“It’s not about changing the course of your life. It’s about accepting the course you’ve chosen.” ~ Johnny Outlaw
It was the announcement none of us saw coming. One month to the day I last saw Dalton in the hospital, the band announced it will be taking a break at the end of the tour and pursuing solo projects. In LA, we all know a break means breakup.
The Resistance is no more…
My water falls from my hand and a pain shoots through my stomach. Gripping the counter with one hand and my stomach with the other, I start my meditation breathing to calm. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Please be okay, baby. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
The pain subsides, but my concern doesn’t. Anger takes over, making me bitter that Dalton’s not here to experience the good and bad with me. He’s abandoned me when I needed him most.
I think about everything he said, his accusation running through my mind like a painful metronome. Minutes don’t pass without thinking of him. Only seconds here and there give me amnesty from the heartbreak.
My phone sits on the counter in front of me, tempting me to call. But like I assume how he feels, I can’t seem to get over the hurt to actually pick it up and dial after that one time weeks ago. I push the phone away and go to bed.
Lying there, I wonder what happened to the band, or if it’s Johnny who made the final decision. He’s spoken about going solo, but to do it now… Inhale. Exhale. I can’t spend my time thinking like this. It’s not good for me or the baby. He’s chosen to believe the lies instead of his wife. I glance over at the framed photo of us from last summer. I thought he was getting better after Cory’s death, but now from what I’m hearing, I don’t think he’s ever been healed. Add in the stress of the tabloids, and he put on a good show for as long as he could.
I wake up, my body bunched with my knees lifted as I lie on my side. An excruciating pain tightens, bringing tears to my eyes. I squeeze my eyes closed and reopen them. I try my meditation breathing, counting each one to relax my body but it doesn’t work. Scooting to the nightstand, I reach for my phone, but it’s not there. Mentally distressed when I remember it’s downstairs in the kitchen, I grip my knees close to my body until I can’t take it any longer.
Something’s wrong.
Starting to panic, I stand up and make it to the door before the pain kicks in again, causing me to cringe and bend over. Wrapping my arms around my middle, the worst scenarios start running through my head. “Baby, be okay. Be okay, baby. I’m here for you.” I push off the wall and despite the pain, I hurry to the kitchen and call Rochelle.
“Hello?”
I get on the floor with the phone in my hands. Curling over, I lie down. “Rochelle, help me.”
The panic rises in her voice. “What’s wrong, Holli?”
“I don’t know. The baby.”
“Holli, you have to get to the hospital. I won’t get there fast enough. Call 9-1-1.”
“I can’t. Everyone will see it leaving the house. It will be everywhere within minutes.” Tears blur my vision.
She knows I’m right, so she suggests, “Can you drive yourself?”
Holding my body tightly together, I cry, “I don’t know.”
“You have to. You have to get in that car and go. Don’t think about it. Just go. I’ll meet you there. For the baby. Do this. Okay? Do this for the baby.”
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. I stand despite the pain. “Okay.” I grab my keys and my purse. One. Two. Three. “I can do this,” I say, psyching myself up. Four. Five. Six…
Twenty minutes later I walk into the ER. I get checked in quickly and Rochelle comes into my room just as the doctor does. She rushes over to my side. Taking my hands in hers, she says, “Everything will be all right.”
The doctor introduces himself and explains that they’re going to do an ultrasound. “I see here that you’re eleven weeks along and you’ve had one ultrasound. We’re going to give another and listen to the heartbeat.”
I nod, wanting so desperately to hear that little heartbeat again. Rochelle moves to the other side of the bed and continues to hold one of my hands as he pulls the machine over and gets the goo out. I look up at her, knowing this should be Dalton. This should be the man who vowed to love me always. But he’s not here. Inhale. Exhale. I squeeze her hand tighter and pray my baby is okay.
A sob breaks free as soon as that heartbeat—strong and steady—is heard. The doctor smiles. “Seems the baby is good. The heartbeat sounds great. As for the pain you experienced. We should talk about that. Let me make a few notes first.” He wipes my tummy with a wet wipe, then hands me a towel to finish. A nurse walks in to clean the equipment and take the towel. When she walks out again, he continues, “When it comes to growing babies, you need to be mentally healthy as well as physically healthy. I think this was your body reacting to stress, which is common among women who lead busy lives.”
Staring at the ceiling, his words bounce around my head as I try to make sense that this is my life. This isn’t. When I look at him, I say, “I’ll try.”
He pats my arm. “But you’re doing a good job. You’re maintaining a healthy weight. Keep up the positive work. That little baby benefits from all your good decisions.”
“Thank you,” I say, wanting him gone, wanting to be alone.
“We’re gonna get some more fluids in you, but you’ll be free to go in a few hours. Take care of yourself and that little baby.”
“Thank you,” I repeat.
When he leaves, I turn to Rochelle. “What a pair Dalton and I are. Both of us having stress related issues and still not able to talk to each other. How is this possible?”
“Stubbornness?”
I smile the best I can, but it falls flat in effort. “Some pride too, but how do I get past the pain, Ro?”
Shaking her head, she replies, “I’m not sure. I’m stuck in my own cycle I can’t seem to break away from.”
“I’m sorry.” I hate being so insensitive. I lost my head in my own moment of despair.
Rubbing my arm, she says, “Don’t be. You’re allowed to be upset. You’re just not allowed to spend your life apart from the man you love.”
“I want to call him, but how can I under these circumstances? How do we find our way back when he thinks I slept with someone else and that our baby is Sebastian’s?”
“I’m not sure, but I do know he’s suffering too, suffering to the point of self-imploding. Unfortunately, you can’t worry about him right now. You need to focus on this baby and let Johnny figure his own shit out. He’s not in a place to be good for you right now.”
“That makes me want to cry hearing that, but I might finally be all dried up.”
“I’ve been there. Trust me, more will come and they may come in waves, but ride them the best you can.”
“Thank you for being here.”
“I’m always here for you.” She smiles. “Can I get you something to eat?”
“I’d love a breakfast taco.”
“You got it. I’ll go find one for you and then help you check out of this place.”
“Thanks.”
When she leaves, she closes the door. My gaze darts to my purse on the table next to me. I reach in and grab my phone out of it. Checking first to see if I have any missed calls or text messages. I haven’t and disappointment, the feeling I’ve come to expect, sets in again. I find his name and number in my contacts and stare at it. My thumb hovers over the call button and before I can overanalyze, I press the button.
My phone doesn’t make it to my ear before I end the call. Remembering her at his bedside shoots through my heart, crushing it again. I drop the phone back in my purse and focus on the beach to erase the negativity.
As much as my heart has packed its bag and flown away to set up house next to his heart, I can’t think about him right now. He hurt me and he needs to clean this mess up. I have to concentrate on growing a healthy baby. I rub my stomach. “We can do this, baby. We can do this even if it’s just the two of us.”
Over the next few months I discover just how strong I can be. I rediscover me—the me from before Dalton. It hasn’t been easy or pretty if judging by the dark circles that reside under my eyes, but I’m managing. Sometimes the idea that I’m getting by saddens me. I never thought I’d have to get by without him. But that’s what I have to do for the baby. Fortunately, my mother arrived earlier in the week. “Sweetie, where do you keep the cleaning supplies?” I hear her in the kitchen rummaging around.
It’s weird having someone else around, someone who isn’t him, someone who wants to tell me how to live my life and shows infinite interest in the operation of my household. “Mom, we… I have a cleaning service that comes weekly. You don’t have to clean.”
She walks into the living room where I have my feet propped up on the arm of the couch while I lie there trying to read a book. “I don’t know why you insist on helping. I find cleaning therapeutic. You might also.”
“Most weeks, I work fifty hour—”
“About that. You need to slow down. Your health should come first. It’s not just about you anymore.”
I roll to my side, away from her and keep reading. We’ve had this conversation more times in the last five days to last more than a lifetime. “Mmmhmmm.”
She takes the book from my hands and sits on the coffee table in front of me. “Stop moping. If you’re not working, you’re moping. Your baby is gonna be born with that disease.”
“What disease?”
“Resting bitch face. No one deserves to have that burden put on them in the womb.”
I burst out laughing. “That is hysterical. Did you actually just talk to me about resting bitch face?”
“I did. Apparently all the hottest celebrities have it these days. Don’t be one of them and don’t put that on your baby.”
Still laughing that I’m having this conversation, I say, “I did not see this coming. I think you’ve got Hollywood all figured out.”
She touches my arm and smiles. “Maybe you should come home for a few days. Get a new perspective on things.”
“This is my home, Mom.”
“It’s too big for you and a baby.”
“I know, but it won’t be just us.”
Her eyes turn downward. I’ve brought up the unspeakable—Dalton. “Have you talked to him? The tour ended weeks ago.”
Squeezing my eyes shut to avoid the tempting tears, I adjust the blanket over my body, wanting to hide from this conversation.
“Holli, he’s not here, so where is he?”
Aggression shoots through, stirred from the reality that I might have to live my life without him. “I don’t know, but I know we’re not over. My heart knows, Mom.”
“What if your heart is wrong?”
“He just needs time, like after Cory died. That’s all it is. I know it.” I move to my back, not wanting to face her anymore. “If we choose to go our separate ways, then I’ll deal with it then.”
“It’s been over three months, Holli. You need to start thinking of a future without him.”
Sitting up, I shout. “No! Not yet.” I toss the blanket off of me and get to my feet.
“Then when? When you’re giving birth?”
“I’m tired. I’m going upstairs to take a nap.”
“It’s called depression, Sweetie.”
“It’s called pregnancy.”
She turns away and lets me go in peace, as peaceful as she can, considering how sad I am. I shut my bedroom door and sit on the loveseat by the window. Staring out with my phone in hand, I do what I do at least five or ten times a day. I think about calling him. Sometimes I wonder if I’m being stubborn or if the pain is ruling my thoughts. Other times, I feel strong in the sense that he has to fix himself before he can fix us. I just don’t know how to feel today, so I set the phone down like I do every other time and silently call to him, my heart’s song a version that speaks through aches, longing for its soul mate.
I rest my chin on the cushion back and stare out the window. All the doubts about my own part in this come back as a reflection in the glass. Sitting up, I take a deep breath and pick up the phone again. Like that one other time, I press the call button, but this time I hold it to my ear and wait. My heart thunders loudly in my chest and I slide my hand over my tummy. My breath stops cold when it doesn’t ring or go to voicemail. There’s no sound at all but the sound of silence. I bring the phone back down and look at the screen making sure I dialed the right number.
Dalton.
Yep. It’s there, right there on the screen. I immediately dial again. The same thing happens. Alarmed, I call Rochelle, but I don’t give her a chance to speak when she answers, “What happened to Dalton’s phone?” She sighs into the phone and my body tenses, bracing myself. “Please tell me.”
“I’ll tell you, but I just want you to know I didn’t want to worry you anymore than you have been.”
“I appreciate that, I do, but he’s my husband.” The phone goes quiet for too long, so I ask, “Rochelle?”
“I’m still here.” She pauses again and the silence is deafening, the blood rushing in my ears louder than my breath. “We lost contact with him a week ago, Holli.”
The phone wobbles against my ear and I tighten my hold on it. “What do you mean you lost contact?”
“Tommy, Dex, everyone. We haven’t heard from him. His phone isn’t working and we have no idea where he is.”
“Rochelle,” I say, the name having a painful pitch to it. I squeeze the arm of the couch, the words staggering in an exhale. “Is he alive? Did you search for him?”
“We called his parents and everyone we knew who might have a clue, but no one knows.”
“Did you call the police?”
“He’s alive, Holli. He just doesn’t want to be found.”
Her words sink in, but make no sense to me. “I don’t understand,” I say, confused. “How do you know?”
“I got a letter from him.”
Hesitant to ask, but needing to know, I plead, “Please tell me what it said.”
“He’s taking time to figure out what he wants and what’s right. He loves you, but he doesn’t know how to fix this.”
Anger, frustration, and hurt burrow in and I snap, “He fixes it by coming home and talking to me.”
“You know it’s not that easy.”
“I know it’s not that hard either. I’m carrying his baby, going through this by myself and for what, his ego? He needs to get over himself and come deal with life like the rest of us.”
“Hol—”
I hang up I’m so mad. I throw my phone on the bed and go downstairs. “I’m going out,” I snap in my mother’s direction as I storm toward the front door. I grab my purse and go to my car. Inside the car, the stale air surrounds me, deafening my crazed mind. I pull away from the house and drive. I have no idea where I’m going, but if he can lose himself for awhile, I can too.