Katie Pugh | Wild Flower

—

Donald had to work late on a project a few nights later. When he came home, the street was a fireworks display of white, red and blue lights. Flipping through cue cards in his brain, he tried to think if Pippa had shown any of the signs the therapist had told him about. Not being able to pinpoint something just made him sweat more, made him brake a bit harder so that tires squealed as he pulled up behind the first squad car parked in front of the house.

“What’s going on?” he asked, grabbing a uniformed man by the shoulder.

“Sir, please stay back.”

In the back of an ambulance, he saw a figure, slight in the shoulders, hunched over with a blanket wrapped around her. “That’s my wife,” he said, not letting the officer go.

Her face was down.

“Sir, there’s been an incident. Somebody came into the house.”

Donald wasn’t able to stop the choking gasp that came out of his throat. “She was there with my son. Where is he?”

The detective turned to face him. He took a step back to keep a space between them, but quickly assured him that both the baby and his wife were fine. “We think he came in to steal a few things. Maybe thought nobody was home. He was armed, though, with a knife and a handgun. He went into the baby’s room, and…”

That was when Pippa raised her face to him.

The lower half of it, from her lips to her jaw and down her neck, was a waterfall of red. Not a bright red, no, but only because it was dry. It was muddy brown, the edges a blackish gore.

When a gurney passed her, covered with a white sheet, she seemed to hold the baby asleep in her arms closer to her. Donald wasn’t sure if it was a trick of the light that got into his eyes, but he wondered later if he really did see what he thought he saw.

Because in that moment, it looked like she pulled her lips back and bared her teeth in a silent snarl.

—

In the darkness, Pippa could smell everything that came in through the open window. The wind – chill with a kiss of autumn – passed through the trees and carried with it the scent of sap leaking. The camellia blossoms were beginning to fall, the fragrant perfume fruity, fleeting. One of their neighbors had left their grill burning, and there was the smoky, after-scent of charred flesh. There was the grass, freshly mown, and…

The last time she had gone to see the doctor, Donald had accompanied her. They sat, not touching, as the man had gone on talking about self-defense and medical conditions and how there wouldn’t be a case. “Especially not with the fact that Pippa was protecting herself and the baby.”

Her jaw clenched, a tremor, a reminiscence: the intruder’s face in the darkness, his hand going for his hip, and the white streak of panic and rage.

Donald rolled on his side to face her, and in the bright moonlight, she saw his eyes were opened. “I can’t sleep,” she confessed.

“Do you need to go?”

“ I’m going to write you a prescription,” the doctor said, “and we’re going to meet every month. I know this isn’t an easy time for either of you, but you’re going to need each other until whatever this is passes.”

Then, Donald’s hand was on hers. His fingers didn’t restrain but wove between her own. She looked up from wherever her eyes had been at the moment, and the love, the gratitude, in his face was blinding. Had she really been missing the sunshine, the wild world that was right there at her side the whole time?

She shivered with delight before she could stop herself, and he squeezed her hand beneath the sheets. “Are you sure?” she asked.

He pressed to her side and kissed her cheek. “We’ll be here waiting for you.”

When they had re-entered the world, leaving the powder whiteness of the doctor’s office for the bright afternoon, Donald whispered, “You don’t need to take anything, if you don’t want to.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I’m not going to pretend to understand what’s happened to you,” he said, kissing her temple. His cologne touched a memory in her mind of the quiet day before she found out she was pregnant, but now the scent was more profound. She hugged him close. “But I was lucky to have you there that night. With our baby. So…we’ll figure it out, okay?”

Rolling out of bed, she was out of her pajamas with little more than a thought. The night air caressed every inch of her, loved her fully and completely. She glanced back at Donald one more time – his eyes now only half-opened, and what was visible glittered in the night’s soft light – and she was out.

Out to the forest line.

Out to the meadows and valley beyond.

Farther.

Away.