Surrogate (8 page)

     "Robbie," she whispered, and in that moment, it was Carrie's voice. His Carrie.  He felt his throat tighten, and he wanted to hold onto that one moment and never let it go, afraid it might not come again.

     "It's all right, baby," he whispered.  "Just let me get you inside."

     She swallowed hard.  "There's not much time."  Tears filmed her eyes and threatened to spill down her face.  "You don't understand.

     She was right, he thought, tightening his hold.  There seemed an urgency about her, one that made him hasten his steps in carrying her to the bedroom and easing her down onto the mattress.

     By the time Robbie had lain her down, new tears had replaced the old, and he felt he was stumbling in the dark again.  He was lousy with tears, and this time he sensed there was something really big causing them. 

     But why had her speech pattern changed, almost as though there had been someone else in her body?  That made no sense, and a cold chill swept down his spine. 
     He started to stand and take off his shoes when Carrie grabbed his hand, drawing him closer.  "Robbie."  It was a whisper, a plea.

     "What?"  He leaned in, kissing her cheek.  "Why are you crying?"  His voice was soft, and yet the pain growing inside him made speaking nearly impossible, at least without crying.  He didn't have a clue what was haunting his wife, but he could feel it inside him, too, threatening to destroy everything he loved.

     "It...doesn't matter."  She set her palms to each side of his face and forced him to look deeply into her eyes, holding her palms there for what seemed an eternity, with her breath the only sound breaking the silence.  His was slower as he forced himself to keep calm, telling himself he could handle anything.

     "I don't understand," he whispered.  "You have to tell me."

     "I...can't."

     The frightened look in her eyes cut through him, and he wanted to feel everything would be all right, but he wasn't sure he'd be able to feel that way again no matter how diligently he tried. 

     "You're scaring me, kiddo."

     He thought she'd laugh at that, but she didn't.  She just kept staring at him, seeming to memorize everything about him.  Even more unnerved, he eased himself on the mattress beside her and kissed her again.

     "What can I do?" he asked, longing for something to make all this easier.  There was no doctor who could help him with what was going on, no friend who would understand what he, himself, could not.  There was only Carrie.

     "I love you," Carrie said, stroking his face.  "I've always loved you, and I will always love you."

     Her eyelids fluttered slightly, almost seeming to stumble in that motion before finally closing completely. The movement frightened Robbie because it reminded him of someone dying, which baffled him.  Carrie was fine.  Even the doctor had remarked at how strangely well she was considering what her injuries should have been.

     "Carrie?" he whispered, thinking he could call her back to him.

     No response.

     Her hands slipped from his face, and the panic mounted.

     "Carrie?  Can you hear me?" 

     In the still of the night, he struggled to detect whether she were breathing, but she was so still, he couldn't tell.

     "Damn it, Carrie--answer me!"  He leaned over so his cheek was next to her mouth as he prayed for her next breath. When it came, it was extremely soft and slow, but it was there nonetheless.

     Unsettled, Robbie felt his shoulders cave beneath the sudden relief.  Of course, that didn't tell him what had just happened, but then again, maybe he didn't want to know.  He laid his head on Carrie's chest and listened to the soft, steady gallop of her heart. 

     His wife was alive, and that was enough, he promised himself, but just as the sun lay hiding in the distance, waiting to rise, Robbie felt something uneasy stirring in him.

Chapter Six

     Robbie woke early the next morning and felt he hadn't slept at all.  It had been a long time since nightmares had reached for him, but last night they had come with a vengeance.  He kept dreaming he was down the road from the wreck and could see it unfold even as he ran as fast as he could, trying to get there and stop it.

     A glimmer of light swooped into the road in front of Carrie's car.  Carrie must have seen it at the last moment, as she'd swerved to miss it, sending her car flying toward the ditch; the only thing had had stopped it had been the huge tree it slammed into.

     More than once, Robbie had woken in a cold sweat as the dream played out over and over, and no matter how many times he told himself it didn't matter--that it was just a nightmare--he would go through it again until he finally woke for the last time, drenched in sweat and raw from the night.

     He glanced at the clock.  5:30.  Granted, it was around the time he usually woke, but nothing about his life felt normal anymore.  He looked at Carrie who was turned on her side toward him.  She seemed so calm--so unaware of the tremors that had been rocking his world all night--and rather than risk disturbing her, he eased from the bed and headed for the shower, figuring that soaking in hot water might help alleviate the stress.  No, a shower wouldn't change anything, but it might help him focus, and he was going to need that to help him figure out a way to explain the differences in his wife to Beth.  Hell, he wasn't able to even explain it to himself, so he didn't have a clue how he was going to get it past Carrie's best friend.

     After the shower, Robbie felt a little better, and with it came a tighter sense of focus.  Still, it brought the details of his dream into sharper focus.  Or at least one detail into sharper focus as well--or at least one detail in particular.  Something that seemed altogether random and senseless. In the dream, he'd seen something silver cross Carrie's path, but the  object hadn't been grounded, not like a car.  It also traveled perpendicular to Carrie's path.  The wreck had occurred in the  middle of a road, not at the mile intersection.  So whatever he had dreamed had not been a car.  It had been above Carrie's car, which had been the only reason she hadn't hit it in the first place.

     "It was just a stupid dream," Robbie snapped as he went for the coffee pot.

     Still, as he sipped his coffee, he found himself going back over the dream again.  What bothered him most, besides not being able to get there in time to stop what happened, just like he had been unable to do in real life, was that it didn't feel like any dream he'd ever had.  Usually his nightmares had weird elements--pink bunnies with machine guns or stupid crap like that.  Also, the timeline were always scrambled.  Things happened out of order, and there was confusion.  There was always something in them to tell him he was having a dream, which is why no dreams, no matter how horrific, had ever actually scared him.  His mind could always tell the difference between dream and life. 

     This time there were no elements that didn't fit, and all the events had been sequential.  He could feel the wind blowing around him as the chaos unfolded.  He could hear himself screaming his wife's name, yet those screams hadn't followed him into the waking world, not unless the wreck had damaged Carrie's hearing, which he knew hadn't happened.  Still, she slept on her side, turned toward him, unaware of the warzone in his mind.

     "Get over it, will you?" he snapped, setting the coffee cup on the counter and rolling his shoulders, trying to ease the tension.  "It was just a stupid dream."

     Still, that dream was with him when he glanced at the clock, watching the slow tick of time unwind around him.  In about an hour, he'd wake Carrie so she could get ready for Beth's arrival.  Gritting his teeth, he tried to reason through what he planned to tell Beth with regard to the differences in Carrie, but while he was glad his wife was okay, others seemed freaked out by the whole ordeal, and if one more person asked him if he'd seen the wreckage, he was probably going to go homicidal--or just give in and go see what remained of his wife's car.

     Robbie picked up his mug and trudged into the living room, where he turned on the television and watched the early edition of the news, the biggest story being the heat wave that had settled across the state and showed no sign of budging.  There was no hint of rain in the ten-day forecast, and that was going to be bad for the farmers who were depending on it.

     Leaning back in the recliner, Robbie watched the rest of the news and let the words and images blur together until he was no longer really even paying attention.  He tried not to think about the dream, but the silence teemed with an urgency he didn't understand, and that seemed like an obvious sort of place to find the source of it.  Since his wife was physically fine, it had to be the dream that wouldn't let him go.

     The stillness was mindnumbing around him, and he'd almost drifted off when he realized he needed to rouse his wife or Beth would show up on the doorstep before Carrie was ready.

     Raking his fingers through his hair, Robbie stood, walked back to the bedroom, and sat back on his side of the bed as he set his mug on the nightstand. Carrie was still lying in the same position as before, one hand tucked under her chin, and her knees drawn close to her chest.

     Despite the stress of the last few days, Robbie found himself smiling as he watched his wife sleeping so peacefully the world around her had ceased to exist.  He couldn't remember the last time he'd slept that well, and part of him envied her that kind of peace, especially since he sensed that, with his child about to enter the world, he was going to find so many more things to make him nervous, things far beyond his control.

     "Carrie, baby, it's time to get up.  You need to get ready because Beth is going to be here in an hour or so."  He reached out and gently caressed her cheek.

     While his words didn't get much of a reaction, his fingers on her skin caused a muffled groan as she stirred, her eyes clenched shut even more tightly than before.  Now those were all typically Carrie-isms.  She'd hated mornings long before she'd ever gotten pregnant.  Her nine-month condition had only exacerbated her frustration at dawn's early light.

     "Maybe you need caffiene more than I do?"  Robbie grinned and reached for his mug. 

     Carrie turned over and fell still again; she'd drifted back to sleep. 

     "Hey there," Robbie said, gently prodding her side.  "You've really got to get a move on, kiddo.  You've actually slept later than I intended, and I seriously doubt you want Beth tromping in here and dragging you to the shower.  You know she'll do it." 

     Robbie grinned and leaned over the other side so he could check out her expression.

     One eyelid opened slowly, and she slowly sat up, one hand drifting to her belly, checking to make sure the baby were still there.

     "Yep, Carrie--you're still pregnant."  He waited for her to push the hair from her face before holding out the mug.  "Maybe this will help wake you."

     She stared at the mug, unsure whether she wanted to take it, but as Robbie nudged it closer and pretty much left her no choice, she took it in her hands, staring at it a moment before finally lifting it to her mouth and taking a drink. She grimaced.

     "Yeah, it's hot," Robbie said.  "I'm sorry.  I guess I should have warned you."  He leaned forward and pecked her cheek before easing himself off the bed.  "Now that you're awake, I'll just get out of your hair.  Beth seems to think the two of you have a big day ahead, what with all the shower plans."

     She watched him silently with those bottomless eyes, eyes that now seemed so different; they were timeless.  Yes, they were still beautiful, but somehow they had lost the impishness he'd cherished; his playful wife had been taken over by an old soul, and while he knew pregnancies tended to change women, he hadn't expected this.  Then again, who could have imagined it?

     As Carrie rose from the bed and padded awkwardly down the hall to the bathroom so she could shower, Robbie reached out and touched the place on the pillow where, just a moment ago, her head had lain.  The pillow was still warm, and he rested his hand there for a few moments before getting up and ambling the kitchen to make his wife some breakfast.  Yes, the chance was good that Beth might be bringing food, but it wouldn't hurt for Carrie to eat before her best friend arrived, just in case whatever Beth thought would be appetizing didn't appeal to Carrie and might upset her stomach.

     He was pouring the last of the waffle batter into the maker when he saw Carrie emerge, her hair dark from water still dripping from the ends.  It was temporary.  As soon as she brushed through it and it dried, the light would catch the reddish-blonde strands and burnish them, casting highlights in her hair.

     "Did you enjoy your shower?" he asked, shutting the waffle iron.

     "It was okay."  Although her voice sounded a little more normal, there was still a strange detachment to it.

     "Well, then."  He pushed  a plate with two waffles bathed in syrup, just as she liked them, at Carrie.  "I fixed waffles in hopes the breadiness might take the edge off your stomach. Last week, you had nasty heartburn."

     Her eyes met his, and, as usual, he swam in their darkness while awaiting an answer.  She offered none.  Instead, her she looked at her plate.