Loss, a paranormal thriller (10 page)

Bizzy, that damned, loveable little dog.  Chasing whoever had made those noises in the woods, and Angie, not wanting to experience another devastating loss, chasing after her.

And winding up back in her bed when she'd all but conceded her life to the wild.  Somehow she'd made it back to bed.  Somefuckinghow. 

She didn't want her mind going down that route.  She'd been doing so well.  Her thoughts had been on the rise, even as her health had taken a nosedive.

No, she couldn't think that way.

And she couldn't wait for Cronin another minute.

Angie shot up from her chair, purse in hand, and was reaching for the doorknob when a light knock came to the door and it opened.

She could see the accusation in his eyes.  He'd seen it all in the thirty years of his practice.  His eyes narrowed, accusatory; he was sniffing out a drug-seeker.

"Oh, hi Dr. Cronin."

"Angie, I heard you're not feeling well."

Something in her face must have told him that she was here for a purpose other than his assumption.

"It's been bad.  Throwing up.  Nausea."

Cronin opened the patient file and scanned the information taken down by the nurse upon Angie's arrival.

"Is there any possibility that you're late?"

"I'm sorry?"

"When was your last period?"

"Are you actually accusing me of being pregnant?  You know that I suffered a terrible accident, that my husband died not long ago."

"I'm sorry if I've upset you, Angie.  But I needed to ask.  The symptoms you described to my nurse sound like early stage morning sickness."

"That's not possible.  I can't be pregnant."

If to only cut the tension in the room, Cronin took hold of Angie's wrist and checked her pulse.

"You haven't had a fever?"  Up close, his breath smelled dusty.  She turned away, her nausea strengthening.

"No."  She wanted to say otherwise.  A fever and stomach bug was easily explained, and even more easily dealt with. Angie did the math in her head.  Paul had been gone... almost three months.  Her last period was shortly after she'd come home from the hospital.  And that was the last time.

She thought back to the night of her vivid, bizarre dream, her vivid
sexual
dream.  Her dream of Paul. 

Could it be?
  She could think of no other explanation.

Her only other human contact had been during her mysterious return to her bed. 
Could it be...?

When she reconsidered what had happened, how she had somehow been whisked away from a certain death in the middle of the woods, how she had been put gently to bed... how Nathan had mysteriously shown up at her door almost as soon as she had awoken, and his unsettling admissions about keeping an eye on her...   None of it made sense.

"So, Angie, have you been around anyone who's been sick or exhibiting flu-like symptoms?"

"No... I've been alone."  Angie's mind raced, but her thoughts were a mess.  The math didn't work.  She placed a hand on her belly. 

Could there be a baby inside of me?

She looked up at Dr. Cronin, who looked concerned.

He broke eye contact with Angie and opened her medical file again.  He seemed uncomfortable, even for someone who'd been administering medical care for decades.

"How long would it take to find out?"

"If you're sick?" he asked, confused.

"No.  If I'm pregnant."

"We'd just need a urine sample.  I could have the results within ten minutes."

"Okay.  Where's the cup?"

Angie sat on the examining table, waiting for the results of her pregnancy test.  For the first time since she entered Cronin's office, she felt like a patient.  A patient with an actual medical condition that needed a physician's oversight. 

She couldn't believe what was happening.

The possibility tormented her.  Having Paul's baby, however inexplicably... she felt alternately joyous and scared out of her mind.  She touched her belly.  The aching no longer felt like the complaints of an overworked liver.  It could be her body preparing for a miracle.

The door opened, and Dr. Cronin entered.  His expression, which looked awfully similar to when he figured her for a drug-seeker, made Angie's stomach clench.

"What is it?" she asked impatiently.

"It's still early, but your body is producing enough pregnancy hormones that the test came back positive."

"Really?"

Dr. Cronin seemed unsure on how to proceed.  He'd been their family physician for the duration of their marriage.  She and Paul had made a joint visit two years ago to get a referral for their fertility issue.  Cronin knew Paul and Angie on a first name basis, and on the few occasions they'd encountered him in town, he'd chatted with them in a warm, neighborly fashion.  Cronin was a longtime doctor and a small-town resident.  He also knew full well that Paul was dead.  He seemed ill-prepared to deliver such unseemly news.

"I'm not here to judge you, Angie--"

"How come people say that when they only intend to do just the opposite?"

"Well, in my case, it's the truth.  Your life is your life; how you live it is up to you.  My only concern is your health," he said and briefly touched her shoulder.  "For the health of your baby."

Baby
.  The word held so much power.  Few words could so dramatically change someone's life.  Angie could see in Cronin's expression that her words had stung.  "I'm sorry, Dr. Cronin."

He half-smiled, accepting her apology.  "I just want to set you on the right course for this pregnancy.  I can refer you to an ob/gyn.  You'll need to set up an appointment in the next week or so.  He'll pinpoint your delivery date and get all your baselines."

"I'm... I'm just not... I just never knew I could even get pregnant."

"Human biology is a mystery, even now.  I've seen women, who thought they could never conceive, get pregnant in their forties after not using birth control for twenty years."

A mystery?
Angie thought. 
You don't know the half of it.

"I'll get you Dr. Billick's card.  He's the best ob/gyn in Grand View."  Cronin turned toward the door.

"Dr. Cronin?" Angie called out before he could leave.

"Yes?"

"Is it possible to determine paternity before delivery?"

Cronin dropped his amiable bedside manner and gave Angie an unshielded look of contempt.  It was gone just as quickly as it appeared, but she'd seen it. 

"Sure, it's possible.  There's a test, but we don't do them here.  It's done through a processing lab in Atlanta."

"I'd have to fly to Atlanta?"

"Not at all.  It's a simple DNA test.  It's all done through the mail.  You'll need a DNA sample from you, one from the potential father, and one from the baby."

"From the baby?"

"The hospital will need to take an amniotic sample."

"Is there any danger in that?"
"Little or none.  And for you, the pain will feel like getting a booster shot."

"What about the father's DNA?"

"A hair sample would suffice."

"Can you help me set up the test as well as getting Dr. Billick's card?"

He said nothing, but her question had altered something between them.  When he returned with the information, Cronin could barely contain his disdain as he explained everything to her.

Chapter 11

The air in the great room felt both damp and cold against Angie's skin when she returned home.  She checked the thermostat, which seemed to be in working order.  Determined to start taking better care of herself, Angie grabbed a cable-knit sweater from the chest at the end of her bed.  It was one of Paul's favorites for days such as this.  It was baggy, hanging loosely over her shoulders and especially around her middle, but she supposed she would grow into it during the coming months.

Before she closed the chest, she saw Paul's smiling face gazing up at her from the assorted sweaters and extra blankets; she'd nearly forgotten about the exiled photo she'd taken at the top of Mt. Diablo, his unguarded "Paulness" on full display.  With much care, she took the frame out from hiding, replacing it to its rightful spot on top of Paul's dresser.  She stepped back, checking the angle of the photo from the bedside, then adjusted it until she would be able to see it clearly upon waking.  Well, whenever she decided to finally return to sleeping in her own bed.

Angie had been avoiding the subject since leaving Dr. Cronin's office.  She needed to think rationally about something that made no sense whatsoever when considered in the light of day.  She was pregnant.  After years of futile effort, after consulting a fertility specialist to no avail, and without the presence of Paul (at least in the living, physical sense), Angie Chandler was with child. 

What an odd term
, she thought.  A child was currently "with her."  Which meant she was no longer alone.  This realization made it easier to dismiss the other possibilities. 
Which is worse
, she wondered,
holding onto the hope of a supernatural impregnation, or coming to terms with the possibility that she had been the victim of the worst crime short of murder?

She didn't think Nathan capable of something so heinous, something so underhanded, but just the same, she collected a hair sample from the winter cap he'd left behind when she'd chased him from the living room a few days before.  If her brother-in-law had somehow taken advantage of her during her binge of wine and pills, she didn't know what she would do.  Violent retribution came to mind.  Could she take revenge?  Could she even keep the baby?

After sealing Nathan's hair inside the baggie from the test kit provided by Dr. Cronin, she did the same with hair she'd removed from Paul's hairbrush.  She held the small vial that represented her baby's contribution to the test up to the light.  She would've never guessed at the beginning of the day that she would soon be holding in her hand a vial of her own amniotic fluid.  The whole thing had a Frankensteinian implication; a clear mixture representing her genes combining with those from someone else, a mixture that would become neither parent, but something different.  Something
other
. 

She filled out the paperwork for the test, and made sure everything essential was inside the prepaid delivery box.  She sealed it, took a trembling breath, and waited for the arrival of the Fed EX driver.

After the paternity test had been picked up, the worst possibility came to mind.  What if neither hair sample revealed her baby's father?  It felt like she was in the middle of the most obscene episode of
Maury
.

She took a fireplace poker and rattled the slumbering logs from the fire she had started earlier in the day, sending sparks toward the flue, wondering about the life growing in a womb she had once thought barren.  After adding another log to the fire, she rubbed her arms to chase away the last of the chill.  It felt like spring would ever come, that the nascent signs of renewal would never take hold and flourish.  

Though the idea of Nathan taking advantage of her during a late night blackout was horrible enough, somehow a more unnerving possibility existed, that someone (a certain unknown man in black and with a penchant for forcing SUVs from the road) had broken into her house and raped her.  What made it worse, as if there could ever be gradations to such degradation, was the unknown.  If her assailant was Nathan, then she had a single person to fear.  If it was someone else, some unknown person who could be just about any man, well, that left her with fearing half the population.

Rationality couldn't override all emotions.  Through the trying days of cleaning up from the bad habits she'd developed after the accident, and the recent revelation of her impending motherhood, she had ignored the one thing that threatened everything she clung to concerning Paul. 

TRINA.

That one word called into question Paul's devotion, love, and faithfulness, no matter if Lindsey had tried to convince her otherwise.  If she couldn't believe in Paul in death as she had in life, she didn't know how she would get through the coming months.

Trina.  That name was a torment and a curse.  It undermined the foundations of her marriage.

She sat down on the couch in the great room, and as she dialed the phone, she had the worst irrational fear that Imogene would pick up the line.  Heart hammering in her chest, Angie held the phone in a clammy hand as it started to ring.

When it picked up, a woman's voice greeted her.

"Dr. Trina's office, how may I help you?"

"I... um..." Angie said, confused.

"Hello?"

"I'm sorry, it's just I didn't know what this number was for.  I found it in my husband's date book."

"This is the Manistee Fertility Clinic."

"You see, he has an appointment..." Angie said before she had to stop to choke back a sob.  Saying anything about Paul in the present tense... it made it all seem so unreal, that he could walk through the front door at any moment, even though she knew otherwise.

"I see.  Did you want to confirm his appointment at this time?"

"No... it's just that...  Paul Chandler, my husband, he passed away recently.  And I've been going through his things and I noticed he had an appointment for next week in his day planner.  Is it possible to talk to Dr. Trina?"

"Can you please hold?  I'll see if he's available."

Before she could reply, the line clicked over to hold music, an upbeat tune full of flutes and chirping keyboards.

Angie felt relieved learning that Trina was a new fertility doctor.  They had gone that route two years before, but still hadn't gotten pregnant.  Paul had been on his adoption kick for the last year, so she didn't know what the new appointment could be about.  Regardless, Paul seeing a fertility doctor was better than the alternative.  At least Trina wasn't another woman.

The line clicked, and a gravelly voice said, "Hello, Mrs. Chandler?"

"Yes, speaking."

"This is Dr. Philip Trina.  Julie just told me that Paul has passed away.  I'm so sorry to hear about your loss."