Take This Regret (Take This Regret #1)(4)
Author: A.L. Jackson

“Does she have any all ergies?”

“When did the symptoms start?”

Shaking his head that had begun to pound from the immense amount of stress, he stated he didn’t know.

He slumped into a hard, plastic chair pushed against the far corner of the wal and watched as they began to poke and prod at his friend. He felt helpless, having no idea what he was supposed to do.

Should he call someone?

Christian?

Elizabeth’s mother?

No. She had call ed him, and that in itself gave him a clue. She needed him, and so he chose to be there for her, even if it meant waiting around and having no idea what was going on.

As he sat silently in the corner and watched the nurses and a doctor work over Elizabeth, he thought about how she’d come into his life. He’d met her the year before at the smal diner where they worked on the weekends. They were alike in many ways. They both lived in a city neither could afford, attending a col ege they’d dreamed of most of their young lives, living off scholarships, grants, and mounting student loans they’d both be paying for wel into their thirties. The tips they made on a Saturday shift barely covered food and necessities for the week. But neither of them looked at those things as negatives in their lives.

Instead, they embraced the opportunity and ran with it, and they’d become fast friends.

Matthew obviously knew how beautiful Elizabeth was.

He wasn’t blind, but he’d never viewed her that way and didn’t harbor unrequited feelings. He loved her as a friend.

Truly.

That didn’t mean he liked her boyfriend. To Matthew, Christian was a spoiled rich kid who was doing nothing more than slumming while he played at col ege. He was certain Christian would break Elizabeth’s heart.

Matthew winced for Elizabeth when they inserted a long, thick needle into her forearm before attaching an IV bag to the line.

For what seemed an eternity, Matthew sat and watched Elizabeth sleep while the color slowly came back to her face as the bag dripped its contents into her veins.

Real y, little more than an hour had passed when the very young doctor who had examined her returned, chart in hand.

He extended his free hand across the smal space to Matthew. “Dr. Lopez.”

Matthew nodded and shook his hand. “Matthew Stevens.”

“Al of her test results are back . . . severely dehydrated . . . anemic . . . pregnancy . . . too much stress . . .” Matthew tried to focus on what the doctor was saying, but real y heard nothing more than pregnancy.

Matthew felt lightheaded with the implications this would have for his friend. Slowly everything fel into place, the late night phone call to him when it should have been to someone else, the swol en eyes. The doctor’s words about too much stress triggering shock seeped in.

Matthew curled his fists, sickened that someone could treat his friend so poorly—anyone that poorly. Matthew’s first instinct was to go straight to Christian Davison’s apartment and tear him apart. Instead, he moved to sit on the edge of Elizabeth’s bed and ran his hand through his friend’s matted hair, silently promising her he would always take care of her.

May 2005

Christian stood in front of the ful -length mirror, studying himself in the long, black gown, seeing nothing more than a pathetic excuse for a man staring back at him.

He should have felt proud. Receiving his bachelors at Columbia with top honors should be a proud day. His mother and father had just left his apartment to await him in the car but not before his father had proclaimed how proud his only son had made him this day.

But Christian didn’t feel proud—he felt ashamed.

He’d seen her about three weeks ago in line at the store, though she hadn’t seen him. He had gathered the few items he needed, deodorant, shampoo, and toothpaste, and hastily had made his way back up to the registers.

He’d scanned for the shortest line when he saw the wavy locks of blond hair he knew so wel . He’d felt an immediate pul , the need to go to her, but had frozen when she turned to the side, exposing the large protuberance in her abdomen.

Like a coward, he’d hidden himself, watching her with an almost morbid curiosity from behind a row of shelves.

He felt sick, observing the woman he still loved, but had betrayed, strain to reach the items in the cart—diapers, blankets, and smal things he didn’t recognize. She was preparing for her baby to be born.

It frightened him that she now seemed thinner than he remembered, her skin sal ow and chalky, gaunt, as if the growing mass in her front had stolen all the life from the rest of her body.

Even then, she was still the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

But, like he already knew himself to be, he remained the coward and did nothing but watch as she paid for her things and walked out the door.

It was the only time he’d seen her since they’d fought at his apartment. She’d never returned to class, had never call ed or sought him out, had never changed her mind.

He had made no real effort of his own since that first day when he’d gone to her place, only call ing once and hanging up when a man had answered her phone. He could have tried harder—should have tried harder—but he’d taken the easy way out. He’d convinced himself that he didn’t ache for her, pretended that his sleepless nights had nothing to do with his worry for her. He told himself she’d moved on, that she didn’t need him, that she’d found her own way. Even if she had, he knew it still didn’t absolve his responsibility for the child.

So as his guilt had grown, he’d done more and more to drown it out, spending long days in class and even longer nights with his head spinning from the amount of alcohol he’d consumed, then waking to unfamiliar women in unfamiliar beds.

No, today was not a proud day.

Christian grabbed his cap and trudged downstairs to join his parents in their waiting car.

The celebratory dinner was everything Christian had expected it to be, the sound of forks and knives clattering against china filtering into the stuffy atmosphere of the Club, the waiters in tuxedos and far too wil ing to accommodate.

Christian’s father, Richard, lectured him that his schooling had only begun and that the next three years of law school were going to be the toughest of his life. Claire, Christian’s mother, sat withdrawn as she listened to her husband giving her son instruction he obviously didn’t need.

It was nothing Christian hadn’t heard before. Every conversation he’d ever had with his father had been the same. He’d hoped that for just one night his father would be satisfied, that they could relax and just talk, but it was always about the next step, the next achievement.