The nurse checked me in and immediately took me back to a room where my clothes were removed and I was dressed into a gown. My stomach still rumbled and rolled, making me sick as sweat began to fill my face. If they could just make this feeling go away, I swore to myself that I would never drink again…ever!
“What did you have to drink, hon?” the nurse asked. She was a young civilian who looked no older than myself.
“Something called jungle juice. I was at a party,” I managed to make out before vomiting into the bucket she had placed on my lap when she first came in.
She wrote meticulously while watching the clock and taking my vitals. A tray sat to my right, and she immediately started an IV, pumping fluids into my body as I continued to expel whatever was lingering around inside of me.
“I’ll just need to get some blood from you. Okay, Cassie?” the nurse yelled as if I were going deaf.
I nodded, feeling exhausted and worn out. The prick of the needle was barely noticeable as I drifted off into what felt like a year’s worth of sleep. When I awoke, Dalton was sitting uncomfortably in the chair by my side, staring at the sterile, hospital walls. His face lit up with excitement at the blinking of my eyes, making him sit up and take my hand in his.
“How is Johnson?”
“He’s okay. I just left his room about thirty minutes ago.”
“Where’s the nurse? What did they roofie me with?”
“Shhhh…” he chided, placing a wet cloth on my forehead. “We don’t know yet. Still waiting on test results.” He kissed the top of my hand, then stood and paced the room.
“You know, when these test results come back, I’m personally going to see to it that Angelica never wears our fucking uniform again. It’s one thing to dislike a person, but to fucking drug them…and not just you, but Johnson as well. I can’t deal with this. This has gone much too fucking far, and she is going to get her due.”
“Dalton,” I croaked, my mouth dry.
“Don’t Cassie. Just don’t. I feel like I need to be Alex right now, bashing people’s fucking faces into walls and shit. I’m fucking pissed about this.”
“We’re still in the hospital,” I weakly murmured.
“I don’t care! This envious, spiteful bullshit could have seriously hurt you and Johnson. I fucking hate—”
The nurse walked back in, her face full of surprise as she barged in on Dalton’s tirade.
“Is she going to be okay? Please tell me she’s going to be fine?”
She flashed his a quick smile, then turned back to me. “Cassie, you are going to be just fine.”
“And what about Johnson? How is he doing?”
“We’ll get to him in a minute. But Cassie, I need to ask you some questions. Did you eat anything at this party? Or even before it?”
“No,” I mumbled, utterly confused at what this had to do with anything.
“How much of that punch did you have?”
“Just one cup. It was a full cup, but only one.”
“Okay.”
“How much is in my system? How long as I going to be here?”
“You weren’t drugged at all, Cassie. You’re pregnant, and the effects of drinking with no food on your stomach and apparently very little water caused your body to break down.”
The rest of her words fell on deaf ears. She continued explaining things, but as her mouth moved, her words dissipated into thin air like particles of water. She hadn’t just said what she’d just said. There was no way what she was telling me was true, and even if it were true, I couldn’t believe what she had just told me.
“Cassie…Cassie,” she called out. I turned and looked her in the face, my eyes bloodshot and burning. “We’ll have the OB come in and see you. He’ll go over what steps you need to take next. Congratulations.”
I looked over to Dalton and burst into tears, followed by the violent eruption of another round of putrid vomiting. My mind raced with how this had happened, what Alex’s reaction to it would be, and how I would ever gather up the courage to tell him.
The more I thought, the sicker I became. Dalton did everything in his power to try and calm me down, which did nothing for me. Three nurses and the doctor filed into the room, each of them hurriedly moving to take a task in trying to stabilize me. Dalton held my hand, never letting go as pills were placed into my mouth and forced down my throat with a long gulp of water and the massaging of one of the nurse’s hands. Fans were placed in my direction and turned on while my blankets were changed over me. The doctor began talking, and the room started spinning, making me fling my head back against the pillow, praying that it would stop and the nausea that accompanied it would go away. This was my worst nightmare come true, and the person who I wanted most was the same person that I wholeheartedly feared.
The inner turmoil of having such conflicting emotions led me to break down emotionally and I laid in the bed, attempting to listen to the doctor speak to me as tears rushed down my face.
“We’ll just give you a moment, Pfc. Bennett,” the doctor said before leaving Dalton and I alone.
He stared at me with concern etched into his face, his big blue eyes begging me to speak, but I couldn’t make out the words. The tears slowed, but my breathing was still erratic. Pregnant? The word was terrifying, so much so that I couldn’t bring myself to speak it. I had been here before. Pregnant by someone who I loved, but unmarried and unsure of the fallout that was to come. I felt stupid and low, painfully aware that history was repeating itself, and I was allowing it to happen.
“I have no idea why you’re so distraught. You are going to have a beautiful baby with the love of your life. And if it’s the alcohol, I’m sure you’re fine. It’s early.”
I regained my composure, then finally brought myself to speak. “Dalton, it’s not that simple.”
“What’s not? You’ve said yourself that Alex wants babies with you. Well, here you go.”
My eyes burned as tears threatened to spill out again. “We speak in future terms all of the time. I highly doubt he meant right now. I sure as hell didn’t. I’m unmarried and pregnant. This is not what I had planned for myself.”
“So get married. It’s not like you two weren’t planning on getting married anyway. And besides, if you two weren’t stubborn as hell, you’d be married right now.”
Silence fell over the room as I took in Dalton’s words. I understood his standpoint but still felt uneasy about the situation. The facts were the facts: Alex was gone, we weren’t married, I hadn’t been drugged, and I was indeed, pregnant.
My head began to spin as I came to grips with my reality. Fear gripped me and held me down, never allowing my mind to travel to the possibility that Alex would be thrilled by this. I couldn’t get there. We had plans for a family, but not this soon in our lives, and knowing that things would irrevocably change for us was another step into the unknown. The unknown held greater powers that any other entity in our lives. It was big, dark, and terrifying. It had me in its clutches and wouldn’t let me go.
No matter what Dalton said, I couldn’t find my way out of it.
“Hey, Ben just texted me. Johnson just has alcohol poisoning, no drugs. Thought you’d be happy to hear that.”
I forced a smile, the pain of it not allowing my face to stay in that form for too long. “I’m happy to hear that.”
Dalton sat down on the bed next to me and held my head to his chest as he rubbed the back of my head. “Cassie, it’s scary right now because you’re allowing your mind to go to the negative. Think about the positive. You and Alex, creating life is awesome.”
“I wish I could be so optimistic.”