But also, if not now, then when?
And even if everything was going to be okay tonight, was this how Kallum was going to be whenever something went wrong? If our baby got sick? If they hurt themselves playing soccer or climbing a tree or riding a bike?
No. No, I had to stop catastrophizing. Just because Michael had been hurtful and selfish to me didn’t mean Kallum would, and of course Kallum was taking this seriously. I could viscerally remember his joy when he found out I was pregnant, how eager he’d been to tell the entire world. He would be devastated if something happened to the baby.
There was a little bit of dried blood in his beard, and when he shifted the now-squishy mojito mix to another angle on his lip, I could see the sharp edge of his broken tooth. It made him look a little dangerous, a little piratical, and if I wasn’t bleeding on a hospital bed, I would have found it endearing.
“Are you still doing okay?” I asked. “You took a huge spill on that stage.”
Kallum lowered his makeshift ice pack and his face splitinto an instant magazine-level smile. There was definitely no missing that chipped tooth, front and center. “I’m great, actually. I’m thinking this might be a new look for me. Hillbilly chic.”
I tried to answer his smile with one of my own, but my face wouldn’t quite work. My smile muscles were broken. “You don’t feel woozy or anything? You did have trouble spelling your name up there.”
A line dug itself between his brows. “What?”
Maybe when the nurse came in, I needed to have her take a look at Kallum too. “Remember? You spelled your name with aC?C-A-L-L-U-M?”
“Ohhh,” he said, understanding lighting his eyes. “No, that’s my real name. Emotionally, it’s my real name, I mean. I was born Callum with aC, but then I swapped theCfor aKwhen we formed INK, so that way our names could match up with the letters.”
“Oh, like a stage name,” I said. That made sense. I’d been born Winifred Baker, but had been credited as Winnie Baker since my very first gig (as a secret twin’s secret baby in a long-running soap opera).
Kallum grinned—a drunken grin that looked all the more rakish for the chipped tooth. “See, I didn’t actually get how stage names worked back then, so when our manager suggested I go by Kallum with aKinstead, I thought that meant I had to go have it changed legally. So I did!”
“Ah,” I said. My voice sounded faint, even to me. “Cool.” And it was cool, or at least totally fine. Name changes were so common in our business!
But I couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe I barely knew Kallum at all...
“This isn’t a hospital, this is a glorified clinic,” came a polished voice from through the door. It swung open to reveal my parents, my mom in a pressed sweater set and my dad in a button-down and blazer, even though it was near midnight.
“Darling,” my mother said, coming forward to take my hand. She and my dad both ignored Kallum. “We’re here now, and we’re going to make sure you and the baby get the best care possible. And we’re going to organize a transfer. Boston, maybe. Albany, if we must.”
My dad came up and gave my foot a warm squeeze. “I’m going to make some calls and see how quickly we can get you to a real hospital, sweetheart,” he said. “Be back in a flash.”
“And I’m going to find you a blanket,” Mom said, aftertsking at me shivering on the bed. “This is ridiculous.”
She bustled back out of the room, and Kallum stared after her. “Those are your parents?”
I nodded, but before I could say more, my mom was already back with a warm blanket. She draped it over me and tucked me in, and it felt so deliciously nice that a sudden wave of sleepiness washed over me. I had to drag my eyelids back open again and again.
Dad returned with a beleaguered looking nurse, who ran anIV under the watchful eyes of my parents, and then promised that a doctor and a sonographer would be in very shortly. After the nurse left, Kallum seemed to decide it was time to make his move. He unfolded himself from the chair in the corner, and approached my mom with his hand stuck out.
“Mr. and Mrs. Baker, it’s a pleasure,” he said. My mother hesitantly slid her slender, French-manicured hand into his, and then immediately yanked it back. I could see the mojito slime on it from here; Kallum’s ice pack had been leaking on his hand, apparently.
He seemed to realize it at the same time we all did. “Oh shit, I’m so sorry,” he said, laughing a hearty Kallum laugh, and then he tried to stride over to the sink in the corner to wash his hands—except he tripped over my newIV cord, yanking on the needle taped to the inside of my elbow and knocking over the pole with a loud crash.
At the very same moment, the doctor walked in, freezing in the act of pulling her hair into a low ponytail. She took in the scene: me clutching my elbow, the two parents looming over my bed, the man in the strip club T-shirt wrestling with anIV pole.
The mojito ice pack was in the middle of the floor, slowly leaking pale green goo onto the floor.
“Right,” the doctor said briskly, finishing with her ponytail and then sticking her hands under the sterilizing foam dispenser and rubbing them together. “Only one person can be in here during the exam and the ultrasound.” She turned her gaze to me. “Who would you like it to be?”
I glanced at Kallum, who was still trying to set theIV pole back on its wheels, his lip bleeding a little again after all the commotion, a shiny patch of sticky mojito goo lingering just above the line of his beard.
I glanced at my mom, who was the furthest thing from sticky, who’d already brought me a blanket when she saw thatI was cold. At my side, Kallum finally got the pole settled and then walked back to the chair, where he dropped himself down with a woozy, drunk-sounding groan.
“My mom,” I said. “I want my mom to stay.”
Kallum’s head snapped up. “What?”
