They lay huddled on a mattress, covered in the warmth of cotton blankets. She sat on up in the bed, with his head resting in her lap and her hand gently combing through his soft hair. His snores filled the room, and usually she found them to be comforting, but now as she sat awake, they rattled her thoughts.
She thought of him and his circumstances, and how they could possibly affect her, how they could possibly affect them. She still remembered the crack in his voice and the tension in his shoulders as he told her how he was kicked out of his own home by his brother. She recalled how he felt betrayed and angry about his brother abandoning him, but she saw the sadness that bleared his eyes, and she remembered the comforting kiss she gave him that quickly grew beyond comfort.
The last thought cracked like lightning in her mind, and she restrained a groan so as to not wake her boyfriend. How could she do this to him, to them? Life was difficult enough as it is, living in an apartment they could barely afford, having him work tirelessly at night as she labors during the day. He had just lost his family, his brothers that he cared for, and his mother that never lost faith in him. One foolish mistake she made may have brought the final blow to his fragile mind.
Her thoughts were abruptly ended when a ringing resonated through out the small apartment. He was roused from her lap, eyes blinking slowly at her as he was awakened. "Carla," he slurred. "Carla, what's goin' on?"
She left a chaste kiss on his forehead as she gingerly got up from the bed, "Go back to sleep, Stanley, I got the phone." He grunted in response and let his head fall on the crinkled pillow.
The phone rang again, and she felt her heart jump in her throat as she pulled the thin robe to her now chilled body. She left the small bedroom, and entered the kitchen, where the phone continued on with its piercing cacophony. She stared at its hard, plastic shell before slowly picking it up. Her voice shook as she answered, "…Yes?"
"Carla McCorkle?"
The thumping of her heart replaced the harsh ringing of the telephone. Her whisper was hoarse as she answered, "This is she."
The news should have brought her to her knees. Once the person on the other line had finished telling that yes, there was no doubt that she was pregnant, and yes, she would need to come in again to check up on the child, their child, she put the receiver back with a cold feeling in her chest.
She forced herself from the kitchen and back into the bedroom, and leaned on the wall of her bedroom, staring at the sleeping figure of her boyfriend. She smiled feebly as he let out another huge snore. The cold that sat like a rock in her chest softened a little as she looked at him rest peacefully on the beat up mattress.
They had overcome so much together, and they would surely overcome the ordeals the child would surely bring. She told him this that night, and any uneasiness the morning had had dissipated under the warmth of his smile when she told him. As she was enveloped in the his arms, and as she held him just as tightly back, he insisted that there could be far worse news brought from the telephone.
Years later, she got another call from the telephone, and as she visualized a car crash, and a body they found, she looked to their child as he played on the ground of their old apartment. Upon hearing the news, she gripped the hard plastic and felt tears slip down her face, and she decided he was right. There was far, far worse news from the telephone.