Choices

(previously titled How A Man Should Be)

Synopsis:
A medical emergency reminds newlywed Julie that, having chosen a husband with the right attributes, the keeping of a secret from her past is unhealthy for her marriage.

Status: Searching for markets for this very long short story(or very short novel).

Excerpt:

The hedge behind the house twittered happily with unseen birds. Julie wondered if they were getting ready to fly south yet. It was tricky eating the apple with one hand while she rolled up the hose lying along one side of the house, but she managed to hang the hose on the large metal hooks and looked around for other items to put away before winter. There were the two lawn chairs where she and Mark had been sitting talking about the baby just last week.

"We'll get one of those baby monitors," Julie had explained to Mark. "And as soon as he outgrows the bassinet, we can move him across to his own room without worrying if he's okay at night."

"We won't give away the bassinet, though," Mark had answered: "You can prop the baby up in it so she can see you while you're busy in the kitchen or wherever. And later it can move to the laundry room so we can put folded clothes in it as they come out of the dryer. I like the fact that it's on wheels so it can move around wherever we need it. "

Julie put the two images together and pictured herself dragging around a bassinet full of folded clothes with a happy baby sitting in the middle unfolding as fast as she could fold.

Snapping the lawnchairs closed, she carried them across the grass and tucked them beneath the back porch. Amanda, her next door neighbour was piling wood at one edge of her driveway, tangled curls blowing in the breeze. Julie didn't know her well, but they'd been neighbours for a few months and she waved hello as she carried the remaining two chairs toward the house. Suddenly she was hit with a wave of nausea so violent that she dropped to her knees, spitting up bits of apple.

In the driveway next door, Amanda dropped the three chunks of wood she was carrying and ran hurriedly across Julie's lawn. Opening one of the lawn chairs Julie had been carrying, she gave quiet instructions: "Sit there. Don't move. I'm getting the car."

Amanda loaded Julie into the front seat and slammed the door. "Who's your doctor? Where is the office?" "How do you feel now?"

It was only a few minutes before they pulled up in front of the doctor's office, but Julie felt removed as they made their way down the stairs. At the bottom they found a locked door. Of course! Office hours would be over by this time of day. Amanda eased Julie back up the stairs, thankful that there had been a parking spot right in front of the building.

As they drove across town, Amanda kept asking questions. Where did Mark work? What time did he usually get home? Was she having any cramps? Julie couldn't think what they ought to do next. She no longer felt sick but the world had developed a spinning quality. "Don't worry," Amanda told her, "before I got the job at Bell, I wanted to be a nurse." Julie wasn't with it enough to think whether that qualified Amanda to care for a sick pregnant neighbour, but neither was she worried. She hadn't given a thought to the baby, to Mark, or to anything other than what was happening at this precise moment, which was putting one foot in front of the other to get into the door at Emerg.