Chapter 218: Happy Birthday
*He’s about fourteen weeks early and addicted to heroin, but he’s healthy overall; I think he has a fighting chance. – Dr. Hamilton*
**February**
Ryanne arrived at the hospital in Ridgeview around two in the afternoon. It was now the day after her sister had called. The conversation had been a strange one, even for Leigh Anne.
“Hey, baby sister. I think that I’m pregnant. I think I’m having the baby.”
It had taken Rye several attempts to find out where Leigh Anne was. How she got up to Massachusettes and why was still a mystery to Rye.
Finally, she got another woman at the gas station to call an ambulance. In typical Leigh Anne fashion, she had been getting high while in labor.
Rye doubted if Leigh Anne even knew who the father was. Even before their parents had died, Leigh Anne had been the wild child. She took after their mom, while Rye took after their dad.
When he had died in Afghanistan, it had been seventeen-year-old Leigh Anne who had to keep them both safe. She poured out beer and liquor bottles. Flushed pills and powders. Locked up prescriptions. Told men that it was time to go.
Leigh Anne kept Rye safe from the men and their mother. Even before Mike had died, Leigh Anne had run interference between her mother and sister. Especially whenever their dad was gone.
Rye always felt as though her mother disliked her. She just never knew why. After Mike died, that feeling had grown.
Over the next few years, Rye was the one to learn to do this. Not to keep her sister safe, but to keep their mother out of jail. And for her and her sister to stay out of the system.
Three years ago, it had been Rye that identified their mother’s body. And sat by her sister’s hospital bed, not certain if she would live or die. Not certain which would be better.
Leigh Anne had lived and had agreed to get help. Then, while Rye took a shower, Leigh Anne left.
Rye kept the same phone number since then. The same number their mother had given her.
Three years. Two phones. One number. And until last night, there were zero calls.
She had been at work during a rush at the restaurant after the local high school won a state championship, in what she wasn’t sure. And to be honest, she didn’t really care. The restaurant was just down the street from the high school and where the teams went after every home game. Win or lose. And last night everyone in Dahlonega wanted to eat with them.
Rye had gone to the manager and said that she had a family emergency and needed to leave. The middle-aged man looked at her with his greedy eyes and told her that if she left, she would lose her job.
As her father had drilled into them, a promise is a promise. And she had promised her sister to be there when needed.
And family always came first. Always.
Rye told her manager that she would let him know where to send her last check. Then, to his surprise, she walked out.
Everything that she owned was in the trunk of her little used Volvo. It was hideously ugly; the heater didn’t work and sometimes the engine didn’t want to start. But it had been five hundred dollars and got her from place to place.
It had even made it up to Massachusetts from Georgia. From sunny Dahlonega to snow covered Ridgeview.
Rye had told the old woman that she rented a room from that she had a family emergency. When she told Miss Beulah that she might not be coming back for a while, the old woman told her not to worry.
Then the woman packed her a box of drinks and snacks for the road. Along with the ham sandwich, sodas and chips had been the rent she had recently paid and all her deposit.
The money would be needed for clothes and baby stuff. It would not be the first time that she slept in a car, but Rye wanted better for the baby that was laying in the plastic box in front of her.
She wanted better for her sister. Leigh Anne was probably already gone, having slipped out without the nurses noticing. So, for now, Rye would start with improving her nephew’s life.
The baby was no bigger than a Barbie doll with his near translucent skin. It looked like there were more tubes and wires in the box than there was baby. The diaper was just folded up around him and a cloth covered his head, and another was over his eyes. The nurse had explained that the lights would hurt his eyes and his skin was so fragile that anything could rip it.
They hoped that in a few days, she would be able to touch him through the portals on the side. Once he was strong enough, she could hold him. The kind doctor had already explained that withdrawal would be hard on him.
It was not the beginning that any child deserved. But it was the one that this one had.
An unknown father. A drug addicted mother. An addiction of his own. Nearly a day old at this point, and still nameless. Already abandoned.
Rye looked at this tiny little perfect human with ten tiny fingers and toes. Smiling down at the little baby, she touched the plastic box.
“Happy birthday, little man.”
