After my shift ended at 3:00 pm I walked slowly to the staff car park. Henry's words had not stopped echoing in my mind since morning, “Nelly is pregnant.”
Those words were running around my head as I carried out my duties. The matron had to ask me twice today if I was okay. I only told her I was fine and tried to concentrate as much as I could. Heaving a sigh of relief when the end of the shift came. I quickly signed off, and picked my bag and left the ward.
A single tear escaped, tracing a path down my cheek. I didn't know how to make the cold sharp pain stop as my tears continued to flow. After I could control myself, I decided to drive to my father's. I needed to talk, to let the pain out, and the only person I coukd do that with was my father.
We didn't exactly have the normal father-daughter relationship, but he was the only family I had left apart from my step siblings and their mothers.
But before that I drove to the nearby shop to get him some groceries like I usually do whenever I was visiting him. The smell of cigarette smoke and stale beer hit me as usual when I opened the door.
“Hey dad,” I greeted and went to the kitchen to set the shopping bags I was holding on the kitchen counter.
He was already standing at the kitchen doorway by the time I turned around. His signature scowl on his face; my father wore his grumpiness like a badge of honor.
“How was work today?” he asked with his arms folded in front of him. “Fine,” I said tartly.
“What happened?” he asked, eyeing me suspiciously as he leaned back against the doorframe.
“Henry… he wants a divorce,” I whispered, my voice barely audible as I walked out into the living room. “His ex is back. She is pregnant already.” I babbled on.
He followed me and said, “you women always forget how to keep a man once you’ve got him. Bet you stopped doing the little things, huh? Let yourself go? That’s how his ex got back in, I’m sure. Men need to feel wanted all the time.”
His words hit me like a slap, each one stinging worse than the last. My stomach churned with a mix of anger and regret. “I shouldn't have come here.” I thought to myself.
“Dad, you know that's not true,” I retorted. “You know me very well. You can't accuse me of that. I have never changed towards my husband in any way after we got married.”
I plopped down on the couch, crossing my legs and he sat across from me.
“Then why don't you beg him? Let him know you love him.” He sat upright and looked all serious. “He's a man. You make him keep the ex as a mistress and you can continue to be his wife. That will make everybody happy.”
“What Dad?” I shouted. I couldn't believe what he was saying. “Why would I beg him?”
“Don't be arrogant,” he blew out a long puff from his cigarette. “All you women are, you don't want to accept that one woman is not enough for a real man.”
“That is bullshit,” I spat back at him. “It’s nonsense, why would I want to beg Henry?”
“Because you still love him.” He rubbed his hand along his pants legs. “That's why you are so miserable, Kathy. Go and beg Henry.”
“I'm miserable because he betrayed me, Dad.” I uncrossed my legs. “I don't love him anymore…I can't love him again with the way he had betrayed me. He didn't even love me in the first instance.”
“That's the lie you women tell yourselves.” He rubbed on the stubble covering his jaw. “The whole lot of you like to throw unnecessary tantrums.”
“Dad, you’re unbelievable,” I spat, rising from the couch. “I came here to find some comfort, but here you are giving me the opposite. Why Dad?”
“You want me to pamper you?” He laughed. “You of all people know that I don't sugar coat; I say it as it is.”
I walked to the door. His laughter followed me out: cruel and hollow. I slammed the door shut behind me with my anger and practically ran to my car, tears blurring my vision.
I blamed myself for coming over as I backed out of his driveway. “What do I expect from a man with six children from five women, anyway?” I asked myself as I drove away.
I missed my mother in moments like this. She would have known what to say, how to pull me out of this pit of despair. My father was hardly a beacon of wisdom on relationships.
When I pulled into my driveway and turned off the car engine, I just sat there, staring at the house Henry and I had lived in together for Twenty-eight months after our wedding and seven months prior.
My mind wandered back to the night I first set my eyes on him.
Henry was rushed to the hospital when he had an accident on his way home from work during my entry year as a registered nurse. I had just started working in Oasis General Medical Center.
He didn't sustain any serious injury, but Dr. Daniel insisted he must stay overnight and I was the one attached to him for his care. It was during the night that we got talking before he slept off.
In the morning, he insisted on having my phone number and promised to call me. I wasn't even thinking about him after he left. I never thought I would see him again since he already made it clear he was going to be using his family hospital after his discharge.
But he did call me two days after he was discharged and I was pleasantly surprised. He asked me out to dinner, and I turned him down, but he was persistent and I agreed after three weeks. The rest is history now, as they say.
