An Act of Persuasion - By Stephanie Doyle Page 0,100

years after Anna was born explained why Ben hadn’t wanted to tell Anna anything about her parents. Mark had planned to set up a meeting to confront Ben about it. They couldn’t hide the truth from Anna. It wasn’t fair.

“You should have told her when you found out. Why did you go looking anyway?”

Ben cupped his face in his hands as if trying to support the weight of his heavy head with something besides his neck. He sighed and then finally straightened. “I don’t know. We’d been working together for a few years. She never mentioned much of her past but I knew she’d been in foster homes. For some reason I wanted the information. You know me, when I get that idea in my head nothing can stop me. I told myself we were working with the government on several contracted projects and, security clearance issues aside, I should have more intelligence on my staff. It made sense.”

Mark shook his head, not believing someone so smart could be so obtuse. “Ben, you wanted to know more about her past because you wanted to know more about her. You had been falling for her for years, you just wouldn’t admit it to yourself.”

He made a harsh sound. “Falling for her. What a ridiculous phrase. Something so...powerful...to be described with a euphemism a teenager might use. I wasn’t falling for her. I was...in need of her. That was what I denied myself. That she was different than any other woman I had ever known and I needed her like I needed to breathe. I thought...I thought if I could give her her past it would change something between us. But the story— It was so awful. I didn’t want her to know. You saw?”

Mark nodded.

“Then when I got sick I thought if I could give her security, maybe after I was gone she might figure out the one thing I wouldn’t admit to myself while I was alive. It gave me a strange sense of peace.”

“Why can’t you say it?” Mark asked. “Even now, why can’t you just say it?”

Ben turned to him and Mark sucked in his breath. The agony pervading Ben’s being was tangible. As if it was so real Mark could smell it and hear it and taste it.

“I wasn’t supposed to have her or the baby. I wasn’t meant for this life. I’ve always known that. Always. If I say it now...she’ll die.”

That’s when Mark knew that his thoughts when he first entered the hospital were true. If Ben lost Anna, Ben himself was lost.

* * *

“YOU CAN STAY with her now if you would like.”

The nurse who had brought Ben to Anna’s room left quietly. He’d insisted on a private room and saw that there was a lounge chair that would recline next to the bed where, later, he might be able to sleep. A straight-backed chair was situated on the other side of the bed.

Behind her bed he saw the monitor beeping steadily and the tubes inserted into her arm were connected to pouches that would hydrate her. Earlier an orderly had shown him a staff bathroom equipped with showers. Ben was able to wash off and exchanged his blood-soaked clothes for a pair of blue scrubs.

Two floors above him, the nurses in the NICU reported that his daughter was resting comfortably after a good bottle feeding.

Anna had wanted to breast-feed. But that was impossible right now.

Sitting beside the bed he took her hand in his and thought how pale she looked. She didn’t like to sleep on her back. It made it uncomfortable with the pressure of the baby on her lower back and bladder.

Only the baby was gone. Out of her body. Strange, because the thin sheet covering her still showed a predominant bump where her stomach was. But he imagined that was partly from the bandages used to cover her incision.

And partly from the amount of ice cream she had consumed while pregnant.

He smiled as he thought it and imagined the scowl she would give him if he’d said that out loud.

Only she wasn’t scowling and her face was like he’d never seen it. Not even when she slept was it this...neutral. It was as though she wasn’t inside her body. That the light and the energy and the chaos that was her, was suddenly quiet.

Outside the room Ben could hear the buzz of a hospital. Gurneys being rolled down hallways, people having conversations, both work-related and social, trays of bad food