Chapter 16

It is true that, if Bobby had visited Mindy in the hospital, it might have been viewed as being scandalous. But nobody asked the woman who came back every day for hour-long visits just who she was. No record was required for her to sign. No identification was demanded. Basically, she was ignored by hospital staff.

The reason Jane returned, day after day, was simple. She liked Mindy. She liked being around smart people and, to tell the truth, she was a little starved for interaction with another female adult. Jane didn’t play bridge. Women in Indian Springs didn’t form coffee klatsches. Jane had friends at church, but only saw them once a week. Talking with her daughter was fine, but Melissa was like most teenage girls, in that she avoided speaking to her parents, when possible. And, when Jane was talking to her daughter, she had to be mindful of what she said. Sitting with Mindy, as she now called her son’s teacher, was fun, and it made her feel like she was doing something nice.

She was doing something nice. Mindy was bored practically to tears. She was allowed to get up and walk around, but only for thirty minutes at a time. She was actually tired, because she couldn’t get any uninterrupted sleep. For the first two days, people kept checking on her and examining her every hour, around the clock. After that, she got to sleep two or three hours at a time. During daylight hours, there were too many noises, and the hustle and bustle of nurses going here and there. She was constantly waiting for someone to come get her to take her for another of the endless tests that were keeping an eye on her brain.

When Jane showed up, it was a welcome diversion, and when the woman actually presented her with her iPod, Mindy almost cried with relief. She wore the earbuds almost all the time after that, letting the device cycle randomly through the thousand songs she’d put on it.

Jane’s repeated visits were a little confusing to Mindy. She understood that this woman might be worried after her son came home with vomit on his shirt and reported what he’d reported. She was thankful that Jane had gotten her iPod for her. But she did not understand why Jane kept coming back, as if they were friends. Had she known about the rumors floating around, she might have understood that Jane wanted to believe her son hadn’t done anything wrong, and that every time she sat with Mindy and Mindy didn’t say, “By the way, you do know your son tried to kill me, don’t you?” she felt better.

Oddly, the result of all this was that Jane and Mindy did become friends, of a sort.

Maybe it was karma. Whether it was, or was not, it would become very important in the future.

That’s because Mindy should have had a period while she was in the hospital, and because of the unfamiliar environment, hadn’t realized that this period failed to occur.

When Mindy got out of the hospital this time, there was a Pendleton there again. This time it was Jane Pendleton, who offered to give Mindy a ride home, since Mindy’s car was still parked at the school. Mindy had tried to manufacture a reason for Bobby to visit her, by suggesting that Jane could give him the car keys and he could drive it to the hospital and park it. Then he could deliver the keys back to her. Jane’s response was, “Nonsense. I’d be happy to take you home. Or I can take you to your car. You choose.”

Once again, events conspired to keep the lovers apart. So it was that the first time they got to see each other was in school, where their behavior had to be ... modified.

It has to be stated that the police never actually contacted Mindy in the hospital. They’d already determined the rumors were baseless, and there was no need to talk to either her or the “suspect.” It was easier to say, “An investigation is in progress,” than explain why they weren’t actually investigating anything. Time would temper the emotions of the complainants, and eventually they could say they had discovered no illegal action.

It’s also important to mention that the administration didn’t talk to her, either. In fact, nobody had told her the content of the rumors that were floating around, or that anybody had taken their kids out of school. Basically, Mindy didn’t know about any of it until she got back to school.

She did notice that people were looking at her strangely, when she arrived. There were some whispers, too.

She chalked it up to the high-profile way in which ambulances had been called to take her away - twice in one week!

Her peers also acted a little oddly. Most asked her how she was, and a few said they’d missed her, but the quality of this chit-chat seemed strained, somehow.

A substitute had covered her classes, but Mindy hadn’t been able to work on her final exams while she was in the hospital. Teachers were required to submit their final exams a month early, for administrative review. There’s a long story about why that policy was in place, but it doesn’t matter to this narrative. Mindy had to scramble all morning to get the tests ready for review. Her first class of the day was after lunch. It happened to be the class Bobby was in.

When that class filed into the music room, everybody was uncharacteristically quiet. They were watching her as Bobby walked in. He noticed the silence, too. He was frustrated, and he lost his temper.

“I did not try to kill her!” He turned to the teacher. “Did I?”

“I beg your pardon?” asked Mindy, who was completely blindsided by this.

“People think I tried to kill you,” said Bobby, his voice heated.

“I beg your pardon?” she said again, her voice hollow.

Bobby’s anger wilted, and he felt foolish.

“Didn’t anybody tell you what’s been going on since you went to the hospital?” he asked.

“Nobody’s told me anything since I went to the hospital,” said Mindy. She looked at the others. “What in the world is going on?”

Not much music got taught that day, but a roomful of gossipers soon spread the word that, “Go figure! Bobby Pendleton didn’t try to kill Miss Middlesex after all. It was all just a big misunderstanding!”

That night, when Mindy was lying in bed, she thought it was ironic that she couldn’t get to sleep. All that time she was in the hospital, she wished she could get a good night’s sleep. Now, she still couldn’t sleep, except this time it was because there was so much swirling through her head! Bobby ... trying to kill her?! She wanted to laugh at how ridiculous that concept was. He was her savior! He was her lover!

Of course she couldn’t tell people about that part. That was what seemed so unfair. He must have gone through hell. She wished he was there, with her, in bed, where she could comfort him.

She lay there as memory took her mind back to the little time they’d had together, in this bed.

She was lying there, just remembering the feel of his weight on her, when a little bell went off in her mind. She went still, and then sat up. She got up and went to the calendar. Her gut tightened as she realized she should have had a period while she was in the hospital. She should have had a period eight days ago.

She went back to sit on the bed.

It was only a week. Maybe the upset of her injury and hospitalization had caused her to be late. Could something like that make a woman skip? She’d never skipped a period before. Of course she’d never let a man ejaculate in her bareback, before, either. She hadn’t made Bobby use a condom. She didn’t even have a condom in the house. She didn’t need condoms.

She remembered telling him she needed to get some condoms.

Her finger traced back on the calendar to the day they had made love. The knot in her gut tightened further. There couldn’t have been a worse time to do it.

What if she was pregnant? What would she do? What would that mean?

The concept of being pregnant ... at least with Bobby’s baby ... wasn’t terrifying. She loved him. The concept of having his baby didn’t bother her. But it needed to be later... much later. It needed to be years from now, when he was finished with school and working full time.

But if she was pregnant ... what would she do?

Part of the deciding was easy. There would be no termination. She could not, would not, abort Bobby’s baby. She’d have it, and she’d keep it. Even if she never saw him again, she’d keep his baby.

But what did that mean?

If she told him, he’d never go away to school. She didn’t know him as well as she should ... wanted to ... but she knew him well enough to know he’d react to this news by insisting on staying with her. He’d happily told her how he wanted to live with her during the summers between college years. It was obvious he wasn’t worried about their relationship being out in the open, once he graduated from high school. She’d seen the flaw in that plan instantly. She had to live there while he was off at school. She had to teach to support herself, and if she “took up with some boy who had just graduated,” the rumors would be even more incendiary than the ridiculous ones that had fluttered around while she was in the hospital. Especially if her belly swelled while all that happened.

She couldn’t tell Bobby.

People would want to know who got her pregnant. Nobody would know before the next school year, when she was showing. Her imagination coughed up a ruse. She’d tell some of her peers that she’d met a man online, and was going to go see him that summer. She’d say he lived in Cheyenne. Or she could say she met him at the music rodeo, and had been dating him on the down low. That would deflect suspicion away from Bobby. The last thing Bobby needed was another cloud of rumor and suspicion around him.

While the concept of being pregnant with Bobby’s baby wasn’t so terrible, the idea of having a baby scared her. She didn’t know how to be pregnant. She didn’t know how to be a mother. She didn’t have any female friends or other mothers she could turn to for advice. Jane Pendleton popped into her mind.