The Other Side of the Pillow
The baby!
My left arm, the one without the IV, instinctively dropped to my stomach. I still had a little pouch there but I panicked. I didn’t feel the baby moving.
I attempted to speak but nothing came out, so I rattled one of the bed rails to get someone’s attention.
Lilibeth and a nurse appeared in my range of view within seconds.
“She’s awake!” Lilibeth exclaimed, and then leaned over me, staring into my eyes. “Jemistry, can you hear me?”
I nodded and held my hand up to point at my throat.
The nurse said, “She has cotton mouth. Let me go get her some ice water. I’ll be right back and I’ll alert Dr. Horton that she’s awake.”
The nurse left the room and I realized that I was at Providence Hospital where Dr. Horton practiced. Thank
goodness the school was in the correct zone for the ambulance and that Lilibeth remembered his name from making my appointments with him over the years, prior to my pregnancy. I had been making the prenatal ones myself over the summer months.
I had confided in her about my pregnancy the week before. She giggled and said that she had already suspected. Her exact words were: “I know more about your mannerisms and eating habits than you probably know about yourself. You’ve been having me order some interesting food choices for your lunches since school started back up. Plus, you have that glow.”
Everyone kept talking about the “pregnancy glow.” I couldn’t see it.
I was quite sure that I was not glowing at the moment. I clamped my eyes shut and said a silent prayer to God not to take my child away from me. Not to take another child away from Tevin.
“The two students that knocked you down need to be expelled,” Lilibeth said. “That was inexcusable.”
I shook my head and tried to get the word accident out of my windpipe. It came out as something unrecognizable.
The nurse returned with a pitcher full of ice water. “Dr. Horton has been paged. He’ll be here in less than five minutes.”
She poured some water into a plastic cup and then raised the bed so I was sitting up enough to drink. There was an excruciating pain in my lower back.
Once the water hit the back of my throat, I coughed but it felt like I could function again.
I cleared my throat. “It was an accident, Lilibeth. Donald and Leon didn’t mean to push me down the stairs. There was a lot going on today and they were simply trying to make it to their next class on time. We should have delayed the fourth-period bell.”
Lilibeth took a seat in the chair beside the bed. “Leave it to you to try to make excuses for those kids, even today. You’re always looking out for them.”
“That’s my job. And they’re both good kids. Good grades, honor-roll students. I’m not about to expel them and ruin their chances at making it because of an accident. Accidents happen all the time.”
I really wanted to ask Lilibeth if they had said anything to her about the baby, but I was too afraid. From the expression on her face, it didn’t appear that they had delivered such distressing news to her. She was not good at hiding her emotions. I knew that from experience.
The nurse was jotting my vitals down on my chart and had broken out a thermometer to take my temperature. Before she could stick it in, I asked Lilibeth, “Has anyone called Tevin?”
While the thermometer was in my mouth, she responded, “Yes. I did. He was in surgery but they said that they’d give him the message the second he was done. I asked them to disrupt but—”
The nurse removed the thermometer in time for me to interrupt her. “No, they can’t bother him while he’s in surgery. It’ll be fine. He’ll be here.”
Dr. Horton entered the room and smiled at me. I felt a sense of relief. My baby was alive!
* * *
Two hours later, Tevin came bolting through the door of my hospital room.
Before he could even say anything, I assured him, “The baby’s fine.”
He came over and laid his head on my stomach and embraced me, kissed my stomach, and then moved up and kissed my forehead.
“It’s okay, baby,” I said, caressing the back of his head. “I fell but everything’s all right.”