****
I met Sarah outside the hospital after work, since I’d been sitting out there keeping an eye on things the whole day anyway, and we met Hope and John just outside the restaurant lobby a few minutes later. Upon seeing them, Sarah’s steps faltered. I could see very well what had caused her a moment’s pause.
Hope no longer looked pleasantly pregnant; she looked big, uncomfortable and generally unwell. Was this a normal state of pregnancy? Apparently not, because Sarah had kicked into doctor mode. She was concerned, but she was also calm and confident, as if she’d encountered whatever was wrong with Hope a million times and had the cure to every ailment in her pocket.
“How long have you been feeling ill, Hope?” she asked, bypassing all greetings.
“Oh, it’s just a headache. It’ll pass.”
“Are you dizzy, too?”
“Maybe a bit. Why?”
“What else?” Sarah asked expectantly, though her voice was soothing enough that it was hard to feel distressed.
“Nothing much. It feels like the little munchkin’s been sitting on my liver for the past few hours…”
“How far along are you?”
“I just passed thirty-seven weeks. Why?”
“Well, I could be wrong, but I think you’re about to get to meet that little munchkin.” She said it in such a way that it sounded like a good thing, but what Hope was describing hardly sounded like labor—not that I was any kind of expert. But since this wasn’t Hope’s first child, I would have thought she’d notice if she was about to give birth.
“What do you mean, Sarah?” Hope’s hands had moved protectively to her belly, confirming my suspicion.
“I think what you’re experiencing is preeclampsia, Hope. Since you’re close to your due date, it would be best to get you to the hospital and get your labor underway.”
Hope looked up at John with panic in her eyes, but Sarah was quick to reassure her. “I know it sounds scary, but you’re far enough along that it’s perfectly safe to deliver now.”
Hope nodded, and as if she were absorbing Sarah’s courage, she squared her shoulders and nodded to John. “Are you ready to meet the newest member of the McLellan clan?”
“I’ll meet you at the hospital and we’ll get you checked in,” Sarah told her and then Hope and John were off.
Sarah turned to me expectantly like I had any idea what had just transpired. Espionage and weapons, sure, I knew plenty; pregnancy and childbirth, not so much. And obviously seeing I had no clue, she smiled indulgently. “As I said before, I think Hope has a condition called preeclampsia. It can be very dangerous, but since she’s safe to deliver, there should be nothing to worry about.” She patted me on the arm like she had done with Hope, and I realized she was trying to offer comfort and reassurance. What I wasn’t going to tell her was that her calm confidence had worked on me, too. With Hope in her care, I knew there was no reason to worry.
Eleven hours later, I had a brand new—and completely healthy—nephew. While the obstetrician on staff had taken over Hope’s care, Sarah had stayed with her the entire time, and I think that did far more to reassure my sister than anything her attending doctor had said or done. I had popped in and out of the room, not at all comfortable with the situation in general, but there was no way I was going to leave Sarah there on her own.
“I don’t know how my sister does it,” I’d told her one of the times she’d come out to grab a coffee from down the hall.
“It looks pretty rough, but most women make it through childbirth just fine,” she’d replied.
“Not that part. I mean the new human part. Hope’s going to have three now, and hell, I can’t picture myself taking care of one other living being,” I’d confessed, baffled by the pull some have toward childrearing. “I even have someone else take care of my houseplants,” I whispered in mock-horror, and she smiled, though the smile didn’t reach her eyes.
Sarah had been preoccupied with Hope after that, but she’d emerged from the delivery room about an hour ago with my nephew in her arms. I peeked at the waterlogged-looking little human with a hint of interest, but when she’d held out her arms for me to take him, I’d declined. I hadn’t been kidding—I knew absolutely nothing about babies and I was completely comfortable with that.
Once Hope and my nephew were able to rest, we decided to head back to Sarah’s place. As we climbed the steps to her front porch, she stopped and began to fidget with the keys in her hand.
“Look Declan, I’ve had a really great time the past few weeks, but we knew at the beginning this wasn’t supposed to last. I think it’s time you got back to your life in the big city…or wherever it is you’ve been all these years.”
She was giving me the brush-off? I should have been relieved, but I didn’t want to go just yet; I still had a job to do, of course. “I don’t think there’s any reason for it to end so soon. We’re good together, Sarah.”
“Yes, we have been. But we’ve practically been playing house the past few weeks, and that isn’t what either of us wants, is it? You made it perfectly clear it wasn’t what you wanted, so, I think it’s best if we cool it now.”
“That’s what you really want?” I couldn’t help but feel that something was off. Maybe it was just my ego talking, but something was telling me there wasn’t anything genuine in that speech, aside from the dull ache I could see in her eyes.
Nevertheless, there was nothing more I could say. She was the first woman I’d spent more than a few hours with, and she’d had enough. But regardless of who ended it—her or me—it had to end eventually. It would have been better if it could have lasted until I’d managed to eliminate Cane, but it was possible for me to keep watch from a distance.
And so, it was settled. I nodded and leaned in to kiss her one last time, feeling something very unlike ‘goodbye’ in her kiss, and then I turned and left. I ignored the way my chest suddenly felt like a band had been wrapped around me and the woman on the porch, and how the further I walked, the more it tried to pull me back.
Once on my bike, I drove around for a while with no particular destination in mind. I needed to put some distance between the two of us but I also knew the time for that was limited. I’d have to be back at her house before long, sitting at watch from thirty yards away. It wasn’t much of a distance, but I felt better when I was right there with her, knowing I’d let nothing get to her.
Like this, there were no absolute guarantees; there were windows I couldn’t see from my position, and the back door was impossible to watch from anywhere. And since she’d closed all the windows and curtains, there was no way for me to know what was going on inside the house with absolute certainty. While everything was always a gamble in my line of work, suddenly, with Sarah, any gamble was too big.
This wasn’t going to work. There was only one other solution: I was going to have to tell her the truth. She needed to understand why I had to be there; that it was the only way I could keep her safe. She would hate me, no doubt, when she discovered all I’d been keeping from her, but if that was the price I had to pay to keep her alive, then so be it.