“Yeah. He still doesn’t stay awake too long. Then he’s usually up all night.” He looks at me with a sad smile. “I’m exhausted.”
“Hasn’t Rose been helping with him?” If I could move, I would’ve taken him off her hands so she can sleep an entire day away. But that’s not in the cards. Not now. Not ever. I’m essentially a useless parent at this point.
“She has, but when he needs to eat…” She gestures to her chest, and my nostrils flare on an exhale. “I don’t know about you, but I’m tired.” Without asking, she walks behind me and moves the wheelchair to be besides the couch.
“Whoa, what the fuck are you doing?”
“I’m going to watch TV, unless you’d rather stare at the wall the entire night?” She snarks, her sass such a welcome from her new nonchalant demeanor. It’s like she’s grown up ten years within this past month, and I feel stuck in a horrifying loop.
I say nothing, instead sighing into myself as I get turned around and parked next to the edge of the couch. She sits down at the head, right next to me. So close, I can smell her familiar scent, which is mixed with something new.
Baby.
I instantly feel guilty. She’s been trying hard to keep things cordial and probably killing herself trying to keep everyone sane, herself included.
I’m an ass.
“About the hospital—”
She puts her hand up. “You know what, Jackson? I don’t really want to talk about it. Things have been… insane, to say the least. Let’s just put it to bed, and start fresh, okay?” She sees the look in my eye and shakes her head. “I’m not asking for anything. I just… let’s just be friends, okay?” Her voice chokes at the end, and my nose burns with emotion.
I nod, even though there’s a million things I want to say.
I wasn’t looking at her odd because I don’t want to be with her.
I was looking at her odd because I do want to be with her.
I wake up later with a painful kink in my neck and my ears ringing. The tiny wails that seemed so far out in the distance seems clearer as the fog clears from my brain.
I tilt my head up just as Cara does the same. We must have dozed at some point. I guess that’s what happens when you only have like ten channels. She ended up watching some weird documentary from thirty years ago that bored me to sleep before the first commercial came.
Cara wipes the side of her mouth as the dream clears from her eyes. “Wesley must be awake.” She stands up and stretches, her shirt inching over her stomach and revealing a brutal scar.
“What the fuck is that?” I sneer, fury building through me at her being injured, pained, or marred in any way. I think of my dad, and how he plunged a knife into her abdomen. “Did my fucking dad do that?”
She looks down, instantly making the scar disappear from my sight. She curls over a little bit, as if embarrassed about her scars.
“No, well, yes, actually. A combination of your dad and the c-section.”
“C-section?” What the hell is that?
“I couldn’t… have Wesley in a normal birth.” She rushes off to go and get Wesley and a moment later, she comes back with a wide-eyed Wesley.
I stare at him, absorbing all the information she’s just told me as I stare at my son. I had no idea she couldn’t have a normal birth. I didn’t realize the trauma to her stomach would be so… substantial.
“Why couldn’t you have Wesley normally?” I stare at him and my soul sinks. I so badly want to reach out and touch him. I want to feel him in my arms like Cara gets to, and it puts a sour taste in my mouth that I feel angry with her that she gets to do those things and I don’t.
That I’ll never have the ability to feel my own child in my arms.
She sinks down, grabbing a rattle that starts singing an obnoxious tune when she presses a button. “Your dad… what he did, I went into shock, Jackson. I almost didn’t make it.”
I feel my face prickle with malice.
It’s a good thing that I can’t move right now, because if she would have told me that and I would be able to move, I don’t know even want to think about the damage that could be done to this home she just worked