The Wall (The Woodlands) (5 page)

Everything was fine for a while. They took two bags without anything seeming to happen. Then she
started to sway. Matthew walked over and said, “Ok, I think that’s enough.” He went to disconnect the tube but her hand shot out and grabbed him.

“
No, you need at least this last bag if you want to have any chance of saving him. Let me finish,” she said through her teeth. She looked so frail and yet so much stronger than I thought her capable of.

Where was Alexei? I had unfair visions of him crying in a corner somewhere
, cowering like a child.

The door swung open and he appeared. He stumbled over to her chair and sat on her other side. His eye
s connected with mine. I wanted to say,
I tried to stop her
, but my mouth was dry and wouldn’t open to the words.

He looked down at Apella and smiled.
“I’m sorry, darling. What you are doing… I’m proud of you.”

She looked up at him, her face paler than I thought possible.
I could almost see through her. They looked at each other forever. I finally understood what they had. This was an old love but a strong love. It was unconditional. They couldn’t hurt each other because it would be hurting themselves.

Apella let out a small cry
, tiny. It shot out of the room on a breath of wind. I know she didn’t hate me but I hated myself. It shouldn’t have happened. Matthew ushered me out of the room, telling a much brighter looking Cal to leave also.

“
When I’m ready, I will come down and collect Joseph. Wait for me in your room,” he said as he turned his back to us, closing in on Apella. She was braver than I’d ever thought possible. Somehow, she had become a mother without a baby. She was protecting her family. Maybe she would come out of this stronger, shake the old life off like shedding a skin, papery remnants of a horrible existence floating to the ground. It was something to aspire to.

I was staring through the
small, rectangular window, intruding on their personal pain, when I felt a hand on my shoulder. “C’mon, we need to give them some privacy,” Cal said. He guided my rigid body towards the ladder.

I shrugged his hand off and
tried to steady myself but the floor was heaving under my feet. An imaginary gust of wind churned around me and tried to knock me over. If only things would slow down for a second, if the world would stop spinning, I could catch my breath. His face stretched and blurred before my eyes. “Whoa!” Strong arms caught me and then… darkness.

I
awoke propped up against a wall in a dark hallway. Hard, jagged rock poked into my back, wet with condensation. A shaft of light sliced through the blackness about a hundred meters away. I stood quickly, bumping my head on a low-hanging pipe, a comical ‘boing’ sound shimmying away from me.

“
Rosa, isn’t it?” a vaguely familiar voice asked. I pulled my legs up quickly, hands in front of my face in defense. “Don’t panic. You fainted.”

“
Oh. Um. Sorry. I’m just not used to all the blood,” I lied. If only that were true.

“
It’s all right. Lucky I was there or you would have fallen down the ladder,” Cal said a little too proudly. I could barely see him in the dark, just his ears poking out, giving him a recognizable silhouette.

I started to stand.
“I better get back. Matthew said to wait in my room.”

A hand clamped on my shoulder, holding me in place.
“Hey, there’s no rush,” Cal said in an odd, syrupy tone. “They’ll be a while.”

I stood up
, swaying a little, and walked towards the light. It felt uncomfortable being in the dark with this boy. I picked up the pace, ducking my head when I got to the door so they didn’t see me, and swinging myself down the ladder.

“
Wait! Can I come with you? Keep you company while you wait?” In the light, he still looked pale. He was only a couple of inches taller than me and he was leaning up on his toes. Eyes earnest, he stared at me expectantly, one hand in his pocket, the other tucking a stray curl behind his ear. He seemed harmless.

I weighed it up. This boy had just donated all the blood he could to Joseph. He must have understood our relationship. Besides
, what I was thinking was preposterous. I was not desirable in any way. I was a teenage mother, a mess. Whatever had made me uncomfortable, I ignored it. My instincts weren’t to be trusted anymore, look where they’d got us so far.

“
Ok,” I shrugged. He followed me to my room, silently. I kept a good few feet between us, not entirely trusting him. The only sound was the standard-issue canvas sneakers squeaking on the linoleum floor.

I entered to find Deshi
sitting, rocking an inconsolable, screaming baby. He looked stressed. Hessa was rolling around on the floor. I smiled down at the darling child.

“
What happened?” Deshi asked, his eyes showing concern for both of our family members, as he walked to me and handed me the baby.

“
She went through with it. Matthew is coming down to get Joseph soon.” My face felt thin, stretched over my bones too tightly. My heart felt similar.

“
Do you want me to stay?” he asked, his eyes moving from me to Cal and back again. I wanted to say yes. But I was being silly. I would be fine.

“
No, it’s ok. Joseph’s here,” I said with a weak smile.

De
shi rolled his eyes. “Well, I’m going to put Hessa down for a nap.” He tapped his hand on Joseph’s shoulders lightly. “Good luck, Joe.” He kissed his fingers and placed them on Joseph’s forehead. Then he was gone.

The baby screamed. I climbed onto the bed and put the child to my breast. Not even thinking about Cal. This had become second nature to me now. The boy shyly looked away as I fed my child, his curls forming a curtain over his bowed head. When I was
done, he pulled up a chair and sat facing me eagerly. Maybe he was just being friendly.

“
So, have you thought of a name yet?” he asked, trying to be kind or interested.

I stiffened
. “No, not yet. I mean, I can’t.”

His eyebrows rose in confusion
. “Oh, why’s that?”

“
Not that it’s any of your business but I always thought his father would name him,” I snapped.

The boy
was offended. His eyebrows turned down, his eyes wide, but he quickly swallowed it. He seemed overly sensitive.

“
I’ll help you,” he said, half-standing out of his chair, his hurt flipping to inappropriate enthusiasm.

Now I was confused.
“What do you mean?”

“
I’ll help you come up with a name. He’s going to be pretty tired and confused when he wakes up.” Cal gestured to Joseph’s resting form. “The last thing he’s going to want to do is name a baby.”

He was irritating
, but he had a point. And I wanted to show Joseph I wasn’t completely incompetent.

Cal devised a plan. He started asking me questions, pers
onal questions. The first being—how did you feel when you first found out you were pregnant? I eyed him suspiciously, replying that I was really, really angry. Violated. Seeing that was not a great line of questioning, he continued to ask me about the baby. How I felt, when did it change, what made me think I could be a mother?

“
Stop. None of this will help me,” I said crankily. My patience was not thin, but non-existent.

“
Ok, ok. I know,” he said. Rubbing his chin, he pointed at Joseph. “How does
he
make you feel?”

I closed my eyes
, dreaming, thinking of Joseph’s warm arms around me, his soft lips parting mine. The way he pressed me up against a tree and buried his face in my hair, kissing my neck, sliding his hand down my arms to my waist.

“
Like gold,” I whispered, forgetting I was answering a question, forgetting there was someone staring at me. I opened my eyes and my cheeks flushed hot at Cal’s intense gaze.

“
Hmm. Like gold,” Cal grinned with a faraway expression. He paused and I waited for him to snap out of it. When he didn’t, I rattled the arm of his chair. “And you are of Spanish origin right?” he said chirpily, coming back to reality.

“
I suppose. I mean, in old terms, I guess I’m half-Indian, half-Spanish.” It felt strange to say it. These terms were rarely used in Pau, banned outside of the classroom. They were considered inflammatory.

Cal stared at me a long time
, picking over my features, his eyes pausing over my nose, my ears, my neck, and to my chest. I wanted to kick him. He returned to my eyes and kept peering, until I coughed and turned away, giving my attention to the baby as I wrapped him and tried to rock him to sleep. The way Cal looked at me was completely foreign. I didn’t know whether to be scared or flattered.

“
Interesting,” he said, peculiarly fascinated. “Those eyes…” He stopped talking mid-sentence and pulled out a small reader from his pocket. At least that’s what I thought it was, until he started typing things in and reading. I was curious but something told me not to get too close, so I hovered above him from my bed.

“
What about Hema?” I screwed up my nose; it sounded too much like Hessa. He laughed, a low sound that didn’t quite touch his eyes. It sounded like Joseph and I didn’t want to put the two together in my mind. “Ok, maybe not.” He returned to the screen. “Oriole, Orville, Hemen, Kunal, Orlando, Kin, Jin, Paz.”

“
Wait. Go back a few.”

“
Kin?”

“
No.”

“
Orlando?”

I paused. Orlando. I turned it over in my head, pulling it out and laying it across the child like a blanket. Orlando. He o
pened his eyes and looked at me. One blue and one brown eye framed with long, blond eyelashes. My eyes, Joseph’s frame. I wondered if there was a nice-sounding name for defective. Probably not. I let out a giggle. No, Orlando fit, a beautiful name for a beautiful child, a one-of-a-kind child. Something materialized in me, or maybe was there all along, and now it was making its presence strongly felt. When I looked at this baby, I saw beauty. I saw love. The connection was there. I took his tiny hand in mine and put it to my face. Soft and sharp.

I nodded
. “Orlando is good.”

Cal was looking at me with a
quizzical expression. He opened his mouth to speak but Matthew entered the room, flanked by two women I didn’t recognize.

He just stared at me
with tired, worried eyes and I knew what he was going to say. I watched his lips moving slowly, noticing the dryness in the corners. The words came out like they were underwater. A dull thrumming noise that I understood to mean ‘Apella will probably lose her baby’ and the words not spoken, ‘It’s your fault’. I felt the pain of his words, each one smarting like the lash of a cane. Leaving a message slapped into my skin, a debt I could not repay.

“
Can I see her?”

H
e shook his head. “Give her some time,” he said, his usually bright face looking worn, tired. I felt so very sorry for him. He seemed to have invested so much in our well-being and I could tell this was weighing on him heavily. If the operation wasn’t successful, Apella’s sacrifice would be for nothing.