Deanna Roy - Forever Loved

I knew Tina and Gavin were at the counter, and my art therapy image was playing out. But it was all so different, Gavin at the desk and me facing this woman and her child.

She had not greeted Gavin but just sat in her chair. “It’s just a cotton swab,” I said, not even sure why I was saying it. “It won’t hurt.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“I thought it would be a blood test,” I went on, knowing I was rambling. “And I knew that would be hard, watching him cry. But it’s not. It won’t be.”

Tina turned to us and squeezed my arm. “You okay?”

“Yes.” I turned to her. “I’m fine.”

“Rosa?” Tina said. “You want to bring Manuel back for the swab?” She moved toward the corridor past the desk.

When Rosa stood, the boy seemed to panic. “No no no no!” he cried. She leaned down and picked him up, letting his knees settle on either side of her hips, a movement so natural for other mothers that it made my stomach quiver. I’d only held my son once. Just once. Long enough to watch him breathe a few last times. She had been holding her boy his whole life.

I felt my control falling away. I wasn’t going to be able to keep my emotions reined in. The tears behind my eyes triggered all the other sinuses to leak. My throat was gooey. I needed to cough. There might be gunk. I felt overwhelmed.

Gavin turned from the counter. “Hey, little buddy. Remember me? You’re going to be fine.”

Manual quieted, his head buried in Rosa’s hair. If Gavin went up to him, if he touched him, I knew I would pass out. I shouldn’t have come. I could not witness this.

Tina saw me and hurried back over. She glanced at the woman behind the desk. “Kelly, go ahead and take them back,” she said. “I’m going to sit out here.”

“Don’t you have a class?” I asked. “Won’t Clementine and Albert be waiting?” I felt like I was in a daze, and I just needed to keep talking.

“You’re not looking good,” Tina said. “Rosa, you go on back with Kelly.”

Manuel began to whimper, but Gavin stepped away without touching him.

“Let’s sit,” Tina said again, and this time she pulled me down on the chair. “I don’t want to wreck your recovery.”

“The nurses don’t know I’m out,” I said absently.

“Okay,” Tina said. “That’s fine. We’ll get you back up.”

Rosa and the boy disappeared down the hall. Only when they were gone did Gavin turn around.

“Shit, Corabelle, you okay?” He rushed over.

“I think it’s a lot for her,” Tina said.

I shook her hand away. “I’m FINE. This is HARD. I’ll be fine.”

Gavin sat back in the chair and expelled a rush of air. “Yeah. This is tough.”

“This will end,” Tina said. “Waiting will not be easy either. You two should be together.”

I leaned my head back against the wall. “If I could get out of this hospital.”

“They didn’t put you on my roster for tomorrow,” Tina said. “So it’s looking good that this is your last day, or tomorrow morning. Did the doctor say?”

“The last X-ray was fine. Nobody’s signed off on anything, though.”

“You still taking antibiotics?” she asked.

“Nasty oral ones. I think they are what make me dizzy.”

“Well, hopefully soon.” She stood up as Kelly reappeared in the waiting room.

The boy came out next, a lollipop in his mouth. Then Rosa, holding the truck, looking relieved. “It not so hard,” she said to Gavin.

He stood up, and then it happened. Rosa glanced up at him, shyly, with a small smile. I knew the look, the emotion behind it. For a moment I was her, and I could feel all the things she felt, relief that the hard part was behind her, pleasure that he stood up out of respect for her, and yes, there it was, that rush of unmitigated love.

God, she was in love with him.

I turned back to Gavin, my heart smashing against my chest. He didn’t see it, or wouldn’t see it. How long had she felt this way? He said they had been together three years ago, but it must have gone on. She couldn’t have felt this way without seeing him since then.

Suddenly I doubted everything. His story. The truth. The child not being his. This was not a woman who was making something up for gain. She was following her heart. She had options. She was choosing this one.

The boy pushed on his mother until she looked down. He passed her the lollipop and dug through his pockets.

“ ¿Que necessitas, Manuelito? ” she asked.

We all watched him as he clumsily shoved his hands into the fat pockets, finally extracting a small square package of gum. “ ¡Chicle! ” he said, holding it up to Gavin.

The expression on Gavin’s face changed into something I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen. Surprise and amusement and disbelief and a very tender sort of pride.

“You remembered?” he asked.

The boy pressed the package into Gavin’s hand. “Yellow! You like!”

Gavin’s jaw clenched in a way I was used to seeing only when he was angry, and I realized he was holding in another sort of emotion now, raw and hard for him to manage. He was in love with this boy, it was so plain. And here this woman looked from the man to her son with such joy, like everything was clicking into perfect place.

I did not get up. I did not make a scene. I did not cry. And outwardly, I just held myself together, like I had years ago, watching another drama unfold, one that would not end happily, but in grief. And I prepared myself to lose everything all over again.

Even if Rosa had put the boy up to it, I knew this moment had changed me. I had this taste, this very small understanding, of what it was like to be a father.

No matter what happened with the test, I would have to help them. For all I knew, Rosa would be out on the streets after taking her son back. The image of the woman sitting on the curb with the child clutching her was still very much on my mind. Tijuana was not kind to its poor.

Rosa seemed to be in some sort of a trance, and I figured it was what Mario had said — she had some sort of attachment to me I would have to deal with. That didn’t matter. I had Corabelle and that was that. But I could help them. I had to do that much.

I turned to Corabelle, who looked even more frail and sick than she had coming down. “We have to get her back to the room,” I said.

Tina stepped up, missing nothing. “I’m going to take her up. You still have to do your swab.”

She shook Corabelle’s arm. “Let’s get you back up.” Corabelle just sort of obeyed, not really looking at anyone directly.

I didn’t want to leave her, but Tina squeezed by me, and I stepped out of her way. As Corabelle came through, I pulled her to me, her head against my chest. “I’ll be right there,” I said. “I promise.”

She nodded against my shirt, and I let her go. Something wasn’t right with her, but I’d be there in just a minute, away from all this drama. We’d fix whatever it was. This meeting couldn’t have been easy for her.

Rosa looked at me uncertainly. “Gavin? We come here tomorrow? For answer?”

“Yes, back here. I think we have to wait for afternoon.”

“So, three? Three o’clock?”

The door behind us whooshed open. “Gavin?” It was the lab woman, Kelly. “You need to come back for your swab.”

Rosa moved away. “See you tomorrow, Gavin.”

I turned back to the lab. I needed to get this swab done and be back upstairs. Corabelle was more important. Rosa had already proven she could handle herself.

I turned back to get my first, and surely my only, paternity test.

The elevator trundled up, but when the doors opened to my floor, I didn’t want to go. “Can we go to the art room instead? Don’t you have class?”