Page 18 of Tiny Precious Secrets (The Brothers of Calloway Creek The Montanas #4)

Allie

Every time my phone rings, I jump. Hudson said the results would take about three days. This is day three.

My parents sat me down last night and said they were worried about me.

I lied and said Asher and I broke up. It was the only thing I could think of to explain my recent behavior.

And it wasn’t so much a lie. Not that we’ve technically broken up.

But can you even break up if you were never officially together?

Whenever Asher has texted about coming to town since Antigua, I’ve responded with a simple ‘I’ll check my schedule’ or ‘Sorry, can’t make it this time.’

He’s starting to get the message, however, because I haven’t heard a thing from him in twelve days.

The fact that I know exactly how many days have passed since I’ve heard from him is something I try not to think about.

Because right now, there’s no room inside me to think about anything but the impending test results.

I run a hand across my belly pooch and think of Christopher.

The first time I felt him move inside me was surreal.

I was sure the test was wrong even when Dr. Miller assured me a false positive occurred some infinitesimal amount, like less than a fraction of a percent.

My pregnancy was so normal I just knew there had been a mistake, which is why I refused further testing.

As he grew inside me and I loved him more and more each day, I thought my sheer love for him would be the miracle he would need.

And that he would be my miracle. And we would live happily ever after, me and Christopher. Mother and child.

I’m startled when my phone rings. When I see Hudson’s number on the screen, my body goes completely numb. I can’t raise my hand off the bed to answer it. Because this is it. I’m about to find out if the next six months are going to be a living hell.

For a moment, I pray that the results show a different kind of abnormality. Maybe Trisomy 21: Down’s Syndrome. At least then I’d get to raise my baby. Interact with my baby. Love my baby. I sit here, bargaining with God, or maybe the devil. I can take something else. Just not that. Not Trisomy 18.

My mind flips through all the other things that could be wrong.

All the other chromosomal issues or birth defects I researched way back then.

To me, there were few that were worse than going through a normal pregnancy, having what appeared to be a normal baby, and then watching that perfect, tiny human pass away right in front of you.

My screen goes blank before I work up the courage to answer.

I immediately press the number to call Hudson back.

But it goes to voicemail. I hang up and call again.

Same thing. I squeeze my eyes shut, cursing myself for not answering.

The torture just continues to pile up as I dial him over and over.

Sweat dots my brow. Shivers of fear crawl up my spine. My hands are shaking.

Am I having a panic attack?

Finally, on the ninth or tenth try, he answers.

“Allie. Sorry about that, I just got paged into an emergency C-section. I only have a minute.”

I can hear him shuffling about. Maybe changing clothes or running for his car.

“You have the results?”

“I’d like you to come into my office tomorrow.”

“I told you, I don’t want to do that.”

“You said you had an ultrasound at eleven weeks?”

“Yes.”

“Did you get a video or a printout?”

“No. It was a free clinic. Why?”

“Allie, I really have to get to surgery, but I want to go over these results with you in person.”

I almost drop the phone as I slide off my bed, sinking to the floor. I pull my knees up to my chest and a sob bellows out of me. “The baby has it. That’s what you don’t want to tell me over the phone.”

“Ah, shit. No, that’s not it. No Trisomy 18. I promise.” His next few words are muffled, but I think he’s speaking with someone else. Then he talks to me again. “Listen, I have to hang up. Come whenever you can and I’ll fit you in.”

The phone goes dead. I stare at it, crying.

He promised the baby doesn’t have Trisomy 18.

He promised . A doctor wouldn’t lie about something as critical as that, would he?

But there’s definitely something he’s not telling me.

I can feel it all the way to my bones. He’d have reassured me if everything came back normal.

He’d tell me not to worry and to just make an appointment at my leisure.

He wants me to come in tomorrow. To go over the test results.

That means there is something to go over.

I crawl back up on my bed, curl up into a fetal position, and cry myself to sleep wondering if tomorrow I’ll be going out to find that bridge.

“Push,” the nurse urges again. “You can do it, Allie. You’ve got this.”

Mom squeezes my hand and offers an encouraging nod.

I hold my breath and bear down as hard as I can.

“Okay, stop.” The doctor’s head pops up. “Stop pushing. The head is out. There, okay, now one last push.”

I lock eyes with my mother, hers aren’t as hopeful as mine.

I’ve prayed so much these past months, surely my prayers will be answered.

He’s going to be fine. He’s going to have ten fingers and ten toes and he’s going to outlive me by twenty years.

I even have a name picked out for him. I’m naming him after my father.

I can feel the relief as his body slips out of me. I rise up on my elbows, waiting to hear the sound every new mom wants to hear. When I hear it, I smile. He’s okay. He’s going to be okay. Dr. Miller was wrong.

His cry is everything I want to hear, but it’s not loud. And when I glance around the room, people are shuffling quickly and hovering over him. Someone puts a tiny oxygen mask over his face.

“What’s happening?”

I look up at my mother as if she’ll have all the answers. She just rubs my arm in that soothing manner mothers do when they know you’re hurting.

Mom hasn’t come out and said it, but I know she hasn’t believed like I have that the test could have been wrong. She’s been supportive. She flew out here a week ago so she’d be here when he came. She’s been staying with me at Aunt Lucy’s, where I’ve been living for the past four months.

The doctor is busy delivering the placenta and doing whatever else needs to be done down there. A nurse helping with Christopher looks over at me with a sad smile. Nurses don’t look at new moms with sad smiles. Nurses look at new moms with happy smiles, and sometimes with happy tears.

“No,” I say, shaking my head over and over. “No, no, no.”

Mom climbs on the bed next to me as soon as the doctor is done with me. She pulls me into her arms and cradles me like how I should be cradling my son. “Shhh.” Her breath flows over my hair as she tries to calm me.

A man, the neonatologist I think, steps forward. “Miss Montana.”

I hold out my hand to stop him. “I know. You don’t have to say it.”

He clears his throat. “Miss Montana, your son is breathing on his own at the moment, but he’s weak. We’re taking him to the NICU for evaluation. I’ll report back soon.”

The three words that keep cycling through my head are ‘ at the moment.’ What he’s really saying is that at any time, he could stop breathing. I turn and press my face into Mom’s shoulder and scream.

I wake, drenched with sweat, shaking and nauseous. I can’t move. I can barely breathe.

I need Mia. She’s always been good at calming me down. I call her, not caring that it’s four in the morning. It goes to voicemail. When I text her, I see she’s set her notifications to silent. I try again and again, hoping that my sheer determination will have her waking up and checking her phone.

My heart races. Then stops. Then races again. I feel like I’m going to pass out. I’m having a full-on panic attack, and I don’t know how to stop it.

Without even realizing what I’m doing, I tap Asher’s name. The phone rings. He answers on the third ring. “Allie?”

“I…I…” I break down in sobs. “C-can’t breathe.”

“Allie. What’s wrong? Do you need an ambulance?”

“N-no. I… just… c-can’t… breathe. Dream. I… Ash…”

“Okay, okay. You had a bad dream?”

I can’t respond. Because it’s now when the true reality hits—I’m on the phone with Asher. I never call Asher. Ever . And it’s four o’clock in the morning and I’m calling him in a frenzy.

“Listen to my voice, Al. Whatever it was, it was just a nightmare. You’re okay. Do you hear me? Breathe. Just breathe in and breathe out. Do it with me. Come on, let me hear you. Breathe.”

His voice is soothing. He just keeps talking, and eventually the calm, quiet cadence of his words slows my racing heart.

Soon I stop shaking altogether. I actually grow sleepy again.

I imagine this is how he talks to Bug when she wakes up from a nightmare.

Or after she has a bad day. Or if she gets hurt riding her bike or dumped by a boy.

He’s a good father. A good man. I should tell him.

Now’s my chance to get it all out there.

But I don’t. I can’t. How can I tell him that tomorrow I’m going in to the doctor’s office to find out what’s wrong with our child—the child he doesn’t even know about.

“Allie, are you still there?”

“I’m here,” I say quietly.

“Must have been one hell of a nightmare.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you okay now?”

“I don’t know. I guess. I mean, I will be.” Suddenly, I’m crying again. I’m sniffing and snotting and sobbing because I know I won’t be okay. Nothing will ever be okay again.

“Allie. Seriously, what’s wrong? I can hear you crying.”

“It’s n-nothing. I’m gonna go now. I’m sorry I woke you up.”

“Al—”

I hang up the phone before he has a chance to talk me into telling him what’s wrong. Because a part of me wants to. Because he’s not my ex and he would never abandon me like Jason did. Because he deserves to know. And because I’m a terrible person for not telling him.

But I have to know. I have to know before I go ruining his life.

I can’t ruin his life. I refuse to. I love him too much to do that.

Oh my god. I love him.

I press my head into my wet pillow and cry at the revelation.

Then for the next ten minutes, I stare at my phone.

My silent phone. The phone that hasn’t received a single text or call from him since I hung up on him.

So I cry even more, because now I know I finally did it.

I pushed him far enough away that he doesn’t care.

Time and distance have made him lose feelings for me while all it’s done to me is the opposite.

I love him.

And he’s gone.

Dawn starts breaking. My sleep shirt is soaked with sweat.

I take it off and pull on the first thing I can find—the yoga pants and sports bra I left by the side of the bed.

I scoot to the other side of the mattress where the pillow is dry.

Pulling it to me, I fall back to sleep as Asher’s soothing words play through my mind, fearing the only place I’ll ever hear them again is in my dreams.