Читать книгу These Things Hidden - Heather Gudenkauf, Heather Gudenkauf - Страница 19

In the dark of night I still question how the police found out the baby was mine. Someone had to have called them and it sure wasn’t me. In the back of my mind I know it was Brynn, even though I can’t believe she had it in her to actually pick up the phone. Brynn couldn’t even order a pizza on her own. Five years have passed and I still have trouble picturing her making the call.

The strange numbness that I had felt after giving birth the day before was gone, replaced with burning pain that brought tears to my eyes. I was actually glad for the officer’s steadying hand. Brynn reached out to touch my face. “Alli,” she cried. I pulled away from her fingers. I felt so sick, like I would combust if anyone touched me. I know that pulling away from Brynn hurt her feelings. She was always so sensitive. In an odd way, I could understand why she did what she did. This was way more than a fifteen-year-old girl, especially one like Brynn, should have had to shoulder. I prayed that for her sake she didn’t tell anyone she had helped me through the delivery. There was no reason why we should both get in trouble for what really was my own fault. As I carefully slid into the back of the police car, I could hear Brynn’s awful cries.

I haven’t spoken to or seen Brynn since.

I ended up fainting in the police car, so our first stop was the hospital, where I got thirty stitches and spent the next three days hooked up to an IV full of antibiotics. The way the nurses and the doctors looked at me while I was in the hospital was new. Everyone took adequate care of me; they were all too professional to do anything else. But there were no gentle touches, no cool hands laid against my hot forehead, no plumping up of pillows. Just anger and disgust. Fear. My parents’ original shock at me being led away by the police was replaced with outrage. “Ridiculous,” my mother hissed when the detective who came to the hospital to interview me asked if I was the one who threw the baby in the river. I didn’t say anything.

“Allison,” my mother said, “tell them it’s all a big mistake.” Still I didn’t say anything. The officer asked me why there was a black bag full of bloody sheets stuffed into the garbage can in our garage. I didn’t answer. She asked me how I came to be nearly ripped in half, my breasts swollen and leaking milk.

“Allison. Tell them you didn’t do this,” my father ordered.

Finally, I spoke. “I think I need a lawyer.”

The detective shrugged her shoulders. “That’s probably a good idea. We found the placenta.” I swallowed hard and looked down at my hands. They were puffy and swollen; they didn’t look like they belonged to me. “Inside a pillow case at the bottom of a trash bag.” She turned to look at my father. “In your trash can. Call your lawyer.” As she was leaving my hospital room, she turned back to me and said softly, “Did she cry, Allison? Did your baby cry when you threw her in the water?”

“Get out!” my mother screeched, so unlike her usual composed, proper self. “Get out of here, you have no right. You have no right to come in here and accuse and upset us like this!”

“Huh,” the detective said, nodding in my direction as she moved toward the door. “She doesn’t look so upset.”