Her job as junior counselor was more demanding and taxing than she had expected. The ten-year-old girls she was assigned to were a handful. They never left her alone even for a minute, and one of them or another always had a stomachache, a headache, a splinter, a blister, a bee sting, or a cut finger. One of the girls was suspected of having a hot appendix and was rushed to the hospital with what turned out to be indigestion from too much candy sent by her grandmother. Pennie rode horseback with them, swam with them, played tennis and badminton with them, volleyball and softball. They went rowing, kayaking, and canoeing. She accompanied them to arts and crafts, where they made presents for their parents. She had a great time, but she fell into bed exhausted every night. They had campfires and sang songs, all of which Pennie knew from her time there as a camper. They made s’mores and toasted marshmallows and told ghost stories around the campfire at night. They went on hikes and camped out under the stars. They had tugs-of-war and relay races. She helped them write letters home once a week, tucked them in at night, and taught them the words to the camp song.
She had only seen her brothers a few times, but they were happy when she did. They thought it was funny that she was a junior counselor and teased her about it.
In the last week of July, they had a track meet. She’d been coaching the girls all week to get their speed up for the running events. She was a fast runner herself. It was exhausting but her little group did well with her coaching. Afterwards, she took a short break and happened to be standing at the end of the dock at twilight when a girl from another cabin wandered down the dock, tripped and fell into the water, hit her head on one of the pilings, and sank like a rock. Pennie dove in without hesitating for an instant, pulled her up from the bottom where she’d sunk rapidly, and one of the male counselors who saw it happen helped Pennie pull the girl onto the dock. She was unconscious, and the counselor worked on her for a moment, got the water out of her, and brought her back to consciousness. He checked her pupils and thought that she had a concussion. They called 911 and the local paramedics came immediately. The girl was crying when they took her away in an ambulance, with the head of the camp with her. The male counselor commended Pennie for her fast reaction, and the strenuous effort getting the unconscious girl onto the dock.
“You did all the hard work,” Pennie said, smiling at him but still shaken by the experience, and the realization of how quickly things could go wrong. If they hadn’t been there to save her, the girl would have drowned. And as she said it, she saw the counselor look at her strangely.
“Are you okay?” he asked her. She felt a terrible pain slice through her, and when she looked down to where he was staring, she saw that her shorts were drenched in blood and it was running down her legs onto the ground where they were standing.
“I…yes…I’m fine,” she said with a look of panic and embarrassment, and rushed back to her cabin, leaving a trail of blood. When she took her clothes off in the bathroom, there was blood everywhere. The girls had just gone to the dining hall, and a senior counselor appeared a few minutes later, sent by the male counselor she’d been talking to. It was obvious that something serious was happening to her. She was hemorrhaging, and the female counselor suspected what it was.
“Tell me the truth, Pennie,” she said, trying to help Pennie stanch the blood with towels, which were instantly drenched dark red. “Are you pregnant?”
“Yes,” she said in a weak voice. Between the pain and the bleeding she could hardly stand up. “Four months,” she added. The counselor helped wrap Pennie in towels and a blanket, and a moment later, drove her to the hospital after telling another counselor where they were going. It had been a strenuous day, between the track meet, running after the kids all day, and pulling the drowning girl from the bottom of the lake onto the dock.
Pennie was in excruciating pain on the way to the hospital, and by the time they got there, she was having severe contractions and losing massive amounts of blood. There was no way to stop it, so they hooked her up with a transfusion immediately and whisked her into surgery, to deliver the dead baby. When she woke up they told her it was a boy. The doctor in charge said that she could easily have bled to death. She’d already had two more transfusions by then. She was sobbing later when she called her parents and told them. Her mother drove up to Vermont that night to be with her. Pennie was deathly white and still groggy from the anesthetic, and she cried as soon as she saw her mother.
“I didn’t do it on purpose…I guess I overdid it…I’m so sad…I didn’t want to lose it.” She felt guilty as well as devastated.
“I know, baby, I know,” her mother said as she held her, but it was a simpler solution to a problem which could have ruined her life and Tim’s, even if it could have given them much joy. It felt like a tragedy to Pennie, knowing that a tiny life had been lost. It was the death of a hope, and the symbol of their young love, even if the circumstances had been wrong. But now there would be no painful decisions to make. Fate had decided for them.
She stayed in the hospital for three days until she was stronger, and Eileen stayed with her. Pennie had to rest for the next three weeks at home. After a discreet meeting with the director at the camp, they agreed to say that Pennie had suffered a burst appendix, and had to go home to recover. It was an event which had happened at camp before, and although the girls would be disappointed, it would cause no further comment. The only person other than the director who knew what happened was the counselor who had driven her to the hospital and saved her life by doing so. She had agreed with the director and Eileen to keep the matter entirely confidential.
Eileen picked Pennie’s things up at camp before picking Pennie up from the hospital. The girls in her cabin had made her a big sign with daisies on it, wishing her a speedy recovery. They had given her a copy of Madeline from the camp library, the story of a little girl in Paris, in a convent boarding school, whose appendix had burst too. The girls in her cabin had all written messages in it to her.
Pennie was quiet and depressed when they left. She had managed to text Tim in China and tell him what had happened. He was in Shanghai by then, and it was easier to reach him. He called her in the hospital, and they had both cried, but fate had decided their destiny and the baby’s and spared them difficult decisions. He promised to see her in August when he got back. And now they could both move forward with their futures as they had planned them. He was off to college and she had to finish high school. She burst into tears when she saw her father, and he told her how sorry he was that she had to go through the ordeal she had, but he was grateful she had survived. She had a month to recuperate before her brothers came home from camp.
She didn’t call her friends, and didn’t want to see them. No one knew about the baby except Tim and his parents. He had let them know, and they didn’t communicate with Pennie or her parents. They were just relieved that the problem had been solved. They wanted no further contact with any of the Jacksons, and felt as though their son had been spared from his own noble motives, and a marriage they were convinced would have been disastrous. Pennie was just as happy not to hear from them. Tim sent her several texts while she rested at home.