There was something familiar, and at the same time bizarre, when I opened my eyes and found myself on a bed at the ER. The familiar part was that it was the same bed I'd been given after the car accident. I lay directly under a stain on the ceiling shaped like Florida, or maybe that was just me missing my family in my worst moments.
What made absolutely no sense this time, though, was that I was surrounded by four men.
One of them wore a white robe and held a chart in his hands. If I remembered correctly, his name was Kevin, the same physician who had my case before.
Next to him was Pace. His face was pinched with fear I suddenly felt right down to my bones. As I tried to ease to a sitting position, Maurice helped me on my right and Chase on my left.
Despite nausea sloshing in my stomach, I managed to ask, "What's going on?"
The doctor and my boyfriend turned to me. It was the physician who said, "Welcome back, Miss Diaz."
Why did that make me feel like I'd just sucked a lemon?
"First things first," he announced, as though the other men and I weren't on the verge of panic. Kevin flipped a page in his chart like he had all the time in the world. "You're pretty healthy so today's incident isn't really a cause for concern for someone in your condition. I'd just advice you take it easier with the physical activities, because you're burning more calories now."
For a beat, the only sounds came from activity around us. A couple of nurses wheeled in a patient to a nearby bed. Over by the counter, someone talked a bit too loud on the phone.
I glanced at my companions, seeking the understanding I sorely lacked. The blank expressions in the Leblanc men's faces told me they suffered from the same confusion as I did.
So, I asked Kevin, "What condition do you mean?"
That succeeded in tearing him away from the chart.
The doctor finally faced me, his eyebrows were up as though he was now the confused one.
"Well, you're pregnant."
I—
"Que yo qué?"
Someone drew a sharp breath that sounded almost painful.
Was that me?
My head swam. I dropped back on the bed, ready for the dark.
It didn't come. Instead, the stupid Florida shaped stain danced above me.
"That can't be," I muttered with the weakest voice to ever come from my chest.
"Who here is the father?" the doctor asked, his voice just shy from breaking into laughter.
He took turns inspecting the three men, as if he really thought I could have boinked a man thirty years older than me, or another who was at least five years younger than me.
Pace lifted his hand and it made the world stop. At least mine. Because his admission made this real and any hope I harbored that it was a sick joke went up in smoke.
There was no color left in his face. We might need another bed for him to pass out, too.
"Congratulations, man!" Kevin clapped him on the back.
I'd never seen someone misread a room so bad.
Then again, the way his eyes shone hinted he was probably doing this on purpose.
"Why don't we leave the happy couple to rejoice in the news in private for a bit?" the doctor beckoned Maurice and Chase to join him and the two men did, their bodies moving as though they were under water.
The wording stuck to me even as the doctor disappeared around the corner.
Rejoice. Was that a different language? I didn't think I could English anymore.
Coño de la madre, qué acaba de pasar?
Several things bubbled within me at once. One was bile, which I had to swallow back. Another one was tears, which I let fall freely.
And another was laughter, which I couldn't have held back if I stuck a boulder in between my lips. It burst like an explosion that filled the entire ER. Every eye turned to me as I lay on my side in stitches, clutching at my stomach in case it decided to bring forth its contents too.
Pace plopped on the chair his brother had occupied and just existed there until my fit abated. He ran a hand through his hair and pulled it slightly. It stuck in all directions and sent me into giggles.
On top of everything, was I drunk? Why couldn't I stop laughing? Me volví loca? Más loca?
Finally, he looked at me.
"Are you okay?"
A horrible sound came out of me—what would happen if a sob and the letter u had a baby. An apt allegory, now.
I didn't know why I expected him to react any other way. The terrifying possibility this could've happened with my ex fleeted through my mind. That wouldn't have been Rodrigo's first question.
Even as fear had taken most of my gut prisoner, shame clawed its way up the pyramid of emotions making me weep. We'd been moving too fast, I knew that, but now that the extent was officially known, I couldn't believe my impulse to just be with Pace, to share in his touch and his breath and the light that shone from his eyes, would result in me completely ruining our reputations and, fuck, our lives.
Pace shot to his feet, "I'll call Kevin-"
"No." I latched onto his hand. "I'm okay. I'm okay."
I was not. That was a lie the size of all Alberta.
Pace's chest worked as though he were running on the treadmill when he sat back down. His Adam's apple bobbed up and down a few times. Could be he was also working to keep dinner in his stomach.
"I'll support whatever you want to do," he said, his voice barely audible. His pretty eyes were unfocused in the distance, blurred by moisture.
My lungs stopped working for a solid moment and I forced them to restart with a forceful gasp, because now I wasn't breathing just for myself.
Which gave me my answer right away.
But Pace was the most out of it I'd ever seen him, shaken as I didn't think he could become.
What if he didn't like what I was about to say? What if it pushed him away?
Whatever I wanted to do...
I tucked my arms against my chest and curled my legs up, as if giving myself a preemptive hug. Then said, "I'll keep it."
The reaction came right away, unexpected though it was.
"Okay, good." Pace let out a breath that completely deflated him as he grabbed my hand. "I was hoping you chose that."
"Really?" I bit my lip. "Even though this is basically a disaster?"
"Not with you," he said.
"Oh, you dumb, perfect boy."
That clearing up some of the clouds in his eyes.
"I'm not perfect," Pace said, giving me a watery smile. "I'm not proud of this, but I might just have shat my pants a bit."
Ugh, that his statement made me giggle in this situation painted him as even more perfect.
I scooted backwards on the bed and patted the empty space I'd cleared. Pace didn't bat an eye. In the next second, he drew the curtains around the bed shut and joined me on the bed, tucking me against him. My head was on his arm and as he looked down at me, our noses brushed.
Brushing my fingers across his jaw, I said, "There's no one I'd rather shit my pants with."
His eyes crinkled at the corners as he fought against a smile until worry returned to them.
"I don't know how this happened." Pace's forehead wrinkled up. I suspected mine was the same. "We wore a condom each time."
Even as I crafted my question, I knew it would land like a blow, but I still asked it. "Did you put them on correctly?"
His mouth opened in the shape of an o.
"I was a virgin but not ignorant." He ran a hand down his face. "Or so I thought."
"It's not your fault," I murmured. Though, it wasn't mine, either. "Something must have gone wrong. Maybe one of the rubbers had a tear or was expired."
Or maybe it had shifted during one of our most vigorous sessions, the earth-shattering ones that left us unable to locate our common sense among the shrapnel.
"I'm sorry," Pace said, enveloping me in a hug so warm and gentle there was no way his words inspired fear in me.
I fisted my hands on his shirt. "What do you mean?"
His breath fanned over the crown of my hair and for a while he didn't respond. His free hand ran up and down my back and I focused on the sound of his heartbeat. Strong. Steady. Like him.
"I have something a bit embarrassing to say," he started, which did raise some alarm bells. I pulled away enough to look him in the eye. Red tinged his cheeks and he looked like he wanted to hide. "I, uh. Okay, here goes nothing."
Nothing? I was sure whatever he was struggling with would be monumental.
I drew in a sharp breath in unison with him.
"I'm in love with you."
At the resulting silence, all I could do was blink.
"It was at first sight," he continued, urgency in his words even as he kept his tone low and soothing. "When I saw the carwreck, I didn't think the driver could've possible survived. But there you were, perfectly intact, sitting upside down with your eyes closed as though you were taking a nap. It was so strange, you didn't seem to belong to this world."
"Funny," I said softly. "That was my first thought about you, too."
Pace's lips curved upwards ever so slightly. "I've seen so many crazy things at this job over the years I figured you were kept safe because you weren't done with the world yet. There was something you had to do with it. Which was to turn my world upside down."
My heart fluttered and made heat travel everywhere in my body, especially my tear ducts.
"And I knew it the second time I saw you, right here on this bed." A tear rolled down his eye and over the bridge of his nose. "And I knew it the third time I saw you. And the fourth. You came to this town to steal my heart."
A sob caught in my throat.
Pace leaned down to kiss my forehead. "I'm just afraid I've now stolen your future from you."
"Who's to say it didn't belong to you all along?" I asked him.
"Still." He swallowed hard and resumed rubbing my back. "I've moved too fast because I didn't want to let you go, and now you're stuck. You have a job you love and all of these plans, and now..."
Oh, this was real, after all.
The job I was still new at, that I loved, that had given me new purpose, was probably not going to work out anymore in a few months. At best, I'd get relegated to admin duty. At worst, I'd be fired.
In either case, I couldn't continue training for the welding certification if it risked my health. And the health of the creature inside of me. I had to think not about myself first anymore. And then, even if the pregnancy went well, even if my parents or my sister didn't kill me, the future would shift into a picture I had never imagined for myself.
Pace closed his eyes and when he opened them again, they were the clearest they'd been all night. "That's why I'm sorry. But I love you and I won't let you shoulder this by yourself. Not this or anything else. So, even if the circumstances aren't quite what I had in mind, would you marry me, Cora?"
The thief here was him because he'd just robbed me of breath, of ability to think, of any feeling but the one filling up my chest.
That strange u sound came out of my throat again and I sobbed into his shirt. The sound of the curtain being opened rang like a bang, but whoever it was, took one look at the scene and decided to close it again. Which was great, because I was bawling.
Struggling to even breathe, I managed to say in between sobs, "I don't want to shackle you."
Pace murmured into my hair. "Too late, Cora. I'm already yours."
I pulled him down for a kiss, right there in the middle of the ER, with only a thin curtain to separate us from the world. But in his arms I felt like I was in a different place, somewhere warm and safe and right. In his arms I was home. In his arms we would grow a home.
That was how, despite everything, we did walk out of the hospital as a happy couple, oblivious to what was in store for us.