Jo's Point of View
He nudges his glasses up on the bridge of his nose with his index finger and clears his throat, licking his lips and swallowing the little bit of phlegm he coughed up in preparation to speak. His eyes leave the paper laying on the desk in front of him and flicker up towards me. When they meet mine, I feel like I want to shrink. Like I want to curl up in a ball of myself and disappear completely, fall flat, clean off the face of the earth. I don't want him to look at me. Not when he's looking at me with blatant, clear shame. I can't stand it when people look at me like they're ashamed of me...especially when I'm already ashamed of myself.
"It...says here that you're uh…" He looks at the paper again and reflexively, my eyes follow his. I squint my eyes just slightly so I can see the paper more clearly. I shift my position in the brown cushioned chair that I'm sitting in and cross my legs, prepared for whatever "I'm disappointed in you" speech he's fixing to give to me. I'm prepared for whatever he's going to say because deep down, I know that the amount of guilt and shame he is about to bestow upon me is nothing in comparison to the amount of guilt and shame I've already bestowed upon myself. "You need my signature of approval…for request to drop out?"
"Yes sir," I nod my head and fold my hands on top of my kneecap.
"But if I'm reading your file correctly, it is to my understanding that you're currently ranked…number one in a class of three-hundred fifty-two. You're a member of the academic league, honor society and scored a 1530 out of 1600 on your SATs…" He sounds genuinely confused, which genuinely annoys me. It's not his business and he should stop snooping in my file. What's it to him if I drop out or not? Regardless of my intellectual abilities? He's just the principal. He has no right.
"If you could just sign the paper Mr. Peterson, I'd—"
"Josephine," he calls my name to cut off my sentence. "Jo." He swiftly corrects himself, which sends a shiver up my spine.
It's alright if he calls me "Jo." I usually only let adult figures that I'm comfortable around call me by my nickname and when he does, it forces me to realize that yeah…I am comfortable with Mr. Peterson. He knows me very well. I've been in his office on more than one occasion. Never for being reprimanded though…usually to have some kind of academic award given to me. He's always complimenting me on how kind, respectful, commendable and sweet I am. I'm a smart kid. So imagine his surprise when I came to him with this "Request to Drop Out" form.
"What's really going on here?" He takes his glasses off and looks at me with low, caring eyes. "You know what potential you have."
I close my eyes and grit my teeth. I really don't need him to sit here and remind me how great I can be. I don't need him to sit here and tell me about all the Ivy League schools I could get accepted into with standardized test scores like mine and I really, truly don't need him to give me this speech. I give it to myself at least once a day, every night before I fall asleep. I really don't need to hear it from someone else. His eyes flash down to the undeniable bump in my middle and back up to my face. I spent the last three months hiding the bump underneath baggy clothes but it's impossible now. It's prominent and it's very visible and there's no use in trying to hide it anymore.
"And you don't have to let this define your life, there are other—"
"Can you just sign the paper?!"
I turn my head just slightly to my left and the moment I do, my cheek touches something ice cold and hard, which causes me to jump. My eyes are sore and heavy, so still groggy with sleep, I bring my hands up to them and rub hard in hopes of clearing my vision. I look around for a few moments and sigh once it takes me all of thirty seconds to realize that I'm sitting on the hard linoleum floor of the cramped-up gas station bathroom, and the ice cold object that my cheek touched was actually the tile wall that my head is slumped up against. I've been sleeping in this gas station bathroom for a couple days now and tonight is actually the first time I've ever actually woken up in the middle of the night. I'm usually too exhausted to even think about waking up. I usually sleep through the entire night...but tonight, for some reason, feels a little bit different.
I'm not sure if it's what I dreamt about that made me want to wake up or if it's the fact that I'm not as tired as I usually would be due to the fact that I took a decent nap today, but whatever the reason, something internal told me that waking up was a good idea. I open my mouth and let out a harsh, dramatic yawn and rest my palms flat against the floor so I can pick myself up off of it and feel my way over to the toilet. I could just reach up and turn on the light, but it's pitch black in here and it's been pitch black for a while and I know that if I turn on the bright fluorescent lights of this bathroom, my eyes will ache even more than they already do. So I wrap my hand around the ledge of the porcelain sink and pull myself up. Intuitively, my hand flies down to my stomach and cradles it as I drag my feet the three or four paces over to the toilet.
Just as I'm about to pull my pants down and use the bathroom, I'm interrupted by a very loud, squawky, and slurred, "Jo!"
I freeze in the middle of my motion, my fingers still wrapped around the waistband of my jeans and my knees slightly bent as I already started preparations to squat over the toilet. Did somebody call my name? At this point, I'm not sure if I'm awake and fully cognizant. Like I said before, I don't usually wake up during the course of the night in this bathroom so maybe my normalcy prevailed and I'm still somehow asleep. Because I'm pretty sure that I'm hearing things. There's no way someone is calling my name, and there's no way they know I'm even in here.
"Jo! I know you're in there! I know it!"
I feel my eyes widen by about two or three sizes as I whisper to myself, "Oh my god." I'm not sure what I'm more scared of at this very moment. I don't know if I'm more worried about the fact that someone knows I'm in here or the fact that whoever it is clearly knows who I am when in all seriousness, I haven't the slightest idea who it could be. I don't recognize that voice. What if it's the police? God, what if they found Chris, locked him up, ran my license plate and found me here? What if they're going to arrest me next? Oh my God, they wouldn't make me have my baby in a jail cell, would they? Who would they give her to? They wouldn't let me keep her in jail, would they? Of course not. There are no cribs in jail. Then again...if someone took her...that'd be a hell of a lot better than having to raise her in a gas station. Should I go out there? If it's the police, should I go out there and let them know that yeah, I'm the girl that was on the run with Christopher Douglas. I'm the one that the car is registered to...I'm an accomplice to everything. Should I tell them? Or should I stay in here and pretend like I'm not in here? I don't know.
I adjust my pants on my waist and drag my feet quietly over to the door. Maybe if I just...explain to them? Maybe if I just tell them the truth, that I was never involved in selling the drugs. I was never involved. I was around while he was making it and I witnessed him sell it to a few people but I swear to God I never did anything. I've never even so much as smoked a cigarette. I've never done anything with drugs, I swear to it. They might not believe me though. I take a deep breath and pull the door knob to open up the bathroom door. I tiptoe towards the front of the store, keeping my body behind the racks so whoever it is doesn't see me right away. If it really is the cops, I'll just go back into the bathroom and shut the door. I'll pretend like I'm not in here.
I could stick to telling the truth though. I always told myself that honesty is the best policy. I could just tell them the truth about everything….yeah, I could do that. I purse my lips together and start thinking of what I'm going to say while they're putting the handcuffs on my wrists. I was never involved with the drug trafficking, I swear. And I know it's illegal to do what I'm doing. I'm stealing, I'm living in the gas station and I'm freeloading. It's illegal but I...I swear I'll pay everyone back. I just don't know what to do. My boyfriend left me here and I'm not from around here and I'm just trying to keep myself and my baby alive. That's all. I swear I'll pay everyone back for the things I've stolen once I get on my feet...if I ever get on my feet, that is.
"Jo, come on...I KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE."
I wrinkle my eyebrows and narrow my eyes, because for some reason, I recognize the person that this slurred yelling of a voice belongs to all of a sudden. I snap out of whatever trance I was in and lightly jog to the front door to let her in. I guess now that I realize that it's Amelia calling my name, it makes sense that it's her. She knows that I stay here. Come to think of it, she's probably the only person in this godforsaken town that knows my name. I was worried for no reason. I wasn't thinking. Amelia makes sense.
"Amelia?" I fumble with the lock on the door and mumble a swear word under my breath as I struggle with it.
Once I finally get it open, I push the door outward and instead of letting her come inside, I migrate outside and step into the bitterly cold, fall air. In all honesty, it'd probably be better if I had let her come inside to where there's actual heat instead of having the both of us stand outside in the freezing air, but on the off chance that someone knows that Amelia and I are at this gas station right now, I don't want to drag her into trouble as well. If I get into trouble, at least she can say that she was never inside the gas station and it wouldn't be a total and complete lie. I wrap my arms around myself to keep warm and just stare at her, since she isn't really speaking anymore, since she stopped yelling. We're just staring at each other and it's somewhat awkward because neither one of us really know what to say to each other. She's dressed casually in jeans and a sweater, and I can tell that she isn't just coming back from work. I could be wrong, but if she was just coming back from the hospital, I'm fairly certain she'd still be dressed in scrubs. I could be wrong, but I don't think I am. She's coming back from somewhere else...and the loud, foul-smelling odor that's coming from her is a clear indication of where. It smells like it's seeping out of her pores in the form of sweat.
"Amelia," I take a step towards her and flinch when she steps away. "What are you doing out here?"
I decide that settling for small talk is probably the best way to go here. I'm fairly certain she's intoxicated and I don't know her well enough to know how she acts when she's under the influence. She doesn't look good though. Underneath her eyes, her usually flawless pale skin is a deepened shade of red and her eyes look like they have residual tears inside of them. I don't want to say that I'm scared of her, because I'm not. But it is a little unnerving to see her, when she's always so put-together, look like this.
"Amelia…," I whisper her name, trying to refrain from alarming her. "Are you okay?"
"See," she grins sloppily and triumphantly. "I knew you were here!"
"Did you come for something?" I don't know what else to ask her, so I settle for just that. Clearly she came here for something. I don't know how she got here...I mean, obviously she drove here but what I'm saying is that I have no idea how she managed to do that and live to be standing here having a conversation with me. But obviously she came here for something and I'd like to know what. "Do you need something? From me?"
"You live in a gas station," she laughs like she's just delivered a punchline. "A gas station! You're pregnant and living in a gas station! And I live in a big, fancy house all by myself. Why shouldn't you stay there too? Come on, let's go. We'll go now."
"You're so drunk," I whisper only loud enough for myself to hear. "Yeah," I clear my throat, speak up and nod my head at her. "Why don't we go home? To your house?" I slowly walk towards her with my hands up in a surrendering notion. I don't want her to think I'm trying to harm her or anything of that nature. She's pretty messed up right now, so I'm willing to bet that her judgment's a little screwed as well. "Let's go home." I grab onto the metal keyring in her hand and give it a gentle tug to test her reaction before I go full out and grab them.
"You don't know where to go," she snaps and pulls her ring of keys back. "You'll get us lost!"
"How about you just tell me where to go?" I gently pry the keys out of her hand. Now obviously, I'm not going to go home with her. She's heavily drunk, irrational and I highly doubt that either her husband or her son would appreciate an annoying, pregnant seventeen year old in their house. I'm not going home with her. But I'll be damned if I let her drive herself anywhere. I don't even know how she made it here safely. I just would not be able to live with myself if I let her drive out of this parking lot in this condition. The guilt will eat me alive tomorrow morning when I read the headline, 34 Year Old Local Neurosurgeon Dies In Fiery, Explosive Car Accident. "How's that sound? I'll drive and you'll tell me where to go...like a chauffeur."
She stares at me and thinks about it for a moment, then yawns and nods, slowly handing me her keys. Apparently, whatever I said to her, it made sense in her drunk brain.
"Okay," she yawns again. "But you gotta listen. I'm too tired to get lost."
"I'll listen," I nod my head, only to make her feel better.
Before I go to her car though, I take off my socks and roll them up. I grit my teeth together to bear with the fact that this asphalt is about thirty degrees below freezing right now and walk on the balls of my feet over to the glass door that I came out of. I wad my socks up so they're nice and thick and stuff them underneath the door so that it doesn't lock when it shuts. I hate myself for thinking that lightly on my feet. I hate the fact that my brain actually came up with an alternative to being locked out. I hate that I'm sleazy enough to know that I'm going to need a way to get back into the gas station. But I rationalize that well...it's for the baby. And that's enough to make me feel okay about the fact that my socks made an excellent door stop.
At least for a little while.
I take my eyes off the road for a brief moment so I can look down and see exactly where her turn signal is. I'm used to driving my crappy old car and her new, fancy car is a big change. I'm generally aware of where turn signals should be but I have to look to be sure. I've never driven something this fancy before. I kind of like it and honestly, that's probably because I can actually fit underneath the steering wheel with my big, beach ball belly. I slap at the turn signal and make the left turn that'll lead me into the hospital parking lot. I feel kind of bad for taking Amelia's car and driving it like this, but I have good reason to believe that she wouldn't exactly mind. I could've let her take her own self home. I could've given her the keys and let her drive herself home...who knows? She might've actually made it. I'm not sure how, but she managed to drive herself to the gas station from whatever bar she crawled out of. She might've made it home. But I don't think I would like myself very much if I had let her drive herself home while she's as inebriated as she is.
Speaking of Amelia, I think she's fallen asleep. She's been silent for a while now and I've been driving in solitude. I glance at her through the rear view mirror and sigh when I can't see much of anything. Her head is slumped to the side and resting against the window but I can't see much of anything past that, so I give up. You know what? For a moment upon pulling out of the gas station parking lot, I actually thought she would be competent enough to tell me where she lived. I actually felt myself get a little excited at the possibility of seeing where Amelia Shepherd, big time neurosurgeon, lived. I was kidding myself though. She got in the back seat of the car, put her head against that window and has been quiet ever since. So I took her to the only place I knew she'd be safe.
I sigh again and turn the wheel and pull into the parking lot of the hospital. When I pull up, I'm halfway expecting to see a few people standing outside. It's a hospital, after all. I'm expecting people to be outside, people that will recognize her and take her inside and maybe call her husband or someone else that cares about her. I'm proven wrong, though. Opposed to the hundreds of people I was expecting to be outside, there's only one. I'm not close enough to make out details just yet, but I can tell that it's a guy solely by the way the shoulders are squared off. I circle around the parking lot for a few moments before picking a parking spot close to the doors. I imagine she'll be pretty hungover tomorrow morning and the last thing she'll want to do is look for her car. I shut her car off and step out of it with a hand braced against my belly, walking around to the back to help her out.
"Amelia?" I call her name as I rest my hand against her knee-cap. She stirs and groans, flapping one hand up to swat me away.
"Go away," she mumbles.
"I'm workin' on it," I mumble back and help her out of the car.
I bump her door shut with my hip and let her rest against my body for support as we walk towards the entrance of the hospital. As we get closer and closer to the door, I see that I actually recognize the man that's standing outside. He's holding a phone to his ear and he's talking loudly, barking at whoever it is on the other end of that phone. His voice is intimidating, but I roll my eyes up to the black night sky and silently thank the God that I doubt exists. Thank GOD it's her husband. He'll know what to do with her.
"What do you mean you don't know?" He barks. "She's tiny, dark hair. She'd have ordered a vodka tonic, probably more than one. She- I know you have a lot of people coming in and out all night! Can you just check credit cards? If she paid with one it would be under-" He stops when I come up behind him, and it takes him all of two seconds to realize who I have leaning, both physically and metaphorically, on me. He returns back to his phone. "Yeah, thanks anyway. You were absolutely no help." He hangs up and looks at us both, me with confusion in his eyes worn like a pair of glasses, but he looks at Amelia with what is clearly love and concern underneath anger that is brimming even more to the surface the longer he stares.
"Are you- from earlier?" He asks.
I just nod my head because in truth, I can't find my voice. He's intimidating and quite frankly, after the episode where he kicked me out earlier, I'm not entirely sure if he even likes me. He probably thinks I'm just another useless, pregnant teenager. A stain on society. How do I speak to someone that has that impression of me? It's not until this moment I realize that I'm still nodding.
"I'm sorry... about earlier. I hope you know it was entirely professional. It was nothing against you. It's just Amelia-" He stops and looks her over once again, this time much less angry. "How did you find her?"
"I-I-" I stumble over my words as my mind is moving faster than my lips can keep up. Although I'm pretty sure that he already knows I'm living in a gas station, I don't want to actually say it. I don't want to actually tell him that she came to me in the middle of the night, banging on the glass window of the gas station I'm living in. I just don't want to say it. Saying it is a whole different level of degrading. "I didn't find her," I shake my head. "She found me. She...wanted to drive home and I just...took her keys."
Nodding as if he totally understands my position, he finally comes forward enough shift Amelia's weight onto himself. I hand him the keys so he can make the short walk to the car. Amelia perks up again after her nap and recognizes him, but he brushes her off, the anger returning. After he buckles her into the backseat, he walks back over to me.
"I have to go get my son," he says, looking toward the front doors. "He's inside."
I nod my head once, give Amelia another look and let a soft smile crack across my face. It's not a smile of happiness...I don't really know why I'm smiling. It just seems like the most logical thing to do I guess. I want to tell Amelia "goodbye". I want to tell her "thank you" and "take care" but it's useless. I just wish the last time I saw her wasn't when she was drunk. That's not the last memory I want to have of her, but I guess I'll settle. I'll always remember her as the woman that showed me and my baby kindness when the world shut it's back on us though. I'll always, always remember that.
I tuck my hair behind my ears and scrunch my toes under in a desperate attempt to warm them up since I'm still barefoot from stuffing my socks underneath the door. I purse my lips into a hard line to bear with the fact that my feet are numb and probably frost-bitten and stuff my hands into the pockets of my jacket so I can begin the twenty minute trek back to the gas station.
Amelia's Point of View
As doctors, we are trained from the very beginning to fix the problem. That's our role. Stitch the cut, irrigate the wound, slather the burn, set the broken leg. There are a million different ways, thousands of different specialities, but it all comes down to one thing: fix the problem. That's why most of us become doctors, I think. That's our driving force. When people come to us, they're already broken and we've spent the better portion of our lives learning how to fix them.
In residency, I struggled with plastics. I always knew I would be a neurosurgeon. There was nothing else in the world that interested me like the brain. But we had to sample all the specialities, and in my third year, my attending assigned me to a burn victim. Her entire body was covered in third-degree burns. I spent hours upon hours with that woman. We told stories, and laughed, and cried. I told her that I was a screw-up destined for a life alone, and she told me she wished she had lived her life alone. She was eight months pregnant when it happened. Her water broke and her husband was cranky because he had worked all night and had just come home to sleep through the day when it broke in the morning. "Let's get this damn thing over with," he said to her, nudging her just a little too hard. She was at the top of the stairs.
She rolled forward, tumbling downwards. She says now that she knew it before she hit the bottom, but she didn't want to believe it. After that, her husband didn't say a word. He just drove her to the hospital stoically, so she could deliver her now-dead, full-term baby.
They let her hold him. They gave her a moment alone, and when they came back, they couldn't find the body. She had hidden her baby underneath her pillow. When they tried to take him away, she was hysterical: "No! Let him be! I can take care of him! Let me take care of him!" and she had to be sedated. She said the rest was a blur. The next thing she remembered was a dream where her son was talking to her, telling her to get revenge for him. She had to listen. She set her house on fire with her and her husband in it. She wanted to die, but the firefighters got her out.
Free, she said dryly, like she was the furthest thing from it. That's what I am now.
I asked if she felt guilty.
She said she hadn't felt anything at all since her son died. Then I peeled back her burnt skin and she yelled in pain. I mean, she really screamed. And then I realized that skin grafts or no skin grafts, this woman was broken, and no doctor, no matter how well trained or gifted they may be, could fix her. It was too late.
If you're starting in the aftermath, it's already a little too late. I should have known that.
Walking down the stairs of my house brings me closer to the stench of eggs cooking, my least favorite smell, but it makes me smile. Owen and Teddy always eat eggs together, and for a minute, I forget where I am or when. For that one minute, it's Owen and me, and Teddy is still a little chubby-faced three-year-old, still innocent to a world outside of safety and goodness, and bubbling with giggles over eggs with Daddy in the morning.
But I walk into a kitchen with a stone-faced Owen standing over the pan, and my silent five-year-old. The eggs were right, though. My head is ringing a little from a hangover, but it's manageable. At least for an old pro, it is. I have a million questions running through my head for Owen, but I don't ask any of them. I don't even look at him. I'm afraid that if I do, everything will come crashing down. The one thing I do remember for sure is that I came home to empty drawers and an empty house, and Owen left me. For some reason, he's back now, and if I ask him why, then he'll tell me. And I don't want to know why. I want to believe it's because he loves me. Because he didn't want to take Teddy from me. Because he realized he made a mistake and he wants to stay and work it out with me, no matter what or how long it takes. So I don't ask him. Because as long as he doesn't tell me, I don't have to know.
"Hi Buddy," I say, kneeling by Teddy's chair. He stops coloring and smiles at me so his eyes crinkle into nothing but little lines on his face. He turns back to his paper and in purple crayon, messily spells ou y. He looks back at me, pride swelling his face, and smiles again. "That's right. Mommy." I kiss the top of his head and pick up a red crayon, squeezing an extra m into his word. He nods in understanding, giving me yet another smile. Our best way of communication, these days.
"Hi," Owen says. I look up at him, but he isn't looking at me. I walk over to him and stand across the counter, where he's pushing around scrambled eggs in the pan with a spatula.
"Hi," I say. "How are you?"
"I should be asking you that."
"What does that mean?" I scrunch my eyebrows, genuinely confused. I wish I could remember last night clearer. After going to the bar, I remember thinking about Jo. I was going to do something with her. Go find her, I think. I must have got side-tracked and gone to Owen.
"Really, Amelia?" He sighs and turns off the stove, dividing the eggs onto three plates.
"I hate eggs," I say.
"They're not for you."
"Then what-?"
He looks over my shoulder and beyond me. For the first time since my eyes locked on Teddy, I follow Owen's gaze and look at the couch. There is a lump on it.
A blanket lump.
A human-shaped blanket lump.
"Owen," I hiss, more angry at the fact that I'm so caught off-guard. "Who is that?"
"Your friend," he mumbles.
"I don't have any-," I start, then my mind wanders. Arizona? Why would she be on my couch? Owen would have said "sister" if it was Meredith or Maggie, and it was neither of them, anyway. Neither of them would be sound asleep on my couch. They would have woken me up. "What are you talking about?"
"Do you remember last night?"
"No," I shake my head, lowering it a little with shame. It feels like a confession. "I don't. At least not everything."
I turn back toward the couch and see the lump moving. When she pulls the blanket off her face, there is a tuft of brown hair. A baby-face I know too well, and a swelling belly to compliment it. I can see her waking up from sleep still, rubbing her eyes, but I walk over to her anyway and sit on the coffee table.
"Jo? Are you okay?" I look back at Owen, taking waffles from the waffle maker and
setting them on four different plates, one clean of eggs. "What happened? Did something happen to her?" I turn again to give my attention to Jo. "Are you okay?"
Last night I came home to no one. I went out for a drink, and I woke up in a house with my husband cooking breakfast, my son smiling sweetly, and the girl from the gas station sleeping in my living room.
What the hell happened?
