Safe Zone

{Katy’s Point of View}

Paperwork scattered around my desk was the only thing catching my attention for the time being. I wish they would’ve let me do my work while I was sitting in the hospital bed two floors down, because this catching up business was tiring.

“Did you check on the Atkins baby, yet?” Sharon, my favorite co-worker, asked. Wheeling her chair towards mine from across the large cubical.

“Yeah, mom’s feeding him. I figured I would give them bonding time,” I never looked up from the paper that I had been filing.

“Okay. Sounds good,” She quickly rolled back to the front of her desk and pressed the button that allowed us to talk to people that were trying to come in to our NICU unit, “Yes, how may I help you?” It was a security device to help us talk to a person before allowing them to come in.

“I was wondering if I could speak with Katy Owens,” The raspy voice over the small intercom pulled me from the paperwork. Sharon looked over at me confused. I vigorously shook my head ‘no’. Earlier, when I visited River’s room, was the hardest thing I’ve done in a while, but I was legitimately worried about River.

“She’s in with a patient. Do you have a message to leave? Because I cannot allow you in without a relation to a NICU patient.” Thank God for Sharon. I could see him on the camera that gave us outside vision of the double doors.

“Yeah, that I’m sorry. Maybe tell her that I would like for her to call me. If she would like.” I watched as he rubbed his temples and then softly smack his hand on his forehead about three times.

“Okay. I will relay your message. Have a nice day,” Sharon turned off the sound of the intercom and looked over at me, “Who is that?”

I was embarrassed because I had never told them that I was with Matt. Even though Sharon was my best friend at work, I kept all my love life to myself.

“It’s an extremely long story,” When in reality it wasn’t.

“Oh I see how it is. Brett know about him?” Sharon asked, not knowing that Brett and I weren’t even together anymore.

“Sharon. I’m not with Brett anymore.” I finally confessed on a small tidbit of information.

“What? I just saw y’all this morning eating together!” She exclaimed scooting close to me once more, her Texas accent showing through her vocabulary.

“Yeah, he has high hopes of us getting back together. I’ve tried telling him I want to be by myself but he’s trying to prove to me he’s changed,” I sighed, while all my hidden secrets started to flow.

“So you left Brett for the other sexy tattooed guy?” She grinned raising her eyebrows.

“Brett cheated on me. I cheated on him. All while Matt was cheating on his wife with me. But whenever I was admitted, he went back to his wife after my dad made him feel guilty with some fatherly speech. Because he has two boys,” It made me figuratively feel dirty telling my friend all about the cheating charades that had went on in the last couple weeks.

“Girl, I didn’t know you were crazy like that. Wish hot guys would cling to me like they do you.” Sharon laughed. I rolled my eyes because it wasn’t just a lust thing. It was emotional wearing me down.

“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. There’s a lot of crying involved.”



My sixteen-hour shift was now over. Exhaustion was an understatement, but I finally caught up on all my work.

My backpack was over my shoulder, while my arm had my jacket draped over it. It was weird to get off in the middle of the day while most people were still occupied at their jobs.

I took all the nurses short cuts, to avoid any unwanted conversations with ex-lovers. Which worked well, but eventually I had to go out to the very public sidewalk to walk home.

Ten minutes into my walk, I was almost home to my sister and I’s apartment. That is until a car pulled up next to me on the sidewalk and parked. The occupant quickly jumping out of their car and running over to me.

“Kate,” Matt slightly spoke. I closed my eyes acting like I didn’t hear him, “KATY!” He yelled, so I stopped.

“Oh hey! How’s River?” I played dumb. But really wandering how River was doing.

“He’s good, finally waking up from surgery. I was sent out to get food because he hated the hospital food.” Mat nervously laughed, walking next to me as we moved closer to the buildings so people could pass by.

“Well that’s wonderful. And I’m totally with him. The food they offer is disgusting,” This was awkward. I wanted to be home in my bed.

“Listen. Can we talk?” Matt asked, standing in front of me.

“I don’t want to. I’m actually really tired from this sixteen-hour day. And I have to be up early in the morning to go for my check up on my head. And I’m sure going in there sleep deprived wouldn’t be the best idea.” It was every bit true, because this was my first sixteen since coming back to work two weeks ago.

“Okay. I understand. Please try and call me,” He stated turning around and walking back to his car. My heart face palmed and cried but my mind stood on the first step and cried as it received the gold medal.



You would think I would be use to hospitals and doctor’s offices but I wasn’t when it came to something for me. Dr. Drake had me come to his separate practice to run some test to make sure everything was okay since it was so close to my brain.

He had already taken my blood and looked at my wound. My wound had healed ‘beautifully’ so he took out the staples. So now I just sat and waited for the results of my blood test, to make sure that I didn’t get any infections.

“Okay, Katy.” Dr. Drake walked in with a clip board, “I have two things. One is good news the other is up in the air for good or bad.” He laughed sitting down.

“Let me hear it, Doc. I don’t care which one first,” I had an assumption of what they were going to be.
“Okay, so your test came back all good. No, infections or anything of that sort. Second, during your blood test you know we run all of the test to ensure that we know everything to the full effect.”

“Yes, I understand.”

“Well your HCG is high. So we decided to run it through a pregnancy test. And well congrats,” My jaw must’ve dropped straight to the floor. I thought he would tell me my hair wouldn’t grow back from the scar. Something small and simple.

"I-I" I stuttered, my mind was exploding with different emotions. After all these years of thinking I couldn't get pregnant again, I finally was. But now I didn't know who the father was...