Losing Gabriel (9 page)

“Y
ou have a true affinity for this place, don't you?”

Lani was busy gathering vials of blood specimen results in the lab for delivery to various departments. She smiled at Cassie's question. “I'm a medical junkie. I've wanted to be a nurse for years, so it never seems like work to me. I love it here.”

In the three months Lani had been a volunteer, she had learned every nook and cranny of the hospital, from the ER to the surgery rooms, from the chemo center to the newborn nursery and pediatrics, along with the floors of patient rooms and central staff centers on each floor. The ICU, radiology, imaging, labs, the gift shop, and staffing rooms where she had her own locker were as familiar to her as the rooms in the house she'd grown up in.

“Years?” Cassie, a third-year student and Lani's friend at the hospital, offered a wry smile. “What are you…all of seventeen?”

“I'm an old soul, trapped in a teen's body. I know what I want. How 'bout you? Why are you here?”

“I took care of my mama for years before she died. I knew I could do this…take care of sick people. All I needed was the classroom credits and I could have a career. What's your story?”

“I caught the nursing bug the summer my cousin died. She had cancer and spent days in bed, too sick to get up. I liked making her comfortable.” Even now, the memory of that thirteenth summer brought tears to her eyes. “Before she…left us, she told me how much it had meant to her to have me around when most girls my age were off having fun.”

“Well, you're good at it,” Cassie added quickly. “Plus the floor nurses really like you—some of them are real crabs too. Some even ask for you to work with them. A huge compliment, you know.”

“My secret is chocolate. I bring in bags of it and stuff it in the nursing station drawers. A person can make a ton of friends with free chocolate.”

Lani grinned and Cassie laughed. “I've wondered how the stuff keeps magically appearing. Keep up the good work.”

Lani picked up her lab deliveries and hurried out the door. She couldn't wait until May and graduation so she could spend even more time in the hospital. She had cut back on her hours at Bellmeade but had promised Ciana she'd teach a riding class in the coming summer. At school, her senior class was counting down the final days too. Many had already signed letters of intent to different colleges. Kathy would go to University of Florida: “And par-ty!” she'd said with a whoop. Three football players had signed with University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Others had plans to join the military, go to community colleges and tech schools, but Paulie had won the college lottery with a full ride to MIT in Boston. “Genius trumps us all,” Lani told Kathy.

“Nerd. How about Dawson? Heard where he might be going?”

Kathy took pleasure in needling Lani about her crush, which she'd been unable to hide from Kathy's X-ray vision. Lani shrugged it off. “Doesn't matter. I'm sure it won't be MTSU.”

“Wonder what Sloan will do? They're always hanging on each other. Bet you couldn't slide a butter knife between them.”

“No idea.” Lani didn't want to talk about either Dawson or Sloan, although Kathy's observation was true.

“Maybe she'll follow him to college.”

Refusing to rise to Kathy's bait but seething inside, Lani smiled sweetly. “Maybe she will. Whatever. I just hope he'll be happy wherever he goes, even if Sloan tags along.”

Kathy offered a derisive snort, signaling she didn't believe Lani's sentiment for one second.

Lani kept walking.

Sloan took the test three times and failed it three times. She stood in the cramped bathroom of the trailer, staring at the stick and its plus sign.
Yes,
it silently announced,
you are pregnant.
Her knees went weak as the irrefutable truth slammed into her. Her menstrual period, gone missing for ten weeks, wasn't going to show up in March. She gagged and retched into the toilet. Dry heaves now. Because she was pregnant, or because she was scared? Both reasons were interlocked and inseparable.

All the time she'd been with Jarred, she'd taken the pill, but once they fell apart, she forgot about taking it. Why bother? The side effects of the anti-pregnancy drug were annoying. The pill made her breasts sore. Not to mention the bloating! But once she and Dawson had started having sex, she'd gone right back on it. She hadn't missed a dose. Now her breasts throbbed, she was throwing up, and the pregnancy tests were all positive.

She braced her palms against the wall over the toilet, fighting the urge to heave again. Her knees trembled. Her head ached.

LaDonna pounded on the flimsy door. “Hey, hurry up in there! I got an appointment. What's taking you so long?”

Fear seized Sloan by the throat. How would her mother take the news? She shuddered just thinking about it. “Hold up! I'm getting in the shower…running late.”

“Well, move your ass!”

Sloan turned on the water, hoping to drown out LaDonna, and realized she'd never make the school bus. She felt awful. “I think I have some kind of stomach flu. Don't think I'll make it to school today,” she called from under the stream of hot water.

“Then get out of the shower and go to bed. I'm in a hurry!”

Sloan pulled herself out of the stream, did a haphazard dry-off, and wrapped the towel around her. She opened the door, and the steam rushed out.

LaDonna stood glaring. “You look like crap. Don't give me no flu.”

Not contagious, Ma.
Sloan stepped around her and crossed to her tiny bedroom, barely big enough to contain the pulled down wall bed, dropped facedown onto her rumpled sheets. She thought of the school gossip, of all the hateful things the kids would say about her. They'd talked about her before, but singing in the band had allowed much of the talk to roll off her. Now she had nothing. Fear and nausea clawed through her insides. She moaned. She didn't want to be pregnant…didn't want to be a mother. She wanted this growth out of her, wanted it gone. Sobs welled up. She struggled to swallow them down, lost the fight, and smothered her face into the bedding, shoulders heaving uncontrollably.

She sent Dawson a text about being sick, and he called her at lunchtime. “How you doing?”

“Still hanging over my toilet,” she told him. Morning sickness was all-day sickness for her.

“Want me to come by after school, check on you?”

“No.” The single word was terse, said without invitation for discussion.

She told him the same thing when he called after school, that night, and the next morning.

Rebuffed, he couldn't figure out why she was acting this way. How sick was she? “You need a doctor? My dad—”

“No! I'll be fine.”

“I'll ditch classes, bring you one of those chocolate shakes you like,” he offered at lunchtime on the third afternoon.

She didn't want him to come because she didn't want to face him. She couldn't even think of how to tell him. He'd most likely dump her anyway. “You don't have to keep tabs on me, Dawson. I don't need you hanging all over me, you know. I'm sick. I'll get well.”

Her words hurt. Something had happened to make her shut him out.
Maybe her mother…
LaDonna was unpredictable. No telling what she'd done to Sloan. “Um…okay…call me if—” He heard her click off, and not wanting to look stupid standing in the hall, he said, “Bye,” to dead air. He shoved the cell into his backpack and went to class, where he sat brooding through the lecture.

Maybe he'd done or said something that had ticked her off. But no matter how hard he searched his memory, he couldn't figure out
what.
Now she'd all but blown him off.
What the hell!
He got mad.
If that's the way she wants it…
Maybe they needed a break from each other. He didn't like the idea, but her moodiness was wearing thin with him. Two could play the same game. He decided to give her space. Lots of it.