Anywhere but Here (25 page)

“What am I going to do, Cole?” Lauren whispers. The question's a few months too late, but I don't say that.

“We'll figure it out,” I reassure her. “We can get a place, if you want. Or we can stay at my place, although it's a little more crowded than usual at the moment. My dad's girlfriend moved in, with her daughter.”

Lauren looks surprised, and her eyebrows go even higher at the end. I don't explain. I'm busy feeling dreams pop, like soap bubbles: my Vancouver apartment, actresses fawning over me, coffee shops, martini bars, film school. Film school.

It hurts, as each one disappears. It hurts less than I would have expected, though. As I stare at Lauren's eyelashes, translucent against her skin, I imagine a baby—an actual baby—with those lashes. Turning the word “father” over in my head, I remember what my subconscious was trying to tell me while I was stuck in that tree well, about friends being safety nets.

I think about what Dallas said: You don't go to the bar and then scoot your ass out when the fight starts.

All this time, I've been thinking of the Web as a trap. Maybe it's a safety net. All those tangled relationships—they keep you stuck in one place, but they also keep you together. Web. Net. Are those the same thing?

“We'll figure it out,” I say again.

There's a loud throat clearing behind me and a nurse nods at both of us. Lauren's parents are back, peering over the nurse's shoulder.

I stand and inch back against the curtain.

“Do they know what's happening?” Lauren asks as the nurse slides a blood pressure cuff onto her arm.

“The doctor will be here in a little while,” the nurse says, her eyes focused on the equipment.

Another throat clearing. Lauren's dad this time.

“Cole? Can you come back in a few minutes?” Lauren says.

I'm released back into the hallway, but I don't go through the swinging doors. I hover at the edge of the ER.

•  •  •

Here's another soft-focus scene, slightly overexposed from the light bouncing off the all-white walls.

One afternoon in the hospital, Mom looked at me with her eyes a little brighter blue than they had been, and she asked me to find her a specific story.

“It's in one of my old textbooks,” she said. “A little girl is sick
and she's supposed to die before the last leaf falls off the vine by her bedroom window.”

“Mom!” I protested. “What kind of story is that?”

“No, she doesn't die. Someone . . . her grandfather, maybe, or her neighbor . . . I don't remember; someone paints a leaf on the wall by the vine so it never falls.”

Mom closed her eyes a few minutes later. Even that much talking was enough to tire her. I got up to go, barely kissing her cheek so I wouldn't wake her.

“Cole?” she asked just as I was in the doorway. “You'll be okay?”

I nodded, my throat closing up in that way that I hated.

I never did find the story about the leaf. Later that night a nurse called from the hospital and woke Dad and me. We picked up two separate phone extensions simultaneously.

“Her pulse ox is pretty low,” the nurse said. “You should probably be here.”

Within minutes, we were in the truck, shivering from the damp cold and driving through darkened streets without another car in sight. We didn't say a single word to each other.

By the time we got there, a nurse was already disconnecting Mom's wires.

“She left?” my dad said, disbelieving. Taking Mom's hand from the sheet, he leaned down and pressed it to his forehead.
The nurse bustled a chair behind him, but he didn't sit. He stayed bent in half, like a broken tree.

“She left,” he repeated. He didn't say, “She's gone.”

I knew exactly what he meant.

•  •  •

I'm standing in the middle of the hallway when a pair of arms wrap around me.

“I came as soon as I heard.” It's Tracy, and I swear I've never been so happy to see a pierced lip in my entire life. She knows Lauren, of course. We spent enough lunch hours here together last year. I let myself rest my head on Tracy's shoulder, just for a second.

“I don't know what's going on,” I tell her.

She tilts her head down the hall, and I follow her to a little row of chairs lined against one wall.

“She's pregnant,” I tell her. “Someone said she was bleeding all day. And she was bleeding at the party. . . .”

Tracy nods. I guess she knows all this already.

“Her mom doesn't want me in there with her, and I don't know what's happening.”

“The doctor's going to talk to Lauren,” she says. “He and I just spoke.”

“What? What did he say?”

Tracy sighs. “Cole,” she says. “There was a lot of blood. She could bleed again at any time. And her cervix is open.”

I don't really know what this means.

“She's far enough along that there was a small chance that a baby could survive. But there was no heartbeat.”

In Tracy's eyes, I find the meaning of those words. She takes my hand and squeezes it as the significance sinks in.

“There's no baby,” I say finally.

“Not anymore. She'll have to have surgery, something called a D and C, to remove the tissue and the placenta. They're waiting for the anesthetist to arrive.”

Another bubble pops, just like the film school bubble popped a little while ago. Strangely, this one hurts more.

“She doesn't know yet?”

“Only the doctor's supposed to tell her,” Tracy says.

I have to tell her. We're in this together now. I can't let her hear the news from a stranger, without me there.

I'm surprisingly calm. I'm breathing normally. My heart rate is steady. I notice these things with one half of my brain. The other half only registers that my guts have been scraped out with a spoon. Inside, I'm all raw wounds. A big bloody mess.

And yet, I thank Tracy, my voice solid. Then I clear my throat at the door of the cubicle. Her parents and I perform the same sheet-doorway dance for a third time.

I sit on the bed beside Lauren, my hip touching hers. “I
talked to a nurse,” I say. I don't use Tracy's name. I don't want to get her in trouble if this gets repeated later.

Lauren surprises me.

“The baby's gone,” she whispers.

I nod, and then she's crying. Her arms are around my shoulders, tubing everywhere, and she's shaking with sobs, crying like a little girl. I cry too, partly for Lauren and partly for me and partly because of what used to be a baby, a small human being. Gone. The images flashing through my head are all mixed up. There's my mom, lying on hospital sheets like the ones on this bed. There's Lauren on the bathroom floor, pale and bloody. There's even the damn dead deer, side heaving on the highway.

“You always teased me for wanting to stay in Webster,” Lauren says after a long while.

“I didn't mean . . .”

“No, it's okay. I just want you to know, I didn't want to stay like this. This isn't how I planned things. I didn't want to be the girl who didn't finish high school.”

“It doesn't mean we wouldn't have taken care of a baby.”

She nods. “I think I knew it was gone, Cole. I think it's been gone for a while.”

After that, we're quiet for a long time. I guess we don't need to explain to each other this mix of sadness and confusion and, though it feels wrong, relief.

“I should tell my mom,” she says eventually.

“Do you want me to stay?”

She shakes her head. “No. If Lex is calm, you can send her in after a bit.”

“Cole?” Lauren calls me back as I turn to leave. “Thanks for telling me. And thanks for offering. To stay with me.”

I nod. I did offer, didn't I? I offered to stay and be a decent dad. I stayed between these curtains with her and shared the pain of our whole messed-up situation. And even though I caused this pregnancy in the first place, I was also part of the safety net. I feel a tiny, amoeba-size bit better.

•  •  •

Back in the waiting room, everyone stands as I enter. All of them. Greg and Greg's mom, Hannah, and Lex, and the girl posse. Even Ms. Gladwell and my dad, who have somehow arrived too. You can't escape anyone in this town.

They're all staring at me, waiting.

“She lost the baby,” I say. The entire room exhales.

I turn toward Lex. “Have you got it together?”

She glares at me as if she's never had an un-together moment. I glance at Hannah, who nods that Lex is okay.

“Lauren is asking for you.”

“Are you all right?” Ms. Gladwell asks me. At the same time,
my dad puts a cup of vending machine coffee in my hand.

I nod. I'm as all right as I can be under the circumstances. Not quite ready to deal with these two yet, though. Not ready to analyze my feelings for Ms. Gladwell or make light of them for my dad. Not ready to wonder how you can lose a baby so soon after you've discovered its existence.

I step up to the sensor and the doors swoosh open, releasing me into the cold. The air sears my lungs, but it doesn't stop the tears rolling down my face. Suddenly, what I want most in the world is to talk to my mom. Even my imaginary mom would do. I'd take a hallucination.

The lights in the houses across the road are dark. There's only the streetlight shining down on the corner church with its marquee board.

I AM WITH YOU ALWAYS, EVEN UNTO THE END OF THE WORLD.

It seems less like a threat this time and more like a message. Maybe from God, or maybe from my mom. Looking at that sign makes me feel a little better.

Behind me, the door opens again. Greg and Hannah emerge, their shoulders hunched against the wind.

I'm happy to see them. I turn that over in my head for a minute, just to make sure the feeling's real.

It is. I'm happy to see them.

“I'm going for a walk,” I say. “You want to come?”

And even though it's the middle of the night and pretty much the Arctic outside, they both say yes. It's hard to come by friends like that. Or so says my dead mother.

•  •  •

If this were a film, there would be a real ending. Something solid to point to and say “final scene.” In a documentary like
Hoop Dreams
, I'd be the basketball player who failed to make it big. I would have told Lauren we would care for the baby together, my film school dream would have popped like a bubble, and I would be left here in obscurity. Or maybe I'm one of the kids who failed to win the good-school lottery in
Waiting for Superman
. But there's no baby anymore. School
is
waiting, as is the promise of success.

This night doesn't seem entirely tragic or entirely happy. Not even close.

Seems like life doesn't have a documentary ending. In fact, it's possible that my bleak film, bundled into its manila envelope, has entirely the wrong conclusion. It turns out that Webster isn't necessarily the problem and escaping isn't the answer. In reality, things are messier.

“I'm sorry, to both of you,” I tell Hannah and Greg. “I've been an ass.”

Neither disagrees. I reach for Hannah's hand and enclose it in mine.

“I should have realized how great you two are.”

“You're not so bad yourself,” Greg says.

The relief that surges through me is so strong that I have to squeeze my eyes shut for a minute until I can breathe.

“You could have talked to us,” Hannah says.

“That too.”

We walk, in the dark, until Hannah's lips are blue and everyone's teeth are chattering and it's time to check on Lauren again. Time to face the room.

The surgery's over. Lauren's asleep on her hospital bed, her mom sitting vigil beside her. She was right about the baby being gone for a while. That's what Tracy said.

Once Ms. Gladwell has gone home and Greg's mom has given my dad a ride back to the house, Greg and Hannah are still with me. We huddle over paper cups of hot chocolate, in a corner of the waiting room that we seem to have claimed as our own.

“You want to go on a Vancouver road trip with me next summer, help me rent an apartment?” I ask Greg.

He doesn't answer right away. Maybe he hasn't entirely forgiven me.

“You can decide later, I guess.”

He shakes his head. “I was just thinking maybe you want to rent a two-bedroom place. I'm going to sign up for an apprenticeship program there.”

This makes me sit up straight. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. I can work for my dad during the summers. He thinks it's a good idea.”

I look over at Hannah, and she's smiling.

“We can make it the three of us, if you want. Like a commune. We can all eat quinoa and make our own yogurt so it feels like home to Greg,” I say.

That makes Hannah roll her eyes. “Personally, I'll stick to a dorm room,” she says. “But thanks.”

“I'll take the commune,” Greg says. “But not the quinoa. And, Hannah, the doors are always open. You know what happens in communes. They like to share. Everything.”

She actually laughs, loud enough to make the reception desk nurse stare in our direction.

“Leave me out of it. We could hang out sometimes, though. See some films,” she says, looking at me.

“That would be good.” Her leg brushes against mine, tentative. I shift toward her slightly so our knees touch.

“What about Lauren?” Greg asks.

“I don't think she wants to live in our commune either,” I say.

“Very funny.”

I take a good look at him. His hands wrap around the paper cup. They're huge and creased with auto grease. They're grown-up hands.

“I don't think she wants to marry me and live behind a white picket fence anymore,” I tell him. “And even if she did, her mother would murder me. Or Lex would.”