“You're a very lucky girl,” the nurse said to her. “Your little boy is fine. I just gave him a Popsicle.” She glanced at Bill encouragingly. “And your husband has been right here talking to you ever since you got here.” And then she remembered as she glanced at the fetal monitor and back at Adrian again. “And your baby is fine too. Looks like everybody is going to be all right now. How are you feeling, Mrs. Thigpen?”
She fought to pull off the oxygen mask, and the nurse helped her to lift it. “Not so good,” she croaked. They had pumped the water from her stomach and now she was hoarse and she felt desperately nauseated and viciously battered. The last thing she remembered was slipping into a soft warm place, when she had gotten the final blow on her head from a rock and started drowning.
“I'll bet you don't feel so good.” The nurse smiled at her, and propped her head up a little bit. “You had quite a fight with a rock, and a whole lot of water. But they tell me you ran a race. You saved your little boy. You did!” She smiled at her, and Bill finally caught his breath, and looked at Adrian gratefully through his tears, still holding her hand tightly.
“Adrian, you saved Tommy.” He started to cry harder then and leaned down and kissed her face. “Baby, you saved him.”
“I'm so glad … I was so afraid … I couldn't have held him up for much longer …” Bill still remembered the limp body and the gray-blue face when they had snatched him from her just beneath the surface. “The current was terrible …and I was afraid I couldn't run fast enough …” There were tears in her eyes, but they were tears of relief and victory as she held fast to Bill's hand, and the nurse slipped quietly out of the room to report her improvement to the doctor. And then Bill leaned down and whispered to her.
“Why didn't you tell me about the baby?”
There was a long silence as she looked at him, grateful that he was there, her eyes full of the love for him that she'd been fighting almost since she met him. “I didn't think it was fair to you.” She started to cry then as she said it and he kissed her gently and shook his head.
“It wouldn't have changed anything.” He smiled then, and sat down next to her, never taking his eyes off her. “It's a little unusual, I admit, but hell, to a guy who writes soap operas for a living, did you really think I couldn't understand it?” She smiled and then coughed, as he held her, and then laid her gently back down on the pillows. “Frankly, Adrian, I'm relieved. I was afraid that for you that appetite of yours was normal.” She laughed again and then sighed, with a worried look.
“Is the baby really okay?”
“They say it's fine. I think you'll probably have to take it a little easy for a while. But babies are pretty sturdy.” He remembered a bad fall Leslie had had when she was pregnant for the first time, and he had almost had a heart attack watching her stumble down a flight of stairs, but in the end, nothing had happened. And then he remembered something he wanted to ask Adrian. Something he now suspected. “Is that why Steven left you?” It was something he wanted to know now. It was inexcusable if it was true, and while she was unconscious, he had guessed that that was the reason for their separation.
And quietly, she nodded. “He never wanted children, and he gave me a choice. Him or the baby.” She started to cry again, thinking of it, as she clung desperately to Bill now. “I tried …but I couldn't do it. I went to have an abortion, but I just couldn't. So he left me.”
“What a nice guy he must be.”
“He has very strong feelings about it,” she tried to explain, and Bill looked at her ruefully.
“I'd say that was an understatement. The guy is divorcing you for having his baby. Does he realize it's his, or does he question that too?”
“No, he knows it's his. His lawyer sent me papers, he's filing for a termination of parental rights, so neither the child nor I can claim him as the father. In essence, the baby will be illegitimate,” she said sadly.
“That's disgusting.”
And then she sighed again. “But he may change his mind …maybe if he sees it.” He realized then what the problem was. She was still hoping Steven would come back, for the baby, if nothing else. And then he asked her something else he wanted to know now.
“Adrian, are you still in love with him?” She hesitated for a long time, and then shook her head as she looked at Bill.
“No,” she said quietly, “I'm not. But the baby has a right to its natural father.”
“If he wanted you back, would you take him?”
“I might …for the baby's sake. …” She closed her eyes then. She felt nauseated and exhausted, and Bill was looking at her, saddened by what she had just told him, grateful for the honesty. It was one of the things he loved about her. He didn't think Steven would come back, not if he was filing papers renouncing the child, and divorcing her. The guy was obviously crazy. But it was equally obvious that she felt she owed him and the child something, a relationship they deserved, even if it meant giving something up herself. But she was that way. In trying to save Tommy, she had been willing to risk herself and her baby. She was an all-or-nothing kind of person. She lay there and closed her eyes then and for a while neither of them spoke and then she looked at Bill again, worried about what he was thinking. “Do you hate me?”
“Are you out of your mind? How can you say a thing like that? You just saved my child.” And it had almost cost her her own life. He moved nearer to her again, and touched her bruised face with gentle fingers. “I love you, Adrian. This may not be the time or place to say it,” he said softly, “but I love you. More than that, I'm in love with you. I have been for two months, maybe even three.” He kissed her hand then and her fingers. He was afraid to hurt her if he really kissed her.
“You're not mad about the baby?” There were tears in her eyes as she asked him.
“How could I be mad about the baby? I think you're wonderful to do what you're doing. You're very courageous, and unbelievably strong, and a good, decent woman. And I think it's very special that you're having a baby.” It was the first kind word anyone had said about her pregnancy, except Zelda, but she had taken so much abuse from Steven that in the face of Bill's kind words, she started to cry. And he gently wiped her eyes as she sobbed and tried to explain it all to him. She was feeling very emotional and terribly upset and suddenly the dam had broken after three months of having to apologize to her husband, and trying to cope with the pregnancy on her own.
“Just relax.” She was getting too upset, and he was afraid of what it might do to her. She had already had a terrible shock to her system. “Everything's going to be fine. Okay?” He smoothed her hair off her face, and gently tucked her in. She looked like a battered child, and she was hiccuping like a little girl who'd been crying. “You're going to have your baby and it'll be beautiful.” He leaned his face down to hers and carefully, carefully kissed her lips, and there were tears in his eyes too. “I love you, Adrian … I love you so much …you and the baby.” And the beauty of it was that he meant it.
“How can you say that?” Steven had deserted her over this child, and now Bill, who barely knew her, was telling her he loved her. “It's not even your baby.”
“I wish it were,” he said honestly as he looked down at her. And then, he dared say to her exactly what he was feeling. “Maybe one day, if I'm very lucky, it will be.” Fresh tears rolled down her cheeks then, and she didn't say a word, she just held his hand tightly in her own, and closed her eyes as she nodded. She dozed for a little while then, holding his hand, and he watched the monitors while she slept. The nurse came in a couple of times, and reassured him that everything was normal. He left for a little while eventually, to check on the boys. He found Tommy sleeping too. He was taking a nap, but he looked fine. They had put in a glucose IV, and they were checking his temperature regularly, but they said he could go home by the end of the afternoon. And Adam was watching old reruns of Mork and Mindy.