Like He Never Left

chapter 13

I watch as her eyebrows scrunch together and the wheels turn in her head. She's smart. She'll have figured this out before I even finish the story. 

I start at the very beginning of Josie's and my meeting and watch Brooke carefully. She's remained calm thus far, but she winces when I tell her about the beating she gave Mary Jo.

"She really did that?" Brooke asks, eyes widening. 

"No one could bad mouth her best friend except her, even if it was the girl he was dating. Mary Jo's eye was black for a week," I snicker. 

"So that's where the real tension came from when you told me who she was."

"Yeah. Anyway, they finally realized their love for each other wasn't just platonic, so they decided to test the waters with each other. They spent their senior year together and went to the dances together and basically had one of the best years of their lives."

"Senior year was kinda great for me too," she muses quietly.

I smile at her in response before continuing. 

"As soon as Josie turned 18 and became legal, Colt proposed to Josie, and obviously she said yes. They got married, and basically everyone who knew the two were invited and showed up to the event, which was basically the whole town because everyone knows everyone down there. I mean, this is what the whole town had wanted and gossiped about anyway. So the wedding went off without a hitch. They couldn't afford to go on a honeymoon, so they stayed in Oak Bend and worked and worked. Colt was a mechanic at one of the car garages and did a little carpentry on the side. Josie worked as a tour guide on one of the plantation houses close to town during the summer and worked at a nursing home for the rest of the year. 

"The first year was wonderful for them. They struggled financially, but their parents helped with bills when necessary and they were happy. Josie found out she was pregnant about a year after their marriage. The couple was elated at the thought of beginning a family. Josie lived to have fun, and up until she found she was carrying a baby, she loved her alcohol. Whiskey, mostly, but as soon as the pregnancy test came out positive, she quit cold turkey. Colt made sure that she went to her doctor's appointments and took the prenatal vitamins and everything. In the second trimester, they lost the baby."

"The second trimester?" Brooke interrupts, shock etching onto her face.

"Yeah," I breathe. So many emotions are resurfacing, try as I might to suppress them. "Yeah, the doctor chalked it up to something being wrong with the placenta. The nutrients couldn't get from Josie's bloodstream to the baby's without blood leaking through I think. The baby is basically this foreign thing inside the mother, and there're certain hormones that relax the uterus during pregnancy. I guess hers weren't at a sufficient level to keep the uterus under control or something. The doctors didn't catch it in time or something. I really don't remember what happened. I've suppressed those thoughts and memories for a long time," I admit. 

I rub my eyes, trying to get rid of the visions of all the blood that I see every time I close my eyes when I talk about this. 

"I wonder if it was placental abruption," she wonders aloud, "I can't even imagine what that was like for anyone involved, especially Josie. I'd probably go crazy."

Of course, being trained in pediatrics, she would have maybe some idea as to what I'm talking about. 

"Well, you're not too far off from what happened. Josie went into this state of hysteria and depression, swearing up and down that it was her fault because of her drinking history. Everyone knew that if she wasn't one already, she was on her way to becoming an alcoholic before the baby, but the doctor said that that wasn't the problem. The placenta just didn't attach correctly I guess, and her body didn't catch it until it was too late.