laura is, this morning.”
***
“She’s in room 222,” the lady, sitting at the desk tells us.
“I can’t believe she’s still here. I thought they would give her some fluids, and boom she would be better,” I say.
“We’ll find out soon enough why she’s still here,” Eden tells me as we get in the elevator, and go up to the second floor.
The elevator doors open, and we see the room number right away. “Here she is,” I say.
Eden knocks lightly on the door. The door opens, and Kyle’s unshaven, very tired looking face, peeks out at us. “Oh, good it’s you,” he says as he stands back for us to come in.
“Kyle, you look terrible,” I say.
“I haven’t slept,” he tells us.
No wonder I had no dreams about him. “Why not?” I ask him.
“I think Laura will want to tell you that,” he says as he shuts the door.
I look at Laura, who is fast asleep. “Is she okay, did they find poison?”
He shakes his head. “No, it wasn’t anything that they did to her,” he says.
“That’s a relief because I would’ve lost it if they’d done something to her. Probably just the stress of the situation had her like that,” I say.
“Eden, can you take me back to the house, so I can get cleaned up? Ally can stay here with Laura for a while?” Kyle asks Eden.
“Sure, Kyle, whatever you need me to do,” Eden says. “We’ll be back in a little while, Alyssa.”
I look at Kyle and sense something’s wrong. His mind is blank, though, almost as if he’s closing himself off to me on purpose. “Kyle, you sure you don’t have something you want to tell me? You seem out of it.”
“No, Ally. I’m really tired,” he says. “She needs you right now a lot more than she needs me, anyway.”
I watch them walk out the door, knowing full well something has happened between them. I turn to look at Laura, sleeping. Her color is better; there are still black circles under her eyes, though. I sit down in the chair next to her bed. The TV is on, so I flip through the channels, leaving the volume on low.
“Ally?” Laura says with a hoarse voice.
I stop and put the remote down. “Yes, Laura, it’s me,” I say, then move in front of her. “Can I get you anything?”
She smiles, weakly. “You can get me out of here,” she says as she laughs a little.
“I bet you are ready to come home, and sleep in your own bed. Hopefully, the doctor will let you go today,” I say.
“I’m sure he will. What’s wrong with me can’t be fixed by staying in the hospital,” she says.
“So what is wrong with you?” I ask.
“You must have seen Kyle,” she says. “He didn’t whine to you about it?”
I shake my head. “Why would he whine about what’s wrong with you?”
“I can’t believe he didn’t tell you,” she says, almost to herself. “I thought he would come crying to you for sure. All he could say when they told us, was that you were going to be so upset. It was pretty embarrassing as the nurse thought we were married and might actually be happy with the news.”
I frown at her. “Well, he didn’t. He asked Eden to take him home so he could get cleaned up.”
“I see. He’s going to cry to Eden about it then,” she mumbles.
“What is he going to be crying about, Laura?” I ask, getting tired of this runaround.
“I’m pregnant,” she states, flatly.
My jaw drops open. “I thought you were using birth control!”
“The thing about birth control pills is that you have to remember to take them, and I have trouble remembering that. So I got myself in this predicament. It’s not really Kyle’s fault. I was taking the responsibility for keeping myself from getting pregnant and I failed. He probably hates me now,” she says.
“No, he doesn’t hate you at all, Laura,” I tell her, reaching out to hold her hand. “He was worried sick about you. He told me he knew for sure he loved you because he was so upset over what was happening to you.”
She looks up at me with a blank expression “Do you know that he had the nerve to suggest that we get married?”
Why do I feel like I have just been slapped?
“What do you mean by that?” I ask her.
“I won’t be marrying him just because if this thing,” she says as she motions towards her stomach.
“Laura, I know this is a shock to you, and you had not planned on any of this, but it is your future now, accept it and be happy. Don’t shut Kyle out, he’s a great father.”
She turns her head to look at me with a quizzical look in her eyes. “Did you just say, that
he is
a great father, Ally?”
Oh no! Did I say it like that?
She can’t hear about that right now.
“I mean I know he will be one. That’s what I meant. Laura, maybe he was going to ask you to marry him anyway.”
“The Hell he was, Al! He’s still all about you. I could see it in his eyes when he said you would be upset. Can you tell me why you would be upset?”
“I’m not upset. I don’t know why he would think that. I will set him straight, though. This baby and you are his future. I’m only a small part of it. You and your children will be his world,” I tell her.
“No, we won’t. We will always be second to you, and that isn’t enough for me. I’ll always be your guardian, Ally, but I won’t always be with him. I can’t short change myself like that, maybe someone else can, but not me.”
“He loves you, Laura. I wish you would stop thinking you’re second to me in his eyes, because that’s not true,” I tell her. “I wasn’t going to tell you this right now, but I have to, so maybe you can see where he’s coming from.”
She looks at me. “What is it? Is it that the two of you have been sleeping together? Since I’ve been gone you have, haven’t you? I can see it. Does Eden know?” she asks.
I nod. “It’s not how you think it is, though.”
“Ally, this is really low. How could you do this to Eden? I knew Kyle had that dream about you. I never thought he would talk you into it. I feel like I’m in an alternate reality.”
“That is how it happened,” I tell her. “In an alternate reality is where we’ve been living, once we fall asleep. He and I dream the same dreams, somehow. We think it’s so we can see how life would have turned out if Eden and I had never happened.”
Laura looks at me in disbelief. “So you haven’t been together in the physical sense of it?” she asks. “Only in your dreams?”
I nod my head yes. “The only thing is, it feels real. Even now it feels like something which has really happened. That’s why he thought I would be upset. He and I had a baby together in our dream the night before last. I have been a little bit sad she’ll never really exist. In our dream marriage, he was a great father. He loved that baby so much, and he will love this one even more,” I explain to her.
“This is completely whack, Al. I don’t see how this is going to make me change my mind. I mean, he’s married to you, having kids and shit in his head. So I get the daytime Kyle, and you get the nighttime Kyle?” she asks me.
“I hope our dream life is over since we both know this path is the right one and the best one for all of us. This baby will be loved so much, Laura. You don’t have to worry, just have faith,” I plead with her.
“I don’t know, Ally, I won’t be deciding anything right now. I want to go back home, to Cloudcroft,” she tells me.
“What, Laura? No, please don’t do that. You’ll never come back. I know this is a very different situation, and one which could never have been predicted, but you belong with us. You and he really do belong together. Please stay with us for a while, please,” I beg her.
“I need to call my mother, Al. Can I use your phone? I don’t know where mine is.” she asks me.
I hand her my cell phone. “Do you want me to leave the room while you talk to her?” I ask.
“I’m not telling her I’m pregnant yet. I’m only a couple of months you never know what might happen, I might lose the thing,” she says, and I feel like she hopes she will.
“I’ll let you have some privacy. I’m going to get something to eat in the cafeteria. I’ll bring you something back,” I say.
“I really want pancakes, Ally. They brought me breakfast at like six this morning, and I’m starving.”
“Got it, Laura. I love you and Junior too,” I say, then I walk out the door, closing it behind me.
I stop as soon as I walk out, and fall against the wall.
How do I feel about this? Why does this have to happen so fast? How is Kyle taking this? Why can’t life be more simple?
“How is she?” Eden says as he walks off the elevator, noticeably alone.
I walk to him, taking his hand and pulling him back into the elevator. “Did he tell you?” I ask him, as we go down to the cafeteria.
“Yes, so she told you then?” he asks.
I nod. “She isn’t taking it well. Even though he suggested they get married. She’s just not feeling he really loves her.”
“He loves you so much more,” Eden tells me.