by Margot Early
PAUL AWOKE outside in the darkness and cold and saw stars overhead. His head ached, and he remembered being forced into the van. Now, he was lying on the forest floor, abandoned.
He sat up and found himself alone. Night. Where was he? No longer bound with duct tape. Free.
He stood slowly, feeling woozy, trying to think. He patted his pockets. No phone. Yes, he’d dropped it, hadn’t he? Must have dropped the keys to the truck, too.
Keys.
Of course. He hadn’t dropped the keys. They had wanted his keys and had undoubtedly gotten them. To release the animals.
His headache intensified, but he smiled. The protesters had foiled themselves. The new baboon exhibit and the chimp exhibit and the big cat house had been fitted with combination locks. No one but the keepers knew those numbers. Granted, the protesters could cause havoc in other areas. Briefly, he entertained happy visions of confrontations between protesters and, say, the hippopotamus—or the king cobra.
Really not funny. Bad for the animals, bad for the zoo.
He tried to orient. Was he still in the state park? He saw a hillside and walked in the opposite direction until he saw moonlight on asphalt. Yes, the road. He was still in the park and should go toward the zoo.
But what if they’d released the primates?
He had no phone. He saw a mile marker up ahead, then headlights illuminating the road, the headlights of a vehicle coming from the direction of the zoo.
Should he try to flag down the driver? He had no interest in again falling into the hands of the protesters.
He stepped back into the trees and saw the white van go by.
Had they gotten into the zoo? Had they released animals? Where was the nearest phone? Outside the ranger station, half a mile away.
He stepped back onto the shoulder and began walking.
“HIS TRUCK’S OUTSIDE the swimming pool, but he’s not around.” Bridget was talking on the phone from the back of her mother’s car, stroking Cameron’s hair as they drove to the hospital. She told the police, “Cameron says those animal protesters have been bothering him. Some people upset about the zoo taking the baboons? You know what I mean. I don’t know which group. Does it matter?”
Cameron wondered what the protesters might have done to Paul, and then she couldn’t think of it because another contraction came. She was only three centimeters dilated, but she’d never known such agony in her life. She cried out on a long moan.
This was a nightmare. Was there any way the baby could survive this? Something must be wrong for this to hurt so terribly.
They were in Clare’s car because it would get them to the hospital faster than an ambulance. Clare had driven herself straight to Cameron’s on hearing from her, and Bridget had met them there. Bridget had left her children with Sean, whom she’d called and asked for help. “Cameron’s in labor?” he’d said. “Paul’s missing?”
Bridget had growled, “Don’t get your hopes up.”
She’d told Cameron of this conversation, and Cameron thought of the fact that Paul was missing, that it made no sense for his truck to be at the swimming pool.
“The police are on it,” Bridget said as she closed her phone. She held Cameron’s wrist, checking her pulse. “How are you doing?”
Cameron was in terror of the next contraction. How did anyone withstand this? Paul’s not going to be here. She wanted him to see their child born. She had wanted to give birth, not have the child cut out of her. Now she only wanted the pain to stop. How could she stand this pain, and the child was premature. Would the baby be all right? Could the baby survive what was happening?
The next contraction came with a pain that shrieked up her back.
“Try this.” Bridget helped her onto hands and knees, steadied her in the moving vehicle.
Where was Paul? This was a nightmare. She’d been so foolish, so immature. She’d believed he wasn’t ready for marriage. Even now she felt a stupid disappointment that there would be no homebirth, probably no natural birth, even no vaginal birth. Stupid for it to feel like failure. Soon her baby would be with her, hers and Paul’s. Oh, God, if only the baby could make it. Please hang in there, baby. Please be okay.
The pain was a black hole, beyond all thought except I can’t do this. I will break apart. This is going to kill me.
Bridget said, “You’re doing great, Cameron. You’re doing so well.”
“Hospital,” Cameron choked, feeling so terrified, for the baby’s life, for her own. This couldn’t be normal pain. This was anguish. This was hell, the hell in which she’d seen Beatrice but surely worse. No one could control this, no one could stop it.
“We’re almost there. Here, we’re at the door.”
Cameron got out of the car under her own steam and was guided into a wheelchair. I don’t want to sit down. I can’t. She bent forward with her head between her knees and vomited, and at the same moment there was an enormous gushing between her legs, water breaking, and more screaming pain.
“Good.” Bridget’s voice was at her ear, Clare walking fast beside them.
But it was Bridget Cameron wanted, clinging to Paul’s sister’s hand. “Where’s Paul?”
“I don’t know. We’re finding him, honey. Don’t worry.”
A POLICE CRUISER picked Paul up just outside the ranger station. They had been notified by his sister, they said, that he hadn’t returned from work. One of the officers was a man who had responded to the incident at the Women’s Resource Center, with the belligerent ex-partner named Jerry, and he asked after Cameron.
Paul needed to call her, and he asked to use a cell phone, his own being missing. One of the officers let Paul use his phone, and Paul called Cameron’s house, then her cell phone. His first call was picked up by the answering machine; the next call connected him to her voice mail. In the zoo parking lot, he found his cell phone, but it had been run over, undoubtedly intentionally, undoubtedly by the activists.
He tried his mother’s house, to see if she had heard from Cameron because he was feeling uneasy about his fiancée. She would have been worried when he hadn’t come home. But his mother didn’t answer, either. He would try her cell phone after he discovered what was happening inside the zoo.
The activists had succeeded in creating considerable havoc, despite being foiled by the new combination locks. Not all animals had been so protected. As Paul had predicted, the Reptile House had suffered, the backs of several snake exhibits opened and their inhabitants gone. As a former reptile keeper, Paul knew he could be of use in hunting down the escapees, but his mind was still on the fact that he hadn’t gotten hold of Cameron.
The wolves had been freed, as well, but they had not gone. They were creatures of habit, used to their home at the zoo, reluctant to venture into the keeper area, shy of people. Two grizzly bears had torn apart their keeper area, opening the refrigerator and helping themselves to its contents, ransacking the garbage. They had to be darted to be moved out of the keeper area.
The king cobra was simply gone, presenting a puzzle, and while Paul shined a flashlight all about the area outside the Reptile House, puzzling over where the sixteen-foot venomous snake might have gone, he used the veterinarian’s phone to try to reach his mother.
“Paul?” she said when she answered, probably second sight kicking in to tell her that it was actually her son on the phone. “Cameron’s in labor.”
“Where is she?”
“We’re at the hospital.”
“I’ll be right there.” A colleague had moved his truck back from the pool to outside the zoo. The protesters had left the keys.
After speaking to the veterinarian and returning the phone, he met the zoo director entering the zoo.
“Where are you going?” Dr. Bannister demanded.
“My girl—fiancée—is in labor.”
The director looked shocked that Paul should have impregnated an unmarried woman. Dr. Bannister was the kind of person to be shocked by such a thing. In fact, he’d once expre
ssed concern to Paul about children who were visiting the zoo possibly witnessing primates mating.
“Where are the apes?” he demanded, apparently recovering from hearing of human reproductive behavior unsanctioned by matrimony.
“All accounted for,” Paul answered. As were the other primate exhibits.
“Reptiles?”
“You’ll see.” It was a bad time to have to leave, but he needed to be with Cameron in her labor, to be with her as their child was born. She must not have to go through labor without him. He could think of nothing else.
“You can’t leave!” the director told him. “We need you. Are there animals out?”
Paul pretended he was in too much of a hurry to hear.
CAMERON SAW HIM when he entered her room, but his presence no longer seemed a matter of urgency to her. She was delirious with pain, plain old pain. All the romantic words she’d heard, contractions described as “rushes,” seemed unfair tricks. A nurse had checked her two minutes before, said, “She’s not dilating,” as though Cameron couldn’t hear her.
Cameron knew that failure to progress right now would mean a cesarean. Her water had broken. But she was on her back, in agony, and the nurse suggested an epidural.
Cameron shook her head.
“It might let you stay with it,” the nurse said.
Cameron looked into Bridget’s eyes.
Bridget said, “Whatever you want.”
Two nurses came in and looked at the screen for the electronic fetal monitor.
Paul crouched down beside the bed. He said nothing, just gazed at her steadily, bringing a quiet that Cameron wanted.
Then it happened.
Fetal distress.
And she was wheeled toward the O.R., Paul coming along, being given a mask, a hat to cover his hair. And there she was given an epidural, and as the pain eased she thought only of the baby, that she would see the baby soon. And please let the baby be all right.
Paul watched the obstetrician make an incision, watched his child born by cesarean section. It was a girl, and when he saw her he thought that she seemed to have come from some alien, holy place. Her face scrunched up, she breathed, and Dr. Henderson showed her to Cameron before she was taken away to the NICU.
Cameron said, “Gabriela?”
Paul nodded, gazing down at her face, overwhelmed by her courage. “I like it.”
“Go with her,” Cameron said. “Go ahead. Don’t wait here.”
Paul wanted to stay with Cameron while the surgeon sewed her up, but he understood her desire that they shouldn’t both be so long separated from the baby.
IN A SHORT TIME, they wheeled Cameron down into the NICU so that she could look at Gabriela in her incubator. The premature newborn had tubes in her nose, forcing oxygen in, yet she was extremely beautiful. Cameron had wanted so badly to be able to give birth vaginally, but now it didn’t matter. Little Gabriela was alive and, though premature, her lungs not yet fully developed, she was healthy.
They held her the next day, sitting back in a reclining chair made for the purpose, Cameron first allowed to hold the tiny child against her bare skin, her warmth helping to keep Gabriela warm. Paul was next.
In the coming days, Cameron learned to pump breast milk, which was scanty at first. Paul took to softly singing lullabies to Gabriela during his turns holding her in the NICU. They were both constantly at the hospital, where all Cameron’s family, including Nanna, came to see her and Gabriela. Though all the milk Gabriela received was pumped from Cameron, the baby would not be allowed to go home until she could breastfeed.
Sean came once to see the baby and Cameron. The birth of Gabriela seemed to signal to him that Cameron was truly unavailable, and her text messages from him ceased. Part of her wondered—irrationally, she knew—if she seemed defective to him for having given birth to a premature baby by cesarean section. She knew Paul did not perceive her that way. Yet she almost perceived herself that way. It didn’t matter, of course. Gabriela was healthy, and that was what mattered.
Together, Cameron and Paul shared the daily milestones. Cameron was in love with her baby, glad when more milk began coming in, thankful to be able to pump breast milk for Gabriela. Then, after a week, Gabriela was deemed strong enough to begin nursing, and that was another new and wonderful sensation.
Cameron and Paul spent as much time as possible holding their daughter, Paul coming by every lunchtime from the zoo, despite the distance. The hospital was always his first stop after work.
When Cameron was able to go home from the hospital, instead of returning immediately to work, she continued to go to the hospital each day to spend as much time as possible with Gabriela.
Cameron felt more committed than ever to Paul since Gabriela’s birth, and she tried to stave off any insecurity caused by knowing he’d been given a love potion. Rather, she tried to look forward to planning their wedding.
But Paul did not mention the wedding. Gabriela’s birth certificate read Gabriela McAllister Cureux, but Cameron knew this was not synonymous with herself and Paul being married. Had he developed “cold feet,” and where had that expression come from anyhow?
She wanted to sound him out and wasn’t sure how. One night, three weeks after Gabriela’s birth, when they returned late from the hospital, she said casually, “You know it would probably be nice for her if we got married.”
Paul, driving his truck, said, “I don’t want to do that until she comes home. I want her to be there.”
Cameron assessed the answer for sincerity. It wasn’t an unreasonable wish, although it certainly wasn’t the usual thing for a newborn to attend her parents’ wedding. She didn’t fault Paul for an unconventional wish—as long as it didn’t hide another motive. As long as it didn’t hide his not wanting to marry her at all.
Granted, Paul had been busy with things other than their new daughter. There had been long sessions with the police regarding the protesters’ kidnapping him. The zoo had been closed for several days while employees searched for the king cobra. They found him at last, trapped in a pipe that was too small for him. He had died in his struggles to free himself. The zoo had been featured in news articles all over the state because of the mischief caused by the protesters. Paul had had a “relationship” with the cobra when he was a reptile keeper, and the snake’s death had saddened and angered him.
As they reached Cameron’s house, she asked him how that day had gone at the zoo.
He sighed, not wanting to talk about the sakis. The male appeared not to like his mate, and the mate—to Paul—appeared injured by the fact. Her mothering was haphazard at best, though the baby wasn’t starving or anything. “Everything’s fine,” he said.
Cameron thought of her own job, which she loved. When Gabriela came home, Cameron would be able to go back to work and take the baby with her.
The dogs greeted them outside. Inside, Bertie stepped out of the bedroom to look at them, then went to the kitchen.
Paul said, “So…you seem pretty healed up.”
Warmth rushed through her at his words. They had not had intercourse for months and hadn’t done any kind of lovemaking since Gabriela’s birth.
“I’m healed,” she answered, smiling when he looked at her.
“Meet you in the bedroom.”
IT FELT LIKE A CENTURY since they’d made love. The lovemaking was interrupted by episodes of her milk leaking, but they laughed, too, and were both glad to have intimacy restored.
The day Gabriela came home, Bridget and her children, as well as Cameron’s mother, were on hand to welcome the baby. Cameron relaxed in the pleasure of nursing her daughter at the kitchen table. Paul was at the zoo. When Bridget and her children left, Cameron’s mother remained.
“Now you and Paul are planning to marry, aren’t you?” she said.
It was inevitable, Cameron supposed. The Billingham genes decreed that people who weren’t married did not live together, let alone raise a child together.
“We’re enga
ged,” Cameron said simply. “We’ve both been focused on Gabriela, Mom. And nothing’s going to change once we are married.” Cameron was certain of this. “We’re married now, for all intents and purposes.”
Her mother knew when she was beaten—or rather when she couldn’t get what she wanted immediately. But Cameron knew the subject would come up again.
When Paul came home from the zoo, she mentioned her mother’s remark.
“We may as well do it,” he said with a shrug. “When do you think?”
Cameron had hoped for more enthusiasm. At least, he hadn’t again suggested putting off setting a date. Well, she shouldn’t quibble with it. They got along, were best friends, and if the love potion was wearing off, that was all to the good. She hated artifice. Even if they were both marrying simply for Gabriela, that was all right.
Yet she couldn’t escape a slight depression at the thought that Paul spoke of their wedding with so little interest.
“Why do people get married?” she asked as she scooped up Bertie the cat, posing the question to the animal.
“All kinds of reasons,” Paul answered, stepping into the bedroom to gaze at their daughter.
“Bridget,” Cameron told him, still speaking from the kitchen, “says people marry for first chakra reasons: survival.”
“That sounds like Bridget,” he murmured.
“Obviously, some people fall in love and get married,” she remarked, following him into the bedroom to see Gabriela, too. “Then, everything happens in the right order. Engagement, marriage, children.”
Paul stared at her. He said, “I would never have suspected you of being wedded,” he used the word intentionally, “to such a traditional timeline.”
“Obviously, I’m not,” she snapped.
“I think you are. Being that you became pregnant before marriage, I should have promptly proposed and married you, before your pregnancy test had a chance to dry.”
“That’s not true, and nothing about Gabriela is unfortunate.”