I nod, my stomach muscles clenching while we wait. What if the baby isn’t okay? What if the baby is okay? The two possibilities send my life spiraling in radically different directions, and my fear spirals with them. To distract myself, I tap the unknown number alert and see a voicemail. I open the voicemail and put it on speaker.
“Iris, hi,” a vaguely familiar, deep male voice says from my phone. “It’s Jared Foster.”
My eyes go wide.
“The internship,” I whisper-hiss at Lotus, who stretches her eyes wide back at me.
“I hope you’re feeling better since the last time we saw each other.” Jared’s voice holds a touch of humor. “I know you felt bad about what happened. Don’t. My dry cleaning was tax-deductible.”
Even though I’m not in the same room with Jared, embarrassment burns my cheeks. Vomit. Seriously?
“I’ll just get right to it,” Jared continues. “Richter is offering you one of the internship spots. We’d expect you in Chicago in the next month, and we’d need you ready to travel pretty much right away. There’s several deals we’re about to close, and you’d have to jump right in.”
His low chuckle interrupts the list of expectations. “You said you were ready to work, to do whatever it took,” he says. “I hope you meant it. Give me a call so we can talk details. Congratulations.”
My fingers tremble over the phone, and I immediately want to replay the message. I’ve been anxious, biting my lips all day, but now they stretch into a wide grin. In the midst of so many things going wrong, something is going so right.
“Oh, my gosh.” Lotus squeals, her eyes lit with as much joy as she’d have for her own good fortune. “This is amazing, Bo.”
“I know,” I squeal back. “He told me it would take a couple months to decide, but I had almost given up—”
The door swings open in the middle of my sentence. The doctor walks in, followed by Caleb, who lowers the phone from his ear and slides it into his pocket, obviously just finishing a call.
It all comes crashing back. I’m in the hospital, three months pregnant, and bleeding heavily. What felt like the greatest moment of my life now feels like a cruel joke—a carrot dangled in front of me and snatched away. Lotus grips my hand again, lining our rings up and giving my fingers a reassuring squeeze.
“We’ve looked at everything, Iris.” Dr. Rimmel’s eyes are kind, and her expression is serious. “You have a rather large subchorionic hematoma.”
“English, Doc,” Lotus says with a wry look. “No speak medical-ese.”
Dr. Rimmel’s lips twitch, and I’m so glad Lotus is here, or I’d be going crazy. Caleb comes to sit on the bed beside me, his concern and frustration all over his face.
“Yeah, what’s that actually mean?” he demands. “We’ve been waiting forever.”
Where Lotus’s comment lightened the atmosphere, Caleb’s injects so much weight, Dr. Rimmel’s slight smile disappears, and her shoulders square.
“To put it simply,” Dr. Rimmel says, giving Caleb a pointed look, “the placenta detaches from the uterus, which causes clots and the bleeding we’re seeing.”
“The baby?” I force myself to ask, not sure what I want to hear her say. “Is the baby okay?’
“Yes, the baby’s fine, but we need to put you on bed rest to make sure everything stays fine.”
“Bed rest?” I croak. “I … like full-on stuck in the bed? For how long?”
“As long as it takes, Iris,” Caleb interjects sternly. “We’ll follow instructions to the letter.”
We don’t have to lie in bed for God knows how long. I do. Of course, I’ll do whatever the doctor recommends, but Caleb has no right to be cavalier about my life, my time, my body.
I bite my tongue because this isn’t the time to assert myself. I need to understand what is required and set Caleb straight later.
“For how long?” I ask again.
“We’ll start with full home bed rest,” Dr. Rimmel says. “And assess in a few weeks.”
The word home hits me hard. I have to be out of my on-campus apartment. The university has extended as much grace as possible, and I’ve got a few prospects, but nothing in stone.
Full home bed rest?
I don’t have a home, much less a bed to rest in.