The Incubus, Succubus and Son of Perdition Box Set: The Len du Randt Bundle (9 page)

‘When should we
go?’ Justin asked, the reality of the situation making him feel light headed
and sick in the stomach. He wondered how much extra this whole ordeal would
cost them.

The doctor
picked up the phone and dialled a short-code extension. ‘Hello, Veronica? This
is Doctor Taylor, how are you?’ She paused to listen to the woman on the other
end making small talk. ‘I’m glad it worked out for you,’ she said, and then got
straight to the point. ‘Ronnie, I’ve got a couple here that I’m sending over to
you. I’m not picking up a heartbeat on the ultrasound and would like to know if
you could take them for a second opinion.’

Justin stroked
Rebecca’s hand. ‘It’s going to be fine,’ he whispered.

‘That would be
perfect,’ the doctor said and scribbled something on a notepad. ‘Justin and
Rebecca Greene. Great! I’ll send them over right away.’

Justin almost
groaned out loud. He felt fatigued. No strength to go through this. He just
wanted to lay his head on a pillow and sleep until all this was over.

The doctor
placed the note in an envelope and sealed it. ‘Take this,’ she said and handed
the envelope to Justin. ‘Give it to the lady at the counter in the Radiology
department. She’ll assist you.’

‘Where is the
Radiology department?’ Justin asked.

‘When you leave
this office, just walk straight down the passageway. It’s the first entrance on
your left.’

Justin nodded
and stood up. He had to hold on to the chair for support as the blood rushed
back to his head. Rebecca smiled weakly as he helped her up, but the redness in
her eyes told a different story.

‘Come back here
when you’re done there,’ Doctor Taylor said.

‘Okay,’ Justin
said coarsely. Holding her by the arm, he escorted Rebecca from the office.
They slowly made their way to the reception desk at the Radiology department
where Justin handed the note to the lady behind the counter. They were asked to
wait, and a few minutes later they were led to the x-ray room. The coldness and
emptiness of the room reminded Justin of a typical scene in from those old
science fiction movies where the government stored and dissected alien beings.

‘Lie down here,’
an overweight nurse with a stern face commanded Rebecca. The process was
similar to that at Doctor Taylor’s office, but the equipment looked somewhat
different. For the briefest moment, Justin felt a glimmer of hope when he saw a
pulse on the screen. The Radiologist informed him that it was merely Rebecca’s
heartbeat. ‘What we’re looking for,’ she said, ‘are little colourful dots on
the screen. That would be the heartbeat.’ She pointed to a certain area on the
screen. ‘You see these pulsating dots here?’ she asked. Justin and Rebecca both
nodded. ‘Those are her veins. You see them as coloured dots on the screen
because of the blood pumping through them.’

‘Okay,’ Justin
said.

‘This is where
the baby is,’ she said and pointed at another spot. ‘And as you can see, there
are no dots.’ She pressed some buttons and zoomed in on the image, but still
there were none of the colourful dots near the baby’s heart.

Justin swallowed
hard at the knot in his throat.

Finally the
doctor shook her head. ‘There’s nothing there,’ she said. Justin noticed the
lack of emotion and wondered how a person that did this for a living dealt with
telling hopeful parents the same news every day.

The Radiologist
signed a note and sent them back to Doctor Taylor’s office where they waited
another thirty minutes before she was free to see them again. Justin handed her
the note and as she read it, her eyes saddened. Both Justin and Rebecca knew
what she was going to say even before she spoke.

‘I’m sorry,’ she
said softly. ‘There was nothing.’ She waited a while for the information to
sink in. ‘As I said before; one in three pregnancies end this way.’ She said it
as if it was supposed to make them feel better. ‘We don’t know why it happens.
It just does.’ Justin squeezed Rebecca’s hand and she squeezed back. He
couldn’t begin to imagine how she must feel through the entire ordeal. ‘You
have two options,’ Doctor Taylor said matter-of-factly. ‘You can have the
foetus removed surgically with a scrape, or you can wait for it to happen
naturally.’

What kind of
choice is that?
Justin wondered. He bit his lip and
saw a tear slide down Rebecca’s cheek. ‘What do you think, baby?’ he asked her
softly. He figured that it was her body and that she alone had a say in the
matter.

‘You could wait
until the end of this coming weekend to see if something happens,’ the doctor
said. ‘And then if nothing happens, we can do the procedure on Monday morning.’

‘To see if
something happens?’ Justin asked, and for a brief moment he felt a glimmer of
hope. ‘To see if there’s a heartbeat?’

Doctor Taylor
sadly shook her head. ‘There’s no heartbeat,’ she said as if telling him
something new. ‘Waiting the week would be to see if the foetus aborts
naturally. If nothing happens, I will have to operate.’

‘Do you want to
wait?’ Justin asked Rebecca. She didn’t answer, but nodded slightly as she
looked down to hide her tears. Justin looked at the doctor. ‘We’ll wait,’ he
said.

They thanked the
doctor for her time, and left the office. When they got to their car, Justin
turned around and took Rebecca in his arms. She couldn’t keep it in any longer
and burst into tears. Justin just held her tightly. He had no words of comfort.
Nothing to say that would make it easier for her; nothing that would make the
pain more bearable. So he just stood there, feeling small and powerless as he
held his crying wife.

*    -    -   
-    *

Rebecca was
silent on the way home, staring absent-mindedly out into the distance at
nothing in particular. Justin desperately wanted to say something to make his
wife feel better, but he knew that there was nothing; not one word or sentence
would make this better for her, and so he decided to rather keep quiet. She did
the same.

What have we
done to deserve something like this?
Her voice
replayed in his thoughts. For a moment he wondered if there was indeed
something that they—or he, for that matter—had done to deserve this as some
kind of punishment; some way for the universe to get back at him for something
that he had wronged in his life. Justin’s knuckles whitened around the steering
wheel. Possibilities and memories flooded his pattern of thought. Could it have
been the night he kissed Megan? He shook his head to clear it of the thought,
but it remained. Was it something Rebecca drank? Was it the food they ate? The
air they breathed? The possibilities became more absurd with each new thought.
He cleared his head and looked at his wife. She had her head turned away from
him, pressed against the window. Justin could sense that she was crying. As a
gesture of comfort, he placed his hand on hers. She pulled her hand back and
placed it on her stomach. He got the message and continued driving with both
hands on the steering wheel.

*    -    -   
-    *

‘Simon,’ Justin
said when he finally had a chance to be alone with him in the kitchen. ‘I need
to ask you something.’

‘Sure, Justin,’
Simon said. ‘What’s on your mind?’

Just then Sue
from accounting walked in. The two men greeted her and took a step back. For a
moment there was nothing more than an awkward silence. Simon tugged at Justin’s
sleeve. ‘Come,’ he said and nodded towards the door. ‘Let’s go.’

The two of them
left through it after greeting Sue, and headed for the little garden next to
the canteen.

‘What’s up?’
Simon asked.

Justin looked
around to see that no one could hear them talk. ‘I’m not sure if I should be
talking to you about this or not,’ he said. He placed his hands in his pockets
and jiggled his car keys.

‘Don’t feel
pressured,’ Simon said. ‘You don’t have to talk about anything if you’re not
ready.’

Justin took a
deep breath and let it out slowly. Though still somewhat a stranger, he felt
that he could talk to Simon about anything. Besides Rebecca, he hadn’t felt
this comfortable with anyone in his life before. Was it the man’s friendliness?
His charisma? Maybe his child-like innocence? Justin didn’t know what it was,
but he wanted to tell Simon things that not even Rebecca knew about him. ‘It’s
about my wife,’ he said.

Simon’s eyes
were focussed intently on Justin. With a non-threatening nod, he prompted
Justin to continue.

‘She
was...pregnant.’

‘Was...?’

Justin bit his
lip and nodded. ‘She had a miscarriage.’

‘Oh man,’ Simon
said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

Justin could
hear the sincerity in his voice. He could tell that Simon was genuinely
compassionate.

‘We were at the
doctor yesterday, and they couldn’t see a heartbeat. We’re going for a surgical
scrape on Monday.’

‘Does Lance know
about this?’

Justin shook his
head. He didn’t want to discuss his personal problems with his brand new
employer. The only reason that he spoke to Simon was because he needed a
shoulder, and Simon was the only person that he felt he could trust.

‘You have to
tell Lance.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you’ll
need leave for Monday,’ Simon said. ‘And most probably on Tuesday and Wednesday
too.’

‘I do?’ Justin
asked. It only struck him then that it would be best to be with Rebecca
during—and after—the operation, for both physical and emotional support.

‘Don’t worry
about it. I’ll talk to Lance if you’d like.’

‘You would do
that?’

Simon nodded.
‘No worries. Leave it up to me.’

‘Thank you,’
Justin said and forced a weak smile. ‘I guess it would really mean a lot to
Becky, eh?’

Simon stared at
the little waterfall for a moment. A leaf bobbed between the rocks and
continued its course down the little makeshift river into the pond. ‘How is she
coping with it?’ he asked, not taking his eyes from the leaf.

‘She’s all
right, I guess,’ Justin said. ‘Sometimes I can’t help but wonder why something
like this would happen to us.’ He looked at Simon and shrugged. ‘You’re
religious, right?’

‘I believe that
God created the heavens and the Earth,’ Simon said. ‘I believe that He is the
Son, the Father, and the Holy Spirit. If that’s what you mean.’

‘Rebecca does
too,’ Justin said. ‘I can’t get myself to believe in something that would do
this to someone. What did we do for Him to want to punish us?’

Simon didn’t
answer at first, and Justin wondered if he even heard the question. After a
moment of thought, Simon said, ‘It is not for man to know the reasons that God
has for allowing certain things to happen. We are way too limited in our
thinking. God created a self-sustaining universe. Everything interacts. Gravity
ensures that what goes up, must come down. Volcanoes erupt naturally. Some people
die because of that. Villages flood and people drown. We don’t know why.’

‘Does this God
of yours have control over those who die and those who don’t?’

Simon nodded.
‘Yes.’

‘So He
ultimately decides who lives and who dies, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then why did He
choose for our baby to die?’

Simon shook his
head. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t think that anyone would be able to
answer that question other than God Himself. One day, we will have a renewed
mind, and only then, will we completely understand.’

‘Do you think it
might have been something that I did,’ he asked and flinched when the evening
with Megan surfaced from memory. ‘Some previous sin that I committed?’

‘I don’t think
so,’ Simon said. ‘But if you are aware of any sins that have not been forgiven,
and you ask forgiveness for those sins, the Lord will remain faithful and
forgive you.’

‘And what if I
haven’t ever asked for forgiveness?’

‘Then now is
always a good time to.’

Justin weighed
Simon’s words for a moment. ‘It’s not that simple,’ he said.

‘Actually,’
Simon said. ‘It is.’ He smiled. ‘When you’re ready, the Holy Spirit will
convict you. Don’t force it.’

Justin didn’t
like where the conversation was headed. He had been cornered by enough soul
winners to know the signs of a coming conversion session. ‘Thanks for the
chat,’ he said. ‘I really needed it.’

‘Anytime,’ Simon
said. ‘Don’t be too rough on yourself, okay?’

Justin nodded.

‘In the
meantime, I’ll go talk to Lance.’

With that, they
both re-entered the building and went their separate ways.

*    -    -   
-    *