Between the Lanterns (13 page)

She had also finally got August to think about opening his own store, doing tech repairs, creating new tech, and things like that. He was so smart and so talented that he needed to be working for himself.
 

August had finally convinced Samantha to open another restaurant. This time, it would be a food truck, like those that were popular back in the early 2000s. It would be retro, and that would appeal to the locals. The residents of New Dothan might turn their noses up at real food not made with a Nutricator, but they were a sucker for hip and popular things. And recently, the style and music of the 2000s were becoming “cool” again. So a food truck would be an easy way to get everyone to try her cooking.

But now, with Montek demanding this settlement back, even though it was less than a drop in the bucket to the monstrous global corporation, there was no way Samantha and August could afford all of those things. They would have to choose only one. All of this passed between them in mere seconds as they looked into each other’s eyes.

“That’s fine, Mr. Tepid,” August said.
 

“We agree, sir,” Samantha added. “Tell us where to sign.”

Alex grinned wickedly and felt like a champion. He had gotten these idiots to agree to the very first offer. He was willing to let them keep the settlement if necessary. His orders were simple: get August to work for one more year. Alex was even prepared to pay August, including a pay raise! The higher-ups said that August was close to a big breakthrough when he was foolishly fired, and they needed him to finish.
 

The Field Supervisor responsible for letting August go over the phone one day after the accident had mysteriously disappeared a week later. He was eventually found starved to death after accidentally locking himself inside of his own trunk in the woods with some very graphic reading materials about animals and men…together. Alex was not about to let that happen to himself. He would get what Montek wanted, no matter what. He just couldn’t believe it had been this easy.
 

The imbeciles had signed all the necessary paperwork before Mr. Tepid let himself smile self-satisfactorily and said, “Well, that’s all done with. You two can now get the hell out of here. The sight of you together makes my skin crawl. But before you go, let me ask you something… Why didn’t you two negotiate? Why did you take my first offer? I thought you were supposed to be smart, August.”

August reached out for Samantha’s hand and squeezed it tight, then told the wretched man, “Well, Mr. Tepid, we figured that the less time we had to sit and talk with a man as closed-minded and piggish as you, the better. We don’t need the Credit; we have each other. And that is worth more Credit than even Montek could ever offer us. And as far as my consultin’ with Montek.Automaton? I hate to leave anythin’ unfinished. I’m actually relieved they want me to come back and complete my latest project. Good day, Mr. Tepid, and God bless.”

Samantha reached up and grabbed August’s face to plant the biggest and wettest kiss there. They made out like a couple of teenagers right in the doorway.
 

Alex Tepid was visibly uncomfortable, and said, “Here, you two, stop that now. It’s a disgrace. Your kind should never be allowed to be together.”

“Sir, you need some love in your life,” Samantha said, refusing to call this creep by her trademark, ‘sweets’. “You’re a lonely old pig, and you treat other people poorly, and it ain’t right.”

August and Samantha walked out of the room with her hand firmly planted on his butt.
 

 
As they exited the building and headed towards their bicycles, August busted out laughing, and said, “I can’t believe you grabbed my ass, Sam! You’re hilarious. But that man was just plain terrible.”

“Yep, sweets. He was the worst,” Samantha agreed. “I’m glad most people don’t think like that anymore. They may be cold and unkind most of the time, but at least the people of Earth don’t care about things like race or sexual preference. It’s enough to make a grown woman…”

Samantha didn’t finish her sentence. She felt a very strange pain in her abdomen. More scared than she had ever been in her entire life, Samantha looked at August in terror, pulled his hand towards her, and said, “August, it’s the baby. Something’s wrong.”

Chapter 13

IT WON’T HURT A BIT

“A placental abruption? What does that mean, dDoc?” August asked, looking puzzled and in disbelief.
 

 
Samantha’s face was in her hands, and her body was visibly shaking.

“Well, Mr. Lurie, your wife has had a miscarriage in her fifth month of pregnancy. This circumstance was due to the placenta becoming separated from her uterus,” Dr. Granger explained. We’re not sure why it happened. Sometimes it is from drinking or smoking during pregnancy, but according to the blood tests we ran, your wife did neither of these things.”

August felt like he was in a nightmare. The edges of his vision began going black, and everything went into slow motion. The doctor was wrong. He had to be. There was no way that Samantha had a miscarriage. She was healthy; she ate REAL food. His wife walked every single day. She took vitamins. It just wasn’t possible.

“But, Dr. Granger, she is in her second trimester. Ain’t that supposed to be the safety zone?” August asked, looking for a way to prove the doctor wrong. “Don’t people say that miscarriages are only a worry in the first trimester? You should check again. She is fine, and so is the baby. Check again. Please.”

Samantha continued to cry, but no so quietly anymore. August sat down next to her and held her to his chest, squeezing hard.

“Mr. Lurie, I assure there is no need to check again,” the doctor said. “We’ve verified your wife’s condition, and she has miscarried. You are correct that upon entering the second trimester the chances of having a miscarriage are low. Down to around 1% chance. But it does happen, and it has happened here with your wife. Now, we’ll need to do a procedure called a D and C to remove the fetus.”

“Excuse me? The fetus? You mean our baby, right? You are talkin’ about our unborn child. Not just some fetus,” August snapped.

“Yes, Mr. Lurie. Your baby is dead, and we need to remove it before it can cause further complications for your wife. This procedure is standard. Many pregnancies end in miscarriage, and those that end this far along will require a procedure to remove the dead fetus,” Dr. Granger said, acting as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

“I wish you wouldn’t use such unkind words, Doc. All of this... losing our baby... it ain’t an easy thing for us to deal with,” August replied softly.

Dr. Granger put down the paper he was holding, and looked at August without emotion, saying, “Nonsense. It’s a part of life, and you two will be ok. You can try again for another child in a year. And the procedure is simple and straightforward. You’ll be sleeping in your own bed tonight, side -by -side.”
 

August’s fists balled up at his sides as he contemplated punching this “professional” for taking this tragedy too lightly. Samantha sensed her husband’s anger and squeezed his arm a little. August turned around to look into his wife’s dark eyes. He wiped the tears off of her cheek and stroked her straight, black hair. Then he collapsed into her lap and held her around her stomach.

Samantha wiped the rest of her tears away and cleared her throat. She regained control, looked the doctor right in his face, and said, “Ok, sweets. Let’s do the procedure. I want this all over with and done. What do I need to do?”

“Just follow me in here, Patient Lurie,” he replied. “We’ll need to fill out a few forms, and then we can get started. It won’t take long. And don’t worry, it won’t hurt a bit.”

“Sweets,” she said, fighting off more tears, “it can’t hurt any worse than it already does.”

incLater, Samantha and August lay in their own bed, side -by -side. They held hands under the covers. All of the lights in the house were out, except for the two lanterns that hovered on either side of their bed. It was late, but neither of them cared what time it was.

They hadn’t said a word since coming home. August had carried her in from the taxi, all the way to the bed. He had fixed her some sweet tea and made sure she was propped up and comfortable. He didn’t cook dinner because he wasn’t hungry, and he was sure that she wouldn’t be able to eat a bite of food.

Samantha appreciated the fact that August had silently taken care of everything. She didn’t need to hear words right now. Samantha didn’t want to talk. All she needed was for him to be there.
 

And he was.

August had been sure to make his wife feel better, but inside he felt as if his entire life had been a trick played on him by God. His awful parents never loved him,; his amazing Granny being taken away from him,; meeting John and having him taken away, too,; the diner being burnt down and Tara dying,; the accident at the factory,; the lawsuit,; and now the miscarriage. The only thing that stopped him from jumping off the nearest bridge was what Samantha had said to him when he was depressed about the accident:, “As long as we’ve got each other.”

He rolled over and kissed Samantha on her cheek, snuggled up close to her, and quickly fell into a deep sleep. It had been a very long day.

Samantha watched his chest rise and fall and noticed his breathing even out into a peaceful rhythm. She thought about what she had said to him when he was depressed over the accident at his factory, “As long as we’ve got each other,” and smiled. Then she fell into a deep sleep, too.

-

“What are you doing in here, sweets?” Samantha asked her husband.

August had been in his workshop all day. First sketching, then scavenging material from half-finished projects, and finally beginning to put something big together.

He smiled up at her and shrugged his shoulders, explaining, “I’m makin’ Woodrow 2.0. Woodrow the Second. Woodrow Reborn!”

“But sweets, won’t they just sue us again?” she asked warily. “I don’t think I could handle that right now.”

“Aha!” August exclaimed, expecting the question. “They can’t sue me if I make somethin’ completely different from what they’re doin’. I’m startin’ from scratch, basically. I’m usin’ all the ideas that I had while workin’ there that I never tried. I never wrote them down or told them to anyone. They only ever existed in my mind. It’s gonna be better than anythin’ Montek ever made,” he told her with more excitement than she expected. “And I’ve decided that when I go to consult there for a year, startin’ next month, I’m only gonna give them about one-third of what I would have before.”

Samantha was a little worried about her man. They had both felt down ever since the D and C procedure a week ago, but August seemed frantic now; frantic in a happy kind of way, but she could tell there was more underneath, a kind of desperation.
 

“Ok, sweets,” she told August. “It sounds wonderful. Can I do anything? I assume you’ll be making him out of wood again. Can I help with that?”

August’s smile spread even wider as he said, “I was hopin’ you’d offer, Sam. It seems right that we make him together like we did with the last one.”

Samantha wasn’t sure if he meant Woodrow or the baby. August handed her a set of plans for the framework of their new wooden automaton, and he was right. This design was much different than anything Montek had ever done. It was better, too.
 

“It’s amazing, sweets. I mean, this thing is just… incredible, August,” Samantha told him, genuinely impressed.

He looked proud as a peacock, grinned at his wife, and told her, “Just wait until it’s all finished, Sam. It will be a one -of -a -kind marvel.”

Samantha settled herself in to do some serious woodworking. It felt wonderful to work with her hands again. Together, the couple sat in that room until the sun faded, and worked side -by -side in between the lanterns. They had never worked like this before in their lives. Feverish didn’t quite describe it, but it was urgent. All of the wrongs they had experienced, all of the let-downs they had gone through, all of the tragedies they had suffered together;: all of that seemed to melt away. In fact, it acted as fuel to their work, you could say.

All of the awful moments in their lives drove them to work harder, faster, and better than they ever had at anything before. Eventually, they grew too tired to continue and headed up to bed with their lanterns floating along behind them. They may have been too tired to continue creating in the workshop, but they found some additional energy once they reached the bedroom, and celebrated their love with an intense passion.

Over the next month, they worked tirelessly day and night to create this new automaton. The tiny details and engineering were left up to August while Samantha crafted the beautiful, wooden frame and multiple moving pieces. The wood they used was hard and firm. It was real wood from China, but neither of them knew what kind of tree it used to be. It was knobby and gnarled, so it took a little more time for Samantha to bend it to her will.

August realized that this new model needed to have advanced internal components, but he wanted to keep it as natural as possible. He used some metal where necessary, but most of the new automaton was wood, and in keeping with the original Woodrow he used a system of strings and pulleys to create movement in the extremities.

“Realistically, he won’t last for very long,” he said.

“How long do you reckon, sweets?”

Considering, August scratched at the new growth of beard on his face. He had not shaved since they began this new Woodrow.

“Honestly, I don’t know. He definitely won’t last as long as even the earliest Montek.Automatons, simply because of his wooden body and the string and pulley system we used, even though the mind of this new Woodrow is years ahead of anythin’ that they have over at Montek.”

Samantha rubbed at one of the new Woodrow’s arms and said, “Sweets, I hate to tell you this now, but I kinda want him to act like the old one. I don’t want a thinking, problem-solving, wooden robot. I want our little old Woodrow back.”