Mercy (31 page)

Grégoire
stayed beside me through the trip there and my admittance, and wouldn’t leave my side even as they took me back to be examined. I was so far gone, so hopeless and mindless, that I was glad to have him there to answer all the questions they asked. They weren’t hard questions, but there were so many of them, stupid questions that annoyed me in my pain. I was confused though, when they asked before the x-rays if there was a chance I could be pregnant, and
Grégoire
answered quietly, “yes.”

“No,” I corrected him. “There’s no chance.”

“There is a chance, Lucy,” and his face seemed suddenly pale. The way he looked at me made my skin go cold, then prickle into
goosebumps
from the back of my neck all the way down my arms.

“How is there a chance, G?” I asked in a voice that was shaking on the edge of hysteria.

He swallowed hard. “Did you ever get your period last month?”

My breath caught in my throat as I thought back. No, I hadn’t. But...but...that could be due to stress. It could be due to all the new vitamins and nutritious food...the vitamins and food that
Grégoire
had practically forced on me. Bitter tears, the tears of a friend betrayed, pooled in my eyes.

“Lucy...” he said, watching my face darken. “I can explain. I can explain what happened. It’s not all his fault. It’s my fault too.”

I shook my head, trying to put it together. I didn’t understand. I couldn’t get it clear. His fault.
Matthew’s.
It’s not all his fault.

“Am I pregnant?” I asked him. I thought of the nausea, the exhaustion that dragged me towards the earth. All this time the x-ray tech just stood there. Just a gay dancer and his partner sorting some things out about a pregnancy, a pregnancy that had happened though some unholy alliance from hell.

“Talk to me,
Grégoire
!” I shouted.

“I’ll go order a test,” muttered the tech, excusing himself.

“Lucy, listen, just, please calm down. I’ll tell you what happened but you can’t freak out.”

I burst into hysterical tears. “It’s too late for that, it’s too late to freak out now, isn’t it? When? What? The night I was sick?”

“The night you took the pills, and you...wouldn’t wake up.”

“He fucked me? Matthew? Without a condom?” I don’t know why I phrased it as a question, otherwise I’d immaculately conceived.

“He asked how to make you stop dancing, so you wouldn’t hurt yourself, and I told him...”

“You told him what?”

“I told him there were only two ways. For you to injure yourself, or get pregnant.”

My mouth fell open.

“I didn’t think he would, Lucy! He said he couldn’t do that to you. I don’t know what changed his mind after I left.”

My brain was reeling, the pain in my leg forgotten. I couldn’t say whose betrayal was worse,
Grégoire’s
or his. I think Matthew’s was worse, because he’d broken up with me over a lie. My lie, when he had perpetuated the most gargantuan lie of all. He’d been upset that I’d kept my rape from him, and yet he raped my very life, raped my very being by impregnating me with a child without my knowledge, without my permission, against my will.

I was angry enough with
Grégoire
, but Matthew...if he had been in the room then and someone had handed me a gun, I would have turned it on him, and I really do believe I would have pulled the trigger. I was so stunned by the audacity, the depravity of what he’d done, that I could barely draw breath.

The tech returned, and I could tell by the look on his face that they’d run a test with the blood they’d drawn, and what the result of it had been. He silently laid the lead apron over my middle and arranged my injured calf under the machine.

* * *

By the time I got to surgery I knew
Grégoire
had called Matthew, because it was Dr. Rob who smiled down at me from above.

“We’re going to take good care of you, Lucy. By the time you wake up, you’ll already be starting to heal.”

But to tell the truth, I wasn’t sure I wanted to wake up. When they put me under, there was the one liquid second of floating away. How wonderful it would be to bottle that fleeting second, to live forever in that second of drowsiness when the whole world faded away. All the confusion, the fear and betrayal. All the anger and sadness and pain. To live forever in that moment of losing it, that moment that only Matthew had ever helped me find.

But I did wake up, and yes, the pain was better, at least the physical pain. My leg was elevated and immobilized by a splint. Before my eyes even opened, I felt a hand stroking my hair and I knew, just from the pressure, that the hand was his.

“Don’t touch me.” I intended to yell it, but it came out a weak, raspy moan.

“Don’t try to talk, just rest.” His hand stopped moving but he left it there, heavy against my head. “The surgery went fine. You’re going to heal completely. But you won’t be able to dance. At least not the way you did. But it’s going to be okay. Everything will be okay.”

Everything will be okay.
I hated him. I hated his soothing voice and his hand in my hair. I hated his arrogant assumption that everything was going to be fine just because he said so.

“What are you even doing here?” I still wouldn’t look at him. I couldn’t. “How can you even show your face to me after what you did?”

“I did it to stop you from hurting yourself. You wouldn’t have stopped dancing any other way.”

“Why didn’t you just ask me to stop?” I asked, jerking my head away from his hand.

“I did ask you to stop. You didn’t listen to me. You snuck off and got yourself hooked on pain pills to keep dancing, and started buying drugs off the street!”

“You don’t understand! You have no idea what it’s like to be me, to walk in my shoes.”

“No, I don’t,” he shot back, “because you wouldn’t confide in me. I would have done anything in my power to help you. Anything, if I could have, if I had only known. You lied! By keeping quiet about all these things that were hurting you, you lied to me, you didn’t give me truth.”

“
I
didn’t give you truth?” I turned on him and started to hit him as hard as I could. Of course, I was pathetically weak, and he quickly had my hands pinned.

“Enough. You need to relax. You need to be regaining your strength. You have a baby to care for now, our baby. You need to rest.”

“What I need is for you to go far away from me, because you’re an awful, horrible, dishonest person, and the biggest liar and hypocrite I’ve ever met, and the last thing I want is your fucking baby, because I never want to fucking look at you again.”

My voice broke off after that long diatribe. I was exhausted but he still stood there beside me, his own face tired and drawn.

“You don’t mean that. You’re angry now, I understand. You just need some time to calm down. I’m sorry, Lucy, that things had to happen this way—”

“I hate you,” I cut him off.

“You don’t,” he said after a moment, “and this is the most dishonest conversation we’ve ever had. I’m not sorry, actually. I’m excited that we’re having a baby. And I don’t think you hate me. I know you don’t.”

“I mean every word I just said to you. You make me sick. You really do. The way you went on and on about how important truth was to you. Do you remember how you felt when you discovered your last girlfriend lied to you for so long? That’s exactly how I feel now. I really, truly do hate you and I’m not going to be in a relationship with you again, and that’s the bitter truth, not that you would recognize truth if it bit you on the ass—”

“Lucy, enough! You’re tired, you’re angry.”

“No, I’m not angry, I’m not tired! You know what I am, Matthew? I’m defeated. I’m done. My career is over. The love I had for you is gone, completely gone. I’m carrying a baby I don’t want, that I’m probably just going to get rid of, and then I’ll have to live with that guilt my whole fucking life even though it was your fault. But I prefer that to living with you, to having a baby with you after what you did to me, this awful disregard for me, this rape of my life—”

“Lucy,” he cautioned, “do not. Do not call it that.”

“That’s what it is, so just...go. I’m done. There were a lot of things you did to me that hurt, but I liked them, I wanted them. But this, I don’t want it. I keep waiting to wake up and find it was all just a dream.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry. What I did was wrong, but what’s done is done. You know I didn’t do it to hurt you. And I didn’t...I really...I only half thought it would work.”

“But it didn’t half work, because you didn’t half do it, did you? You did it all the way. You came inside me while I wasn’t even conscious, Matthew! What’s wrong with you?”

“Four times,” he murmured.

“What?”

“I came inside you four times, actually.”

“Oh, four times. That’s just great. Congratulations,” I said sarcastically. “Your guys can swim, you must be so proud. But I’m not having your fucking baby. Not a fucking chance. No.”

“
Grégoire
told me you didn’t believe in abortion.”

“I didn’t, until now. Now I think maybe in cases of rape it’s justified.”

“I didn’t rape you!”

“Yes, you did! It sure as hell wasn’t consensual!”

“Rape is something else, Lucy. It isn’t done with love. It isn’t done to help someone—”

“I fucking know what rape is! Believe me, I know. No one knows better than me, because I’ve been there, and now I feel like I’m right back there again.”

“Oh Jesus, Lucy, please.”

I turned away from him.

“What can I do?” He tried to take my hand, but I pulled it away, pulled myself as far away from him as I could.

“Leave or I’ll call the nurse.”

“Let’s talk about things again in a few days. Things might look different in a few days.”

“No, things are very clear right now.” I stared at the light blue wallpaper on the wall, the wallpaper that was the same pale blue color as his eyes. “I’m done. I know that. I’m sure of it. This has gone too far for me. Mercy, Matthew. Mercy, okay? Mercy makes it end, that’s what you told me once. I want it to end.”

Again he reached for me, and I pushed the nurse call button.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll leave you alone. But don’t do anything, Lucy. Don’t do anything, okay? Until we talk again.”

I bit my lip. I was making him no promises after all his lies.

And no, of course I wasn’t going to have an abortion. I just wanted to hurt him as much as he’d hurt me. Let him believe I was going to get it taken care of, let him feel that pain of cold-hearted betrayal, the same pain I was feeling now. Just one little lie, but everything else I’d said was true. I was done with him, done with his peculiar one-sided brand of honesty. In my mind, it was already completely over. Convincing him would be more difficult, but eventually he’d understand.

* * *

A couple hours later,
Grégoire
mustered up the courage to visit me. He lingered at the door like a repentant puppy, gauging my mood before he dared come near. I wished I had a rolled up newspaper to smack him with.

“I’ll only come in if you promise to listen to me, to listen to my side of the story.”