Another Man's Baby (23 page)

Gabi tried to calm herself, mindful of the last time she’d thought Eric was trying a little too hard to forget his pain. She glanced down at him and rational thinking flew out the window. Would her husband do something so crazy?

Not unless he thought he had nothing to live for
. Terror seized her as she picked the bottle up and peered inside. Gabi had no way of knowing how many had been in there or how many he’d taken.

For a second she stood there frozen, hoping that like the last time, he’d only taken a couple. She attempted to force her mind to believe that, but the sight of her husband lying there so still pushed her into an area where she didn’t want to go.

“Eric,” Gabi screamed, hitting him as the tears ran down her cheeks. “Wake up, baby, wake up.”

Eric heard the fear in her voice, the worry, and he blinked awake. Gabi was hitting him. He grabbed for her hands. “What’s up?” he said, sitting up and pulling her into the bed.

“How many pills did you take?”

He frowned.

“Don’t play with me. How many sleeping pills did you take?”

Eric frowned again and looked at his wife as though she were losing her mind. “What the hell are you talking about? You woke me up for this? Damn.”

“The pills,” Gabi said angrily, shoving the bottle into his face. “How many did you take?”

As understanding dawned Eric laughed.
Did she think he was that big a punk
? “I took three. I know it said two, but I wanted to sleep. Is that okay? Damn, baby, after the day I’ve had I need to sleep.” He glared. “I wasn’t trying to kill myself, like I wasn’t trying to kill myself with antidepressants. Every time you find me asleep are you going to assume that I’m not a man, that I’m taking the coward’s way out?”

He felt the shudder as it passed through his wife’s body, saw the relief in her eyes and then her body sagged against him and she began to cry. Surprised, Eric held her. This wasn’t an act, she’d been worried.

Awareness stole over him. This was what had pushed Gabi away, had made her seek out Reggie, his talking to her that way. What the hell had happened to make him do that? He felt his resolve cracking. He tried to order himself to be a soldier, to not give in to the pain, not to cry like a baby, or a little girl, but he could feel the push of hot tears.

“Baby, I…I’m sorry I made you worry. I’m so damn sorry for so many things.” He held her tighter. “Gabi, I knew how disappointed you were, so was I. If I could give you a baby I would. Do you even know what it did to me not being able to?” He felt the tears fill his eyes and run into her hair.

“But you did, Eric.”

He shushed her, not wanting to hear her lies, not now. Right now he only wanted to hold her close to his heart to believe again. “I love you, baby. No matter what’s happened my love remains true. We’ve both done things to hurt our marriage and each other. But I don’t want to go on without you, Gabi. I guess we’ll have to find a way to make this work.”

“Eric, I know it was a mistake. Have the test done again. I promise you the results will be different. Have faith in us, baby, have faith in me.”

More tears fell. “I’ll try,” he whispered. “For us I’ll give it my best shot.” And he would try. Even if the baby came out the spitting image of Reggie, Eric would do his damnest to make the marriage work.

             
ANOTHER
MAN
’S BABY
             
229

Chapter
Eighteen

If Eric had thought he knew pain when Gabi announced she was pregnant, he was wrong. He sat in front of the newest doctor listening to the results, all hope that Dr. Samson had been wrong now crushed. Eric’s mouth was dry, his hands clenched at his side in fists.

“How sure are you?” Eric asked.

For a moment there was silence before the doctor shuffled the papers. Then his gaze connected with Eric. “The tests are pretty accurate.”

“No one has ever made a mistake?” Eric sighed and asked quietly.

“Of course. There are mistakes in everything and for something like this we routinely send the specimen out to two different labs.” He shrugged his shoulders. “That’s the reason the price of the labs is so high and why you’ll see the charge on your bill twice.” He held his breath. “If it happened to me I would want to be certain.”

Eric stared at the man. “Are you absolutely certain that there is no way, not even once, that things could have changed, that I could…that I could give my wife a baby?”

The silence was killing him. Eric was holding onto his sanity by a thread. For more than three weeks, he’d walked a thin line, praying that the baby his wife carried was his, and that by some fluke, some miracle, things had changed, that maybe the first doctor made a mistake.

“Mr. Jackson, you’re married?”

“Yeah…I am.” Eric dragged his gaze to stare directly at the man.

“There are many babies that need homes. You have the option of adopting or artificial insemination.”

Eric blinked. A
rtificial insemination.
He thought of the gentle swell of Gabi’s belly. There had been nothing artificial about how the seed was planted in her womb. He stood, a little shaky, almost falling back into the chair. He’d better get the hell out of there before he lost it.

He took the papers the doctor offered him and ignored the outstretched hand. How could he possibly shake the hand of the man who’d delivered the death blow to his hope. The pity that rapidly filled the doctor’s eyes made Eric’s hand go out to return the quick press of flesh, the male bonding ritual. Eric didn’t want the man’s pity. Pity would not fix what was wrong in his world.

He’d promised his wife he’d call her the moment he knew, but changed his mind. He’d tell Gabi when he got home. He didn’t want her making up more lies before he could return home. He wanted to look into her eyes when he gave her the news, when he busted her.

A second before he reached his car a loud noise pierced the air and Eric went down into a crouch.
Gunfire
. He breathed heavily, reaching for a weapon that wasn’t there. Then he leaned against the door of his car trembling, knowing the noise he’d heard had not been gunfire but merely a car backfiring.

He’d been home a year and had not had many flashbacks. He’d had dreams while asleep and could almost accept that but not this, not while he was awake. Now it seemed almost on a daily basis he was reliving the twelve long months he’d spent in
Iraq
. Eric shook his head, untwisting his long frame and coming up to his full height.

As strange as it seemed, Eric could understand it. He was in a different war and in danger of losing everything he held dear. His body was just in danger mode. He shook it off, opened the door and drove home.

***

Gabi tried not to look at the clock, but still her eyes sought it out. Eric should have gotten the results by now. She’d been praying for almost a month now for a miracle. She was a nurse, this just didn’t happen. She’d talked to several fertility specialists and they’d agreed. A sterile man cannot make a baby.

And this was a baby she carried. She’d even hoped it was a tumor. God forbid, Gabi had wished the worst thing possible in order to prove to her husband that she had not cheated on him.

“Please, God,” she prayed aloud, “please let the test result be changed. You know I didn’t cheat on Eric and I know it but no one else will ever believe me. He’s going to leave me, God.”
If he doesn’t kill me first,
she thought, remembering the strangeness of her husband’s behavior since she’d told him.

Eric was fast heading for a mental breakdown. It was as though they were sitting on ammo and the result of his test would light the fuse. She loved her husband. Why couldn’t they be granted a miracle? Her situation wasn’t much different from the bible story of Zacharias she’d read in St Luke.  Because they were old and Elisabeth’s womb was barren Zacharias had prayed for a miracle, that his wife would bear him a son. Her womb was made ripe and she conceived. Gabi’s eyes closed. If Zacharias were alive today and something like that happened, he would no doubt run his wife to a doctor demanding a
DNA
test. Back then he’d had no choice but to accept that his wife had not been unfaithful.

Gabi blinked. But Zacharias hadn’t fully accepted the miracle even though the angel Gabriel had prepared him for it.  And wasn’t he made mute because of his disbelief? For a moment she smiled, wishing the same thing would happen to Eric.

A scream filled the air. Surprised, Gabi realized that it was from her. She’d not intended to scream but the problem warranted it. She heard the click of the lock and her body tensed.        

“Eric,” she called, walking to the door to meet him. The dead look in his eyes was her answer.

God, no miracle, then how about letting the floor open up and swallow me?

“Eric,” she whispered, “I swear-”

“Do you love me?”

“I love you,” Gabi answered her husband.

“I love you too and I’ll find a way to forgive you.” He pulled her into his arms but she pushed away.

“Eric, do you remember what you told me about being a martyr? The tables have turned and now I don’t want you playing the martyr. I’m not guilty. I didn’t ask for forgiveness on this.”

“Then maybe you should.” Eric pulled the balled paper from his pocket and extended it.

“I don’t need lab results to tell me what I did or didn’t do. I didn’t cheat on you, Eric, and it seems you’re faced with a decision, either to believe me or not. That’s your choice.”

“Believe you, or believe the irrefutable proof that I can’t give you babies? Damn it, Gabi, I’ve been lying to myself for the past three weeks hoping against hope that maybe, just maybe, your God had performed a miracle. But it looks like He’s not in the miracle business, at least where we’re concerned.

“You don’t believe me?”

“No, I don’t believe you, and you know something else, Gabi, it pisses me off that you didn’t have the decency to use a condom. If you had, none of this would have happened. You didn’t even worry about picking up a disease and transmitting it to me.

“You and I both know how many women Reggie has slept with. He always did. Even when you were dating him, baby.” Eric stopped and glared. “I thought you must have truly loved him to let it go.”

“I was never in love with Reggie. And yes, I knew he was sleeping around. It meant he didn’t pester me to sleep with him.”

“Then why were you crying when you found him kissing another girl?”

“Because he did it in my face. He’d never done that before. It was my prom. If I hadn’t invited him, he wouldn’t have been there. I was crying because I felt like a fool. Reggie was in college like you. He didn’t belong at a high school prom and neither did you.”

“What if Reggie has AIDS? You could have handed me a death sentence.  Now I not only have to worry that my wife is a lying cheat who thinks I’m crazy, but that I might have something medicine can’t cure. So forgive me if I’m unsympathetic to your lie, but I’m the injured party here, not you. You should be on your knees kissing my ass that I’m not leaving you.”

Her eyes narrowed and a breeze stole over her, cooling her body until it was ice cold. “I should be grateful, Eric? For what, that you don’t believe me?”

They were squared off. “Did you believe me about Jamilla?” he asked.

“I saw you with Jamilla. There’s a difference.”

“I saw you between Reggie’s legs. There is no difference.”

“He didn’t have his hands all over me, not like Jamilla’s were on you or the way you had your hands all over her body.”

“From where I stood, he did.”

For a long moment Gabi just stared at Eric, shaking her head in frustration. “What are you going to do, ask Reggie if this is his baby?”

Gabi’s hands flanked her hips and she hissed through clenched teeth, “I have been in love with you since I was fifteen years old. I didn’t cheat on you, Eric.”

Pain filled him and suddenly all of the fight began to leave his body. Eric no longer knew what to do. Damn, if only he didn’t love her so much. He wanted to fight with her, force her to tell him who she’d slept with, but the fire in her eyes, the anger, the righteous indignation… Gabi believed she was telling the truth. Damn. What was he going to do?

Eric walked toward Gabi, saw the fury mount in her and reached for her, pulling her to him, kissing her hard, ignoring her hands attempting to push him away. They were not going out like that, not without a fight. He struggled against her anger, felt the sob in the base of her throat and drew on her tongue, pulling her pain into his body.

I love you
, Eric repeated over and over in his mind, needing those words as his mantra, her love for his shield. Maybe he could believe despite all the evidence to the contrary that they had a miracle that couldn’t be proven. Eric took a hard breath. Wasn’t that the meaning of a miracle, something that couldn’t be proven? At least they had a few months. They’d make the best of them and deal with everything else later.

Gabi’s arms wound around him and he pulled her even tighter. If this was all there was to being married they could pull it off without a hitch. But this wasn’t the real world and they would still have to deal with that when the kisses stopped. He shuddered and braced as he adjusted his stance with his wife’s weight in his arms.

“This isn’t going to solve anything.”

“Maybe not,” Eric groaned, “but I need to make love to you so badly right now, that if I don’t, I’ll go crazy for real.”

Gabi’s head eased back to his shoulder and she sighed. “Baby, we’ve made love more in the past month than we have in all the time since you’ve returned. It’s like we’re chasing ghosts.”

“Stop talking, Gabi, please. Just for once, stop analyzing me and make love to me. I need now more than ever to feel like a man, your man. Can you give that to me?”

Her silence was his answer but she was right. Since he’d returned home things had changed. That was a puzzle to him. He’d wanted so much to make love to his wife for the entire year he was gone and when he’d returned home he’d found himself insatiable, finally able to hold her, trembling in relief that he was home, that she’d waited for him, that she loved him.

It had taken a month before he’d come up for air. Eric knew exactly when the change occurred. The day he stepped foot on the
Great Lakes
base, the day he’d seen Linda’s grandson dressed for war. That had been the beginning of Eric’s constant conflict. It had been the first time he’d ever had problems making love to his wife.

That had also been the first time in his marriage that the thought had ever come to him to make love to someone other than Gabi. But it seemed all of that was just practice for the real test. Overcoming his initial objections and coming on board to start a family had made the slow changes in his marriage go full steam ahead.

He wondered if he had never agreed to have a baby if any of this would have happened. He’d felt so emasculated, so horrible that he was unable to give his wife his baby, that he’d almost made a mistake. Before he could do it he’d come to his senses.

Every day of every month since he’d been home replayed in his mind. Eric thought about the doctor who’d told him it was probably nothing more than combat fatigue or post traumatic stress. Whatever the hell it was, Eric had wanted a remedy. He wanted to make love to his wife, he needed to. And when he finally took the pills and was able to perform like a man, he’d cried like a baby and Gabi had held him, allowing him the safety of her arms to shed his tears, not judging, not thinking him less than a man. Or so he’d thought at the time. Now?