Chapter Nine
He had owned the business for less than a year, and, already, it was in its worst shape ever. Much to his chagrin, every single job site was behind. Supply orders were backed up, men had unexpectedly quit, leaving them short staffed, and they had more money going out than they had coming in. Ryan felt like a failure. He felt as if he had failed his employees, and, more importantly, he felt as if he had failed his family, especially his wife, and that was a feeling he did not handle very well.
After spending nearly a week and half in Canada as Marissa recovered from her surgery enough to travel home, the family had somewhat settled into their new dynamic, but it felt forced, and no one was happy. Loren and Aristan were ghosts of their former selves and had to be convinced to return home. Surprising Ryan, they had wanted to remain at Garrett's, enjoying the fact that, at their brother's, they knew exactly where they stood: together they worked to annoy Susan and harass Garrett, all efforts made in jest. But, at home, with their parents, things were not as cut and dry.
He was running ragged as he tried to pick up the pieces of his professional life while still balancing his personal, the baby simply slept, ate, and slept some more, so she was neither a comfort nor a worry to the kids, and Marissa avoided everyone except their infant daughter, withdrawing into herself, hiding from both her fear and the face of reality, and masking her pain with indifference. Hell, when the father of five thought about it, he really didn't blame his two teenage children for not wanting to be at home, but, nevertheless, home was where they belonged, and, if they all kept running away from their issues and hiding, then nothing would be solved or fixed. And that was a thought Ryan just could not even entertain.
"Hey," the weary forty-five year old called out as he pushed open his front door and walked into a dark and silent foyer. "I'm home." There was no response. "Is anyone here?"
Without an answer to his question, Ryan started wandering around the house, unbuttoning the cuffs of his dress shirt and the collar while searching for his family. Just as the entrance was dark and empty, so were the dining, living, and family rooms. "Hello," he called out again, but, still, nothing was said in return. Accepting that either everyone was already in bed, a rare feat in and of itself at eight o'clock at night, even on a weekday, or that they were upstairs and all busy, he proceeded to make his way into his study, figuring that, if no one needed him at the present moment, he would try to get some more work done before going to bed. Although he hadn't eaten since that morning when he had hastily swallowed a glass of orange juice and a couple mini chocolate chip muffins, the business owner was too distracted by the mess that was his life for hunger to register upon his tired, over-stressed mind.
"Oh," he commented upon seeing two very awake and very depressed looking individuals in his office upon his rather preoccupied arrival to the room. "I didn't realize… Why didn't you guys say anything when I called out?"
Loren shrugged her shoulders, still not looking up at him, before replying. "Didn't feel like it."
Undaunted, the father of five attempted to engage his children in conversation again. "So, what are you up to?"
"Cards."
That time it had been Aristan to give him an apathetic answer, fairly dismissing him with his thinly veiled tone of annoyance and indifference.
"What's your Mom doing?"
The two teenagers looked up from their game, stared at each other as if challenging the other one in a battle of wills, and then, finally, after Loren looked back down at her hand, Ryan's thirteen year old son replied, "she's taking care of Tyler."
Exasperated, he let out a long, bitter sigh. "Can you at least tell me where she is?"
"Upstairs," the quiet and somber siblings responded. This time they both answered, but hearing two robotic, emotionless answers at once was much worse than just one.
"Well, it was nice talking to you," Ryan tossed over his shoulder as he left the room.
If the two high school students could detect his sarcasm which hid a wide streak of hurt and injury, they didn't show it. So, dolefully, the husband and father made his way back through his house, retracing his former steps until he was, once again, standing in his gloomy foyer. Taking a bracing breath, he lifted his right arm up to hold onto the railing, both to steady his exhausted form and to give his psyche some much needed strength. Squeezing the banister, he hauled himself up to the first riser and, somehow, found the strength to make his way up the entire staircase, pausing at the top to collect his thoughts before going into the nursery. However, when he got there, it was empty, so, listening carefully, he waited to hear the sounds of his wife and newborn daughter, finally determining that they were in the bathroom he shared with Marissa. It was bath time, something he had always enjoyed ever since Loren was first born.
"This…the two of you together like this…is the best thing I've seen all day long." Taking his wife's silence as a willingness to listen, the forty-five year old let his back rest against the wall and slid down so that he could sit on the floor, talk to the mother of his children, and watch her as she bathed their two week old daughter, Tyler McQueen, a name he had picked out to make the woman he loved laugh, but, instead, she had simply agreed with a blasé nod of her head. He was utterly unaware of the dust and grime he was getting all over the pristine, tile floors.
Sighing, he explained his fatigued mood. "Would it be too much to ask for just one thing to go right at work?" Because it was a rhetorical question, Ryan never noticed that the mother of his children was not particularly listening to what he had to say, so he continued. "It's after labor disputes, supply issues, and having to deal with disgruntled clients for thirteen hours straight that I start to wonder if I really should have bought the business. It was so much easier when I just had to go to work, do what I was told, and then come home to my family, but then I consider the other side of the issue. If I hadn't of bought the business, who knows who my boss would be right now, and, if nothing else, by being in charge, I can make my own schedule, and we'll be able to retire sooner rather than later. I just…," he paused, searching his mind for exactly what he wanted to say, "I just wish that it wasn't everything all at once, you know? It'll be nice when things get back to normal around here." When Marissa didn't say anything, he amended his statement by adding, "not that little Tyler wasn't worth it, because she was. Hell, she's worth everything."
"Go eat dinner," his wife instructed him without sparing a glance in his direction. Pushing herself up off the edge of the tub, she reached for the soft, terrycloth towel reserved for their daughter. "It's takeout. I burnt the casserole I was making by accidentally falling asleep. Guess I was more worn out than I thought I was after staying up all last night with Tyler."
"I never heard her cry on the monitor."
"It's alright," Marissa accepted his silent apology and attempted to relieve him of his concern at the same time. "You're the only one working right now. The least I could do is take care of the baby. Dinner's in the fridge."
And, with that, she walked out of the room, moved down the hallway, and disappeared into the nursery to dress, feed, and rock their newborn to sleep, and, just like that, he had been dismissed by the one person who had never treated him that way.
Later that night, Ryan was in bed, flipping through the hundreds of TV channels they had thanks to the satellite dish perched high up on their roof but not seeing a single image, waiting, rather impatiently, for his wife to join him so he could go to sleep, but, when she came into the room, she simply ignored him, passed through into the bathroom, and began her nightly bedtime routine of showering, putting on her pajamas, and brushing her teeth. By the time the mother of his children returned from the steam filled ensuite, he was wide awake, worried about her because he could have sworn he heard her crying while she had been in the shower. For some reason though, he couldn't ask her, so, instead, he just continued to observe her.
He watched as she sifted through her drawers looking for something to put on, bypassing her nightgowns, her baggy shorts and t-shirts, even the few pairs of boxers and wifebeaters she had purloined from him over the years only to choose a flannel set of pajamas. Although it was just April, Northern California really never got a reprieve from the heat like the more temperate areas of the country. There was no need for such warm sleeping attire, but Ryan figured it was less about the physical and more about the emotional; the figure hiding pants and long sleeve combination giving Marissa a sense of security. He just wished he could give that to her.
At the same time that she climbed into her side of the bed, he reached across to his nightstand and turned his lamp off, blanketing their master bedroom in darkness. Like was his customary habit, he moved to take her in his arms, to hold her against him while they slept, but, as soon as his fingers brushed against her side, she froze, pulled away, and scooted over so that she was resting on the very edge of their bed.
"Marissa?"
"I'm still sore," she whispered, the soft tone of her voice muffled even more by her feather pillow.
"I'm sorry," he quickly apologized. "I didn't even think about…"
"I know," she reassured him. "It's okay. Goodnight."
"Night," the father of five returned, too tired to really listen to the emotions pooling underneath his wife's seemingly unimportant words. However, if he had paid closer attention, he would have been able to tell that she wasn't turning away from him out of pain, or anger, or even out of a desire to hurt him as much as she was herself hurting. In reality, her actions stemmed from a fear of being turned away, so, instead of waiting for her husband to pull away from her, physically disgusted by what she now considered herself to be, a shell of her former self and no longer a woman, she beat him to the punch, eliminating his chance of hurting her as a form of self preservation.
If only he knew that's what she was doing.
It was less than two hours later when a shrill shriek from the baby monitor woke Ryan from a deep, restless sleep. Springing up straight out of bed, he glanced to his left to look at the alarm clock, noticing that it was 12:14, time for the illustrious midnight feeding all new parents claimed to dread but secretly enjoyed.
"Go back to sleep," he murmured to his wife, turning to kiss her cheek before moving out of bed, but, when he looked at Marissa's side of the bed, she wasn't there. Curious, he felt the sheets where her body should have just been. They were cool to the touch. Sighing, he shook his head, already knowing the answer to his unvoiced question but not wanting to admit it.
With quick, compact steps, he left their bedroom behind and made the trek down the hall to the nursery, pushing open the partially closed wooden door to peer into the softly illuminated space, the whimsical nightlight sitting on Tyler's dresser casting a warm glow throughout the pastel hued room. And there, in the corner sitting in the antique rocker they had used with both Loren and Aristan, sat Marissa, their content daughter in his wife's arms drinking from her little four ounce bottle. Because of the blood transfusions, Marissa had not been able to breast feed.
Letting his gaze flicker away from his wife and child, Ryan noticed that there was a pallet made up on the floor beside the basinet, a pallet that had obviously been slept in, and he knew that if he went and touched those sheets he would find them warm. Since they had gotten home from Vancouver, he had been too distracted and then exhausted from both work and getting the ball rolling on their lawsuit against the doctor who had been in charge of Marissa's case that, by the time his head hit the pillow at night, he was almost immediately asleep and not easily roused. Accordingly, he had no idea how many nights the mother of his children had waited before crawling out of their bed to hide from him in their daughter's nursery.
"What the hell is going on," he demanded to know, startling Marissa and making Tyler squirm in surprise.
She immediately blushed and moved her tear filled blue gaze away from his before answering. "I'm sorry. I tried to calm her down before she could wake you."
"For Christ's sake, Marissa, when have I cared about sharing our parenting duties? Never," he replied before she had a chance, "so I don't see why you all of a sudden think you need to do everything where the baby is concerned. I am her father, and I can help out."
"I know you can."
"But that's not what I was asking about," he continued as if she hadn't spoken. "What I want to know is why you are sleeping on a blow up mattress?" The father of five couldn't help the slight edge that entered his voice nor the fact that his volume increased with every word he yelled. "Or are you just that mad at me that you can't handle the idea of sharing a bed with me?"
"I'm not mad at you," Marissa practically pleaded for him to understand. Fully crying, she pressed, "You've just been working so hard lately, trying to take care of everyone, that I thought the least I could do was make sure Tyler didn't wake you at night. Please, Ryan," she begged, "don't be like this."
"Get up," he ordered, striding confidently across the room and holding out his arms for her to put the newborn in them. "Go back to bed…our bed, and I'll finish in here."
Shaking her head in argument, she replied, "no." Despite the nervous, almost frightened tone, he could hear the finality in that one word.
"Come on, you're running yourself ragged. It's been only two weeks since you've given birth, and I think you weigh less already then you did before we conceived Tyler. There are dark circles under your eyes, you don't smile, and you said so yourself that you fell asleep this afternoon while cooking dinner. If nothing else, Marissa," he tried to persuade her, "you have to take care of yourself, and not being able to stay awake while you wait for a casserole to finish baking, that's not a good sign. Now, up," the business owner directed her, even going so far as to reach out and carefully lift her from the chair and help her to her feet. "I'll take over."
"Just…get away from me," she screamed, pushing his hands off of her. "I don't want your help; I don't need it." Losing the anger from her voice only to replace it with desperation, she explained, "this is the one thing, the only thing I can still do. Please, Ryan, please don't take this away from me, too."
"Honey, I don't know what you're talking about."
"I can't be the wife you deserve, I'm not there for Loren and Aristan the way I once was, the idea of going back to work and taking care of women who are pregnant makes me want to break down and simply cry, so I can't financially participate in our lives anymore, and I can't even fucking make my husband dinner so that when he comes home at night there's a warm meal waiting for him. The only thing I can do," she screamed, making the baby cry, is take care of Tyler, so that's what I'm going to do, and you can't stop me. Please, Ryan, please," Marissa beseeched, "leave me with this one thing."
Before he could reply, a shy voice from behind them spoke up. "Dad?"
He turned around to find both of his teenage children watching them closely. "It's alright," he assured him, nodding his head back towards their rooms. "Just go back to bed. We'll see you in the morning." Without a word, they did as he asked, leaving him alone with Marissa and the baby once again. "You can take care of Tyler," he promised her, wrapping a comforting arm around her quivering shoulders, "but come back to bed. She can sleep between us tonight, okay?"
"Alright," the mother of his children agreed readily, hiccupping. Although she tensed when he first touched her, she eventually relaxed into his embrace and let him support her as they walked back to their room.
"And we're going to talk about this tomorrow night when I get home from work," Ryan said, his tone leaving no room for argument.
"From work," she questioned, pulling away from him without any warning, "but what about my doctor's appointment tomorrow. You're still coming with me, right; you didn't forget?"
"Of course not," he covered smoothly, surprising himself with how easily the lie came. With everything he had been dealing with since they had gotten back home, her appointment had slipped his mind. "I just want you to sleep in as late as possible in the morning, because you need some rest, sweetheart. We'll talk tomorrow night…when we're in bed together."
"Okay," Marissa consented.
At the same time, they climbed into bed, and he sat up against his pillows as he watched her finish feeding their newborn daughter, burp her, and then reposition so that the baby was resting right up against her side, her body cocooned around her in a gesture of comfort and protection. Once they were settled, he laid down. Waiting until he heard the quiet sounds of his wife's slumbering breaths, Ryan reached his hand out and gently covered that of the woman he loved. She might not want him touching her yet, but it was something he needed, and he was reassured that eventually everything would be alright when she, subconsciously in her sleep, joined their fingers together and squeezed his hand. It was a small step but at least they were, once again, moving forward instead of backwards.
"I'm sorry for making you both wait so long, but after everything that has happened, I want to make sure that Marissa is perfectly healthy before I send her home with a clean bill of health. I know this must be an inconvenience both with work and Tyler…"
"No, it's fine," Ryan assured the physician. "Work is just that; it's not important."
"And Susan's watching the baby," his wife added. "It's good practice for when my grandson or granddaughter arrives."
"Are we talking about the same Susan you recommended natural child birth to out of spite," Patricia asked, laughing. She didn't see the father of five's warning nod as if advising her not to say anything.
"My daughter-in-law might not be perfect, but she is, if nothing else, a perfectionist, and she would never let me accuse her of not taking good care of Tyler. After all," the new mother snapped, "that would give me something to use again her."
The OB-GYN and the business owner shared confused but hesitantly accepting glances. Obviously, Marissa's relationship with her son's wife had entered a new, even more perplexing stage. However, they let the subject drop. It was safer that way for everyone involved.
"Okay then, as soon as the blood results come back and I have a chance to look at them, you'll be free to go. It's really just a precaution. Other than the obvious aches and pains though, how have you been feeling?"
"Lonely," the one time nurse answered slowly, really thinking about her response, "and afraid, sometimes guilty, too."
"I meant physically, but those are very telling emotions. You do know, don't you," Patricia asked, "what they probably mean?"
"Yes."
"Wait," Ryan interrupted the two women. "Fill me in here. Are those feelings not normal?"
"Let me ask you this," the doctor turned to him. "Do you think that your wife has been acting the same as she did the previous two times you've been with her after she gave birth?"
"Well," he fidgeted in his seat, avoiding Marissa's curious gaze, "not really, but everything about her labor, hell our whole trip to Canada, was pretty intense. I just figured everything combined together kind of heightened her emotions."
"I'm depressed, Ryan," the mother of his children spoke up, putting him out of his bumbling misery. "I'm suffering from post-partum depression."
"And it's very understandable, because, as you pointed out," the OB-GYN filled in, "she went through a very traumatic experience. We'll just monitor her closely and make sure that these feelings don't progress into something more. Because you understand the illness," she said to Marissa, "you'll be able to watch yourself for symptoms, and, if you're unsure, ask your husband what he thinks. We'll get you through this. But back to what I was getting to before. Any physical complaints?"
"Nothing out of the ordinary," his wife stated. "Sore muscles, pain in my abdominal area, fatigue."
"She's also been losing a lot of weight at a really rapid pace," he added, capturing the physician's full attention. "She's already at a lower weight than she was before she got pregnant, and she has no appetite." Noticing Patricia's furrowed brow, he started to become worried. "Other than for the obvious reasons, is that bad?"
"It's probably nothing," the older woman reassured them both, "but that's why I ordered these blood tests, to make sure. It is possible for viral infections to be passed through blood transfusions, but..."
"But the risk of infections is very rare," Marissa spoke up, interrupting her friend. "The FDA's regulations on collecting, testing, storing, and using blood have pretty much eliminated the risk of infection."
"This is true," Patricia agreed with her patient. Just then, there was a knock on the door. A nurse came in with the blood results, handed them to the doctor, and then left again. While opening the folder and going over the information, the OB-GYN continued talking. "However, even in a foreign country as medically advanced as Canada, the risk of infection is increased, so we're just doing everything by the book here just to be on the safe side."
As they waited for the doctor to reassure them that nothing was wrong, Ryan watched as the older woman's face went from confident and pleasant to nervous to downright pale with sympathy and pity. "What, what is it," he demanded, automatically reaching his hand out to hold his wife's, grasping it in the hopes of comforting her. "Just tell us, Pat. Whatever it is, it can't be that bad."
"Have you ever tested positive before for Hepatitis C?"
"What, no, of course not," Marissa dismissed, her eyes wide with panic. "If anyone should already know that, it's you. After all, you are my doctor. Why do you ask?"
"Because there are hepatitis C antibodies in your blood results," the physician stated, tossing the folder aside and sighing heavily, "and, because this is the first time we've ever seen a sign of the virus in any of your tests, that means you were just recently exposed. I'm so sorry."
"So you're saying that my wife is sick because some doctor didn't follow medical procedure and perform a cesarean like he was supposed to, that, not only did he risk her life by making her give birth, but he also gave her a disease she's going to have to fight for the rest of her life," he went ballistic, standing up abruptly from his chair to pace the small length of the office like a caged animal, his left hand distractedly running through his messy hair and gripping it tightly in an effort to curb his anger.
"It might not be permanent, Ryan," Patricia attempted to calm him. "Many people only have hepatitis C for a short period of time before getting better."
"But others fight the disease for the rest of their lives?"
"Please, sit back down," she pleaded with him, both for her own benefit but mainly because she noticed her patient was about to lose control, "and let me give you all the facts before you react." After he had done what she asked, she pressed on. "Yes, hepatitis C is a serious infection, and, yes, it can cause permanent liver damage as well as cirrhosis, liver cancer, and liver failure, but many people manage the disease and go on to live full and healthy lives. In fact, some people never even detect that they're sick. However, Marissa is already displaying some of the symptoms. Because of this, I'm going to monitor her very closely. If things progress and get worse, there are medications we can consider, but we caught this early, extremely early, and there is absolutely no way that there has been any lasting damage done already. It will be important for you to take care of yourself," she instructed Marissa. "You're going to have to exercise regularly and maintain a healthy diet. I can work with you on this. Obviously, you'll need to avoid alcohol and illegal drugs, but I'm not really concerned about that, and we'll have to watch which medications you're prescribed in the future, but, other than that, there is no reason why anyone will even have to know that you're sick. In fact, after a few years, you might forget yourself…if this doesn't go away on its own."
"What about sex," his wife spoke up. He was surprised to see that she blushed when asking the question and that she avoided his eyes. Why, he didn't know. "Will Ryan be putting himself in danger by being with me?"
"Well, we…doctors…actually don't know the answer to that. If there is a risk though of getting the virus through sexual contact, it's minimal."
"That's just perfect," Marissa exploded, standing up rapidly and moving about to gather her things. "So, not only am I sexually unattractive to my husband now, but, even if by some miracle he does someday want to make love to me again, he might be putting his life in danger!"
"I understand that you're angry," Patricia tried to placate her, but it didn't work.
"You're damn right I'm angry," the mother of his children screamed, throwing her purse across the room only to watch it hit a wall and have its contents spill onto the floor. "I'm angry at the person whose blood is flowing through my body right now, whose blood saved me, because they did something stupid like share a needle with another junkie. I'm angry at the incompetent doctor who didn't monitor me close enough when I was in labor so that I had to give birth and need that transfusion in the first place. I'm angry at the catcher who collided with Cooper at his baseball, injuring my son and making me go into labor in the process. I'm angry at Cooper for making it onto a Canadian team and, in a way, forcing me to travel out of the country when I was eight months pregnant. I'm angry at you for not forbidding me from leaving the city, I'm angry at Ryan for giving in to me when I insisted that we go to Vancouver, but, most of all, I'm furious with myself for getting pregnant in the first place. Do I love my daughter, of course I do, but look at what my life has become simply because I took advantage of my age and the fact that my body was starting to change. I'm a forty-five year old joke, a freak! Step right up and look at the five time mother who has children raging in age from twenty-five to two weeks, who is expecting her first grandchild in three months, and who is now technically not even a woman!"
Shocked by her patient's outburst, Patricia stared at the younger mother for several moments, blinking rapidly, before she stood up and made her way towards the door. "I think I should give the two of you a few minutes to talk…in private."
"Don't bother," Marissa snapped. In a matter of seconds her rage turned to absolute desperate misery. "I can't be here any longer," she sobbed, pushing past her OB-GYN and running out the door.
Ignoring the doctor, Ryan ran after his wife. "Marissa, wait," he called after her. Seeing the mother of his children pause, then stop, and then finally turn around to look at him, he felt his strength become bolstered. However, he still had no idea what to say to the woman who meant everything to him. "I love you," he finally admitted, going for the most simple and honest thing he could think of.
But she didn't return his sentiment. Instead, she just cried harder, pulled away from him, and asked, "why," before fully turning around and leaving him standing there with his arms outstretched towards her.
And, just like that, he knew.
He was losing her.
