Everything Unexpected (33 page)

But a knock on my office door forces my eyes open. Like always, without waiting for permission to enter, Holly strides in with several folders in her hands.

“Quick question about those files you sent me—” she starts, but stops as soon as we link eyes. “Whoa. You don’t look so good.”

“Thanks,” I say quietly, slightly insulted.

“Are you feeling okay? You look a little pale.”

“This is what happens when the pregnancy glow goes away. You’re left looking like this,” I say, waving my hand in front of my face.

Holly walks further into my office, standing directly in front of my desk, concern flashing across her face.

“I’m fine. Really,” I reassure her. “I just need to get a little food in me.”

“Let me go get you something,” she offers. “What would you like?”

“Anything,” I answer.

She nods, turning to leave.

“Wait!” I stop her. “You had a question?”

Holly turns back around, remembering the reason she came here in the first place.

“Yes,” she says, indicating the folders in her hands. “I started cross referencing the case files you emailed me but I’m confused. I don’t understand what any of these have to do with—”

She’s doesn’t finish her thought because Cassandra appears at my open door. She gives Holly a brief nod of acknowledgment before turning her attention to me. “Leah, I’m still waiting on those briefs. I’d like to review them before court tomorrow.”

I quickly stand out of my chair, too quick because I’m suddenly light headed. “Yes. Holly and I were just discussing that. We’ll have it ready within the hour,” I promise, resting my hands on my desk for balance. I know that stretch of time is unlikely, but I smile anyway, ignoring my worry over that deadline.

My eyes shift over to Holly’s for a brief moment but long enough to see her concern with that time line as well. There’s obviously an issue I have not been made aware of yet. Now not only do I feel lightheaded, but my neck is beginning to sweat.

“Good,” Cassandra says with a curt nod. “One hour.” She turns to leave.

I look to Holly. Both our eyes follow Cassandra out of my office and down the hallway as I sit back down in my chair, fingers massaging my temples, hoping to alleviate at least one body issue I seem to be having.

“One hour will be tough,” Holly says.

I nod without looking up. “I know. As long as we get it to her within two, it should be fine.”

“That could also be a problem.”

I look up, confused. “Why?”

“That’s why I came to see you. The files you sent me,” she says, holding up the folders in front of her. “I’ve pulled and read through all of them, and I don’t see how any of this is pertinent to the Bakker case.”

“What do you mean? All the precedent is there. Lloyd, Grimshaw, Fontaine. I spent weeks researching those cases. It’s all there. They all work in our favor,” I tell her.

“Who?” Holly asks, confused.

“What?” I respond, equally confused. “The cases I sent you yesterday.” I point to the folders in her hands.

“Yes, these cases.” She glances down at the folders. “But these aren’t Lloyd, Grimshaw and whoever…these are Benton, Carson and Paulson.”

For a moment we just stare at each other, taking turns shifting our attention from the folders in Holly’s hand, then back up to one another. My heart starts to accelerate, panic edging its way up my spine. The sweat that was beginning to form on the back of my neck now spreading. I know something isn’t adding up here but I still can’t seem to pull my thoughts together fast enough to understand what it is. Until Holly speaks, almost in a whisper.

“Did you…highlight the wrong files?”

Highlight the wrong files? I couldn’t have. Not after spending so much time on this case. Not when we are about to go to trial tomorrow. Not when it was my responsibility to have our argument backed up by the cases I spent months researching. The weeks I spent highlighting subsection after subsection. Subsections that apparently don’t match up to the correct cases.

“I—I couldn’t have,” I start, my voice beginning to shake. “I didn’t…” I say, hoping for more confidence.

My hands quickly move to my computer, my fingers hitting the keys on the keyboard at a furious rate. I open my email, the sent folder, my Holly folder. I quickly find the email I need, clicking it open, barely acknowledging the subject line that reads “URGENT” and look for the attachment. For the first time today, I process the first words of a document immediately. Right there, in bold font at the top of the page, directly above some of the highlighted notes that I merged in with this file, are the words Benton, Carson and Paulson.

The wrong cases.

“Fuck,” I breathe out in a panic, standing abruptly. My hands feel numb but I know they’re shaking. “Fuck.”

I look at Holly and see the wheels in her head start to spin. She’s already trying to come up with a plan, a course of action to figure this out while I’m too busy falling apart. There’s no way to make up for at least a day and a half of work when it’s due in less than two hours. My head begins to spin at an alarming rate, making me incredibly dizzy.

“We can do this,” Holly says, now pacing back and forth. “Re-send me the case names. I’ll grab a few of the interns. No one will have to know.”

I hear her words, but my reply stays the same. “Fuck.”

How could I have made such a monumental error? This case was my chance to prove myself. That I could play in the big leagues. Take on the big cases. Now I’ve fucked all that up. Wasting everyone’s time by having them work on the wrong case! What the hell is wrong with me?

I grip the edge of my desk, needing something to ground me in place because my head won’t stop spinning. I try and slow my breathing, taking deep breaths, but it only seems to increase in speed. Short, fast gasps not filling my lungs enough for me to exhale.

“You’re not fucked. We just need to—” Holly pauses. “Leah?”

I attempt to raise my head, trying to focus on Holly, but all I see are little black spots. I want to ask for some water but my mouth is too dry to utter a word. My eyes begin to roll back and I feel my feet slip from the floor. Right before everything goes dark, I hear Holly yell for someone to call an ambulance.

THE RHYTHMIC STEADY beeping coming from the machines are a far cry from the speed at which my fingers are drumming against the rough texture of the hospital sheets. For every beep my heart monitor makes, my fingers move doubly as fast. A nurse comes in to check my blood pressure for what feels like the hundredth time, to see if it’s at all changed from the last time she took it five minutes ago.

“This is ridiculous,” I tell her once again. “I’m fine. Like I said, I forgot to eat breakfast and got a little dizzy. There’s no need for all of this.”

“You fainted,” Holly chimes in from the corner of the room where’s she’s sitting. “That’s more than a little dizzy.”

I give her a dirty look. “I can’t believe you called an ambulance,” I mutter, but she seems unfazed.

“Your blood pressure has stabilized,” the nurse says with a smile, unwrapping the medical band off my arm. “The doctor will want to speak to you before he lets you go home. But everything seems normal. And the baby is fine too.”

I nod before looking up at the monitor that is tracking the baby’s heart rate. The nurse’s words cause a small lump in my throat that I can’t seem to swallow down.

And the baby is fine too
.

I do my best to hide it but the guilt of being here in the hospital, that I may have done anything to cause harm to my baby, feels like my heart is being stabbed from the inside. My monitors continue to beep normally but my entire body lays stiff, tension building under my skin.

All I wanted to do was prove myself to everyone. Prove that I could do it all. Handle it all. That being pregnant wasn’t going to restrain me in my career or be a hindrance to the firm. I was going to show everyone what I had in me. That nothing was going to slow me down.

After jotting down a few more notes in my chart, the nurse leaves, leaving Holly and me alone in the room.

“I need to get out of here. The case—”

“Will be taken care of,” Holly interrupts. “I’ve already got four associates working on it, and they’re going to send the files over by five. I’ve already spoken to Cassandra. Under the circumstances—”

“Oh God,” I say, covering my eyes. “She knows I’m here?”

Holly’s brows furrow together. “You were brought here by ambulance. The whole firm knows you’re here.”

“Really?” I peek through my fingers, mortified.

“It’s wasn’t so bad,” she says, biting the inside of her cheek. “Just think, you could have had your pants down in the bathroom when it happened. Instead, you fell down onto your chair, fainting like a Disney princess.”

I drop my arms and glare at her. “That doesn’t make me feel better.”

“You wanted to be noticed by the partners,” she teases.

“Not exactly what I had in mind,” I say, lowering my hands.

Holly stands, making her way to the side of my bed. “Let’s just worry about you and this little one right now,” she says, patting my stomach.

I look down, resting my hands on top of my large bump. “I should have eaten,” I whisper, quietly talking to my stomach. “I’m sorry.”

A small commotion outside in the hall redirects our attention. I hear my name being yelled loudly and repeatedly. The sound of shoes squeaking against the linoleum tile gets louder with every passing second. And then, that squeaking stops at the entrance of my room.

At finally finding me, Shane’s hands grip the side of the door frame, his fingertips turning white. The light from a large window in the room shines on his face, making the small sheen of sweat noticeable on his forehead. He lets out a long exhale, one that nearly cries relief at finding me. But his next breath isn’t nearly as tender. That one almost screams anger at seeing me here.

Defensively, I look over to Holly. “You called him?” I ask accusingly.

“Obviously,” she answers, scrunching her face.

Shane takes slow steps inside the room, stopping at the foot of the bed. His eyes quickly scan all the machines around me, to the monitors beeping, the IV taped to my hand. He swallows slowly, closing his eyes, releasing yet another emotion. Panic.

“Are you okay?” he asks, finally looking up, meeting my eyes.

Seeing him here, his frightened expression, shoulders slumped, voice slightly pitched, is awful. It only adds to my guilt of being here, leaving me only able to nod.

“What the hell happened?” he asks, his voice seeming to find itself.

I take a deep breath before answering. “Nothing. Everything is fine,” I say in the most assuring voice I can muster.

“If everything was fine, you wouldn’t be here,” he argues back. That panicked expression he carried a moment ago is slowly being replaced with a different one. One filled with accusation and displeasure. Against me. I sit up straighter in the bed, not liking how helpless I feel lying down.

“I forgot to eat breakfast and got a little dizzy. That’s all. This,” I say, motioning to the room, the machines, the bed, “is all just a precaution that I don’t really need.”

I glance over at Holly, silencing her with my stare. Letting her know that Shane absolutely does not need to know the extent of just how dizzy I got. When I look back at him, his eyes are squinting, thinking over what I just said. I hope my words ease some of his tension and he’ll relax a bit. I don’t want to fight with him again. Especially not when the last one we had still stings.

He looks down to the floor for a minute, his hands resting on his hips. He nods a few times and I feel better, thinking he’s going to let this drop.

“How could you forget to eat?” he scolds, looking back up.

His harsh tone hits me like a slap, a stinging mark left on my skin. Only it doesn’t hurt like I thought it would. It
angers
me. Not because he’s right, but because I already feel horrible enough without him shoving my negligence in my face. Shane so openly criticizing me for something I already know is my fault instantly has me wanting to fight back.

“It wasn’t on purpose,” I say, gritting my teeth together. “These things happen.”

“These things happen?” he repeats, sounding dumbfounded. “No, Comb, these things don’t just happen. They shouldn’t happen. Not when your number one priority is to take care of yourself and our baby.”

Is he serious right now? Is he really here to yell at me? Insult my parenting skills? What does he expect? That I stay at home with my feet up and wait while he hasn’t stopped once? That I let my career pass me by while he’s off building his own? Traveling to places all over the globe? Fucking models at every stop? Somewhere inside, I know that last thought sounds bitter, but I’m too insulted to give a fuck. It spurs my mouth into action.

“That’s funny, you talking about
priorities
. Where do models fall on that list?”

His head snaps back, hurt falling over his face at my emotional response. I hate that it doesn’t give me the satisfaction I was looking for. Hate that I hurt seeing him like that more than I feel justified in my response.

“I’m going to give you guys a few minutes,” Holly says, my head jerking in her direction, having completely forgotten that she was still in the room. We both watch as Holly exits, leaving us alone.

I refuse to look at him, too regretful at my choice of words and also because I can’t bear for him to see how vulnerable I feel in front of him. How scared I am that the reason we’re now joined together for life is also what’s tearing us apart.

I hear his light footsteps as he makes his way over to the side of bed, wheeling a small stool over to take a seat. He’s so close I can smell his cologne mixed in with the awful antibacterial cleaner that fills the hospital air. I wish I could pick out the musky spice that makes Shane’s scent so unique and wrap it around me. Remind me that before we found ourselves here, there was a Shane and Leah that never fought, never got angry, never hurt each other.
That
Shane and Leah seems like a distant memory. One I’m trying so hard not to let go of, not to lose in this mess we’ve made for ourselves.