The Half That You See by Rebecca Rowland (best summer reads .TXT) 📕

“Any prenatal medications?”

Josh closed his eyes and sneered at the impossibility. “What? No. Why would she?”

“Oh. Um. According to her bloodwork, she’s pregnant.”

Indignant, Josh blurted, “That’s impossible we haven’t had sex in like two years,” and then immediately blushed as an echoing facsimile of his voice said you haven’t had sex, you, you, you; who knows what she’s been doing, who she’s been doing, who, who, who. “Oh. Wow. How pregnant? I mean, can you tell how long?”

“No. Hmm, well.” The nurse cleared his throat. “She’s been unconscious for nearly two hours, but so far we know nothing. You’re in Kamloops, correct?”

Josh didn’t hear this, wasn’t sure how he felt. “I’m coming. Driving. If she wakes up and is going to leave, tell her to call me.” He hung up as the nurse began speaking.

He pulled the shifter and streaked into traffic. A truck, one not exactly cut off, but close, honked at him. He took a left at the lights and hopped onto the highway.

Two hours into the trip, he stopped in Hope for gas and coffee. A man coming from the storefront, on his way to the Jeep parked in front of Josh’s Sonic, slowed as he pocketed a fat, brown leather wallet, looking into Josh’s car. “Hey, I had one of those as a little guy.”

Josh, in a state of mild shock, said, “Do you have the wife? I’d like to get him for the husband.”

The man jerked his chin in a bird-like reaction and said, “Huh?”

“The wife for the husband. The dolls that go with the camper. You know?”

The guy pouted his bottom lip and shook his head slowly. “Man, had that toy back in the seventies, maybe even nineteen-eighty. I don’t remember anything about it beyond that the wheels squeaked like a bugger and my little sister broke the awning—oh, and our cat stole the dogs.”

“Dogs?”

“Sure, it came with two dogs. Now that I think about it, might’ve been kids, too.”

“Kids?” Josh scrunched his face. “Would you sell them to me?”

“Man, I told you, I had them when I was only little.” The man was shaking his head much faster, eyes widened, as if to say, Ain’t you listening, you wack job?! “Real small. The seventies.”

Josh tutted at this and finished his transaction at the pump.

“She’s still out, sir.” This nurse was not the nurse Josh spoke with over the phone. This nurse was a woman. She double-checked that the contact information on file was correct. “We’ll give you a ring when she awakes. You can stay, too, for a little while.”

“I’d like to see her,” he said. Deep down, a thought, one probably belonging to the owner of that echoing voice, suggested that he’d know who had impregnated his wife once he saw her face.

“Yes, of course.” The nurse stood on the ledge of her stool and pointed down the hall. “Three-two-nine. Please be quiet: there are three other patients in the room with your wife.”

Josh began walking, quickly. The waxy floor shined and the dull white walls bounced a soft blue hue onto the nurses and visitors and the milling patients. The place was busy with motion, but most were respectfully hushed. In 329, Josh passed two very elderly women and a teen surrounded by what appeared to be her family. Tears streaked through a powdery foundation on their way to the teen’s jawline and abrupt end to the makeup. A curtain circled the only remaining bed and Josh peeped around. It was Claire, but he had no idea who’d put the baby in her and immediately forgot the strange inclination. “Claire?” he whispered and then shook her by the big toe of her right foot where it peaked the bedsheet. She didn’t move and the beeping machine kept a constant rhythm. He sidled up to the nightstand next to her and opened the drawer. Her purse was not inside, nor was her phone. He shook her once more before returning to the nurses’ station in the hallway.

“Where’s Claire Dolan’s things? Her purse, cellphone?”

“We have them?” The woman he’d most recently spoken with rose to her feet.

“Somebody called me with her cell, so you must.”

The woman disappeared behind a partition and returned swinging a bulky plastic bag by a string. “Claire Dolan. Here you go.”

Josh leaned against the island’s countertop and began digging with fingernails into the tight knot on the drawstring—made tighter by how the nurse had swung the bag. She was no longer looking at him but had Facebook open on a desktop computer, eyes turned onto the blue grey glow.

The knot finally let free and Josh dug around the bra and blouse, the slacks and shoes. He found the purse and then the cellphone. He held both in his right hand and the bag in his left, as if unsure how to proceed.

“Squeeze tight for me,” a janitor said behind him and Josh leaned in, letting the bag fall back onto the countertop, solving his conundrum by needing space for a garbage cart. “Thanks, bud.”

Josh transferred the phone to his left hand and opened the purse. The Radisson key card and sleeve were in with the cash in Claire’s wallet. “Only one Radisson here, right?”

The nurse didn’t look at him. “Yep.”

“Better take this back in case she wakes up and wants her bra or purse.”

The nurse looked then, reached for the bag and tied the knot, then yanked the bag by the strings as she returned it to whatever lay beyond the partition. “You going to be weird about that phone?”

Josh put Claire’s phone in his pocket. Right then he understood a gossip mill had gone around to the on-duty nurses about his conversation, about Claire’s infidelity. “No. I’m just—no.”

The urge to investigate the phone was strong, but parking tolls ran by the minute at the hospital. He searched out the hotel on his phone and let Google lead him to his destination. Her car was at the airport in Kamloops—she’d flown on the