was nearly too painful to bear. I attempted the math. I’d thought I was regular. I was regular. Or was I? Was this one of those mega-early miscarriages? And how the hell did I get pregnant in the first place? I’ve got the patch. Or was it just some freaky-deaky period. Yeah, that’s it. I’ll stick with that— just a super freaky, I’ve-been-worked-to-the-bone stress reaction. My body’s personal alarm bell shouting: “Slow the hell down!”
As I rifled through the medicine cabinet for painkillers, nothing made sense. My pseudo-promotion felt more like defeat than accomplishment. The new boyfriend, the supposed “right” boyfriend, left me feeling more empty than complete. And worse was the scary, sad, confusing reality that, albeit very briefly, I might have been pregnant with Grant’s baby. What is happening to me?
Finally, behind the Band-aids, I spotted the Vicodin container left over from an abscessed root canal. Five pills left. I wondered if they would help—now would have been a helluva time to start a Vicodin habit. Perhaps a good time. I grabbed one pill, downed it with a sip of tap water, and settled into bed. Perfectly harmless. Everything’s going to be just fine. I’ve got a great life—and precisely the life I wanted.
It was 4:30 in the afternoon when I slipped under the covers for the night. The pain of my cramps had subsided a bit, but my throat felt sore and dry. The sun, forever happy in southern California, continued to penetrate the cracks in the blinds. My room felt like a sauna. I hated it.
Awaking in a cold sweat a shocking eighteen hours later, I was jolted back to reality. I’d had a nightmare, and it had rattled me. It felt too real. It took place on the sweltering African grasslands. One voracious lion was chasing down gazelles, lunging at their delicate necks and then ripping out their innards. This particular lion wasn’t ordinary; he was sadistic and cruel. None of the other lions got to eat. He ate, and ate, and ate, and became stronger and hungrier with every meal.
The gazelles weren’t ordinary, either. They were spooky shape-shifters. They transformed from people to hoofed animals, and back to people. At one point, they were just ordinary people with beer bellies and bad perms and a desperate look in their eyes. Then I saw Laura and Brenda and Oliver and some of the other show guests huddling together, looking frightened, along with the other gazelles. It was haunting and weird. I felt myself running and running. The more I ran, the closer I came to the lion’s grasp. He was the ultimate predator. The rest of us were his prey.
Then something strange happened—I was able to leave my body and, from the outside, I saw myself running. Only I wasn’t a human being or even one of the gazelles. I, too, was a lion, and blood was dripping from my teeth.
It was the first weekday I hadn’t been on a plane in months. I rolled in early for a production meeting called for 9:30 a.m. Before I could get to my desk, I was stopped by one of the PAs.
“Hey, Jane, long time no see. Where you been?”
“On an airplane.” I smiled and patted him on the back. He was one of the younger, greener PAs, but as keen as they came. He told me he was hoping to make AP by next month.
“Good job on ‘The Hitter’ story. I don’t know how you got her to smack her kids on camera, but she was unbelievable! She scared the crap out of me!”
“Oh shit! Has that aired already?”
I so rarely got to see my work on television. Too busy. Thank God for Toni’s Tivo. At least now I had some record of my accomplishments, even if I rarely had a chance to see them along with the rest of the world. I think I saw The Purrfect Life once—that was pre-Toni’s Tivo machine.
“Yup. And, of course, you missed her at the studio shoot. She was asking for you.”
My stomach flipped. During the field shoot, I’d promised Brenda I would meet her back-stage and help her with her nerves. She’d begged for my help in an e-mail this weekend. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten.
“Damn, that’s not good,” I said regretfully.
“Her show aired yesterday. They flew her in pronto because her story was so riveting. It was nuts. We’ve already received tons of e-mail. People are saying we should get Social Services involved!”