Darlene Graham - To Save This Child

Annoyed, she grabbed the thing. This was Sarah, no doubt, trying one last time to talk Kendal out of staying home alone on her birthday. But the caller ID displayed an unfamiliar number. With a sudsy finger, she punched Talk. “Hullo.”

“Is this Kendal Collins?” A vaguely familiar female voice.

“Yes.”

“Hi, Kendal. This is Kathy Martinez from Dr. Bridges’s office.”

Kendal tried not to make watery noises as she sat up straighter in the tub. Dr. Bridges’s nurse?

“Did I catch you at a bad time?”

Kendal leaned forward in the water, adjusting the phone. “No, actually, I was just…relaxing. What can I do for you, Kathy?” She was grateful that she was able to maintain a fairly coherent business voice, despite the wine.

“Stephanie Robinson—” the nurse started, “do you know Stephanie?”

“I know the name.” Stephanie Robinson. Kendal gripped the phone, thinking that if Stephanie Robinson were anywhere near this bathtub, Kendal would drown the woman. Why was Dr. Bridges’s nurse calling her about Stephanie Robinson? To rub in the fact that her boss was still prescribing Stephanie’s drug like candy?

“Well, she had to cancel a breakfast she had arranged for Dr. Bridges and the staff. I knew you were on our waiting list in case we had a cancellation. You wouldn’t be interested in doing it, would you?”

Kendal almost slid under the water in disbelief. Would she do it? Would she do it? Was the sky blue? Did the Pope wear a beanie?

“Actually, I’d love to.” Was she saying actually too much? She frowned at the empty wineglass.

“Great! Apparently Stephanie’s expecting and has such a dreadful case of morning sickness that she can’t even function until noon most days.”

Expecting? Stephanie was pregnant? Kendal raised her knees out of the sudsy water and propped her elbows on them. She pressed her forehead with the butt of one hand and squeezed her eyes shut while she fought down tears. Pregnant. With Phillip’s child.

When Kendal remained quiet too long, Kathy Martinez said, “Kendal? Are you still there?”

By an act of will so fierce it sent a tremor through her, Kendal dragged her mind back to the conversation, focusing on the good fortune that had suddenly dropped in her lap.

“When do you want me to come?”

“Tomorrow. Seven o’clock.”

Tomorrow. So much for the pity party. She’d be busy getting her act together for a presentation instead. “Great. I’ll see you then.”

They hung up, and Kendal slid back down in the water, feeling far, far worse than she had before the nurse called, if that was possible.

So Stephanie Robinson, no, Stephanie Dudley in her nonprofessional life, was pregnant.

She, Kendal, should be the one who was pregnant by now. That had been the plan. At least that had been her plan. To pay down the town house for about a year, then, as soon as they were married, get pregnant. Then combine their home offices, convert the third bedroom into a nursery and live happily ever after. Her longing for a child overcame her suddenly, an ache in her middle, a physical hunger.

Did she really miss Phillip so much, or was it this fantasy she missed? The idea of a family. They weren’t getting any younger, she’d told Phillip more than once, hoping to inch him toward the altar. They’d have to start on a family as soon as they were married. She’d never dreamed the malleable Phillip wouldn’t go along with her program.

Only in hindsight had she recognized that Phillip had been mostly silent during these one-sided conversations. Ominously silent.

She got out of the tub and pulled the plug. She stared at the draining water for a moment while she thought, Goodbye tears. Kendal Collins is all done crying. Kendal Collins was, by Jove, going to have Dr. Bridges eating out of the palm of her hand within the month. She would make so much money that she could pay for this stupid town house outright if she wanted to.

Almost angrily, she started toweling off. She stopped when she caught her reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirror that covered one wall. She gave herself a determined glare, straightening her shoulders. Yes, indeed, Kendal Collins was going to take her life back, make buckets of money and forget all about marriage and babies…and pain.

But when she started toweling again she thought, Who am I kidding? She couldn’t forget about marriage and babies. Because that was what she really wanted. Underneath the manicures and cars and clothes, that was all she really wanted.

But now, instead of marriage and babies, she found herself on her thirty-first birthday, all alone and struggling to survive in a very competitive business.

She closed her eyes, wondering again why Phillip had left her. Oh, sure, their love life hadn’t been the hottest in history. But she had thought that was the way Phillip preferred it. He’d always been reserved…almost to the point of being passive. She had always feared that unleashing her own fierce passions might scare the pusillanimous Phillip off.

So ironic. He had left anyway, despite her efforts to mold herself to suit him. Was there something wrong with her? She opened her eyes and gave her reflection a critical once-over. She was cute. Everybody said so. She was healthy and…shapely. Was she perhaps a little too shapely? Phillip had hinted as much so many times that Kendal had struggled to lose weight, trying to keep him happy. But Phillip had dumped her for the anorectic bimbo anyway.

She turned sideways and lifted her chin. Okay, so she was endowed with some pretty serious curves, but she also had a healthy mane of coal-black hair, riveting green eyes and skin like a China doll. She unhooked the clip that held her hair high and let the heavy waves tumble down. They felt cool against her bath-warmed back. She looked, she decided, like a Madonna, like a woman born to be a lover…a mother.

To hell with Phillip. She liked herself the way she was, and even if she never found a man, never had babies…

She clutched the towel to her front and closed her eyes. Never? She had turned thirty-one on this very night. Never was looking like a real possibility.

“Please, God,” she whispered to a deity she seldom thought about, much less prayed to. A deity so remote, so powerful and elusive, that she refused to even assign “it” a gender.

“Please,” she prayed, “send me a husband.” And as long as she was asking she decided to add, “And a child, too. That’s all I really want. A family. I don’t even care how you do it.”

KENDAL EXITED the elevator at the tenth floor, pulling her rolling travel cart behind her, reflecting that sometimes a pharmaceutical sales rep resembled nothing more than a glorified bag lady. Hauling your business around in the back seat of your car, up and down elevators in a silly rolling cart. So much paraphernalia—the cell phone, the pager, the laptop, the PalmPilot, the boxes of samples, the promo items, the paperwork. Kendal’s constant challenge, and one of her chief strengths, was keeping it all organized. From her home office to her company car to the wheelie nipping at her heels, Kendal’s life was a study in constant and careful order. Control, unrelenting control, was the key.

She opened the door of Dr. Jason Bridges’s office and hoped Daylight Deli hadn’t delivered the quiche, pastries and fruit trays yet. The waiting room was empty—a good sign. She wondered what kind of pull Stephanie Robinson had that she could conveniently get a breakfast scheduled on the one morning in a million when Dr. Bridges wasn’t in surgery. A youngish receptionist sat in her chair behind a glassed-in cubicle. Kendal didn’t see Kathy Martinez.

The lobby window rolled open and the young receptionist said, “May I help you?”