Don't Give Me Tainted Love novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Swab

Dalton quietly orders a rush DNA swab while Melanie plays the loving mother at the bedside. Eric wakes and whispers that he saw Uncle Bradley at the school gate.

The surgeon came out at six and said the leg had gone well.

Eric would have a cast for eight weeks and a scar on his shin.

He had no other injuries, and he would wake up in a few hours.

I thanked her, and then I asked the question I had been carrying since the vending machines.

"If I wanted a real paternity test, and fast, where would I go?"

She did not ask why.

She looked at me for a moment and wrote a name and a phone number on the back of her card.

"They're a private lab across the street," she said. "They do a rush cheek swab. Results by tomorrow noon."

"Does my wife get told?"

"They tell whoever pays."

I paid.

A technician in a blue coat came up to the recovery room twenty minutes later.

She swabbed the inside of my cheek.

Then she bent over my sleeping son and swabbed his, gently, while he breathed through his mouth.

He didn't wake up.

I watched her seal both tubes and sign her name across the tape.

I signed the form for him too, and my hand did not want to.

I did it anyway.

Melanie arrived at a quarter past seven.

She had told me ten minutes, and it had been three hours.

She came down the corridor fast, in a gray suit, with her hair coming loose from its clip, and I stood up before I knew I was going to.

"Dalton."

She put both arms around me and held on.

I felt her heart going against my chest.

I stood in the hall with my arms at my sides, and then, because there was a nurse watching, I put them around her.

"I'm so sorry," she said into my collar. "The meeting ran over and the traffic was a nightmare. I should have come the second you called."

"Traffic," I said.

"The bridge was down to one lane."

I knew the bridge was fine, because I had driven across it myself that afternoon.

I said nothing.

She let go and looked past me through the window of the recovery room.

Her face changed.

I had seen that face on her three times in eight years.

Once at the funeral for my father, once when Eric had a fever of a hundred and four, and once when he took his first steps.

She pushed through the door and took Eric's hand in both of hers.

"Hi, baby. Mommy's here."

Her shoulders shook.

She was crying, quietly and for real, and I stood at the foot of the bed and watched her do it.

I did not know what to do with that.

Nobody could fake that much love for a child who was not hers.

But Eric was hers.

It was only me he did not belong to.

I understood that now, and understanding it did not make my hands feel any better.

At eight her vice president came in with a bouquet of white tulips.

She was the same bright, blond woman I had heard through the door.

"Dalton, I'm so glad he's okay," she said, and hugged me, and I hugged her back.

She hugged Melanie too, hard and long.

She put the tulips in a cup on the windowsill.

Then she stepped into the hall with her phone and typed with both thumbs for a full minute.

She was gone before nine.

Melanie sat down in the chair by the bed and did not leave it.

At ten the nurse brought a cot for me.

At eleven Melanie's phone lit up on the armrest.

I saw the screen from where I lay.

It was a single letter and no name.

R.

She turned the phone over, face down, without opening it.

"Work," she said, to nobody.

I closed my eyes.

I lay there with my heart going and listened to her breathing change, and at some point it settled and became slow.

She had fallen asleep sitting up, one hand still wrapped around Eric's fingers.

I got up from the cot at midnight.

I stood by the bed and looked at my son.

He had a pale, serious face.

I looked at his chin, and for the first time in seven years I looked at it hard.

It had a small cleft.

Mine did not.

Melanie's did not.

I told myself half the world had a chin like that.

"Dad?"

His eyes were open.

They were gray and cloudy with the medicine, and they found me and stayed on me.

"Hey, buddy. I'm right here."

"My leg feels funny."

"That's the cast. You were so brave."

"Did the van get my bike?"

"The van got your bike."

He nodded slowly.

Then he looked at his mother asleep in the chair and dropped his voice.

"Dad. Can I tell you something? You can't tell Mom."

"You can tell me anything."

"Uncle Bradley was at the gate today."

I did not move.

"He was standing by the fence. He said my name and waved at me." His small mouth worked. "I got scared and I rode away fast. That's why I didn't look."

"Why were you scared?"

"Because Mom said if I ever see him by myself, I have to run."

His eyes slid closed, and then opened again.

"Don't tell her I didn't run the right way," my son whispered.

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