Fool Me Twice

Time seemed to fly by and a full week before Lena's due date I was awakened by her screaming for me. I ran into her room without even bothering to throw a shirt on.

I turned the light on and she went quiet. "My God, I'd forgotten how nice your body is," she said in shock.

"Lena, what are you screaming about. Oh, you wet the bed," I said. "Why didn't you call me sooner, I'd have taken you to the bathroom."

"Jeezus Danny, I don't pee that much," she snapped. "My water broke. I think you'd better call in and tell them you're not going to make it to work today. She's ready to come out."

I started to panic. "But it's not time yet," I said. "Is she finished?"

"Danny, it's not like we're baking a cake. I'm sure she's finished. She's probably just developed a little bit faster or the doctor's estimate of when I got pregnant might have been off by a few days. I kind of expected this. I'm pretty sure I knew when I conceived all along. Now get me to the hospital."

"Oh, shit, I was going to clean out my Cherokee and check the battery this weekend," I said. "We're going to have to get you good and dry." I was thinking that she was way too wet to put into my Mustang. I didn't think that stuff would ever come out of the leather. But then I realized that the baby I'd become so attached to was coming into the world and suddenly the car didn't seem so important.

The Mustang was more important than Lena, but not more important than her baby.

The staff at the hospital knew all about Lena and I. We'd become regulars there over the past few weeks. So when I carried her into the emergency room, they got a wheelchair and paged her doctor immediately.

They started checking her out and took her into the maternity ward as soon as we got there. I checked in at admissions to give them our healthcare insurance information. Luckily they still had everything on file and gave a couple of really quick papers to sign and sent me to maternity too. I was in the waiting room getting ready to sit down and make a few phone calls when the nurse came and got me. She looked really pissed and I had no idea why.

"Why are you in here?" she asked.

"I brought Lena in to have her baby and after I filled out the waivers and other forms they told me to come here," I said.

"They told you to come to this ward, but not this room," she spat. "Are you afraid or something? Well, she needs you to be brave so just step up, buddy. You can throw up later. All of the men do. But for now I need you get your ass in gear and get in here."

"Get in where?" I asked.

"The birthing room, of course; don't you want to see your baby come into the world?" she asked like I was committing a sin of some kind.

"But it's not..." I began.

"Look I understand that it's not what you wanted," she hissed. "But she really wants you there. So are you coming or not?"

I followed her numbly. They took my jacket and put a gown over the rest of my clothes. They put a hat and a mask on me and little booties over my shoes and pushed me into the delivery room. They basically told me to stay close to Lena and talk to her and encourage her, but at the same time to stay the fuck out of the way and let the pros do all of the heavy lifting.

They talked about dilation and blood pressure and a lot of other medical stuff that I had no idea about. They talked about 24 hour labor and complications and my head started to hurt. Lena was squeezing the hell out of my hand. The doctor told her to just keep breathing and to yell as she tried to push.

"What should I yell?" she asked.

"Shit, seems to be popular," said the doctor. "But anything that comes into your head is good."

They all started working while I just stood there terrified with Lena trying to grind my bones to dust in her relentlessly powerful grip. All of a sudden she just gushed out, "I love you Danny," and squirted a baby girl into the doctor's outstretched hands.

"Aw, that's so sweet," said the nurse who was attending to the doctor. "She loves you." I turned to watch the doctor to keep the nurse from seeing the revulsion in my expression. As I watched in awe the doctor cut the cord connecting mother to child. He then gave the baby a gentle tap. Everyone in the room held their breath as the small form wiggled a bit then sucked in a tiny breath and screamed.

I took one look at the squirming, mewling little mass of humanity and fell in love with her. She was red all over and covered in some kind of slime. I was immediately worried. "She's too small isn't she?" I asked.

"Five pounds and thirteen ounces, is a bit on the small side," said one of the nurses. "But she seems to be very healthy and that's the important thing, I'm sure she'll be fine." The nurses cleaned her up and held out the tiny baby for me to see.

"You're the first person to set eyes on her," said the nurse.

"I meant what I said Danny," moaned Lena, and I lost it. I headed for the door. "Danny where are you going?" cried Lena.

"Don't worry, Honey," said that same fat old nurse. "He's overcome with emotions, He doesn't want to lose it and cry in front of us. Give him a few minutes."

I snatched the hat off of my head and took of the gown too. I stalked through the ward and out of the hospital, glaring at everyone I crossed paths with. I finally took off the stupid little shoe coverings as I got to my car. I started the motor and just began to relax as the thrumming and vibration of the 5.0 liter 400 horsepower V8 began to sing its sweet synchronized steel symphony. I teased the gas pedal and the low, menacing growl of the exhaust echoed the roar growing in my throat.

I eased the car to the edge of the parking lot barely holding it in. I very slowly crawled the car down the street as my eyes narrowed more and more and my mouth tightened until it was only a line near my chin. Finally I got to the entrance to the freeway and we both let go together.

The sound of my tires shredding as I left a forty foot wake of burning rubber was eclipsed by the sound of my screams. "That stupid fucking biiiiiiiittttccccchhhhhh," I screamed. I pushed my foot down until it bottomed out, then backed off, switched gears and stomped it again. The sounds of rage coming from the car mirrored the way I felt. The car and I were one as we flew past slower cars and truck on the freeway headed nowhere in a hell of a hurry.

A quarter of a tank of gas later, I calmly slowed down, got off of the freeway and got back on it headed in the opposite direction. I had screamed out and played out my outrage. Now it was time to think about my anger and the reasons for it and decide what I had to do.

I was angry at Lena for two reasons. The first was because the bitch was trying to run some kind of con game on me. Her tearful declaration that, "I love you Danny," was too dramatic and too sappy to be anything but a staged ploy to try to invoke my emotions. It was her attempt at plucking on my heart strings and it wouldn't fucking work. The fact that she'd done it in front of strangers only made it more ridiculous. There was no way I would ever go back with her. In fact, the first day she'd come back into my life I'd told her not to ever say that to me again. Did she really think I'd let her get away with it?

By rights I should throw that bitch out on the sidewalk, or simply not go back to the hospital. I'd never set eyes on that conniving bitch again. It would be the right thing to do. But if I was going to do that I wouldn't have been so angry. I'd have simply snatched my hand out of her death grip and calmly looked her in the eye and said, "Lena, I told you not to say that." Then I'd have walked my ass out of the hospital and out of her life forever. I'd have paid the medical bills just so I'd never have to deal with any of her shit again and called it a day.

But I could do that, I was trapped. Despite my plan to keep Lena at arms-length, I was trapped.

The second reason I was pissed was because the baby had been born small. She seemed to be free of birth defects and diseases but who knew what her brain function would be like. I was really pissed about the baby being born small. Low birth weight is a symptom of several dangerous infant syndromes and I was worried about that baby. I know that I'm not her father. That asshole is, of course, nowhere to be found, but I loved that baby before she was even born.

I blame Lena again and the missing asshole, because when I first came into the picture, Lena was already malnourished and sick. She had to know that it would have affected the baby. The past six weeks of me stuffing her with vitamins and fruits and vegetables couldn't make up for the seven months of neglect. I felt like grabbing Lena around her throat and squeezing the life out of her. I felt like finding Mr. Not-so-wonderful and beating the shit out him as well. But I was trapped.

I knew then that I would do anything I had to do in order to stay in that child's life. I'd let her fucking mother continue to live in my house. I'd pretend that I didn't still want to kill Mr. Wonderful just so she could grow up with her "Uncle Dan," in her life. That tiny little girl held me captive and far more securely than the thickest walls or most solid bars of any jail.

I pulled back into the hospital's parking lot and pulled out my iPhone as I got out of the car. I called Kim and told her she was an aunt. I also left a message for her mom and dad to let them know they were grandparents.

I don't know where the time went to. It seemed like only a few seconds ago I was leaving the hospital so full of rage that I could barely hold it together. But more than an hour had passed.

I checked the desk and Lena was out of the recovery room and assigned a room in the maternity ward. I went to the room and found out that she wasn't there. She was in the radiology department having her ankle checked.

She looked up and saw me and as sick and queasy as she felt, she managed to smile. When she saw that I didn't return her smile her face faded. It bothered me somehow that my moods could affect her that easily and that much.

The technician told me that she'd be in there for about another twenty minutes. I left. I went to the maternity ward to see the baby. I almost didn't get a chance to. I didn't know the baby's name. "What's your name?" asked the woman at the desk When I told her she got a big smile on her face and then took me to a room with a big glass wall where I could look at her.

"So did you get it together?" she asked. Apparently the story of my meltdown was all over the hospital. "Don't worry," she said. "It happens a lot. Men suddenly realize that they have all of these new responsibilities and obligations. Suddenly there's this little person who depends on you for everything. It's overwhelming. But you're one of the good guys. The bad guys are the ones who leave and just don't come back."

After staring at the baby for a while, I swore that she was staring back at me. I waved at her and headed back to Lena's room.

When I got to the room she was sitting up in her bed. It looked alike she was waiting for me. I could tell that she was nervous.

"Um, the doctors wanted to x-ray my ankle to see if they could take the cast off," she spat. I just stood there. I tried very hard to stay neutral.

"Dan, look I know that you're pissed," she said. "And I haven't been honest with you at all. I was just scared. And I needed to make sure you didn't get upset with me...at least until she was born and hopefully I got the cast off."

I just looked at her. I refused to talk.

"Okay, Danny, we need to talk. If you want to throw me out of your house, fine, but I need to be honest with you. It's time for us to talk."

Again my expression didn't change I just glared at her. So she continued to talk.

"Danny, I'm sorry I said it," she said. "Do you know how much pain I was in? All week I've been reading stories about mothers who died in childbirth. I didn't know what to expect. All I know was that it hurt really badly and the pain killers weren't doing shit. I thought that I might die, so when the doctor told me to just say whatever...It just slipped out. So I'm sorry if hearing it hurt you. But since it's the truth I'm not sorry I said it. If you want to kick me out because I told you the truth, that's fine."

"You can stay for as long as you want," I spat. "I'll get over being pissed about what you said. Just don't make it a habit." I guess that wasn't what she wanted to hear. She looked down as if she was embarrassed or hurt.

"Danny what ARE you pissed about?" she asked. "I can feel anger coming off of you in waves."

"You could have killed her," I spat. "You and that bastard you were fucking. Didn't you ever think about what not eating or not eating right could have done to her. She's the smallest baby in the ward. Even some of the premature babies are bigger than she is. How do we even know that she's going to be okay? All we can do is hope and pray. I'll do the hoping. Maybe we can get your parents to pray. If anything happens to her I'll..."

"Danny, you can't blame Sebastian for this. He was gone before I ever discovered that I was pregnant. He'd already been gone for at least three weeks. I tried to turn to my parents. They didn't want to have anything to do with me. They never even let me get as far as telling them that I was pregnant. Do you know how much it hurts to have your own parents turn their backs on you?"

"Anyway things didn't go very well with the next person I tried to turn to either, Danny. You see after my parent turned me down, I came to you..."

"Bullshit," I screamed. "I never heard from you until the day I saw you in the street. And why would you have come to me anyway?"

"Oh yes I did," she snapped. "It was about seven weeks after I left you. I'd gone to the doctors and found out then that I was pregnant. I'd gone because I was feeling really shitty. Well I was feeling shittier. I'd been feeling shitty since the day I left you. I knew from the day I walked out of our apartment that I was making the biggest fucking mistake of my life. But once I'd told you, I couldn't go back. I knew you'd never even speak to me. So anyway, after talking to my parents I decided to just go ahead and bite the bullet. I would just go with my feelings and let you know how stupid I'd been and hope that there was still some iota of love for me left." She took a deep breath.

"I was surprised to find that my key still worked. I opened the door and went into the apartment. I called you but no one answered. I thought that maybe you'd gone out to run or you weren't there. After a few moments though, I started to hear things and I realized that you actually were there but that you were busy. At first I only recognized your voice and I could see that you were enjoying yourself. You weren't sitting around waiting for me to come back to you by a long shot. But I realized that you had the right to try to find someone else, after all I did. But Danny, what I did as crazy as it sounds, wasn't my fault. I wasn't in my right mind when I left you."

"Then I recognized the second voice. I couldn't believe that she'd do that to me. I walked over to the bedroom and the door wasn't even closed all the way."

"You were fucking my sister, Danny," she said. "You were fucking my sister in OUR bed. No wonder she hates me now. She knows how fucked up this situation is. She also knows how I still feel about you. That's why she's so God damned scared of me being around you. I know that I ruined our marriage Danny. I know far more about it than even you do. I also know that I'd do anything to fix it. Kim knows that too, that's why she just doesn't want to be around me."

Our loud voices and yelling had drawn people into the room. We looked away from each other and realized that there were several nurse in the room staring at us.

"We're fine," said Lena. "Danny and I just needed to vent."

Three days later we left the hospital and brought Ella home. In the ensuing time we hadn't spoken of our argument or any of the other things that we needed to talk about. It would still be two weeks before the cast came off of Lena's ankle. It was healing well but the doctor's told her not to put any weight on it.

That meant I spent a lot of time carrying Ella back and forth from her crib to wherever Lena was. I also started feeding her. And the next thing I knew I was changing her too. That led to me carrying her around and rocking her to sleep at night.

The two weeks flew by and finally we got to the day that Lena's cast was supposed to come off. I held Ella while they cut the cast off of Lena's ankle. Ella and I watched as they pulled the hard white exo-skin off of her mom's ankle and Lena started scratching it like it was full of ants.

They put a large walking bandage around it and told her to be very careful for the next two weeks but that it wouldn't hurt her to walk on it. They gave her a pair of crutches and sent her home.

All of the nurses who knew us came to see Ella. They cooed at her and smiled. On the way home Lena looked back at Ella while I drove. Strangely enough, I was so glad to be taking that little bundle of joy home that the thought of how badly her car seat was deforming the Mustang's leather rear seat didn't enter my mind.

"I can't believe that cast is finally off of my ankle," she said.

"Don't get silly," I warned. "I've already been told that I'm supposed to make sure that you do your exercises. You have to make sure to make the joint stronger and increase the flexibility in it."

"Yeah, yeah," she smiled. "Do you know what the first thing I want to do is?"

I really thought I was beyond that. In fact I was sorry the second it left my lips. "Find some strange guy and have sex with him," I spat. The look of pain and horror on her face told me everything I needed to know. I'd hurt her and badly. I don't know if that had been my goal or if like she claimed in the hospital it had just slipped out.

When we got home, I tried to carry her into the house as I usually did, but she told me to let her get used to her crutches and trying to walk.

When we got into the house and I had put Ella down, I headed back into the living room to apologize. Despite the fact that I'd meant it when I said it, it hadn't been a nice thing to say. If I wanted to keep Ella around for as long as possible, I needed to keep the peace between Lena and I.

I went back into the living room and found her crying. I slowly walked over to her and hugged her. She returned the hug and started sobbing even more. "I'm really sorry, Lena," I said. "It was a childish, thoughtless thing to say."

"It's not just that," she said. She held up a piece of paper for me to look at. "Yours are over there on the table." Our divorce papers had come. "Now I'm truly not your wife anymore," she said sadly.

I just hugged her again and held onto her while she cried. "It's a good thing," I said. "Now you aren't trapped with me. You can actually go out and find someone that you want to be with."

She pushed herself away from me angrily. "Don't you understand that I want to be with you, Stupid? Danny, sometimes you can be such a fucking moron. I already told you that as soon as I left the house that day I regretted it. I went from living with a man who loved me to a man that just fucked me and fucked me over." She glared at me.

"I know you don't want to hear this. I know that you don't care about any of this but Sebastian never loved me. And I never loved him. He was a con man. He fed me all of this shit about pooling our resources. He gave me access to his bank accounts and I gave him access to mine. He convinced me not to go to work at least once or twice a week. He told me I could do some of the work from home and I did. I hated having sex with him and after the first couple of times I always made excuses. He didn't push so I guess that it wasn't any good for him either. He always told me that love was more important than sex, and he loved me."