Beauty from Ashes

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 9

Jake asked me just a few nights ago why I haven’t cried. I mean, I cried the first day in the labor and delivery room, and he was there for that. There were two nurses, a doctor, and one other — I think she might have been a chaplain or social worker or something like that — and they were all leaning over me like I was the patient. Leaning over me, their faces literally six inches away. So close I could probably guess what they’d each eaten for breakfast by their breath. Leaning down, holding my hands, rubbing my shoulders. Only four people, but I swear there were eight hands touching me right then as they told me what happened.

My baby had stopped breathing, but she still had a faint pulse. There were flight nurses on the way, straight from the Seattle NICU where they’d gotten special training for events like this. That’s always what they call what happened to Natalie, her event, like it’s a stinking wedding reception or Halloween party that you hire a planner to coordinate. I hated the way they kept on crowding in on me, but at least I knew my baby was alive. As soon as I heard that code blue, I’d just assumed she was dead.

It took an hour for the flight crew to land, and another few hours before they got Natalie stable enough for the medevac. My OB discharged me early. Gave me a prescription for iron pills, recommended witch hazel for the tearing, and stuffed a few oversized pads into a plastic bag along with the cheery samples of free formula and brand-name diapers they give out to all the moms post-delivery.

Congratulations on your new baby.

I was going to ride with Natalie on the medevac jet. They could only transport one parent, and there wasn’t any question it would be me. They wheeled Natalie out in this self-contained incubator into the hall to say goodbye to Jake. The glass was thick enough it looked bullet proof. Who knows? Maybe it was. Jake walked up to her, but she was just lying there totally knocked out, like she was in a coma or something. And I remember wondering what kind of goodbye he would give. There wasn’t a way for him to touch her or anything. I almost expected him to put his hand up to the glass, but he didn’t.

“Can I get you anything before you go?” he asked me, and I don’t even remember how I responded. What kind of help can a twenty-two-year-old convenience store salesclerk offer a woman who’s only an hour off her epidural but is getting ready to fly halfway across the state because her baby stopped breathing for no apparent reason?

And I wondered if he felt guilty, if he thought what happened was his fault because he was the one who was supposed to be watching her. Then I wondered if he thought it was my fault because I was the one who took a nap. Or maybe he assumed I did drugs or something and that’s what this was about.

Maybe it was my fault. I don’t know. But I’m not a substance abuser. There was a night last spring where I was finally over my first-trimester pukiness, but I still didn’t have an appetite and it had been a horrible day at Winter Grove, the assisted living home, and I just needed a glass of wine. That’s it. A single glass of wine. Not even full, more like three-quarters. Just a hair more than half, really. Jake was working late so I knew he wouldn’t fuss about it, so I poured myself a glass, plopped on the couch, and turned on the TV. I was going to clean up after myself before he came home. I just needed to get off my feet. He was never going to know about the wine except I fell asleep. So he came home, and there I was, completely crashed out on the couch. He saw the wine glass and assumed the worst. He was raving mad. It was the first time I’d ever seen him that ticked off. He threw the glass at me. There’s still a huge red stain on the back of the couch.

I was hardly awake, but I started yelling at him because who does that to anybody, let alone a pregnant woman who’s sleeping after a back-breaking shift at the old fogies’ home? But then I saw the wine bottle he had in his hand, the one I left on the counter because I was so tired after wiping leathery, wrinkled butts all day, and at least then I understood why he was going postal on me. I convinced him I wasn’t drunk. I let him smell my breath, everything. I hadn’t even finished all the wine in the glass before I conked out, which is why there’s such a big a stain today. So he calmed down and apologized, and then he took my hands and said, “I just want you to do everything you can to take good care of her” — her being Natalie because I’d found out it was a girl just a couple weeks earlier.

I’ll blame it on the hormones until the day I die, but I started crying then. It wasn’t just because I was exhausted and emotional and my quiet, shy boyfriend had just thrown a wine glass at my face. It was because I realized then that he really planned to stick around. That if I screwed up and something happened to our daughter, I wouldn’t just be hurting her. I would be hurting him.

I suffered through the rest of the pregnancy stone-cold sober.

So that’s what I was thinking about when the emergency crew got ready to fly Natalie away. That Jake probably assumed this was all my fault. They hadn’t done the brain scans yet. I didn’t even know hemorrhaging was a thing you had to worry about after a delivery that long. I was afraid I’d messed everything up, and that’s why Natalie was dying, and Jake knew it was my fault.

So I told him I didn’t need anything, but I’d call him when we landed in Seattle, and he didn’t say a word. Didn’t even look at me. Just stared at Natalie, and all I could think was I’m never going to see him again. Which made me a little sad, but it wasn’t that big of a surprise. The real shocker was that he’d stuck around so long. Not quite twelve months since our first date, and now we didn’t just have a baby. We had a dying baby. What kind of couple survives that?

I said goodbye to Jake, and I figured it was probably for the last time. Even if he did stick around a little while longer, I was certain things would never be the same between us.

And they never were.