Chapter Sixteen
Finally, Randi thought. A chance to sit down. She sank into a chair in the nurses break room on Pittsburgh Memorial's pediatrics ward. As a way to fill her time after her parent's death, she'd begun to volunteer at the hospital. She loved reading and playing games with the small sick children there. Most of their parents worked and couldn't visit all the time, so the children enjoyed the time Randi spent distracting them from their problems. Many of the children had cancer. As a result, a lot of them were bald. But Randi saw how optimistic they were. She admired their courage. They fought their diseases and yet still tried to play and act like normal children. Yet they were infinitely wiser.
Randi gulped down her soda. Most of the children were in treatment of napping right now, affording her the chance to rest her swollen feet and give her sore lower back a massage. Resting her hands on her stomach, Randi glanced down at her swollen stomach. "You, know what sweetie?" she whispered softly. A kick was her response. Laughing, Randi stared at the poster on the wall opposite her. The nurses on this floor had caught their young patients love for the Backstreet Boys. One of the little girls had been generous to give them a poster to put in the lounge. Randi looked at Kevin's serious face. Looking back down at her stomach, she whispered "Your daddy's going to be in town tonight. You know who your daddy is, don't you?" The baby kicked again.
"Randi?" a voice asked. One of the nurses, Ashleigh, stuck her head into the room.
"Yeah?" Randi asked, slowly standing and stretching.
"Ryan's asking for you" Ashleigh said as they walked out of the room. Ryan was a little 4-year-old with Hodgkin's Disease. He wasn't expected to live much longer, but was still receiving chemo.
"Is he in his room?" Randi asked.
"Yeah. By the way, you are going to the concert tonight, aren't you?"
"I don't think so. Junior hasn't been letting me sleep lately," Randi said, grinning wryly.
Ashleigh laughed. "Well, okay. I'll develop my pictures and get doubles for you."
"Thanks" Randi said, not really meaning it. Besides, the Backstreet Boys were coming to give a concert tomorrow. She didn't she why all the nurses had to go to the one tonight. But because they were coming to visit the hospital in the mid-afternoon, Randi had changed her volunteer hours to the morning. She didn't exactly want Kevin to see her pregnant. Especially since it was his child. And most especially because he didn't know about it. And Randi had no plans to tell him either.