Chapter Three: Fruit Salad and Grits

We were lying on the rooftop, our heads next to each other. He'd had a few beers and seemed a little giddy. I was attempting not to remind him I didn't have an IV. Out of the blue he said, "Don't think I don't know you're still spotting."

"What are you doing, going through my garbage? You really need a hobby, Blue Eyes."

"Did you get any counseling?"

Some people just insist on picking at scabs. "Of course. I spent some private time with a local evangelical preacher-man. We handled some snakes and spoke in tongues and then, just for good measure, danced some devil dances to heathen rock music. He told me if I'd go down on him I'd be healed."

"Sometimes I just want to give you a good spanking," Blue Eyes sighed.

"We would call that 'a good whippin'."

"And I just bet you'd like it."

I tried to assume a Mona Lisa-like smile.

"Blue Eyes, have you ever been in love?"

He rubbed his hand across his eyes. He took out his pill bottle and swallowed one. "Once."

"What happened?"

"It worked for awhile but not forever. And you?"

"Once. It worked for awhile but not forever."

"Did he look really hot in short skirts and stilettos, too?"

I grinned at him. "Did I say it was a 'he'?"

He groaned and rolled my way; he grabbed me and started tickling me. I pulled my knees against my chest trying to keep him away, but it was no use. I was laughing so hard I made a ridiculous snorting noise. I leaned my head toward my knees and banged B.E.'s head. We both yelped and rolled away from each other.

The surprise of the rush of fluid was almost as intense as the searing pain slicing through my midsection. I twisted sideways into a fetal curl as I felt the scream leaving my lungs. I missed the first day of the fall semester.

For three days I was in and out of consciousness, but I absorbed the arguments through osmosis. Strangely enough, Dr. Blue Eyes was Ulysses's primary champion.

"Goddammit, her cervix is still closed, the fetus is still intact and attached to the uterine wall. She has an infection in her abdomen, people. If we can keep her loaded with antibiotics, she can keep this baby as well as her reproductive organs. He!!, if I have to sew her vagina shut and strap her thighs together, she is not aborting this baby!"

An Australian accent complained, "But she's at high risk. When we first admitted her she had no real interest in continuing the pregnancy anyway. Her white count is climbing and her fever hasn't abated any. Why take such a chance with her life?"

What had ever made me think his hair was anything but stringy and over conditioned? Blue Eyes yelled back, "She can hear you, you wombat abortionist. She wants this baby. She's named him, for Christ's sake. Now go. Leave."

I knew when he was in the room. There were broken bits of whispered conversations just to me: "I hope your rapist was a f#cking genius. I'd hate to think I've got the entire hospital on my back for a kid with the IQ of a duck;" and, "Tiger, you've got to start fighting, too. Ulysses is tough, but he can't do it for both of you. It's time for you to wake up;" and the last words I remember, "Come on, Audra, I can't do this one by myself. Ulysses and I, we need your help. He!!, I need you."

Sunshine so yellow it was painful flooded my room when I first remember opening my eyes. Blue Eyes was sitting beside my bed looking into the sunshine. Apparently, he knew I was awake because he was mumbling quietly to me in the form of a mantra, "It's okay, Tiger, Ulysses is okay."

He turned to look at me, and I was startled by his appearance. His normal stubble was longer and unkempt and his heavenly eyes were bloodshot and sunken in bleak hollows. He looked deathly. Sh!t, if he looked that bad, I must be a corpse.

"You've been out for three days," he continued in a monotone. "We've been pumping you full of blood and antibiotics." He looked away from me, back into the sunshine. "It's going to be a long pregnancy and you're going to be lying on your back for most of it, but you're beginning to stabilize now."

"How long have you been sitting here?"

"Should I leave?"

"I almost lost my baby. How does that justify a chip on your shoulder?" He was beginning to piss me off.

He turned his face back to look at me and his eyes were tearing. "I know its your baby, but I want it to live, too."

I cringed. Dr. Blue Eyes admitted to an emotional attachment – where were the lightening bolts and plagues of locusts?

"Shouldn't you let your family know what's been going on?"

"When I'm sure Ulysses is safe I'll let my brother know. He'll be so excited and completely disbelieving at the prospect of a niece or nephew. He's so damm much like you."

He raised his eyebrows with the glimmer of his old bravado. "He's a brilliant doctor?"

"No, smart ss, he's a brilliant cripple." I always felt enormous satisfaction when I could catch him speechless.

I begged and whined and wheedled to go home. Dr. Jacobs brought me a laptop allowing me to teach one online course. I was horribly bored when I wasn't asleep, but they were trying their best to accommodate my limitations. Blue Eyes made an irritated face every time he entered my room and saw me typing on the computer. He sat down beside me one day and opened his mouth in what very well may have been a friendly exchange, but I was not feeling friendly.

"Are you just jealous of the computer, or is it that I have actual students who worship me, sort of like your three sucklings?"

"I am not jealous, and of course 18-year-olds worship you – they've never freaking met you. Once they hear that accent their hero worship will disappear."

I threw a book at him; granted, it was David Storey's play, In Celebration, so it was lightweight, but it was a book I wanted to keep. "I want out of here. I want to go home. Is it like checking out of a motel?"

"Although I'm sure you've had plenty of practice doing that, no, it's not like checking out of a motel. I have to release your still weakened ass. And I'm not comfortable sending you and the sprout to that apartment."

I bristled. "What's wrong with my apartment?"

"Nothing if you want to up your chances of being raped again."

"I haven't ruled out the possibility of having another child."

He became quite cross then. He stood up and leaned very close to my face. "If you are ever harmed again, I will have to hunt down and kill the person who does it, and then I will find you and punish you severely for your risky and unsafe behavior. And I'm being neither suggestive nor kinky."

I slid down in my bed. "You have really bad breath."

"Arrgh," he growled and walked out.

Dr. Wilson had taken to wandering by at unexpected moments and loitering in my doorway until he caught my eye. I always motioned him in. One day he brought a large container of fruit that had me salivating instantaneously.

"I have some homemade salad – I can't eat it all – I thought it might be better than the swill they feed you. Would you like some?"

Dr. Wilson, you know the way to my heart is through my stomach. Please, have a seat."

He divvied up the food and settled next to me. "How are you feeling, Audra?"

"Still tired and ready to get out of bed. Blue Eyes isn't going to discharge me, is he?"

Dr. Wilson laughed. "He has to sometime. We're worried about you living alone."

I studied the doctor's handsome face. "Do you live alone, Dr. Wilson?"

He chuckled. "Yes, Audra, but I'm not in the midst of a tenuous pregnancy, and I'm certainly not Greg House's patient."

"Okay," I started, "let's get me a new doctor. Isn't it time I had an obstetrician? He's not planning to deliver Ulysses, is he?"

"Actually, as possessive as he's been about your care, he may very well be planning to. You might want to address that with him."

I grimaced at Dr. Wilson and swallowed a very sweet bite of cantaloupe. "Gird my loins for battle."

He chuckled. "Would you give me a heads up when you plan to bring it up so I can be within hearing range?"

"Dr. Wilson, you have a naughty streak, don't you?"

He smiled his genuine smile; his genuine smile reached all the way to his coffee-colored eyes. "I have been married three times, Audra."

I nodded. "You're a wanderer, aren't you, Dr. Wilson?"

"Wanderer?"

"My ex-boyfriend was a wanderer. He was always susceptible to the sweet nothings and the naughty somethings of a new woman. He was messing with a married next door neighbor and I got wind of it. I was none too pleased. I took grass killer and wrote 'Bitch in Heat' in the lady's front yard. You could read it from the street."

Dr. Wilson was laughing so hard I was worried he'd aspirate his lunch.

"Of course, they moved in together the next week."

"You live a passionate life, Audra."

"Dr. Wilson, it sounds as though you've had your own share of passionate events."

He considered me for a minute. "It's probably time you called me Jim."

Of course, Blue Eyes knew all about my intentions before I had even formulated a game plan. He was being pressured to discharge me; Jim said his creative powers were being tested just to keep me inpatient. In the dark morning hours of a Saturday, he limped in and looked surprised to find me awake.

"Not sleeping?"

"I was waiting on you. You do have food with you, right?" I couldn't see any bags or containers.

"Actually, I thought I'd sneak you out for breakfast." He reached under his shirt and pulled out a pair of my jeans and my Auburn University sweatshirt.

"Leave the hospital? Are you sh!tting me?"

He grinned and shook his head. "I'll have to take out your IV. We are not taking that pole with us."

While he was taping up my arm I pestered him with questions. "Where are we going? I haven't been out of here in weeks. Is it in walking distance?"

"It's in riding distance. Do you want me to help you change?"

"Perv," I muttered as I gingerly made my way to the bathroom.

"Prude," I hear him retort.

The sweatshirt felt soft and familiar on my skin. The jeans were snug at my waist. Ulysses already? Damm.

"Will you help me with my shoes," I whined when I sat back on the bed.

"Of course, Ms. Primadonna," he answered, but he put the Nikes on my feet and tied them.

"My jeans are snug. Is it Ulysses?"

"It's probably all of Wilson's gourmet food you've been eating."

"You're just jealous."

"Of course I'm jealous. I used to get all of his leftovers." He stood up and looked me over. "Can you walk downstairs, or do we need a wheelchair."

I puffed out my chest and said I could walk.

When we reached the parking lot we stopped before a motorcycle.

"I'm riding this?" I asked anxiously.

"No, Ms. English101, we're riding this." He climbed on the bike and motioned for me to climb on behind him.

When I settled on the back of the bike, he turned and shoved an orange helmet on my head. "Did you buy this just for me?"

"I can't hear you," he said as he revved the engine and we started out. I felt exposed and vulnerable. I wrapped my arms even more tightly around his waist and held my breath until we came to stop in front of an apartment building.

He casually pulled me inside the ground floor apartment which was obviously his. The baby grand piano was a dead give away.

"Breakfast?" I asked.

He pointed down the hall to the kitchen. The refrigerator was freshly stocked as were the cabinets. I started cooking. He started playing the piano."

What is this stuff?" he asked with an upturned nose. We were sitting around the kitchen table.

"Grits. Have some. They're good for you."

He sniffed the bowl. "It's gravel."

I sighed. "Hand me your plate."

He made a face as he passed his empty plate to me. I gave him a large helping of grits with butter, salt, and pepper, scrambled eggs, bacon, and hot water cornbread. "The grits turn to wallpaper paste if they get too cold," I warned him.

He took a small forkful of the grits, swished them around in his mouth, then made a gagging sound. I raised my right arm. He swallowed them.

"How cold is too cold?"

I growled.

"It's gravel."

"Why did you buy them if you didn't want me to cook them?"

"I thought they were food."

"When they get good and cold, grits are good for spackling."

He coughed and hacked like he was trying to get up a fur ball. I slapped his shoulder. "You were supposed to provide breakfast anyway."

I took my dishes to the sink.

"I thought southern women were supposed to be fabulous cooks."

"You heard it wrong," I told him as he brought his dishes over. "Southern women are fabulous lovers."

"Is that what you learned at your grandfather's whorehouse?"

"Actually, he said they just sat around the piano and sang."

Blue Eyes moved a little closer to me. "In case you didn't notice, I have a piano."

"In case you didn't notice, I have a bony right fist."

He moved a little bit closer. "If I remember correctly, the last time you tried to punch me, you missed."

I leaned a little closer to him. "Blue Eyes, I've since had time to calculate the correction factor."