Out of Grief (15 page)

“The police will want to take your statement,” Afua said.

“Those guys are gone by now.”

“I have them on tape. I have inside and outside security.” She smiled proudly.

“Once they get our statements, we’re going to the emergency room,” Quinn added.

***

I tried reasoning with Quinn that we would be sitting in the ER for hours before seeing anyone, but she was insistent. So after serious debate, I conceded to let my father check me out.

“Nikita!” My father took one look at my face and winced. He reached out and cupped my chin, to turn my face from one side to the other. Then he pulled out a light and had me follow it with my eyes. “Now the hard part,” he said, “and I’m sorry for this.” He gently prodded the bone around my eye. I clenched my teeth, trying not to wince.

Once he determined nothing was broken, he breathed a sigh of relief. “The ice will help, but you will have a shiner, no doubt.”

“Happy now?” I asked Quinn.

“He still has to check where they punched you.” Quinn crossed her arms.

“This is not the worst of it?” My father looked concerned.

“They punched me in the side twice. I’m okay, Dad, really.”

“I need to hear it from him,” Quinn insisted.

“Malyshka.
” His voice was tender, as it always was when he called me ‘little one.’ “Quinn is right to be concerned. Please show me.”

I lifted my shirt, to show him the beginnings of what I knew without looking were two bruises.

“Again, I am sorry, but this may hurt.” Lying was never my father’s strong suit, and he was right, it did hurt as he began to gently probe the area around each mark. I winced.

“I think your rib is bruised.” He put his stethoscope in his ears and pressed the cool end against my back. “Take a deep breath in.”

The breath was painful, and my father shook his head, when I couldn’t mask my pain.

“You are lucky it is not broken. But it is bruised.”

He wrapped my rib cage in an ace bandage, gave me prescription strength ibuprofen, and told me to ice it.

“Happy now?” I asked Quinn.

“You got hurt protecting me. How could I be happy about that?”

“What’s done is done. You are both going to be okay, and that is the important thing,” my father said. “Now, I need you to rest. No heavy lifting and no hanky panky.” He looked at Quinn. “I know my daughter, so I am counting on you to make sure that she listens to me and she heals.”

“You can count on me, Doctor K., I promise.”

He kissed me on the top of the head. “I will see you in a couple days. If you don’t come willingly, I will be forced to have your mother call.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Marisol will call the car service to take you home. I think today has been eventful enough for both of you.”

I knew there was no arguing, so I merely kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you, Papa.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

“You’re staring at me,” I said.

“You can’t possibly know that with your eyes closed.”

“I’m okay, you know.”

“Sweetheart, if you could see your eye.”

“It will heal,” I said, snuggling closer carefully, trying not to hurt my ribs.

Her arm was under me, and her hand was gently stroking my hair. I felt her shift so she could kiss the top of my head. “Please don’t scare me like that again. I can’t believe you did that.”

I opened my eyes to look at her. “I couldn’t let them hurt you, or our baby.”

“Our baby?”

“Okay, your baby?”

“No, of course it’s ours.”

I watched her eyes get misty.

“It’s just the first time you’ve said that out loud.”

I kissed her stomach, and rubbed circles around the baby. “Do you think he/she can hear me?”

“They say they can.”

“Hey, you, I’m your other Mom. I haven’t been with you since the beginning. But I’m going to be with you from now on.”

I heard Quinn’s voice catch.

“Hey, are you okay?” I reached up to catch a tear rolling down her cheek.

“I’m sorry.” She wiped the tears from her eyes with her free hand. “Hormones, you know. It’s just that you really scared me yesterday. If anything had happened—“

“But it didn’t.” I squeezed her arm. “I’m here. Everything is going to be okay. And for the record, if anyone was scared, it was me. For you. For both of you.”

“I thought New York was supposed to be safe for people like us.”

“I’m not sure any where is entirely safe when people are bigots.”

“If I hadn’t been kissing you—“

I pressed my fingertip to her lips, stopping her. “I kissed you first. And they are to blame for their ignorance. No one else.” I punctuated my thought with a chaste kiss.

“I love you, you know?”

“I can assure you the feeling is mutual.”

“Okay, well, I want you to rest and I’m going to make you breakfast so you can take more pills.”

“I can help.”

“No. You just lie there and relax. I got this.”

***

Breakfast consisted of a bowl of cream of wheat and a cup of coffee, as cooking was never Quinn’s strong suit. Once breakfast was finished, she motioned for me to lay my head against her breast again. I’d never been one to let people hold me before, but I had to admit that I liked it when it was Quinn doing the holding.

“I was thinking,” she said, as she traced gentle circles on my back.

“Okay, I’ll bite. About what?”

“Do your parents still have the house on Martha’s Vineyard?”

“They’re never giving that up. It’s awesome.”

“We should get married there.”

“Oh.” It sounded perfect to me, but not like something Quinn would really want. “Are you sure?”

“On the beach at sunset. Just you, me, your parents, and a couple close friends. Simple.”

“What would we wear?”

“You’ll wear a plain white men’s shirt, rolled at the sleeves, and tan cargo shorts, and I’ll wear a sundress. We’d be barefoot on the beach.”

“You don’t want a fancy dress?”

“I did the fancy dress. It wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Besides,” she said as she kissed the top of my head, “I am marrying you, and you always used to talk about getting married on a beach, but then you and Mary never did.”

“Quinn, it should be what you want too.”

“No, you are right. The beach at sunset would be perfect.” The expression on her face was peaceful, like she was lost deep in a pleasant dream.

“Just picture how perfect it could be. Your shirttails and my skirt would move with the wind, as the breeze started to come in over the water. You and the minister would be waiting at the altar. You’d be a little nervous, not because you didn’t want to marry me, but because you are a bit uncertain about how fast this has all happened. But Kat would be at your side, keeping you calm. My friend Sandy would be with me. However, I would be as calm as my hormones let me be, because I know that I am finally ready to be happy. And I want to share that happiness with you. Your father would be beaming, as he always is when you do something he approves of. Even your mother would be cordial, although she’d prefer more of a showy occasion. My mother will be at home with my sisters, because I don’t want them to spoil our day. We’d write our own vows, yours will be more eloquent than mine, but mine will make you weep. Not that yours won’t make me cry, they will. But everyone will be expecting me to cry. They don’t know you like I do, though. The rings we exchange will be simple gold bands engraved with our initials, the date, and the words ‘at last.’”

“You seem to have it all figured out.”

“And when it’s all over, we’ll have an awesome dinner at
L’etoile restaurant at The Sydney with everyone. You can have surf and I can have turf.
Then you and I will go upstairs to the room that has a view of the bay and a tub. Our guests would go home, and you and I soak in a bath and then…”

I shifted, so I could kiss her. “It does sound perfect, and when do we do this?”

“I was thinking at the end of the month.”

“That’s less than two weeks away.”

“I know. But I want to do it before Junior here joins us. I was thinking maybe your father could pull some strings.”

“You were, were you?”

“If you don’t think it’s a good idea?”

“I’ll call my father today and see if he can get his friend Linda to perform the service. I think you’ll like her.”

“If you like her, I know I will.” She kissed the top of my head. “Let’s not make ourselves crazy about this, okay? Let’s just roll with whatever happens.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

There are exceptional days in your life, and marrying Quinn was one of them. The day went almost as perfectly as she described, and the honeymoon even better. And then there were days that were a mixture of the best and the worst. The day the baby was born was one of those days.

We were having brunch with my parents when Quinn’s water broke. I thought that my mother might have a brain aneurism about the cushion on her dining room chair being permanently ruined. But the possibility of life seems to change people, and my mother didn’t bat an eye. The contractions were about 20 minutes apart, so my father told us we didn’t have to rush to the hospital until her contractions were closer. So after we got Quinn cleaned up, we finished breakfast, and then my father took us back to my apartment to get the bag we had packed and drove us to the hospital. Riding to the hospital in his Lexus, instead of with a crazy cab driver, helped me stay calm in a way that I never thought I would be.

What they don’t show you in the movies is the waiting. And while you’re waiting, your partner is doing all the heavy lifting, and you feel useless. Sure, you went to the classes and learned how to breathe with the best of them. But my Quinn was in pain, and she wasn’t taking anything for the pain. She insisted that she made a birth plan and she was sticking to it. So she passed on the epidural, just as planned. And the pain was something to behold. I tried to remember ever having pain I could equate with what was making her utter words I never heard pass her lips before. With every contraction, she crushed my hand with a strength I never knew she had. And I found a new respect for my mother, who must have gone through this same thing.

The Lamaze classes taught us how to be as supportive as I could. So, I rubbed her back trying to soothe her. The coach had said not to fight the pain. What a ridiculous piece of advice. She said women tried to be in control all the time, and embracing the pain would make it easier. There were metaphors about rafting and paddles, and who could possibly remember any of it when all the feeling in their hand was gone, and they were watching the woman they loved scream in agony.

“I don’t think I can do this,” Quinn screamed.

“Yes, you can. Remember, you said you could do it with me.” I helped her sit up and moved behind her. I figured if I was doing something wrong, they would stop me. When she was safely tucked against me, I tried to reassure her. “And I’m here.”

“You are. Aren’t you?”

“Nowhere else I’d rather be.” I kissed her sweaty temple.

“Now, I need you to push,” Caroline said.

“We can do this,” I said, before both hands were crushed in a vice grip as she screamed through the pain.

There was a mirror behind Caroline so we could see. The baby’s head crowned. A little blonde, bloody blob peeking out of Quinn’s vagina. The baby was face down, so I couldn’t see the face. Anyone who tells you it’s beautiful has been toking on the happy gas. Anyone who would admit that to a woman trying to pass something that size out of her vagina would be a
moron. “I can see the top of the head, the baby’s got a lot of hair,” I said instead.

“You’re doing good, Quinn. I need you to push again,” Caroline said.

With the next push, the baby’s shoulders passed through, and I could see the umbilical cord wrapped around one shoulder. Caroline didn’t seem phased, so I figured it must be okay.

Quinn was told to push again, and that one did the trick, as the rest of our daughter slid out into Caroline’s waiting hands.

“You did it, baby. She’s a girl.” I kissed Quinn’s cheek, and saw the tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Is she okay? She’s not crying,” Quinn asked.

“She’s fine,” Caroline assured Quinn. Then she looked to me. “Would you like to cut the cord, Nikki?”

I looked at Quinn, who nodded her consent, so I quietly extracted myself from behind her. My hand was shaking when Caroline handed me the scissors, but I managed to cut the cord in one snip. She was so tiny. I saw that as the nurse snatched her up and took her to clean her up. Caroline didn’t move from her seat, she still had to deliver the placenta. I couldn’t watch anymore, so I concentrated on my new daughter, following them to the clean up station. She was amazing; all fingers and toes accounted for.

The nurse handed her to me, and I quickly presented her to Quinn. “She looks like you,” I said.