Page 30 of SEAL’S Baby Surprise (Lanes #2)

LEE

The Family Clinic is just closing as I pedal up the front walk. I’m covered with sweat — there was no “perspiration” or “glow” about it. “Wait!” I cry out. “Wait!”

It is only seven miles from the village to the clinic, which is located at the edge of the city. In a motorized vehicle, it is an easy ten or perhaps fifteen minutes if the traffic is bad.

On a bicycle, in the blazing afternoon heat, it is a subjective million miles. A million difficult miles, filled with zooming cars with motorists flying the bird at me from their air conditioned, gas-powered bubbles of security.

I had fallen off the bike twice. Once when a motorist hadn’t seen me, and I was forced onto the grass between the sidewalk and the road. The other had been scarier.

I’d hit a patch of gravel just as a semitrailer truck passed me. It’d swerved out into the middle lane to keep from hitting me.

Ark had grabbed me and pulled me onto the verge. The big back tires had just missed my toes.

I’d pushed the bike around behind a gas station so I could sit there and just shake for a while. In a few minutes, a cop car had rolled up with its lights flashing. I could hear the guy talking to the station attendant.

“Did you see a girl on a bike with a big dog?” he asks.

“Nope, ain’t seen nobody all day long,” the clerk says. “Just people fillin’ up at the pump. Folks don’t stop and come in much anymore.”

“Thanks for nothing,” the cop says, disgust coloring his voice. “Some fool woman is pedaling along the freeway, and near got herself killed. Much you care.”

The cop car peels out of the parking lot, lights flickering as it goes on down the highway.

A few minutes later the attendant brings out a half-full bag of trash. He squats down beside me, and hands me a tourist map. “Look,” he says, “I don’t know what you are running from, but he’s right. You’re gonna get killed riding on the freeway if you don’t get arrested first.”

“Arrested?” I ask. I don’t dare get arrested. They’d fingerprint me, and I’d be caught out in a minute.

“Yeah. It ain’t legal to take a vehicle out there that can’t consistently make highway speeds. This is a cute bike you got here, but it’s a kid’s learn-to-ride bike.”

I gulp in a big breath of air. “I know. I’m just learning. But I need to get to the Family Clinic. It’s my only hope.”

He grins at me. “I ain’t no Obi Wan,” he says, a comment that makes no sense to me whatsoever.

“But I ain’t no storm trooper, either. I’d take you in my car, but I don’t get off work until ten. I guess you want to get there before closing?”

I nod.

“All right then. There’s a bike trail, runs back of the station here. It’s a little bit longer than the highway, but a lot safer. You’ll be going through residential neighborhoods, and a couple of them are kind of rough.”

“I’ve got Ark with me,” I say.

He looks sober at that. “Keep him close. There’s a gang not far from here that has a dog-fighting pack. Sometimes they let them out, just for kicks.”

I feel my stomach clench. But I have faith in Ark. He isn’t just any old dog. He is a trained warrior that refuses to shut up when there is danger, or someone’s hurt.

“My dog has combat training,” I say. “And he’s a registered ESA.”

“I hope for your sake you know what you’re talking about,” the attendant says. “But it’s daylight still. If you just keep moving, you should be all right.”

I nod.

“You got your GPS?” he asks.

I shake my head. “No phone,” I say.

He gives me a hard look. “I’ll give you this map,” he says. “And I’m marking the safest route on it. Act like you belong. Don’t stop unless you absolutely have to.”

So I don’t. I pedal like a madwoman through neighborhoods with mowed lawns and cute ornaments, neighborhoods with boarded up windows, and broken glass on the sidewalk, older neighborhoods with shaggy lawns and kids playing catch in a vacant lot.

I like that one best, although it might have been the most dangerous. Guys hang out in doorways and on porches, lighting up and smoking who-knows-what.

The clinic is just on the edge of that last one, so I am feeling kind of desperate, as well as exhausted.

“Wait!” I call out again. “I need you! I need your help.”

The woman who is locking up turns to me. “I’m sorry,” she says. “But the medical staff have already gone home for the night. You’ll have to wait.”

I must have looked dismayed, and I know I can feel tears starting to prickle my eyelids.

“Why are you here?” she asks.

“I’m pregnant,” I say. “I’m not married, I don’t have a job, and I don’t know what to do or where to go.”

“You’re thinking to not be pregnant?”

I nod.

She sighs. “Sweetie, there’s only two ways not to be pregnant.

One of them is quick, with chances for regret.

The other is long, with some extra choices, and still chances for regret.

There aren’t any miracle cures for about seven minutes of amazing experience.

Or bad experience, as the case might be. ”

“It isn’t like that,” I say. “I didn’t mean to get pregnant.

I just wanted to know. And I love Austin.

I love him awfully much, but he doesn’t need another kid to look after, he’s already got Julia, and Ark, and now me.

He works from home all the time as it is.

Me being pregnant will just add to his troubles. ”

And I begin to cry in earnest. I had been so sure someone would be here to help me, someone who would know what I should do.

The receptionist expression softens. “Did you just use one of those over-the-counter testers?”

I nod, trying not to let my misery escape in a sob.

“You do know they aren’t always right.”

I nod again, then I say, “But I’ve been really tired, and food that I used to like makes me feel sick. I feel dizzy, and then everything comes back up. I think it might be right, and I don’t know what to do.”

“Did you talk to the father? Austin, did you say?” She doesn’t ask, but her face says that she wonders if he made the bruises on my face.

I shake my head to indicate no.

She sighs. “That’s going to be the first thing the counselor will ask you. It is your body, and you do have the right to say what happens to it, but the dad has a right to know. Especially if you love him and care about what he thinks.”

The tears are raining down my face now. “He’s a good dad. He had to work hard to get custody of Julia. He took me in when I didn’t have anywhere to go or anyone to turn to. I don’t want to mess up his life any more than I already have.”

I squat down on the sidewalk because I start to feel sick and dizzy. I put my head between my knees and sob. Ark cuddles up against me and tries to wash my face.

“Is that your dog?” the woman asks as I cling to Ark.

I shake my head. “Austin’s. He’s an emotional ESA. I shouldn’t have brought him, but Austin told him ‘guard’ and ‘protect’ so he wouldn’t stay behind.

The woman sighs. “There won’t be anyone here until tomorrow morning. But we do have an affiliated hostel right around the corner. I think they’ve still got a bed or two, and they do allow ESAs. Have you had anything to eat?”

I shake my head. It seems to be the only thing I’m good at. “I packed a lunch, but I think it got run over when we nearly got hit by a truck.”

“By a truck?” the woman stares at me. “Girl, were you riding on the highway?”

I nod, feeling miserable. As usual, I’ve messed everything up. There isn’t anything in the whole world that I can do right. “There was a guy at the service station where I hid from the cops after I nearly got run over,” I say. “He gave me a map and marked the best way to go.”

The woman sighs. “That would have been Albert. He called a while ago and told us to watch for a girl on a bike with a big dog. But we’d given up on you.

Come on, then. There should still be some leftovers, and if not, I’ll get you something out of the vending machines. And food for your big guy, there, too.”

I follow her around the corner to a little red brick building. It has a tidy yard with trimmed hedges behind a chain-link fence. The woman stops at the gate and rings the bell.

“We have to lock up at night,” she says. “Didn’t used to have to, but we’ve had a lot of unauthorized people hanging around.”

“Like me?” I ask.

“No, sweetie,” she says, giving me a shoulder hug. “You’re confused and mixed up. No, I’m talking about the people who carry signs, yell slogans, and try to keep people from talking to us.”

“Why would they do that?” I ask. “I mean, aren’t you here to help people?”

“We are,” she says. “We want to be there for them, to be the shoulder they need, and to have the information necessary for good decisions, and medicine for them if they are sick or hurt. And you, dear girl, are in need of a shower, some food, and a bed — in that order. You’ll be amazed what it will do for your thinking. ”

I laugh. I can’t help it. “That’s what Austin said when he found me on the beach. I was hoping the tide would wash me away. Only I didn’t understand tides, so it just ran away from me.”

A girl who looks like she can’t be many years older than Betty comes to the gate and opens it. “What’s up, Artie?” she asks.

“Tell Aunt Leah I’ve got another stray lamb.” Then she says to me, “Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up, fed, and tucked in.”

It turns out that Artie lives in the hostel, and that all the regular beds are full. So I get a pallet on her floor — an air mattress like you’d take to the beach, clean sheets and a blanket.

Ark and I have vending machine sandwiches, then settle down on her tiny living room floor.

I bury my face in Ark’s fur and cry some more. He washes my face for me, which probably wasn’t sanitary but was super comforting. I fall asleep, my head pillowed on his shaggy side.