I’ve Got You

Chapter 6

Inside the hospital, Aleshia faced a nurse. Cameron Lovell was somewhere in the reception, waiting for her to come out. After the initial panic, and doctors had the chance to examine her, they explained that the main issue was, since she had no abdominal pain, to do with a va*inal tear in her inner walls, which caused the bleeding, and was more common than you would expect for someone in or just past their first trimester. The nurse was drawing blood to be tested, though she and the doctor at hand suspected Aleshia would be low on iron, due to the nutrients the baby was absorbing from her, and from the sounds of her diet, which did not contain much red meat.

“You can take supplements to boost your iron levels,” the female doctor suggested. She was already writing out a prescription. “Other things to do as well is to avoid excessive exercise, as if you do this too much, it can aggravate the blood vessels in the placenta, causing it to malfunction in feeding nutrients to the fetus.”

Barraged with advice, but mostly relieved that her bleeding was nothing scary, such as a dreaded miscarriage. It had actually been the first thought to cross her mind when she saw the bleeding, and she felt both dismay and a horrified fascination when it occurred – since she never considered in her future plans that she might end up losing the baby before it even had a chance at life outside the womb. The thought sobered her up as the doctor rattled through a list of advice, as the blood was drawn out of her arm, and a small plaster stuck over the insertion point.

She felt bad that Cameron Lovell needed to wait in the hospital reception for the whole process, as hospitals had to be one of the gloomiest places around. With the stark, sterile white walls, the constant smell of disinfectant permeating the air, and the straggles of disenchanted people who roamed within the walls, it gave off a sickly aura. Coming into the hospital, she spotted one child, barely older than five, with an amputated leg and arm from meningitis being signed out, before being wheeled off by his family.

She also couldn’t help but notice the number of pregnant women, and women there with children, both in the reception and the waiting rooms. Near the ward she was in as well, the nurse had informed her that there were clusters of premature infants who needed machines to help them survive out of the womb, due to complications, such as heart defects, or a threat to the mother’s life leading to a caesarean.

Her cursed mind already started roaming with potential plot ideas, envisioning a weeping mother being led out by a devastated husband, after doctors had gently told her that the baby in the machine would simply not ever be able to survive without help. She saw the people sitting in the waiting rooms like zombies, someone walking down the corridor, dragging their IV drip with them. She saw the dark world of a hospital forming in her mind, even as she walked down the pristine halls of a real one.

Finally free, she located Cameron Lovell sat next to a woman and her husband. The pram where a baby lay was tilted towards Cameron, and he was peering into the contents of the pram with interest. As Aleshia neared, she caught him pulling a silly face, and a tiny gurgle of laughter emitting out of the carriage.

“Hey,” she said, snatching his attention. He immediately stood up.

“Aleshia! Is everything alright then? I know they said it wasn’t anything serious, but, you never know…”

“It’s alright,” she gave him a reassuring smile. “I’ve been told to take iron supplements, not exercise a lot, which is fine because I work on my computer anyway. I also should be careful with inserting foreign objects in my va*ina for the next month, due to the bleeding issue. Fun stuff.”

Cameron laughed, even as the woman next to him scowled at Aleshia in disapproval for daring to use such blatant words near her precious baby.

“I saw you pulling faces, there,” Aleshia said, indicating the cot, and avoiding the judgmental fury of the woman. “Was it pulling faces back?”

Cameron shrugged. “She seemed to like me. She didn’t like my normal face, though, but once I started…” he demonstrated a few hideous expressions. One child, holding his mother’s hand, stared at Cameron in open mouthed wonder, “And there you have it. Face to charm anyone’s child.”

Aleshia laughed. “That’s brilliant! Although I might argue you’ll likely scare them more than endear them to you.” They both laughed.

“Eh, I can cope with that. There seems to be rather a lot of children running around the hospital today. I was squished in between four mothers at one point.”

“As long as you didn’t catch small children cooties, we’re probably alright.” Aleshia smiled fondly at him. “Thanks again for the help. I’m sorry the inspection ended up like this… but I guess it could have been worse.”

“Of course. Well, since the time is now… two, did you need to be somewhere?”

“Oh, God. My sister!” Outside the hospital, Aleshia took out her phone. Cameron raised one eyebrow in inquiry.

“Do you need to go over to her place?”

“No. Yes. Maybe. She expects me over, and she’ll murder me if I don’t. She’ll also murder me if she finds out I went to the hospital and didn’t contact her. Argh!”

“Is there any way to postpone judgment?” Cameron asked, smirking at Aleshia’s panic. “Honestly, you’re more worried about this than you were coming out the bathroom bleeding.”

“I was worried! Also, short of saying I’m with someone, she won’t take no for an answer. And she’ll ask me to hand the phone over to the someone to make sure I’m not lying, with video camera on, to make sure I’m not just making her listen to a recording.”

“Wow. That’s some measures.” Cameron stared over at his car in the pouring rain, Aleshia standing beside him as she squinted at her phone. No angry messages from her sister had yet appeared.

“It’s because I did that before,” Aleshia admitted. “She’s justified. If you can call having a relative punch their way into your life like this justified.”

“It does sound like she cares and wants the best for you,” Cameron observed. “It’s nice. Though I do agree she seems to have a certain amount of… control over things.”