Page 14 of Free to Run
She turns to walk away, and my hand shoots out of my pocket involuntarily, grabbing her upper arm.
Sneering at my hand with distaste, she composes her features before saying coolly, “Not the first time I’ve been manhandled, Keene.”
I’m so surprised by her statement and by my own actions, that my fingers immediately slacken. Before I can find words to explain, Alison strides back into the farmhouse, her back ramrod straight as she closes the door behind her.
“Not one of your finest moments, Keene?” a voice says behind me. Shit. I scrub my hand down my face. I don’t need any of this right now. I turn around to face Phil and Jason. Phil looks furious, Jason thoughtful.
“Not now, Phil.” I wave at the air between him and Jason. “Please.”
Phil opens his mouth, but Jason beats him to it. “Give me a few minutes, babe. Keene and I have a few things to discuss.”
Phil turns to his husband and asks incredulously, “Are you kidding me, Jace? You heard everything Ali said to him, and he didn’t contradict a word she said.”
“I heard, but there’s more going on here. Isn’t there, Keene?” Jason turns to face me. His insight as a trauma doctor has given him the ability to cut through people’s bullshit over the years. There’s no way to take back what just happened inside, but I have to tell someone what I know to protect my sister.
“I…” My voice cracks. Phil’s anger is evident. His mouth opens, and Jason calmly places his hand over it to shut his husband up.
If I was in any other frame of mind, I’d applaud that move.
“Take your time, Keene,” Jason says.
Taking a deep breath, I try again. “All I can remember is the blood.” Phil’s sharp intake of air could be heard a mile away. My whispered words are almost ripped from me. “She was pregnant with twins, and she was screaming out in pain. It woke me from my sleep. I must have been three? Four?”
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Phil whispers. I concentrate on Jason, who nods encouragingly.
“Of course, my father was off somewhere with another woman. My mother was bleeding on the bathroom floor when she miscarried them at barely seven months. I remember visiting her in the hospital later and overhearing the doctors saying it was a fluke, that there was no reason she couldn’t have more children. When I read her medical records years later, I found out that her placenta detached from one of the twins, and the rupture caused too much blood loss. She spontaneously aborted one baby, and the other was too premature to survive.”
Phil is perfectly silent. Jason inhales deeply and lets it out. “I wish I could say it’s a one in a million chance, Keene, but it’s not completely uncommon.” He nods as if he’s understanding, finally. “That’s why you’re out here and not—”
I cut him off. “Celebrating? Yeah.” I laugh bitterly. “I stepped in my mother’s blood to hand her my teddy bear. I called 911 because my father was nowhere to be found.” Phil flinches.
The reality of my baby sister having twins has rocked me to my core.
“There’s another good thing about tonight, then,” Jason says, no-nonsense.
A good thing? I look at him as if he just told me he got his medical degree at a Holiday Inn Express rather than Yale.
“None of the girls, or Phil, know anything about their family medical history. Now that we know about your mother’s difficult pregnancies, we can proactively monitor Cassidy.” Jason shifts to doctor mode, focusing on the tangible fear that drove me into the night. The potential of my sister going through what our mother did.
“We’ll get Cassidy scheduled for extra scans to monitor for placenta previa, make sure she watches for the warning signs of a placenta abruption, and consider the options of her delivering early. Keene, you may want to donate blood to store up in the event of an emergency, though I don’t think we’ll need it. But with your and Cassidy’s blood type being so rare, it doesn’t hurt us to have it ready. If we don’t use it, it can be donated.”
A plan. Something Cassidy would appreciate. Analytical thinking.
Something I do as well.
Phil lets out a shaky breath. “Jesus, Keene. I was an ass.”
I turn to him. “Frequently.” It isn’t up to me to provide him absolution. I learned long ago no one could do that. Everyone lives with their mistakes. I’ve been living with mine for a long time.
My eyes dart to the door that Alison stormed through.
Phil runs a hand down his face as he catches my train of thought. “The girls will talk about this after Jason tells Cassidy, so Ali will know.”
My face is carved in stone as I state, “All Cassidy needs to know is the potential issue I identified to Jason as a medical concern, not that we lost two siblings before she was born. She doesn’t need that burden during her pregnancy.”
Phil starts to object when Jason cuts him off. “Keene’s right, Phil. The less stress Cassidy has, the better. However, Phil is also right, Keene. You’ll likely be hearing from Ali. Regardless if she knows the whole story, knowing the little she’ll hear will send her into a tailspin,” Jason surmises. “You have to decide between now and then on what you plan to do once you hear from her.”
There are so many reasons I should leave what Alison and I shared in the past. Forget about what she makes me feel. Let her think it was a no-strings hookup and that the nights we spent together meant nothing. Then I think of the disgust in her blue eyes when I touched her just now and a lead balloon of regret settles in my chest. Even if I can’t have her, I can’t let her believe those things. She has to know I think more of her than her father, who tried to sell her when she was a blossoming teenager.
