Fool Me Twice

"Why bother trying to explain the past to them?" I asked. "Just pick up a phone and get Magic Dick over here to watch over you and his baby?"

I felt like an ass as I watched her burst out crying. "You could always call your family then," I said. The tears continued unabated. If anything, they became even worse.

"Danny, my mom and dad don't want anything to do with me," she cried. "They haven't wanted to speak to me since I left you. You know how firmly set they are with their views on right and wrong."

"Lena, don't call me Danny or any of those pet names. My name is Daniel, and I'm sure your parents will come around. After all, the child you're carrying is probably going to be their only grandchild for a while," I said. "Things like that have a way of cutting through everything else."

"Danny...Daniel...I'm really afraid. I know that I have no right to ask it, but could you stay with me until. Well until the surgery is over?" she asked. There was a pleading tone in her voice and the look in her eyes told me all I needed to know. She really was afraid.

"Why the hell would I do that?" I asked. "Why would I even care about your fear or anything else? That isn't my job any more, remember? You replaced me a while back."

The hurt in her eyes got to me. I'd be lying if I said that I didn't enjoy the chance to twist the knife a bit. The ringing of my phone in my pocket put further communication on hold for a few moments at least.

"Danny, I haven't seen you in a week," said Kim over the phone. "What cha doin' t'night? I might need some dental work."

"Shit, does everyone want to use my health insurance?" I smiled.

"Not real dental work you sap," snapped Kim jokingly. "I have a cavity that needs to be filled, ya know?"

"I kind of have a date and a problem," I said, moving further away from the bed.

"Cancel the date, and tell me about the problem," she said. "You know the drill. Call your new girlfriend and tell her something...Family comes first. Now tell me about the problem."

"Maybe, you should see it for yourself. It might be your problem too," I said. I gave her the address and the room number and promised to stay put until she got there.

Lena just looked at me as I turned back to her. "Who was that?" she asked with a touch of bitterness in her voice.

"An old friend," I said. "She's someone who actually cares."

She just lay there in the bed looking at me while several nurses came in to check on one things or another. "Danny," she began. My icy glare cut her off.

"Daniel, I meant," she started again. "We never did have a chance to talk about..."

That was all I could take. "Why the fuck would I ever want to talk about it?" I erupted. The nurse in the room looked at me as if she was trying to decide whether or not to call security.

Kim walked into the room and looked around. When she saw me by the window she changed both her demeanor and her walk and headed straight for me. "Why the hell are you in a hospital? Don't tell me you're hanging out with a sick friend, right? That is so like you."

I pointed at the bed. Lena's pregnant belly all but obscured her face from where we were standing.

Kim looked over on the bed and recognized her sister. "What the hell happened to you?" she asked coldly. Then she looked over to me. "Please tell me you're not falling for this? I can only rescue you so many times. Don't you have a date tonight anyway?"

She just shook her head. "I can't believe this. I have to call mom and dad. I'll call you later brother in law." Then she left nearly as quickly as she came.

"See what I mean," said Lena from the bed. "Even the people who are supposed to be my family don't want anything to do with me."

I didn't know what to say to that so I just looked at her. She looked so different, yet still somehow the same. I mean physically, except for being pregnant, the average person would think she looked the way she did when she left me. But someone who knew her well would notice the differences. The sparkle in her eyes was gone. The sense of confidence that she viewed the world through was also gone. There were tiny bags under her eyes and the pop in her personality had gone away.

Everyone always talks about how pregnant women have this incredible glow, Lena didn't have it. It was like looking at a whipped dog that is about to drown in a huge vat of its own liquefied shit. Lena saw me as her only life preserver. I didn't know what to do. On one hand, I hated her as much as everyone else did. She deserved everything she was getting and more for what she'd done to me.

I could sympathize with her family because they were from an extremely religious background and what she'd done embarrassed her parents among their close knit church group. They were pretty much considered a failure as parents for raising "the whore."

On the other hand, call me weak or spineless, but I felt sorry for her. She'd gone from a vibrant and beautiful woman to this lifeless lump of shit in a very short time. Sure she'd hurt me pretty badly but I'd come through it and was doing pretty well. It looked like her antics had only hurt her. I was sure there was a story here somewhere. I just didn't care enough to hear it.

I stood there looking down at her with all of those thoughts going through my mind.

"Daniel, come over here so I can talk to you," she said. I turned to face her and walked a little closer to the bed. She smiled for the first time. And then she laughed a little, but I could tell that even smiling seemed to hurt her.

"Daniel, I'm not going to bite you," she said. "You could sit down on the edge of my bed. It's not like I'm going to try to hurt you." I did as she requested and felt strangely on edge. I couldn't understand why but there was this awful tension between us that had never been there before.

"Daniel, I understand why you hate me. And you probably should. I never thanked you for saving my life and the baby's life back there and I really should have, but I can't help thinking that maybe it would have been a blessing," she smiled kind of a wry smile.

She was so different from my Lena. My Lena believed in life no matter what. My Lena gave and made me give to the anti-abortion groups even though she was a staunch liberal. My Lena was like that little orphan girl who always sang about the sun coming out tomorrow. I wondered what had changed her into this sad excuse for a woman who'd just hinted that if I hadn't pulled her from in front of a car that she and her baby would be better off.

I realized then that as much as I hated her, there was no use kicking her, she was down as far as she could ever be.

"If it had happened," she continued. "All of our problems would be over." I looked at her as if she was insane.

"Danny, even with you allowing me to use your healthcare insurance, this is only going to put me even further into debt," she said. "It's a short term fix that will cost me even more in the long run."

"Lena, most of the forms I've been signing, make me responsible for any costs that health insurance doesn't pay. So when they discover that you can't pay it, the bills will come to me. So don't worry about it Lena. Consider it a parting gift from me to you and your child," I said.

"If I'm getting a gift, can I pick it?" she said. I looked at her strangely. I wondered what could be more important than taking care of the bill for the surgery she was about to go through.

"Danny, I'm scared," she blurted out through her tears and blubbering. "They're going to cut my leg open and do things to me. They're going to put a piece of metal inside of me to hold my bones in place. They've already told me that there's a chance that I'll walk with a limp for the rest of my life and the chances of re-damaging the joint are increased. I'm more afraid of this than I am of not being able to pay the bill."

"Danny, what I want more than anything else, since you seem to be in a giving mood is for you to just put what happened between us away for a little while and stay with me until they take me to surgery. The last nurse that came through here told me that it shouldn't take more than an hour or so. The swelling in my ankle is almost to the point where they'll be able to do the surgery without doing any additional tissue damage."

"Could you do that?" she asked. "Just sit down here and talk to me, so I'm less nervous about them cutting my body open and doing things to it. I know I treated you terribly and you didn't deserve it. If I live to be a thousand years old, what I did to you will always be the worst thing I've ever done and I don't deserve forgiveness. I'm not asking for you to forgive me, Danny, I'd just like for you to sit down and talk to me for a little while."

"There was a time when you loved me more than anything else on the planet. At least that's what you used to tell me. And I believed it when you said it so there had to be something to it. And I lo..."

"Stop," I said sharply. The acid in my tone alone cut her words off so quickly that the last word became a muffled mumbling in her throat. "Don't go there." She nodded and looked away from me. A solitary tear rolled down one cheek as she realized that she'd fucked up again and I was angrier at her after what she'd started to say than I had been before. After a few moments of very uncomfortable silence, I let myself exhale. It all came out as a nearly silent sigh and a lot of the new anger went with it.

"Don't ever say that to me again," I said. She nodded understanding exactly what I meant.

I pulled out my iPhone and went to my contacts screen. The ringing sound in my ear let me know that the call was going through. "Hi Melissa," I said sadly. "It's Dan. Well I'm at the hospital. I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to make it tonight. Someone I used to be very close to is having surgery so I'm going to be here for a while. I can understand it if you're angry at me but I really can't get away right now." There was an abrupt clicking sound as she hung up on me.

"Ouch," said Lena. "It sounds like she's pissed. She must have really wanted to go out with you. Sorry Danny. I mean Daniel." I just sighed again.

"So where's Mr. Wonderful anyway?" I asked. "Did you even call him?" Now it was her turn to sigh.

"We're not together," she said. "Do you want to hear about it?"

"Two words," I said. "Fuck and No."

"Then what shall we talk about?" she smiled. "Danny, could you sit a little closer to me? I swear to you that I will not bite you. I know, you find me disgusting and you hate me and all of that shit. But I'd like to pretend for just a few moments, that I hadn't fucked my life up."

I moved closer to her and she smiled. I guess when I moved close enough for her to touch me it emboldened her because she reached out to take my hand. "Lena, don't touch me," I hissed. The venom in my voice made her retract the hand immediately.

The pain in her voice was so thick I could feel it. "I thought that we were pretending that things were okay," she said.

"I'm not that good an actor," I spat. We sat there for a few moments in silence.

"Danny, if I can't touch you, I have another idea," she said suddenly. She was smiling bigger than she had since I'd run into her. She almost seemed like the Lena of old.

"Can I touch your jacket?" she asked. I nodded my head wondering what the fuck she was planning.

"Close your eyes," she gushed. I did as she requested and soon felt her hands grabbing me by my sleeve. I heard a rustle of cloth and then she was guiding my hand again. Then I touched something that there was no explanation for. It felt like skin but like no skin that I'd ever felt before. I opened my eyes suddenly and looked at her. It was like an electric current had gone through me from the contact. I knew then that my life had just changed, forever.

Then to make things worse, I looked up and saw Lena staring at me with the biggest, dumbest smile on her face. Her legs had started moving with the contact even though her leg on the other side was elevated. Our touch had her very excited. It was like the contact had formed some type of link or feedback loop between us. But the link wasn't only two way. The tiny fluttering of her stomach let me know that someone else had felt the contact as well and reacted to it.

"She knows that you're here Danny, and she's happy too," said Lena. I recognized the tone in her voice. It was kittenish and playful with an undertone of lust. It was the same tone she always got when she really wanted to have sex. I snatched my hand away and stood up. But I knew in that moment that I was trapped.

Lena, of course, misunderstood my reaction. "Danny, I'm sorry," she whined. "You've done so much for me today. I wanted to give you something. I don't have anything else. People are always asking to touch my belly. I guess there's something about touching a pregnant woman's stomach. I just wanted to give you something. It's all I have to offer." The whining in her voice let me know that she was being sincere.

She wasn't trying to make me uncomfortable. She noticed then that her gown was still pulled up around her chest and her vagina was on display. When we were together she'd kept it shaved or at the very least very closely trimmed. She was pretty furry then. She quickly pulled the gown back down.

"I fucked up again didn't I?" she asked. Sobs went through her body.

"Lena, it's okay," I said. "In fact it was magical. I've never felt anything like that before. It was incredible. You and Mr. Wonderful are very lucky."

"Yeah," she said sarcastically. Then she started to tell me something but the arrival of the nurse interrupted her. We all have those moments when communication with another person goes beyond verbal and also beyond our mental ability to process it. Soul to soul communication they call it. I don't know why I thought about Power Station then. Power Station was a one off band formed by members of Duran Duran, the drummer, Tony Thompson from Chic and one of those English singers whose name I don't remember. They had a song, Communication, that went through my head then and every time I think of that moment.

I knew on a level that was far above mental what she was going to tell me. "What, Lena?" I asked breathlessly. She shook her head quickly as the nurse checked over her again.

"Nothing, Daniel," she said. "Thanks. I really mean it Daniel. Thanks for staying with me." She yawned as whatever they were giving her to put her under started to take effect. "Thank you so much. Have a good life, Danny. None of it was your fault." She'd begun to slur her words as she lost consciousness. "All my fault Danny...blame it all on the whore...gave up...best thing in m' life. Stupid whore. Love you Danny...always will...forever n ever...love you."

Then she was out. The nurse looked at me and told me that the surgery would run about two hours and it might be a good time for me to visit the nutritionist before she left for the day. I could see her and also see the physical therapist to find out what Lena could do and couldn't do following her surgery. She told me that being pregnant in the later stages was awful and uncomfortable, but to go through the later stages of a pregnancy while unable to walk was going to be hell on Lena and on me.

"There will be days when she'll want to bite your head off for nothing," she said. "She'll have mood swings that are absolutely out of control. I remember one day when my husband just walked into the kitchen. I threw a cast iron skillet at his head. For one fleeting moment my hormones were so out of whack that I wanted to kill him for making me pregnant." She laughed at my horrified expression.

"I guess the hormones made me forget that I'd begged him to do it. I love that man so much that I needed to have a child with him, but at that moment, in that fleeting instant, if I'd had two skillets to throw, I'd have killed him."

"But I'm not..." I began. "I mean we're not..."

"That woman loves you at least as much as I love my Phil," she said. "Whatever you guys are going through, you'll make it." She smiled and patted my hand and then went to help the other nurse wheel Lena away.

As I stood there in that empty room trying to decide what to do, my phone rang again. I answered it without thinking about who it might have been. "Why aren't you here?" asked Kim. "Oh shit, she got you again didn't she? Mom told me it might happen. Please don't tell me you're still at the hospital. Danny, I can't save you from stupid. That woman is lying there knocked up by the guy she left you for and you're just there sucking up all the shit she puts out. She's trying to get you back, dummy. Mom told me that she showed up at their house a few weeks back trying to give them some sob story about how he'd left her. If you hadn't moved she'd have probably showed up at your place. She probably did go back to that apartment the two of you used to live in."

I just listened to her ranting over the phone. "Danny, grow a set of balls and walk away from her. She's only going to do it to you again. Do you know that mom and dad basically got kicked off of the parents committee at church? The other people on the committee figured that mom and dad couldn't give advice on parenting issues or help to decide policy for families because they are such shitty parents. Mom can't even teach Sunday school anymore. They said that because her daughter is such a whore, they think it must've come from her somehow. Lena is only going to hurt you again, Danny. I just don't want to see that happen to you. Call me when you get home."

As I stood there thinking about what she'd said, it all made sense but none of it mattered. I'd known that her parents were very traditional and very involved with their church, but the reason they'd literally turned their back on their own daughter was suddenly clear. It still had nothing to do with me though. And as much as I still hated Lena, my mind was made up.

"Shit or get off of the pot, boy." The words brought me out of my thoughts. I looked into the kindly face of one of the hospital's janitorial staff. He was trying to mop the room while Lena was in surgery and I was standing in the middle of the floor.

I left the room after apologizing to him and went to see the nutritionist. She was a middle aged slightly chubby woman with a rosy face and a cherubic outlook. All the time that she was telling me about the types of vitamins and foods that Lena needed for the pregnancy and what she'd need to get her levels back up to normal, I had one sick ass thought. If nutritionists are experts on diet and nutrition why the hell, are a lot of them fat?

But I listened to every word she said and took notes on her suggestions on my iPhone. I made a huge shopping list of things I'd need. To put it in the frame of the choices I'd been given by the janitor; I'd decided to shit. I didn't care about Mr. Wonderful or his absence or even Lena. I was doing this for someone else.

I also listened to the physical therapist, much less enthusiastically. That woman didn't seem as nice and also truthfully, the baby would be born before Lena got the cast off of her leg and we didn't need to even think about PT until the cast came off or nearly so.

With the long delay caused by locating and listening to the two 'experts' and the fact that Lena's surgery went very smoothly, she was in recovery before I got back to her.

I had to wait around for a while before they'd even let me in to see her. But it really didn't matter because she was knocked out anyway.

An hour later, she was back in her room when her eyes first fluttered and then opened. I looked up from the game I was playing on my iPhone.

"Danny," she said. "Why are you still here?" There were tears running down her cheeks and I looked at her with a gruff expression on my face.