Random Acts of Trust (25 page)

A whine rose up from my belly, flurried and panicked. “I don’t want to leave. There has to be another way!” One tender step forward and I gasped in shock from how much this hurt. Practical Amy kicked in. This could be causing permanent damage.

Time to admit defeat.

“You have to call the cab,” I told Darla.

“Might be faster to just text Liam and ask him to give us a ride,” she said, reaching for her phone.

“ARE YOU CRAZY?” I shouted.

“OK, no Liam,” she said through pursed lips, eyes shifting left and right as if realizing her error.

I made it to my front door and breathed with little pants of air. It helped with the pain.

“You really sound like a woman on one of those birthing shows,” Darla said brightly, standing a foot away and occasionally putting her hands out to help, then snatching them back as if she were dealing with an unpredictable animal that might bite.

“Stuff a pillow up my shirt and get me a doula.”

“I think I’m your doula, Amy,” she said as I locked the deadbolt from the hallway and lurched down the long corridor to the stairs, cursing every step.

“My smartphone doula?” The stairs were surprisingly easy to manage as long as I visualized my vagina as a field of broken beer bottles.

“You can name the baby Siri.”

“Shut up.”

With wide eyes and a hand over her heart, as if offended, Darla reached slowly for her flip phone, opened it and—

Bzzzzzz.

“Fuck you,” I whispered as I stopped in place and rode it out, eyes watering from overwhelm and humiliation.

We reached the street and a cab magically appeared as if Darla had called it via bat signal. We climbed in, Darla with remarkable dexterity and speed, me like an old lady with a colostomy bag and a bad case of herpes.

The driver didn’t give us two glances as Darla told him the hospital name. The car jerked forward and I leaned against the shiny vinyl upholstery, consumed by the scent of coconut air freshener and my own fear.

“You’ll be fine,” she whispered in a stage voice. “The contractions are still far enough apart that it won’t be a problem.”

The cab driver leaned on the accelerator noticeably as the car weaved through Boston traffic. He made it feel like we were driving in a stick of butter.

“Shut up.”

Bzzzz.

I was stuck in some deranged Stanley Milgrim experiment, which Darla would fail miserably. She was exactly the type to torture other people mercilessly, and cackle along with it at the same time, and unfortunately, she was the only person who could help me.

Her and the mysterious Dr. Alex.

With any luck, there was no Dr. Alex. He was just a lie she’d created with her illegal network to convince me to leave with her. Darla was actually a front woman for a white slavery underground, and I’d be sold off to some wealthy man who would find my vagina phone so repulsive he’d have it removed and set me free and I’d be that poor future librarian who was sold in human trafficking and come home a pitied heroine.

Anderson Cooper would do a special about me.

I’d write a tell-all biography. Even be a contestant on
Dancing With the Stars
.

That sounded
so much better
than what I’d actually done.

I began to cry.

“Don’t worry, lady. This is the hardest part,” the cabbie said from the front, his deep, bass voice startling me and making the pain sharper as I twisted in my seat. “This is the hardest part. That moment when you swear you just can’t do it? You’re about an hour away from holding that baby in your arms.” He chuckled. “My wife’s done it four times, so I know all about it.”

“Thank you,” I said, sobbing. Darla’s eyes met mine and I mouthed,
You are such an asshole
.

She pulled out the phone and began punching numbers. My ineffectual swipes at her hands couldn’t stop it.

Bzzzzzzz.

“Asshole!” I hissed.

“That’s what my wife always said as the baby’s head was coming,” the cabbie chortled.

Sartre was so right.

Hell
is
other people.

Other people in a cab on the way to a hospital to get a phonectomy.

“Here we are!” the cabbie said, jumping out to help open my door. He didn’t bat an eyelash when I climbed out and obviously wasn’t pregnant. I had some extra curves, sure—but no way was I about to deliver a full-term kid.

“You really hung on to your figure,” he admired. “You only look about five months along.”

Darla bit her lips and made a choking sound from the back of her throat. Mercifully, she paid and seemed to give a generous tip, because the driver smiled even wider as he sped off and called back, “Good luck!”

“I
really
hate you,” I shouted at her.

“All the girls say that as they’re crowning,” he called after us.

We walked through an enormous lobby that could have just as easily been a foyer at a luxury hotel. Straightening up, I walked with as much dignity as I could muster, which wasn’t much when you considered that my vagina doubled as a street sweeper.

The walk across those fake-marble floors was as inelegant and torturous as any I would ever experience, bar none. But I made it to a small desk near the emergency room, when Darla pulled out her phone and began tapping.

“Please?” I begged. “I haven’t said anything mean to you for two whole minutes.”

She looked at me like I had a phone in my vagina.

Oh, wait.

“I’m texting Alex,” she reminded me.

And then—
bzzzzzz
.

“You suck!” I hissed.

“That’s not me,” she snickered. The familiar tinkling sounds of
I Wasted My Only Answered Prayer
sprinkled lightly into the hallway, like fairly dust.

Juicy, slick fairy dust.

“Blame Sam for that one,” she said, not looking up from her texting.

Within twenty seconds one of the hottest men I had ever laid eyes on turned the corner next to the desk, tall and muscled, dark and looking like he was missing from the set of Grey’s Anatomy. Green scrubs, messy brown hair, and broad cheekbones, with dark eyes that made me want to disrobe and—

“Alex!” Darla cried out, going to give him a casual hug. As he bent down his eyes caught mine briefly, warm, centered eyes that oozed intelligence and confidence.

My knees pulsed with a tingly shock of shame. This was Alex? THE Dr. Alex?

McFuck me.

The world is so unfair.

Alex let her go and took a step toward me, offering his hand. “Hi. Alex Derjian. And you are Darla’s friend...”

“Amy.” The softness of his hands surprised me. Long surgeon’s fingers—literally, ones he used to deliver babies, gentle and strong—met mine in a firm grasp that showed respect. His eyes held mine a beat longer than needed. My hand stayed warm after he let go. It would take days for me to run through the scene again in my mind and realize that he hadn’t used his title.

“Darla said you needed some care that is confidential. Why don’t we go into this exam room—” he pointed to a small one across the hall—“and I’ll see what I can do.”

Darla followed, but Alex stopped her as I went in. “I don’t think you should come in.”

“Oh,” she said. “Um, you’re right.”

Anxiety shot through me. “No! I want her there. She can explain some things.”

“It’s not like I had anything to do with this, Amy. There’s nothing I can explain that you can’t.”

The idea of being alone with Alex in an exam room, getting a pelvic exam and having to explain why that was in there was just too much. Even the humiliation of having a friend in there was better than having no one in there.

Had I just called Darla a
friend
?

Alex watched our exchange with a detached curiosity. “It’s the patient’s call,” he said softly.

“In. Just don’t text me!” I hissed as Darla scooted in the tiny room.

Alex closed the door and leaned against a small counter with a sink and various medical instruments. He motioned for me to hop on the exam table. This time I really did need Darla’s help; I had never tried to get on a pelvic exam table without really opening my legs, and it turned out I wasn’t good at it.

By the time I was actually sitting on the thin white paper that covered the cheap vinyl, Alex’s face had morphed from gorgeously friendly to professionally curious. I had to think of him as a doctor. A savior.

The guy who would excavate my hoohaw to get the hidden treasure.

“You’re obviously in pelvic pain. So why don’t you tell me what happened,” Alex urged, crossing his arms over his chest in a non-defensive gesture.

Silence.

Darla cleared her throat.

My eyes filled with tears.

When had my life turned into a demented episode of
The Mindy Project
?

Saying the words aloud was just...I couldn’t. Once the words were out this was all true. Until I said it to the doctor it was just something stupid and private and ridiculous, a cosmic joke. But actually saying that I had—

“Her phone is stuck in her vagina,” Darla blurted out.

Couldn’t be stuffed back in, could it?

Darla had made it true.

I had to give Alex credit. He tried. He really, really tried to remain neutral and professional, but those beautiful eyebrows shot up under the stray wave of brown hair that covered his forehead. “I’m sorry, could you clarify?” His eyes bored into mine as he pointedly ignored Darla.

“Her phone—”

He cut her off with a reflexive hand, palm facing her, never taking his eyes off me. “I am talking to Amy.”

Nose out of joint, she made a sour face but stayed quiet. I couldn’t see her—my peripheral vision went to hell with the stress of what I was about to say.

“Darla is right,” I choked out.

“Your. Phone. Is. In. Your. Vagina?” he asked, each word a sentence, the tone of his voice even and unyielding. No hint of laughter or teasing in his eyes, face or body—thank God. Because I couldn’t handle that.

“Yes.”

He swallowed so hard I could see his Adam’s apple bob, but his face remained placid. “I see. And you’re certain?”

Darla snorted. “I think women know when an entire phone is shoved up in there, unless you have a vagina that’s so big sex is like throwing a hot dog down a hallway.”

Alex turned away, grabbed her upper arm, and whispered furiously, “You are not being helpful.”

“I’ve been plenty helpful!”

“Making jokes at her expense is not helpful.”

“C’mon. It’s funny and you know it.”

“Not to
her
.”

Alex was my new best friend. Darla was back off the list.

He turned back to me and bent at the knees to look me eye to eye. “I understand why you wanted to keep this private. I have to ask some questions, though.”

I nodded.

“How, exactly, did the phone get inside your vagina?”

“She tripped and fell. Oops! Happens all the time. Last week it was the cable remote,” Darla snickered.

“Shut up!” I said through gritted teeth, returning my eyes to Alex. “Do you know what a vibrator app is?”

“You mean an app like on the phone? There’s an app for
that
?”

Darla groaned. Alex didn’t seem to realize he’d made an accidental joke.

We both ignored her. “Yes,” I answered simply. “And I was using it, and...” With splayed hands, palms up, I gestured to my pelvis.

“Some women search all their lives for their G-spot,” Darla chimed in. “Amy was looking for her 4G spot.”

Both Alex and I
pointedly
ignored her.

“You were using the app to turn the phone into a vibrator and shoved it inside your vagina,” he said simply, nodding as if this were as plausible as saying, “You were walking your dog and tripped and tore your ACL.”

“No! No! It wasn’t like that.”

“How was it
not
exactly like that?” Darla argued.

“Shut up.”

“I can make her leave the room,” Alex said coolly. I was contemplating that very idea now as the words were out and the truth circulated in the air. His way of handling this was so rational and kind that whatever fears I’d had were—

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Twitching suddenly, I slid half off the exam table and almost fell on Alex, who deftly moved to catch and stabilize me.

“Was that—”

“Not me!” Darla held her empty hands high in the air. “Not me!”