PLEASE READ: there is a scene in this chapter that is not for the weak of heart. Read at your own discretion!
Logan's birthday starts off relaxing. Her gift to him is a nice BJ and anything he wants from the gourmet spread that is the McDonald's menu.
And so they sit at a table, him feasting on a tray full of fries, sandwiches, mini pies, and such. All she has is a diet Dr. Pepper, which she has touched maybe once since they sat down twenty minutes ago. She's felt crappy for a few days now, even to the point of hurling behind a bush along a Minnesota freeway. Logan had barely pulled over the car in time. She's spent the days since swallowing down bile. It makes her feel like a volcano— searing hot lava bubbling up her throat, threatening to explode out of her any minute.
"Just a twenty-four-hour bug," she insisted to Logan. That was thirty-six hours ago. She hopes he hasn't noticed.
He offers a fry to her for the millionth time, and she shakes her head. His frown deepens as he dunks the fry in ketchup and pops it in his mouth. "You're killing me, Four Ears," he whines.
Louise shrugs.
"If you feel off at all, just say the word and we'll go to the doctor or something."
She snorts. "Like we have healthcare. How would we pay for that?"
The determined, stubborn spark in his eyes annoys her. "We find an ATM and withdraw however much is needed, or see if one of our credit cards will work this time."
"I cut my credit card up a year ago," she says flatly. "There was nothing left on it, and nothing worth putting on it. It didn't even deserve to be cut into a ninja star."
Logan chuckles and bites into an apple pie. "Okay, cash, then."
They relapse into contented silence once more. He scrolls on his phone and she counts the stains on the ceiling, trying to focus on anything but the uncomfortable feeling simmering in her gut.
It's when she reaches for her soda for an experimental sip that the feeling hits her. It runs into her face-first like a brick wall, with a confrontational thud. Louise stands, her chair scraping at a cringeworthy volume on the floor.
His head snaps up immediately. "You okay?" She can see him combing her face for an unspoken answer, and she has no response for him that wouldn't also involve a little spitting up.
She races off to the bathroom, crashing through a stall door and slamming it shut behind her. The fact that it's clean makes her feel a little bad that she's about to dirty it up. She crouches over the toilet bowl, letting her innards spew out of her. When it ends, she falls back and lets the cold sweat hit her in full force. Her skin is slick and hair is sticking to the back of her neck. She takes off her bunny ears and pushes away the baby hairs crowding her overheated forehead.
Louise stares down at her cherished hat, massaging her fingers over the worn pink fabric. The bathroom tile is rough and cool against her legs. It's then, as she's looking down at her ears and the cold gray floor, that she notices the blood.
It's coming out of her, gushing out of her, a literal crimson tide. She doesn't understand why looking at this blood is making her feel woozy. She loves gore and horror movies. She could watch a man get beheaded by a chainsaw without even blinking. But this blood, seeping through her jeans and hungrily lapping at her bunny ears, sends a sickly fizzy sensation into her fingers and up through her arms.
Something finally kicks her brain to make a move, and she stumbles over to the toilet, raking down her pants. So much blood. Oh fuck, it's everywhere. She scrabbles for the toilet paper holder, but there's not enough toilet paper in the fucking country to soak up all of this. Pain slices into her lower abdomen. She's never had period cramps this bad. She'd rather be stabbed than suffer through this.
She feels wetness on her cheeks, and she reaches a violently shaking hand up and is met with tears raining from her eyes. A strangled sob claws up her throat, and Christ there's so much blood. She must have no blood left in her body. She must look white as a sheet.
Louise knows she could scream, knows she should or she might bleed out right here. What a death that would be— found frozen mid-cry on the toilet in a McDonald's bathroom. She sniffs, and the door outside her stall creaks open.
"Four Ears?" He's here. There's a pause, a too-long pause, then a shout of "Oh, fuck!" and the stall door is rattling. He's here, and she lets go.
She comes to on a hospital bed. The mattress underneath her is hard as a rock. Shit, she thinks.
Logan is snoring on a chair next to her bed. Louise clears her throat and yells, "Hey!" It takes him a second to wake up. She would slap him if there wasn't an IV needle buried in her good slapping arm.
"Louise," he says. His tone is grave, and a numb dread hollows out her stomach. He never says her real name unless it's serious. "You're gonna be okay."
"Oh, what a shame," she says dryly, for no other reason than to chase away the fog trying to settle on her soul. "I was hoping I'd expel my final breath in a McDonald's bathroom surrounded by a pool of my own blood."
A ghost of a grin appears on his lips. "Glad you're being your same old unpleasant self," he teases. He lets out a slow exhale. "You're gonna be okay," he says again.
"Yeah, I heard ya the first time," Louise mumbles. "When can we get out of here?"
There's a knock on the door, and a doctor steps in. He's a rather unremarkable-looking guy, your average middle-aged rich white dude. Louise can't wait to shovel over all their remaining gas and food money to him.
"Hello, Miss Belcher," he says in his unremarkable voice, and she bites her tongue at the maddening formality of his tone. He pronounces her name in a way as awkward as Tina's teenage existence.
He strolls forward and stops at the foot of her bed. "I'm Dr. Silverman, and I was on call when you were brought in three hours ago." She nods, not finding a response to that worth wasting breath on. "I'm sorry for having to deliver this news to you— it's never easy for anyone to hear this." Pause. She hears Logan's breath hitch. "That blood loss you experienced today was due to a miscarriage."
Logan is still frozen. Again Louise feels the urge to slap him, or Dr. Silverman, or somebody. White-hot numbness spreads through her veins along with the IV fluid. She's heard the word "miscarriage" maybe three times in her life: from her mother, hushed and despondent at the dinner table, after talking on the phone to her friend Ginger; from her teacher, informing and serious, in middle school health class; and from whispered rumors later in high school about a classmate.
All the previous times, Louise was indifferent to the word. But hearing it now, in this context, in reference to her and her body, it has a bitter taste in the back of her throat. She loses all feeling in her head, and it falls back heavily against the too-squishy pillows. As she thinks, the other people in the room with her fade to blurry shapes and the doctor's medical explanation becomes a droning, muffled buzz somewhere miles away.
Logan is the one with a question when she emerges from her mind. "Why did this happen?" he demands.
"I can't say for sure. Sometimes nature just takes its course, and these things happen without any definite explanation. We can conduct some tests to see…" He goes on, and all Louise hears is "You will give us more money if you want to hear what's wrong with you, Miss Belcher."
The angry part of her relishes in the fact that there is no answer to Logan's "why." To think of the times she asked him "why?" and got nothing but vagueness out of him. Now he knows how it feels to be clueless.
"You two can try to conceive again in a few weeks," Dr. Silverman concludes his boring-ass speech. Thankfully, he leaves them alone after a handshake with Logan and awkward eye contact with Louise since both her hands are pinned down by needles and tubes.
"Here's the funny thing," Louise says once the door is shut. "We weren't even freaking trying in the first place."
Logan stares dully at her. "You didn't know?"
"No, Bush, I did not know you knocked me up. I'll try to figure it out in advance next time. My apologies."
He perks up slightly, but his elbows remain glued to his knees, forearms hanging limply. "Next time?" She averts his gaze, and he continues carefully, "I… I was suspecting something. You were acting weird these past couple days. I was hoping you were saving an announcement for my birthday."
Louise studies her left arm, watches some stranger's donated blood flow into it, and suddenly she feels queasy again. She swings her eyes back around to Logan and groans. "Hey, I'm… sorry for giving you a shitty birthday. It's not like I planned this. And I never say sorry, so you better be pretty damn honored."
Her mind wanders into the dangerous realm of maybe, just maybe calling her parents about this. She might need to ask them for money. Then the dumbass's hand is resting on hers, and they look at each other again. His hair looks so blond and disheveled and… blond. She bets their kid would inherit his stupid Bieber hair.
"Would you try again with me, Four Ears?" She likes that he's using "Four Ears" again.
"Well, you really can't try without me," Louise jokes lamely.
He glares at her, but there's nothing harsh in the look.
And she thinks. She thinks about the roller coaster ride today has been, about the liters of blood that must've left her body, about the emptiness she feels inside her now, about how she feels hollow without something she'd never even known was there.
So she says, "Someday."
oo0oo
Louise feels like a poodle that has been waaaay over-groomed. She's spent the morning so far being pampered against her will, though calling this "pampering" is definitely a stretch. Getting wedged into her mother's musty old wedding gown, having a skin-suffocating amount of makeup slapped onto her face, and (barely) letting her hair get yanked and bundled into a neat little bun should be any normal person's definition of pampering.
And now, standing in front of the floor-length mirror in her parents' bedroom, Louise doesn't recognize herself anymore.
"How do you like it, honey?" Linda gushes from just behind her. She towers in the background, poised for another ruthless attack, armed with bobby pins in one hand and hairspray in the other.
Louise pokes her cheek and examines the layer of tan foundation that is rubbed off on her fingertip. "I think I would've been fine with just some eyeliner," she answers truthfully.
"Oh, shush. You're beautiful," Linda brushes her off, ushers Louise back into the chair in front of the vanity, and resumes her work taming her daughter's unruly locks. Louise wonders if being beautiful only applies when she is buried under all these pore-clogging powders and liquids.
"Just some eyeliner?" Her mother's friend Gretchen mocks. "What are you gonna suggest next, those icky bunny ears you used to wear?"
Louise stiffens. She knows the woman is kind of a ditz, so she couldn't possibly understand the magnitude of what she just said. It strikes Louise that, for the first time in ages, she has no clue where her old bunny ears are. Probably shoved in the back of her closet somewhere. Hopefully. Now she has a longing to run down the hall and check, if for no other reason but reassurance, but it's not likely she'll escape anytime soon.
Gayle glances out the window with a nervous titter. "Linda, it looks like it could rain."
Her mother scurries over to join her sister at the window and gasps dramatically as if she's on a stage in front of a large audience. It's fitting— Louise feels like she's being prepped for one of those dumb shows her mom adores.
"Oh, no," she pipes up dryly. "Whatever will we do if Linda's dream beach wedding is ruined?"
She gets a snort out of Tina, but all the other women in the room glare at her. "Now, you listen to me, little lady…" Linda starts, but Louise cuts in again.
"Mother, do you recall my one request for this stupid event? All I asked for was just one thing. For it to be a small ceremony at the courthouse. But what's happened instead?" She waves her arms at the messy room around them. "It's been blown way out of proportion. And let me tell ya, ladies, it really isn't worth it." She shakes her head with a grim expression and stands from her chair. "So I'm done." Linda opens her mouth, but she doesn't even get a chance.
"I'm done, dammit!" Louise steamrolls over whatever crap her mother would've spewed out. Angry tears sting her eyes, but it's beyond her why this alone would trigger that strong a reaction.
For a second, everyone is silent. Then Gretchen speaks softly, "It's okay, sweetie. It's just the pregnancy hormones making you so upset."
Louise's jaw drops. Her head swivels from one woman to the other, and it hits her that there is recognition on each face. She steps threateningly toward Linda with an accusatory finger out and jabbing the air. "What the shit, Mom? You told the whole world about it! Did you scream it from the top of the Ferris Wheel at Wonder Wharf? Did you write a letter to the president asking him to include it in his next speech? Christ, all I wanted was some privacy! Did you seriously think Rudy and I planned it? I didn't even want to keep the stupid thing."
Her snarl is met with a wounded stare from Linda. "I didn't tell your father," she says, as if that helps.
Louise groans and face-palms herself. "Listen," she says in a dangerously low voice. "Nobody's gonna touch me anymore. I'm gonna look and wear what I want, and I sure as hell am gonna say what I want. At least let me have that, because it seems like every other goddamn thing in my life has been flipped upside down."
She storms out of the room and waddles awkwardly into the bathroom. She can barely walk in this stupid dress. A strong urge rises to take out her pocket knife and slash it to tatters, but she stops herself. It would destroy Linda if her gown was mangled. She'd already done enough work on it, having it fitted to Louise's slimmer size and smaller frame.
There's a slight knock on the door. Louise begins to grumble "Go away," but then her sister's voice creeps gently through the crack between hinges and wall.
"It's me, Tina. Please let me in."
And Louise does. She flips it unlocked and collapses back on the edge of the bathtub. Tina walks in gingerly and shuts the door behind her, offering a wan smile. Louise thinks about how much better this dress would look on her.
"Louise," Tina says seriously, brushing back the bangs out of her eyes. She seems hesitant to ask her question, so she takes her time perching herself on the toilet seat. "Do you not want to marry Regular-Sized Rudy?"
Louise snorts a little at his old nickname. Now he is anything but regular-sized; the boy who used to match her height now has several inches on her. But then her smile fades.
"I dunno," she answers honestly. "I'm… just frustrated, y'know?" She lifts her head and meets Tina's brown eyes through the thick lenses of her glasses. "This isn't how I pictured things happening."
Things between her and Tina are still kind of rocky, and Louise feels that now more than ever. Her sister doesn't make a move to hug her or even give her hand a comforting squeeze. She just nods, sighs, and speaks as brutally openly as she always has. "It's true that nobody saw this coming. Nobody expected you to be the first of us three kids to settle down. In fact, I'm pretty sure most of us doubted you ever would settle down. And it's still weird to imagine you tying the knot and having a baby."
A wave of nausea rolls over Louise's stomach at that last word, but she swallows the bile sizzling at the bottom of her throat. "Yeah." A few seconds pass as her brain works; then a sly smile slides onto her lips. "It's about damn time I do what everyone expects me to do."
With that she stands and faces the mirror. She wipes off as much of the makeup as she can, leaving only the eyeliner. Tina helps her pick out every last pin in her hair so it's free from the restraints, flowing past her shoulders in dark waves. She rips off a necklace and two fancy bracelets, and beads scatter everywhere. She can't do much about the dress, but she and Tina manage to put some of the hairpins to good use by forcing down a lot of the puffy areas and getting the veil out of her face.
Looking at herself in the mirror now, Louise feels a burst of confidence in her chest. She still can't say if marrying Rudy is for the best, but it will definitely feel a lot better marrying him in her own skin.
"Thanks, T," she mumbles into her sister's shoulder. Somehow they ended up in a loose embrace, and when they retreat from the hug it seems some of the stiffness has finally melted away.
Tina blinks warmly at her. "I wouldn't miss my sister's wedding for the world," she murmurs. "Go get 'em, sis."
And Louise does. Though first, she makes a stop in her bedroom. She rakes through the clutter in her closet, Gretchen's scornful words lingering in her mind, until she stumbles upon her old bunny ears.
It's been so long since she held them, yet they feel so familiar in her hands. The same pilled pink fabric massages her thumb as she runs it over and over the hat. She pulls the object close to her, and some doubt washes over her again.
Louise frowns. She props the ears up on a lampshade and thinks about how foreign they would feel being on her head again. No one knows her as Four Ears anymore. Now she's the two-eared, knocked up restaurant worker who lost a little piece of herself when she retired that hat.
She harbors this nasty feeling that she will lose part of herself again when she makes it official with Rudy today.
But she can't bring herself to try on the ears. Instead, she kicks off the painful white high heels and replaces them with her good old Converse. Then she exits her room, the door making a soft click as it closes behind her.
Sorry about the wait. Thanks for reading!
