Losers Weepers (Lost & Found 4)

Just as Josie looked ready to break into her next question, Jesse showed back up, having successfully deprived me of my creamed spinach. “Most women feel better after the first trimester,” he said as he took his seat and glanced at Rowen, again with that nervous edge in his expression. He’d always been attentive to her, in a tuned in a way that bordered on protective, but this was something else. This was almost like he was trying to make sure she hadn’t disappeared. Like he was worried she would be taken from him any moment.

“What do you mean ‘most women,’ Jess?” My first words to them probably should have been something along the lines of congrats, but I knew something was wrong. Something besides Rowen being knocked up.

If Josie had noticed how Jesse was behaving or what I’d just asked, it wasn’t hitting her the way it was me. “Pregnant in your twenties.” She laughed, shaking her head. “And you accused me of being small-town.”

Rowen twirled her fork in the air. “Yeah, yeah, whatever. We were on about every form of birth control I could get my hands on, but it appears sexual dynamo here”—she stuck her thumb in Jesse’s chest—“broke right through every one.”

Josie gave him a look that made him shift in his seat. “Jesse, you tiger, you.”

I mouthed, “Sorry” at him, but he was still too busy breaking out in a cold sweat from watching Rowen.

“So are you more excited or more shitting your pants?” Josie asked, waving at the waiter and motioning at Rowen’s empty Sprite.

He took it to refill it, and Rowen smiled her thanks at both him and Josie.

“When I’m not hurling into some form of porcelain, I’m starting to get excited,” Rowen answered, covering her stomach with one of her hands. Jesse slid his hand over hers, weaving his fingers together with hers. “He’s shitting his pants.”

Josie gaped at Jesse. “Why?” She shook her head, clearly stumped. “You’ll be, like, one of the best dads ever. Second to you, baby.” She leaned in to kiss the corner of my mouth.

My stomach twisted into several dozen knots at Josie mentioning me becoming a dad, and not in the way it used to when I thought of what kind of dad I’d had and the opposite of an example he’d left me with. No, this stomach churning was brought on by the whiplash realization that I could never father a child in my current condition. I was the one breaking out in a cold sweat now.

I mean, I’d realized that with everything south of my waist being immobile, I couldn’t get it up, but I’d only been focused on one aspect of that major inconvenience. I’d been too busy struggling with that sad realization to move on to the next logical conclusion—the children part. I might have been a long way off from contemplating rugrats, but I knew somewhere deep inside me was buried the desire to have kids. To prove the Black name wasn’t synonymous with shitty fathers and champion drinkers. I wanted children one day . . . but now that day might never come.

The room started to close in around me, the air growing so thin I felt close to gasping.

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Across the table, Jesse cleared his throat and finally tore his stare from Rowen. He scrubbed his face with one hand, keeping his other firmly planted on Rowen’s stomach. I couldn’t tell who he was trying to protect more—her or the baby inside her. “There was a reason we were using so many different forms of birth control.” He looked between Josie and me as though he was waiting for us to get it.

Josie shrugged. “Because you didn’t want to knock up your fertile young bride so soon?”

Jesse exhaled, and with a one shake of his head, I got it. I got where the dread and hovering and bordering-on-unhealthy protective streak were coming from. His words nearly mirrored my thoughts.

“Because it isn’t safe for Rowen to have children.”

Rowen sighed but didn’t offer any argument. Josie picked up where I’d left off on the frozen-in-her-seat thing.

“What do you mean it isn’t safe for her?” I swallowed. “As in growing a little human in her stomach then attempting to push it out something seemingly way too small? Because that doesn’t sound really all that safe for any woman.”

My attempt to lighten the mood failed. Instead, the table seemed to grow more silent.

“No, I mean not safe in that her heart might not be able to tolerate the strain of pregnancy and delivery.” As Jesse finished his words, his face seemed about to break, but he kept it together. He’d always been so strong, a pillar among tough, work-hardened men, but having to face this was just too much. Every man had a breaking point, and the thought of losing his wife and unborn child was Jesse Walker’s.

“What do you mean her heart might not be able to tolerate it?” Josie asked, the heaviness of the situation settling around her.

Jesse sucked in a breath, but Rowen saved him the explanation. “What he means is that about a year ago, I went to my doctor because I felt faint and out of breath whenever I tried exercising hard. Yeah, I know. Me and exercise—never saw that one coming, right? Seattle’s health craze has a way of rubbing off on you.” Rowen’s attempt at lightness didn’t work either. When the waiter set a fresh glass of Sprite in front of her, she took a sip like she was stalling. “Anyway, she diagnosed me with something called aortic stenosis. It’s a heart condition that basically means I don’t tolerate physical stress to my body as well as the next person. I’ve probably had it my whole life but didn’t notice it until I started pushing my body to its upper limits.”

Jesse still hadn’t touched his meal. In fact, I didn’t think he’d even acknowledged it had arrived yet.

“It’s not like a person with this kind of thing is strongly discouraged from getting pregnant, but it puts me into a higher-risk category,” she said.

Jesse cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders. “No, but the doctor advised you have surgery to fix the problem before getting pregnant. That’s why we were quadrupling up on birth control, but now . . .” His voice caught for a moment, and then he continued. “They can’t operate on her while she’s pregnant. They can’t guarantee Rowen and the baby will make it through this safely . . . they can’t do anything. It feels like all we’re doing is waiting to see what happens, going back and forth between celebrating over a miracle and biting our nails at a possible tragedy.”

I exhaled and shook my head. Dangling precariously on the ledge of hope and fear was a concept I was all too familiar with after this past week.

Rowen turned in her seat to face Jesse. She waited for him to look at her, and when he finally did, she pressed her hand into his chest and leaned closer. “I’m going to be fine. The baby’s going to be fine.” She nodded as if she were waiting for him to nod along with her.

He couldn’t though. He knew no amount of nodding would guarantee his wife and child’s safety. Jesse might have been an optimist to an unfathomable degree, but he didn’t skew reality with false hope. The numbers, the statistics didn’t lie—I knew that.