right. Even if that teacher wasn’t human. I was just using Danica and her problems to distract myself from my own, and that wasn’t fair for either of us.
Half ashamed of myself and half irrationally irritated, I had one hand on the door handle when the bed creaked behind me.
“You’re not a nurse.”
I turned slowly, suddenly nervous. I had no idea what to say to her. How to explain my presence. We weren’t friends. I didn’t have any similar personal experience or wisdom to share with her. I was just snooping. And now I’d been caught.
“Kaylee Cavanaugh?” Danica squinted into the shadows beyond her bed, and I nodded.
“Yeah. Hi.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I was…visiting a friend. Then I remembered you were here, and thought you might like some company.”
She didn’t smile and wave me over. But she didn’t yell for security, either. “Isn’t it kinda late for visitors?”
I shrugged and came forward slowly, my hands in my pockets. “Yeah, but I can hang till I get caught, if you want.”
Danica stared at the hands she was twisting together, and I knew she was going to tell me to get lost. But then she looked up, and there were tears standing in her eyes, and I realized that maybe her problems
I sat in the armchair by the window, and we avoided looking at each other, neither of us sure what to say. But finally Danica sighed and pressed the button to raise the back of her bed, then she leaned against the pillow and rolled her head to face me. “So, I guess everyone’s talking about what happened?”
“Well, it’s probably safe to say that the girls’ quarter-final basketball loss is no longer big news.”
Danica nodded slowly. “What are they saying?”
“The most extreme theory I’ve heard so far is that you’re dying of colon cancer.” Another shrug. “But most people think you had a miscarriage.” Which I knew for sure.
Danica rubbed tears from her eyes with the heels of both hands. “Everything’s so messed up….”
“Messed up seems to be my natural state of being. But if it makes you feel any better, Max has your back. He’s telling everyone you couldn’t be pregnant, ’cause you guys never…” I let my words trail off toward the obvious conclusion, and Danica’s eyes overflowed again.
I felt bad about manipulating her. I really did. But I couldn’t tell her I knew the rumors were true, because she’d ask how I knew. So I needed her to tell me herself.
“Yeah. Max doesn’t have my back anymore,” she sniffled. “He came to see me after school, and I had to tell him the truth.” Another sniffle, and this time she reached for a tissue from the rolling tray table.
“The truth?” I held my breath. She wouldn’t tell me. I mean,
“I was pregnant. But it wasn’t his.”
I actually glanced around the room in surprise, looking for evidence of medical malpractice in the form of unregulated, judgment-impairing pain medication. But then I saw her watching me, looking for something in my expression, and I realized that she wasn’t overmedicated. She just needed a friend.
“Wow.” And suddenly I felt guilty for pumping her for information just to distract myself from my own encroaching expiration date, when all she wanted was a friendly ear. “So…how’d he take it?”
Danica wadded her tissue in one hand, then dropped it onto her lap. “At first he just looked at me, like he wasn’t sure he’d heard me right. Then he got this awful heartbroken look, like I’d told him I murdered his puppy. Then he just turned around and walked right out the door without a word.” She sighed and tossed the tissue toward the can, where it landed a foot and a half shy. “The only visitor I’ve had, until you, and he leaves hating me. But I guess I deserve that.”
Her only visitor? “Your parents didn’t come?”
“My mom’s…sick. And my dad won’t talk to me. The doctor told him what happened, and he left without even coming in to say hi. Because, you know, the shame is contagious.” For a moment, biting sarcasm eclipsed the obvious pain in her voice, and I found myself hating a father who wasn’t mine. A man I’d never met. “And now I’ve lost Max, too. And I don’t even know how this happened!”
“You don’t…?” I started, brows raised, but Danica rolled her tear-reddened eyes.
“I mean, I
“It was just one night?” I said, stunned by the thought that a single mistake could throw her whole life into chaos.
Danica nodded miserably. “Less than that, really. It was just a couple of hours about a month ago. Afterward I tried to put it behind me and move on, but every time I see him, I want him all over again, even though I hate myself for what I did to Max. How horrible does that make me?” She covered her face with both hands. “Why can’t I get him out of my head?”
I waited, hoping she’d let a name slip, but when her hands fell, she only stared at the wall across from her bed, shoulders slumped, eyes starting to lose focus. Maybe she was a little medicated after all.
“Did you know you were pregnant?” I whispered, wondering if I’d worn out my welcome. She looked like she wanted to go back to sleep for a long, long time.
Danica nodded slowly. “I found out last week. That was the only bright spot.” She blinked, then faced me again. “I was going to keep it. I don’t know how—my dad would rather kick me out than claim a bastard grandchild—but I would have found a way. Then this morning, I passed out in first period and woke up in the hospital, and bam, my whole life’s ruined.” She let the tears fall that time, and they rolled down her face to drip on the white blanket.
I leaned forward, hurting for her and desperate to help. But I was in over my head. I had no experience with peer counseling, and no matter what Sabine had to say about my inexperience and naivety, I wasn’t exactly a shining example of the adolescent ideal. Just ask my dad.
“Your life isn’t ruined, Danica,” I insisted, scrambling for something to support that statement. “Max might get over this, if you tell him how much he means to you. And even if he doesn’t, you have a whole lifetime to decide who you want to be with, and if you want kids later, you can…”
“No, I can’t.” Danica stared down at her fingers, shredding a second tissue all over the bedspread, and the flat, dead quality of her voice sent chills through me. “I can’t have kids, Kaylee. Not anymore. Whatever went wrong with this one ruined it for the rest of them.”
I leaned back in my chair, devastated for her and stunned beyond words.
“I know I wasn’t ready,” Danica began, and this time her voice was alive with bitter pain. “It was probably stupid of me to think I could handle it. But now I don’t even have that option. What kind of screwed-up world is this, when the doctor can stand there and tell a seventeen-year-old that her insides are so messed up that she can’t support life. Ever. And they can’t even tell me why. That’s the real bitch.”
I nodded for lack of a better response, oddly relieved to find her anger outshining her grief. “They don’t know what happened?”
She shook her head miserably. “They have more tests to run, but all they know now is that this morning I was pregnant, and now I’m not, and I lost a ton of blood in the process. That doesn’t usually happen in a first trimester miscarriage, according to the doc, but I needed a transfusion.”
She got quiet then, with her head against the pillow, and I thought she was falling asleep.
