Yeah. Just a little over 8 months now, Mrs. Chasez…My mom is coming to Chicago in a couple weeks to help out during the last month…" Laura laid across the bed with the phone propped on her shoulder as she turned the pages of a binder full of homes for sale. "Yeah, she said she had something really important to take care of, so she is away…She’ll be back sometime this week, so I’m all covered in the help department, but thanks."
The two women ended their conversation and Laura was relieved to know that Mrs. Chasez was anxiously awaiting her grandchild’s arrival into the world. They seemed to be the only ones. She hadn’t spoken to JC since their conversation at Justin’s. He hadn’t even called. She knew that he had Justin checking up on her for him. She also knew Rachel had something to do with the lack of contact. But every fiber of her body was praying that Rachel didn't have that much control over him.
RING RING
"Hello?" Laura could hear someone breathing, but they never spoke. This had been happening almost everyday, since she got home from her trip.
"Hello," she huffed. "Why do you keep calling me if you aren’t going to say anything?" Still no one responded. She decided to play along and sat there breathing into the phone. She continued to read her magazine. "I can do this as long as you can." She stated.
Laura faintly heard a tiny voice in the background say, "Da." The phone suddenly went mute. Was it Nikky’s little voice she heard?
"JC?" Still nothing. "If this is you. We’re doing okay." Three seconds later she heard a click and knew he'd hung up.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rachel threw down her napkin and looked across the table. "How long are you going to give me the silent treatment, JC?"
"I’m not giving you the silent treatment. I’d just like to eat in peace for once."
"You never home anymore. It’s like any chance you get to leave the house, you bolt out the door and don’t come back till late at night."
"This is nothing new to you, Rachel. That’s how my life is."
Rachel dropped her fork onto the plate making a loud clanking noise. "Well, you seem to have all the time in the world for Nikky, but no time for me."
"Would you rather it be the other way around?"
"No. I just think that we need to figure out a plan before we get married. Because I don’t want this to be a problem for us in the future, baby."
"We will." JC went back to eating.
"Is this because of how I feel about Laura?"
JC stopped in mid-chew. "I don’t want to talk about it. You’ve voiced your opinion and I am trying to make a compromise by not calling her right now. But next month don’t expect me to not keep in touch with her on a regular basis. I refuse to not be there when my child is born. You’ve already deprived me of that once. You’re not going to do it again."
JC got up from the table and went into the living room to finish his meal. Rachel sat at the table starring down at her plate, forking through her potatoes.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"I can’t find any information on that girl, Justin. I need to know where she works or has worked and then I can get my friend to look her up in the system." Hallie said trying to prop the phone up between her ear and her shoulder.
"I can find out from Rachel."
The two of them began to bicker back and forth about the consequences of Justin asking too many questions about the new friend in her life. He quickly came up with a plan to act interested in Cassandra to gain more information. All the investigative work over the past month had led them back to square one. They had no idea who this woman was or what part she played in Rachel's deception. Justin was beginning to feel that his suspicions were incorrect.
"What if this Cassandra person only turns out to be an actress?"
"Then I'll be wrong about everything. For Rachel to pull something like that off, she would need an actual nurse."
"Do you know how psychotic we must seem?"
"I don't think wanting to know the truth is psychotic, Hallie."
"Yeah, but this isn't any of our business."
"JC is my family...He is my business." Justin defended before focusing back on their plans.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It was 3am and Laura had awaken for one of the 12 routine bathroom trip. As she lifted herself off the bed she could feel warm liquid running down the inside of her thighs.
"Don’t tell me that I just pee'd on myself!" She whined to herself.
She went into the bathroom and cleaned herself up. When she returned into the bedroom, the liquid started to run down again. "What the hell? I just went to the bathroom."
Laura felt embarrassed that she couldn’t even control her body anymore. She went back into the bathroom and stayed there for 10 minutes, hoping that her bladder would be empty soon. Still having no luck she grabbed a stack of towels and retreated back into the bedroom. She set the towels down on the chair and sat down rubbing her belly. "You just won’t be satisfied till mommy has a nervous breakdown huh, little one?"
She grabbed the phone and decided to call Hallie, but there was no answer. She then dialed her mom. "What’s wrong? You okay?" Mrs. Charles asked frantically.
"I’m fine, mom. I'm sorry to wake you up so late, but I just needed to know if it’s normal for someone to lose control of their bodily functions during pregnancy."
"What happened?"
Laura explained everything to her mother. Mrs. Charles had never really heard of anything like that happening to anyone she knew. She told Laura to call her doctor to make sure everything was ok. "Call me back as soon as you talk to them."
Laura hung up and dialed her doctor but only got in touch with his service. She left a message for him and went on to call the emergency room.
"...You say you are in your eight month of pregnancy right?"
"Right."
"What I would suggest is that you come on over so we can check you out and make sure that everything is ok." The triage nurse took down most of her information to be prepared for her when she arrived.
A simple trip to the emergency room turned out to be a mission. They sent her from one room to another until eventually sending her over to the maternity ward. One of the head nurses came in a did an examination.
"Well, you aren’t going home today."
"Why? What’s wrong?"
"There is a tear in your sac." The nurse could see the worried look on her face and tried to calm her fears. "It’s ok. It just basically means that your water broke. You're in labor. We're having a birth in here soon!"
