The Other Life (30 page)

“You know, I still love you,” he whispered.

She didn’t say anything. She just held on tight, as if she might otherwise drown.

“Do you still love
me
?” he asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said.

“Then you do. I know you do.”

She couldn’t think of a response, but held him closer. She didn’t know why she did it, and didn’t know what she was thinking when Eugene put his lips on hers. Maybe she wasn’t thinking anything. She was just feeling. And letting him kiss her seemed like a release from the dark force that was sucking her down. She got lost in the kiss. It was her past, present, and future colliding in one physical moment. She even lost sense of where she was. That is, until she heard a voice behind her.

“Quinn!”

Eugene released her and she turned to see Cordell standing three feet away, his mouth slack in shock.

Time expanded with the fraction of a second it took for her to look into Cordell’s eyes and understand what he was thinking. Quinn tried to find language, to come up with words of explanation, but there was nothing to say. What Cordell had seen was very, very real.

Maybe it was her animal brain that kicked in at that moment, but Quinn did the only thing that occurred to her.

She ran.

“Quinn!” Eugene shouted. “Where are you going?”

Without even stopping for her coat, she pushed open the front door and ran outside, into the icy-cold night, where she was pelted by freezing rain. She had to keep going, had to put space between her and what had just happened.

When she reached the curb, Quinn glanced behind her and saw Eugene and Cordell at the door.

“Stop!” Cordell shouted, but she didn’t. She ran into the street and looked up just in time to see it coming toward her. She heard a screech of brakes and quickly turned to step out of the way. She could make it. She knew she could! But she hadn’t counted on the car’s tires losing traction on the slick street. The last thing she heard before the impact was the sound of her own scream.

QUINN DREAMED THAT NAOMI HAD BEEN SWADDLED AND placed in her arms. All the nurses said she was the prettiest girl ever born in that hospital, and Quinn had to agree. She was filled with joy. All mothers thought their baby was the most beautiful, but hers truly was. Quinn wondered if she was born with hair, and she started to remove the baby’s cap, but a nurse grabbed her wrist.

Quinn looked at the sleeping baby again.

The dream changed then, and she wasn’t looking at the baby but a painting of her. Quinn was confused. Had her mother painted it? Where was she? Where was Naomi? She came to a long corridor and frantically looked around for someone to ask, but she was alone. She ran to the end of the corridor and pushed open a door. Dr. Bernard was there.

Who are you looking for?
the doctor asked.

Quinn wasn’t sure. Was she looking for her mother or her baby? She felt it was crucial to tell the truth. Startling music played. It was Quinn’s alarm clock. She sat up and shut it off.

“How do you feel?” Lewis asked.

Quinn hesitated, still trying to separate dreams from reality. Yes, she had been in a car accident the night before. No, she hadn’t lost the baby. She rubbed her rounded belly. You’re okay, Naomi, she thought. We’re both okay.

Though the impact from the car knocked Quinn down, she had been able to rise on her own. Both her knees were bloody from hitting the street, but nothing seemed broken. Most important, her middle hadn’t taken a hit. Thank God, she thought, as a crowd gathered. Thank God the baby is okay. Nothing else matters.

Cordell and Eugene tried to talk Quinn into going to the hospital, but she refused. She knew she was okay, and was afraid they might insist on taking X-rays just to cover themselves. The thought of exposing Naomi to radiation was too much to bear. She simply wouldn’t do it. Bad enough that she had consumed alcohol. One assault on her baby that night was more than enough.

The owners of Ohm had insisted on paying for limo service to drive her all the way home to Long Island, and she accepted. Hayden and Cordell went along for the ride to be sure she was okay.

Cordell didn’t say a word about what he had witnessed. In fact, he tried to lighten the mood by talking about all the celebrities they had seen at the party. She had managed to miss all of them.

Quinn looked out the window as their conversation drifted into a back-and-forth between Hayden and Cordell. They were dishing and gossiping about who looked Botoxed and who didn’t, and how gorgeous, hideous, smashing, butt-ugly, slammin’, gawdy, or fabulous each outfit looked.

“You know who else was there?” Cordell said to her.

Quinn couldn’t take the evasion any longer. It was like trying to ignore the elephant in the limo.

“Eugene,” she said. “Eugene was there.”

“Quinn,” Cordell said, “you don’t owe me any explanations.”

“But I don’t want you to think I don’t love my husband.”

Hayden looked down, picking at his cuticles. Clearly, Cordell had already told him what he saw.

“We all make mistakes,” Cordell said.

“I’ve never ...” she began, and stopped. She had planned to say she never cheated on Lewis, but knew that on some level what happened in Fiji did indeed count. She rested her head in her hands.

“Don’t worry,” Cordell said. “I’m not going to tell him. Forget about it.”

She kept her head down. “Thank you,” she mumbled. Surely, Lewis didn’t need to know about this. If Hayden and Cordell would keep the secret, she would, too. Still, the knot inside her wasn’t unraveling.

Hayden rubbed her back. “You okay?” he asked.

At last she looked up. “I made the right choice,” she said. “Marrying Lewis, I mean.”

“Of course you did,” her brother said. “No one suggested otherwise.”

“Mom did,” she said.

He put his arm around her and Quinn rested her head on her brother’s shoulder. No one spoke for the rest of the ride.

When she got home, Quinn had put in a late-night emergency call to Dr. Sally Bernard to ask about the alcohol’s possible effect on the fetus. The obstetrician assured her that the baby would not suffer fetal alcohol syndrome as the result of one drink. And though Quinn swore to her that the car’s bumper hit her in the back of the legs and that she hadn’t suffered any impact to her torso, the doctor said she was more concerned about the accident than the alcohol. “It was more like falling down than getting hit by a car,” Quinn insisted. Still, Sally made Quinn promise to get lots of rest the next day, and to call her immediately if she had any problems.

Quinn sat up and swung her feet over the side of the bed. She felt tired and a little stiff, but otherwise okay.

“I’m fine,” she said to Lewis. She put on her bathrobe and went downstairs to make pancakes for Isaac. She didn’t usually prepare such an elaborate breakfast on a weekday, but she wanted to make up for her absence the night before, especially since he was still recovering from the trauma of getting off the bus to find himself alone. Quinn was intent on assuring him that she was not going to disappear again.

Lewis came downstairs just as she was stirring a handful of chocolate chips into the batter. He kissed her on the back of the neck.

“How are your knees?” he asked.

“Not too bad. I’ll change the bandages in a little while.”

“Why are you fussing with breakfast? Didn’t Dr. Bernard say you should rest today?”

“I will,” she said. “I promise. I’ll get back in bed after you guys leave.”

“Do you want me to go wake Isaac?”

“It’s okay,” she said, putting down the spoon. “I need to let the batter rest, anyway.”

“At least let me finish making the pancakes,” he said.

Ordinarily, she would have turned down this offer without a thought. But her visits to the other side were having an impact on her. Quinn’s psyche was starting to believe what her intellect had been telling her all along—it’s okay to accept help.

“Deal,” she said, and went upstairs.

Quinn stood over her son for several minutes, watching him sleep. He was so still, lying with his mouth open and his head tipped back on his pillow. She had to watch carefully to discern the subtle rise and fall of his chest beneath the covers. Quinn leaned in, intending to kiss his smooth forehead, but stopped to breathe in his scent. It filled her.

“Isaac?” she whispered after touching her lips to his head.

He stirred but kept his eyes closed.

Quinn took off the bulky bathrobe she wore over the pale green pajamas that had been a birthday present from her mother-in-law, and climbed into the warm bed with him.

“Scooch over,” she said. He nestled in to her.

“You want pancakes?” she asked.

His eyes opened. “Chocolate chips?”

“Yep.”

He smiled and let his eyes close again. “How was the party?”

What a kid. She pulled him close. “It was fine. Should we stay in this bed all day and snuggle?”

“Yeah.”

“How about all week?”

“All year,” he said.

She laughed. “You’ll miss your birthday party.”

“We’ll have it here.”

Quinn was cozy and comfortable next to her son, and felt as though she could easily fall back asleep. It wasn’t like her to be this tired in the morning. Then again, it wasn’t like her to go out drinking and get hit by a car. She really would need some time to rest that day.

Quinn forced herself to sit up and lay out Isaac’s clothes for him. She put her heavy bathrobe back on and went downstairs. The three of them had pancakes, and then Lewis took Isaac to the bus stop before heading off for work.

Quinn sat at the kitchen table for almost an hour, reading the newspaper. She was just too tired to move. The only thing she wanted to accomplish that morning was changing the sheets, but even that seemed like a massive effort.

Finally, Quinn pushed herself away from the table and went to her bedroom, where she stripped the sheets and dropped them into a laundry basket. She put on clean bed linens and carried the laundry basket to Isaac’s room to do the same.

When she pulled back the covers on his bed she noticed a strange stain in the middle of the sheet. It looked like blood. Was it hers? Had a wound on her knee opened up and bled straight through the Band-Aid while she was lying there?

Quinn opened her robe and sat down on the edge of the bed. There was no blood seeping through the knees of her brand-new pajama bottoms. Where had that mysterious stain come from? She stood up too fast and felt dizzy. The night before had taken more of a toll on her than she realized. She decided that she would just put clean sheets on Isaac’s bed and leave the laundry for Lewis. She really did need to lie down.

She pulled the bloody sheet off, still confused about that spot. Did he have a nosebleed he forgot to mention? She took a clean sheet from the linen closet and shook it out over his bed. As she was tucking it in, she felt woozy again, only this time it was worse. She left the bed unmade and headed to her room to lie down. But she got so dizzy she had to stop in the hallway and hold on to the wall.

Quinn didn’t think she could make it to her room without fainting. She sat cross-legged on the floor and put her head between her knees. And that’s when she saw it—a dark crimson circle spreading through the pale fabric of her pajamas right between her legs.

EVERYTHING HAPPENED SO FAST AFTER THAT. QUINN CALLED Lewis, who was already at work. He made her stay on the phone with him while he called 911, and then Georgette, who arrived within minutes. By then Quinn had already changed out of her bloody pajama bottoms and was wearing clean sweatpants with two sanitary napkins stuffed inside her panties.

Georgette—still in pajamas herself—held Quinn’s hand while they waited for the ambulance to arrive.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” Georgette said.

Quinn was crying. “I’m so scared.”

“I know, cupcake. I know.”

Two uniformed paramedics arrived—a bulky man with a round face and a woman with her hair pulled back in a loose ponytail. Quinn explained about finding the dark blood soaking her pajamas as the woman wrapped a blood pressure cuff around her arm. The man asked a barrage of questions. Did she have any allergies? Was she on any medications? Was she having trouble breathing? How many weeks along was the pregnancy ? Had she ever bled before? Was this her first child? Did she know her blood type? And on and on.

“Are you under a doctor’s care?” the woman asked.

Quinn nodded. “The baby has an encephalocele,” she said. “They told me she might not make it to term.”

“We’ll do everything we can,” the woman said. She squeezed a pump to get Quinn’s pressure and then ripped the Velcro cuff off her arm. “I’m going to start you on a saline IV now,” she said, “just to keep you hydrated.”

Both paramedics went to work on her. The woman put a tourniquet on Quinn’s arm and quickly found a vein. The man asked her to open her mouth and inserted an electronic thermometer under her tongue. Once the IV was in place, the woman opened a box and started sticking small disks onto Quinn’s torso and hands. As she worked, a strand of blond hair escaped from her ponytail and hung over her face. She blew the hair out of the way and explained to Quinn that they would be monitoring her heart rhythm.

“Routine procedure,” she assured her. “Nothing to worry about.”

While the woman spoke, the man asked Georgette a question Quinn couldn’t hear. “I don’t know,” Georgette said, and turned to Quinn. “Have you gone to the bathroom?” she asked.

Of course. She had gone there to peel off her bloody bottoms, which she dropped into the sink. But she knew what they were after, and it made her queasy. They wanted to know if a fetus had been expelled into the toilet and flushed away.