Vamps: Human and Paranormal (50 page)

I sat down and helped myself to chocolate shake and General Pso’s. When Julia and Rupert started talking about the wedding pact, that’s when Bess asked, “So what the hell happened?”

“Gus showed up.”

“Christ!”

“Then Dean showed up.”

“Could it get any worse?”

I nodded as Julia’s glowing smile turned to a woeful scowl, remembering she was the exact age of the marriage pact.  “Gus told Dean he wasn’t the right man for me.”

“Ah huh ... so did he offer any replacement fiancés”

“Yeah, him.”

“I’m sure that went well,”  Bess looked around the apartment.  “Don’t see any blood or signs of a fight.”

“I told Gus to leave, and he did.  Then I was about to tell Dean...”  my voice trailed off.

“Tell Dean what?”

Shaking my head, “I don’t really know.”  Tears filled my eyes and Bess ran a hand through my still damp hair. 

“It’ll be okay, cupcake.  There’s no rush.”

*****

“Pregnant?”   Bess shrieked at nine am the next morning.

“She said, ‘pregnancy test.’”  I scolded.  “She said she wanted to run a pregnancy test.”  I turned to my doctor and felt a desperate edge run through my guts, percolating in my blood.  “You did say just a test, right?”

Doctor Olivia just smiled.  “Don’t worry, it’s just a precaution.  Any of my patients of childbearing years that faint always have a pregnancy test performed.  It’s my standard practice.”  She sifted through some paperwork.  “Dr. Coulter faxed me that you fainted while standing, and that you were out for approximately five minutes.”

Oh my god, Dean faxed her?

“He also said your glucose level was only sixty-nine.  Let me guess you didn’t eat anything yesterday.”

“I was really nervous.”  I said.

“All hell broke loose yesterday,”  Bess added.

I shot Bess a scathing look.

“So,”  Doctor Olivia went on.  “It was a high stress day.”

“Yes--”

“Doctor Coulter asked her to marry him yesterday.  The thing is ... OUCH!  Jesus Christ!”

I stamped my foot down on Bess’ toes, leaving her not only in pain, but her Minolo Blaniks smudged.

Doctor Olivia looked at us with a plainly worried expression on her face.

“But I feel great now.”  I tried to beam happiness at her.  “Right as rain.”

There was a knock at the door and a nurse walked in and handed me a cup and some sterile wipes.  I was really going to have to take a pregnancy test.  What if it was positive?  What if I had the baby and married Dean, forgot about Gus and started to live someone else’s life.

My head felt all warm and fuzzy, and then it started to feel kind of cold.

“Lucy, are you alright?”  Doctor Olivia asked.  “You suddenly look pale.”

I took a deep breath and willed myself not to pass out.  One, two, three ... just breathe ... four, five, six ... push that fucking dark curtain back ... breathe.

As the dark cold subsided I turned to look to the doctor.  “This is another of those stressful days.”

If I’m not pregnant, then I have to face Dean, and that means I have to figure out what’s going on with him and me and Gus.

I tried to shake it off again as I stood to go to the lady’s room to pee in my cup, but suddenly the world lurched out from under me, and that fucking dark curtain fell over me, cold and heavy.

*****

Chapter
24

“Did she hit her head?”  Doctor Olivia was saying--her voice sounding like I was in some kind of echo chamber.

“No,”  Bess said.  “I caught her on the way down.”

I could suddenly feel that I was laying on Bess, and she had her arms wrapped around me.

“Good catch,”  I said.

“I need hazard pay next time I take you to the doctor’s office.” 

Doctor Olivia cut in.  “I’m sending you to the hospital by ambulance for some more tests, things I can’t test for in the office.”

“Ambulance?  Hospital?  Ah, no ... I don’t need --”

The look on Doctor Olivia’s face made me stop talking.  She looked like my Mother for a moment ... or maybe my freshmen gym teacher ... I was scared shitless of her.

“As I was saying, you’re going to the hospital by ambulance for testing, and that’s the end of this little conversation.  Got it?”

I nodded.  “Yes ma’am.”

Her face brightened and she was smiling doctor Olivia once more.  “Good.  Anyways, we don’t want your friend here to have to break your fall again, do we?”

As she walked back to her desk and phoned her staff to call an ambulance. Bess let out a slow, low whistle.  “I’m glad she wasn’t my mom.”

*****

Doctor Olivia didn’t send me to my hospital, thank god, but she did send me to Dean’s.  He met us at the door to the ER, worry etched all over his handsome face.

“I knew I should have taken you here last night.”  Dean was jogging beside the gurney as they wheeled me through the twin, squealing automatic glass doors.  The sounds of the city didn’t disappear as they usually did when you walked into a building.  Instead, they were intensified to a harsh sharp blare.  The paint on the walls was worn and faded, and the place reeked of body odor and other things I didn’t want to know about. 

“She just fainted again,”  Bess said.  “But I caught her.”

Dean rounded on her, barking, “You’re an idiot!  Thank god you’re not in the medical field anymore!”  

Bess looked stunned, more hurt than I’d ever seen her.

“Don’t yell at her!”  I grabbed his arm from the gurney and pulled him away from her.  “She was just doing what I wanted.  If you’re going to blame someone, blame me.”

His anger evaporated immediately and he looked dazed and confused as we all headed down the hall to a room.  “I could never be angry with you.”

The moment I heard him say it I knew I was going to make him eat those words, that yes indeed, he’d end up hating me by the time the day was over.

Two nurses worked on me, taking vitals, taking blood, calling x-ray, even stripping me out of my clothes and making me put on one of those hideous hospital gowns.  Just wearing it made my skin crawl. 

Get a grip, I told myself.  You work in a hospital, for heaven’s sake.  But working in the Physical therapy department and being a patient in the Emergency Room were totally different things.

Bess and Dean came in when the nurses had finished, and they stood on either side of me, Dean looking not only nervous but like he couldn’t stand not being able to help.  The ER resident was treating me under Doctor Olivia’s instructions.  Bess had my hand and I could feel her shaking, no matter how brave and confident she looked.

“You don’t have to stay,”  I told Dean.  “Bess will stay with me.”

Dean glowered at Bess, and then shook his head.  “I’m not going anywhere.”

Suddenly one of the nurses came back in.  “I need to collect a urine sample.”  She came to the side of the bed Dean was standing on and smiled at me.  “I’ll help you to the restroom.”

“Urine test?”  Dean said.

I felt my insides churn, and Bess’ grip on my hand tightened.

“A pregnancy test is just routine when the patient has fainted.”

Again with that goddamn word!  I fucking hated it.

But then I saw the stunned, happy look on Dean’s face.

Bess let go of my hand as the nurse pulled me into the restroom to make my deposit.  She handed me a wet wipe as she placed a sterile urine catcher on the toilet, locking it in place with the toilet lid.  I looked at her as if to say, I can take it from here.

“I can’t leave you in here alone ... you fainted,”  She said.

That word!  I hate, hate, hate that Motherfucking word!

I dropped my shorts and felt the room spin as I sank down onto the toilet.  I tried to pee, but nothing came.  I must be pee shy.  “Sorry, I can’t go,”  I said.

The nurse nodded and then turned on the water faucet.  “Old nurse trick.”  About ten seconds later I was peeing up a storm.  I must’ve had half my body weight in my kidneys. 

As I stood back up and the nurse poured the pee into the little plastic cup until it was full, I started thinking.  “I can’t be pregnant,”  I said, sitting back down on the toilet, feeling a little wobbly.  “We used condoms every time.”

The nurse said cheerily: “Condoms are only eighty-nine percent effective.”

“What?”  I sat up and my eyes bugged out on me.

“Yeah, they’ve done studies and everything”  The nurse twisted the plastic cup closed and labeled it with a pre-printed label.   “Me personally, I take the pill, use condoms and a foam.”

“Really...all that?”

She leaned in conspiratorially, and I could smell
Candy
wafting from her skin.  “I work mad hours, and the only men I see all day are doctors...you think I wanna get knocked-up by one of them?”

My jaw dropped.  Simultaneously I started wondering how shitty a doctor could be when he impregnates a girl?  And I was suddenly wondering if this perky little nurse had been with Dean?

She looked at me; her expression turned from bemused to concerned.  “Oh honey, I’m just such an airhead.  Dean’s not like the other doctors.  You’ve got a good one there.”

“Really?”

“Hell yeah.  Every nurse I know -- me included -- has tried to put the moves on him.  Until we heard about you we thought he was gay.”

I didn’t know how to take that.  Happy because he wasn’t a pussy-hound creep, depressed and guilty because he’d saved himself for me, and here I was on the verge of breaking his heart.

And for what?  A man that has never even asked me out.  A man that if truth be told, I not only dislike, but only wants to fuck me.  A man so loathsome that he’d poach another man’s girlfriend ... no, fiancé

“Honey, I can take you back to bed now.”

That’s how I got into this mess.

*****

When I emerged from the restroom Dean was glowing, his cheeks flushed, a wide eyed goofy smile on his face.  Again I had to ask myself why I wasn’t in love with him?

“The lab’s jammed up,”  she told Dean, smiling.  “So it might take up to an hour.”

Bess saw the look of panic on my face.  “An hour?”  She fumed.  “What are you talking about?  We could go to the store and get a stick for her to pee on, and have the results in ten minutes!”

“Those are only seventy five percent accurate.”  The nurse and Dean said in chorus.

I shook my head.  Next thing you know someone’s going to tell me that you can get pregnant by using the bathroom after your boyfriend.

When he turned around he looked like a puppy waiting for a piece of bacon.  I looked to Bess for help.

“Our girl here was wondering if you could go get her some Jell-o.  You know, the green kind with little marshmallows in it?”

He looked to me all excited and said, “Sure, marshmallows and Jell-o.”

“Green, if they have it.”  Bess said.

“You got it,”  Dean beamed at me and he was gone like a shot.

“Thanks,”  I sighed.  “I needed for him not to be here anymore.”

“Me too.  If he gave me another scornful look I was going to slap him.”  She smoothed a hand over the back of her neck.  “That or fuck him.”

“Bess!”

“What?”  She looked nonplussed.  “You’ve already said you’re not interested in him like that anymore.”

“But now I might be pregnant with his baby ... and what about your rule about not dating your clients?”

“Who said anything about dating him?”  She poured herself a glass of water from the pitcher and took a long drink.  “I wanna fuck him, not marry him.”

Sadly I slouched down in the hard hospital bed, pulling the stiff sheet up to my chest.  “Play your cards right and you can do both.”

Bess snorted.

*****

Two hours later we were all still waiting for the results to the pregnancy test.  Seemed there was a multi-car pileup and the majority of the victims were being brought to St Vincent’s.  Dean was paged and reluctantly went off to help.  So that left Bess and I alone, no TV or anything to keep us entertained.

“I don’t get it!”  Bess fumed.  “It’s just some piss in a cup, what the fuck’s taking so long!”

“Did you miss all the bloodied people on gurneys passing by the door?  I’m surprised they haven’t kicked us out of this room.”

And as if on cue a nurse came in with papers in her hands.  “All but one of your tests have come back, and the doctor thinks everything looks okay.  We’re going to send you home and call you when the last test comes back.”

“Let me get this right ...” Bess got right in the nurse’s face.  “We’ve been here for hours and now you’re kicking us out without telling us if she’s knocked up or not?  You can’t just tell her that, it’ll drive her fucking crazy!”