True Love Pt. 01

After four fruitless months Olga told him she had seen a doctor and all was okay with her. She urged him to do the same. That was when he ended up at the urologist's, ogling a sexy nurse and filling a little plastic container. The results were just below average. The little swimmers seemed healthy. The odds of getting Olga pregnant seemed favorable. It just might take a while.

***

He hadn't heard it. The TV blared the excitement of a full stadium into the living room. The agitated voice of a reporter drowned every other sound. Only later did he hear the loud rapping on the door – and the penetrating wail of the bell.

He jumped up and ran into the hall. He heard a high-pitched female voice. It was Olga's and she seemed in a panic. He tore the door open and she almost fell in. Her coat hung open – her dress was in tatters. One breast was exposed. Her hair and face looked a mess.

"Why didn't you open up?" she screamed, her eyes wild. "I banged and rang and…oh god…ooooh goddd!!" She pushed him aside and stumbled into the room.

John looked outside. The street was dark and empty. He closed and bolted the door. Then he turned around and went looking for her. She had slumped down on the couch, crying. Her hands were covering her face, her shoulders shook. He sat beside her, trying to take her in his arms. But she shook him aside and jumped to her feet.

"Police," she screamed. "Police!"

He went and grabbed the telephone, fumbling with it. Then he saw her eyes roll back into her skull. She slowly slid to the floor.

He ran to her and took her in his arms. "Olga!" he yelled. Her mumbling lips were a blur of smeared lipstick. Her eyes swam in a pool of dripping mascara. They only showed the whites. "Olga, what happened?" Panic overwhelmed him. He felt utterly helpless. She seemed far away. – far off where he could not reach her. He shook her by the shoulders. "Please, Olga?"

She collapsed in his embrace. He carefully laid her on the couch. The dress fell open - her underwear was gone, her body was a mess. He dialed 911 while he went for a cold damp rag and a glass of water. When he returned he yelled his home address into the phone and told them to hurry.

He knelt next to her. Her eyes had opened again. He mopped her forehead with the cloth. Then he poured some water past her bloodless lips. She coughed. With a flare the panic returned to her eyes. She pulled the coat around her and started shaking.

"A…a man…black man," she stuttered. "In the…in the car. He had a knife." The last word came out with a wail. "I…I was getting out of the car when he p-pushed me back in. His kn-knife was in my face. He said… he said to drive him. He shook the knife and he said: "Drive!""

Her body shook. Sudden sobs made some of her words hard to understand. "I- I had the keys in my hand. I begged… begged him to let me go. To take the car but let me go. He hid his face – a…a handkerchief or something… maybe he was wounded." She seemed to lose the thread of her story. Her eyes turned away from him.

Olga didn't speak for a while. Then she pushed at his chest and freed herself to look up at him. She seemed calmer. "He tore at my coat and ripped my dress open. Then he…" A new flash of panic struck her. "He…he raped me, John," she whispered. She pulled him closer and her whole body shook. "It hurt, John. Oh god, it hurt so bad."

The words echoed inside his head. He mumbled her name and patted her back. They cried together. Then she pushed her fists against his chest and rose. Her voice was clear. "When he was…done, I…I pushed him away and ran. I ran, John. Weaving through the street I screamed for help, but nobody heard. Nobody! And I banged at the door and you…"

She accused him – he felt awful. "I," he said. "I didn't hear it. I mean…the T… I did not hear you! Oh god, honey, forgive me, but I did not hear you."

Her eyes had turned into black, bottomless pits. "I banged and banged and rang," she said. Her voice was toneless again. "I was so scared. I was going to die and you weren't there. I was naked and his goo ran down my legs. And you did not open. He was behind me with the knife. I stood there. And You Were Not There." She broke down crying.

***

They had informed the police and she gave them a description of the man. He had been short and stocky, she said – and black. His head was shaven, half his face had been covered by a handkerchief. He had sounded foreign – African, maybe.

She had also been examined by a doctor. There were traces of sperm and other proof of forced entry. They had tried to do a DNA test on the semen, but there was nothing with which to compare the results. The rapist obviously wasn't in the books.

Tests for STDs came out negative. Results from the HIV tests would take some months. The doctor advised them to abstain from sex or at least use condoms. Olga had taken the morning-after pill, as she had been off protection for months. Her physical health was soon restored, but she seemed shocked and psychologically damaged.

She acted scared and panicky for weeks and weeks to come. He could hardly touch her. But the greatest blow to John's confidence was that she refused to feel safe with him. He knew he ought to swallow his pride – right now was not the time to bother her with his hurt feelings. But hurt they did.

When they walked the streets she kept looking over her shoulder. Her step quickened whenever she thought she saw something conspicuous. She pushed his arm away when he wanted to reassure her, and cut into his words when he tried to calm her. She felt cold and distant, shutting him out – she humiliated her knight in shining armor.

John damned the god-awful rapist. He felt as if he was suddenly banned from paradise – punished for something he did not do. He felt scorched by the flaming sword of the angel at the entrance. The angel he loved.

***

"I am pregnant." There was a small tremor to her voice. She looked at him and away again. They sat at the breakfast table. It was Saturday. There were soft-boiled eggs, fresh fruit and tea. The Saturday paper lay scattered all over the place.

John felt a rush of excitement. He rose and took her in his arms. She did not resist – she melted into his embrace. She cried and so did he. But his tears weren't caused by what she had said. He cried because at last she had accepted his embrace again. After weeks of icy rebuke, she had once again let him into her circle.

He didn't know why she cried. Most probably it was the emotion of at last getting what she had been praying for. Maybe it also broke the pent-up tension. Or maybe it was just a hormonal thing. Who'd know? Should he care? She was back, she was his again and that was all that mattered.

But of course there was the uncertainty. He guessed she saw it in his eyes. "It is yours, John," she said. "I took the morning after pill, remember? It can only be yours."

He held on to her gaze. It was calm and steady. "It is ours anyway, honey," he said. He pulled her back into his embrace.

***

The pregnancy went without complication. Olga was a healthy woman. Being pregnant made her body fill out. Her hair became thick and shining. Her skin started to glow. And even in her last months the round, firm belly gave her an earthy sexiness. She never went for the wide, sack like maternity clothes. Her dresses were short and tight – almost provocative. And she knew how to make the best of her newly swollen breasts.

It was a very serene and happy time. Although he had never worked much with his hands, John decorated the baby room and the two of them had a lovely time buying all the new things they needed. More than anything John was amazed how easily they glided into a totally new phase of their lives. It was as if they opened a door that had always been there, but had been invisible to them. Behind it was a world they'd had no idea of, populated with people they'd never have otherwise met. Soft, caring people who weren't in any race for anything. And people like them, waiting for some new and miraculous thing they had never before experienced.

It was a world of women. They tolerated men for practical reasons, but he always felt that they shared an age-old secret he couldn't begin to fathom. He knew he shouldn't even try to. He also found out that he'd best play this role of benign outsider, as it seemed to give him a whole new set of credits with these soft, round bellied, sexy creatures of which his wife was one.

The contrast with the hard-boiled, commercial world he inhabited was immense. He didn't even try to bridge the two. But he always knew when he met a colleague or a client who was in similar circumstances. They never talked about it, god forbid, but they knew.

The actual start of her labor still took him by surprise. He had watched her grow over the last nine months. He had felt the child kick, had seen it on a monitor. The baby had been in their conversations right from the start. They had discussed names. They already knew it would be a boy. John had wanted to call him Christopher after his recently diseased father, but Olga had insisted on Stanley. No reason, she said. She just liked the sound of it – Stan, Stanley, a strong, manly name. He had not liked it, but in the end he gave in. Christopher would be its middle name.

Naming the child had brought reality closer. But it still shook him when she said her water broke. It felt as if an even truer reality kicked in – the irreversible one.

Olga insisted that as long as she was healthy, she wouldn't go to the hospital. So they had decided to have the child at home. There were no specific reasons to go to a medical facility. "I'll have it where we made it," she said.

It was not to be a quiet labor. The baby fought its way out of her in less than a few hours. Olga was restless all of the time, walking, standing, lying down, groaning and puffing. The cramps multiplied until there was hardly any time between them, so he begged the midwife to hurry over. He tried to hold Olga and comfort her, but she pushed him away. She cried out and cursed – all sweetness and glamour had left her.

The baby looked perfectly healthy, screaming at the top of its lungs as soon as it was out. The sheer force and earthiness of it all shook John. It threw him back to a primal level, where life and death were so real that they could be felt and tasted. He took the baby from the midwife and laid it on Olga's blood-stained belly. He slid a hand under her shoulders, helping her up to see her new born child.

***

The low white chest of drawers had a plastic covered mattress on top of it. On it laid a pink, naked baby. It looked tiny in his huge hands. He folded the cotton cloth between the wrinkled legs. Olga had proposed they would not use the ready-made factory diapers – they had to be what she called "the natural thing". Now he was here, alone in the pit of night, wrestling with unwilling cotton and safety pins. His head was filled with a myriad of confusing thoughts.

When he had laid the newborn creature on Olga's sweat- streaked belly, she had opened her exhausted eyes. Her mouth had already formed a smile, when she suddenly got even paler than she had been. A scream left her lips and she pushed the baby off her body. "Nooo…," she cried – the word tapering off into a groan and then into a sob.

The midwife caught the baby before it slid onto the bed. It started to wail. John stared at Olga, then at the woman and back to his wife. He stuttered. "But, but Olga. It – it is a wonderful boy. All is well, honey. He is so lovely – look! Please. Please take him. He is yours. He is ours. He is our Stanley. Our boy!"

Olga turned her head away. She covered her eyes with her hands. Her shoulders shook. There were sobbing noises.

She refused to accept the baby. John tried to change her mind. He wanted to hold her, but she fought him off. "Cut it loose!" she hissed. "Cut the pig loose, get it away from me! Give it up or whatever. And don't call it Stanley. I won't have it!"

The shock was in John's eyes. He and the midwife cut the umbilical cord. The placenta had already followed. There wasn't much blood – all seemed well. The woman swathed the child in white cloth. Then she asked John to come with her.

"You shouldn't worry," she said in a whisper. "This just happens once in a while. It'll pass. We call it post-natal depression. Quite a few new mothers suffer from it."

"But she loved to have the child!" John said. "She has been wanting it for years. We have worked hard for it. It took us forever."

She shook her head. "It just happens," she said, caressing the baby's now sleeping little face. "Talk with the doctor, tomorrow."

He had talked. And after Olga kept refusing even to feed the baby, he talked again. A female psychologist visited her. She mainly told him to be patient.

A week went by. Olga kept refusing to see the baby. She had demanded and gotten the hormone shot to dry up her milk. And when her breasts begon to hurt, she used a pump to drain what little milk remained. She left her bed on the third day and was gone from the house till late in the evening. She refused to answer his questions and never looked for the child.

When she stayed away the first night, he called around. She wasn't with family or friends. No one could tell him where she might have gone. On the third day of her disappearance John noticed that she must have been at the house while he was out with the baby. Most of her clothes and some of their belongings were missing. There was no note or message.

Then their bank informed him that half of their joint accounts had been emptied to a total of € 20.000. That was the last thing he heard from her.

The night stood silently around him. He threw away the cotton cloth and tore open the first package of ready made diapers. "Hi, Christopher," he said to the baby. "Let's pamper your butt, boy." He'd swear he saw a smile.