Ugh. Passing out was the worst. It was worse than crying or throwing up.
I woke up in the hospital, which I was not happy about. I hated hospitals, and I wasn't even injured that badly. My shoulder had been dislocated, but I could tell it had already been popped back into place. I definitely had a concussion – a really bad one – but I didn't think my skull had been fractured or cracked or anything. If I hadn't passed out, I certainly would have argued about being brought here. Damn Thomas. I don't what he'd hit me with, but it had hurt. But it wasn't like this was my first concussion. I knew what to do about it. I would have been fine. I didn't need to be carted off to the hospital.
I looked around. Jesse was seated in a chair to my left, his arms folded over his chest. He was staring out the window. I didn't see any of my family, which wasn't actually reassuring. I knew they would have questions. I was a little surprised they weren't hovering, waiting to ambush me as soon as I woke up. My mom would hound me until I gave her a satisfactory explanation. I still wasn't sure what that would be.
The clock told me it was one-fifty. The sun streaming in through the window told me that it was still daytime, so I'd only been unconscious for thirty minutes or so. That was good. I hadn't spent a lot of time unconscious.
"Where's Thomas?" I asked. That was my biggest concern for the moment. I hadn't seen what happened to him, because I had fallen unconscious.
Jesse looked at me. "He disappeared almost as soon as you fell unconscious. He probably thinks that he killed you. The triplets thought that he had killed you." He rubbed his torso, grimacing. "Emily punched me, trying to get to you. She may have set my recovery time back a week."
I scoffed. Not at the idea that Mopsy punched him - she was one fierce little girl when she wanted to be. She was certainly the most expressive and violent of the three girls. But I was scoffing at the idea that one pesky NCDP could possibly kill me. "Please. That little fight? That was nothing. I've had way worse. I didn't even break any bones."
"No, but I'm sure that you have a severe concussion, based on the fact that you were unconscious for nearly thirty minutes. You're going to be kept overnight for observation."
I immediately objected to that. He knew how much I hated hospitals. "That's totally ridiculous! I live with a doctor. You can observe me over the next twenty-four hours. You know what to look for. I don't need to stay in the hospital overnight."
"I asked them to keep you overnight, Susannah. I don't think Thomas has realized that you're not dead. I'd like to keep it that way. Keeping you here may keep him from realizing that he hasn't actually killed you. As far as I know, he has not visited this hospital since his death. You will be safer here than you will be at the house."
I narrowed my eyes at him. "You just like seeing me suffer. You enjoy my torment."
He rolled his eyes. "Don't be dramatic. That is not it, Susannah, and you know it. But if you're in here, that will give me a chance to exorcise Thomas and end this once and for all. I've tried reasoning with him, and he is obviously not going to listen."
Which was exactly what I'd been telling him this entire time. He would never admit it, though. Jesse never admitted when he was wrong. I shook my head. "No way. I want him exorcised, of course. But you shouldn't take on Thomas by yourself, not with your fractured ribs. Please promise me that you won't do it alone. Please. We'll figure something out, but I don't want you going after him by yourself."
"Well, I'm sure as hell not going to allow you to help me. Not while you're pregnant." He was glaring at me. I gulped. He was angry. Not angry that I was pregnant, I was sure – we both wanted kids – but probably angry that I hadn't told him sooner. At least, I hoped he wasn't angry that I was pregnant. Maybe he was. We hadn't been trying to get pregnant, not just yet. We'd wanted to wait. "How long have you known, Susannah?"
I winced. I didn't want to admit this. It would only make him more angry, I was sure. He didn't like the idea of keeping secrets in a marriage. Even though I'd always told him the truth. Eventually. I was just a little slow about it sometimes. "Um...since the eighth. I took a home test, and then I went to the doctor to find out if the baby was healthy and how far along I was."
He arched a single eyebrow. "And?"
"And what?"
"Is the baby healthy? How far along are you?"
"Oh. Um, the baby's perfectly fine. The doctor didn't see any problems. And I'll be six weeks tomorrow."
"So you've known since the eighth. You've known that you were pregnant for three weeks, and you didn't say anything to me? Not a single word to me about our child? Did you think that I didn't deserve to know? Susannah, we are married. We aren't supposed to keep secrets from each other."
I picked at the blanket, not looking at him. "I know, I know. It's just...I was nervous, okay?"
"Nervous about what?"
"About how you'd react. We had wanted to wait until after our practice was well-established before we tried to get pregnant. We weren't planning for kids just yet."
He looked a little thoughtful. The anger seemed to be gone. "I think it would have been better to wait. But we are financially secure now. We can support a baby. I thought you were taking the pill, though?"
I sighed. "Yeah, but you know how much I like my wine." Jesse looked confused, so I explained, "Alcohol can weaken the liver, which makes it hard for the liver to metabolize drugs the right way. That can make birth control less effective. I didn't know that until I saw the doctor to confirm the pregnancy, and she told me that. I'm surprised you didn't know that, Dr. de Silva." After all the years that he's spent studying medicine, and I finally knew something that he didn't? That was a first.
He shrugged. "My specialty is pediatrics. I don't prescribe birth control."
"Really? You can see patients until they're eighteen, can't you? You know a lot of kids starting having sex during high school, right? Not everybody has your old-fashioned morals."
"I know that. I also know – though they never admit it to me – that my teenage female patients get their birth control from other sources. They don't like to talk to me about things like that."
I bit my lip, watching him. He had seemed angry at first, when he was accusing me of keeping it a secret for so long, but he didn't really seem angry anymore. That was good. "So you're not mad? About the baby?"
He actually looked surprised by my question. "Of course I'm not mad, Susannah. Yes, it's sooner than we expected, but I'm happy. I…For so many years, I never dreamed that I would be able to have a wife or children. I never thought I could have a family of my own." He turned away from me, but I saw the slight glisten in the corner of his eyes. I was stunned. Absolutely stunned. Jesse never cried. Ever. I think it had a lot to do with his nineteenth-century upbringing. Men in his day weren't really encouraged to show or talk about their feelings. I was working on it with him, but it was still a struggle to get him to talk about how he was feeling. Getting him to say what he just had about never dreaming of having his own family was rare enough.
But to see him cry? That was a first. I don't think I had ever seen him cry, in all the years I'd known him.
"Are you…are you actually crying?"
"No," he said immediately. "It's allergies."
I laughed. I couldn't help it. "That's my line. You can't use it." He was always giving me a hard time about using allergies as an excuse, when I didn't even have allergies. He didn't have any, either, so it was just as pathetic when he used that lie.
He tried to glare at me, but his eyes were a little shinier than normal, so it kind of ruined the effect. "Susannah."
I just grinned.
But my grin disappeared with the next thing he said. "Your parents and Brad are in the waiting room, with Emily, Emma, and Elizabeth. They have a lot of questions about what happened today."
I scowled. I didn't want to talk about this. I didn't even want to think about it. It was a disaster. All my hard work at keeping my secret was gone. "What have you told them? Have the triplets said anything?" I'd taught them not to tell anybody about the ghosts, but that didn't mean that they were able to hold out if my mom started asking them questions.
"The girls have promised not to say anything, which is making Brad quite angry. They are ignoring all of his questions and pretending that today never happened. They're quite good at it, actually. They've even seemed to have convinced your mother that they don't know anything. I have barely managed to avoid your mother's questions."
I breathed a sigh of relief. So they didn't know about the ghosts. I could still salvage everything. Somehow.
"Susannah, I think we need to tell them the truth."
I was shaking my head before he'd finished speaking. I knew he was going to suggest that. He'd been suggesting that for several years. "No. I won't do that."
He arched an eyebrow. "Then how do you plan to explain what happened today?"
"I'll think of something. I always do."
"You are a terrible liar. Susannah –"
"Do you want a boy or a girl?" I interrupted. We'd been having this argument over telling my family about our "gifts" for years. I wasn't giving in. My family would never believe me, even after what they just saw. They'd find some other explanation that would make more sense to them, and then they'd think I was crazy for even suggesting that ghosts might be real. So there wasn't any reason for me to argue with Jesse about it. I wasn't going to tell them. It didn't matter what he said, it wasn't happening.
"Susannah –"
"Because I kind of want a boy, but I have a feeling we're going to get a girl. I really do. Your family always had a lot of girls, so I'm not too optimistic about having a boy to start with."
Jesse just sighed. He knew he wasn't going to get anywhere by arguing with me.
The information about alcohol possibly interfering with birth control…that's according to the internet. I don't know how accurate that is. It sounds reasonable.
