“It was a false positive. You’re not pregnant.”
Chapter 29 - Diana
“But… but… I was sick.”
Dr. Trooper nods. “Weekend bug’s going around. Took out half the damn hospital.”
“So, I’mnotpregnant?” I say it slowly, like that’ll make me believe what I’m hearing.
“No.”
No apology for his words. No comfort from them either. Just facts.
He looks at Karter, and with a nod, he steps away. “I’ll be back in a little while with discharge papers. You should be able to go home tonight.”
I nod, though I’m not sure at what.What did he say?
I look down at my hands. Somewhere in all of this, I pulled them from Karter’s, and now they’re in my lap. “I’m not pregnant,” I say out loud, since saying it in my head doesn’t seem to sink in as quickly as it should. My voice is soft, unlike the crack forming in my heart.
Okay, I can do this. I just word-vomited to a man I love about not needing him to raise his kid only to find out there is no kid. Talk about overreaction.
I wince at my lame attempt of humor, even in my own head. It’s a coping mechanism, but one I don’t want right now.
“I need to call Nana.” She must be freaking out.
“She knows,” Karter says with a steady voice as he puts his hand over mine.
I still don’t look up, but I look over his weathered skin. Rough hands. Ones that have worked. That he’s done so much with. They might even be dangerous to some, but never to me. I always feel safe with these hands.
“You told her?” I peek up at him.
He nods once. “She came to the hospital when you weren’t picking up your phone. She told me.”
Told you I was pregnant. Or thought I was. She did. Not me.
“I’m sorry.” I swallow the guilt I have for throwing something on his plate he didn’t need to have. Even if it wasn’t real.
He shakes his head. “No apologies, Babygirl. You did what you thought was right. For you and the kid. I was so locked up in my shit that night I came over, I would have missed an alligator munching on the furniture.”
His words take a second to register, and then I’m laughing so hard I start crying.
“Alligator munching on furniture? Really?”
He shrugs, and a ghost of a smile hovers over his lips.
“You might not know this yet, but I’m a bit of a redneck. Mom and Dad might have wanted lots of things from me, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t born and raised in the south waters of Louisiana.”
“But you don’t have an accent,” I say with a shake of my head because I don’t believe it at all.
“Lost that in the Army. Law school made sure it never returned.”
“Is this your way of telling me that alligator feet and frog legs are on the menu in the foreseeable future?”
“Nah. But I wouldn’t turn down a hush puppy or two.”
“Same,” I say with a small smile that brings the mood from random back to what it was.
He leans in and takes my hand in his, pulling it closer to himself. The silence between us isn’t the escape I want it to be. To leave the topic and pretend that this didn’t happen. Everything from today. That we can just ignore what I thought and move past it. But before he opens his mouth, I know we can’t. We can’t move on till it’s been discussed, raw and awkward as it is.
