by Ev Bishop
When he got into her room, Aisha was already sporting her own hospital gown and a variety of wires and cords were fed into her body. She looked about twelve, but her color was better. In between body wracking pains, she kept trying to joke. It was driving him crazy.
A nurse came over and told him what he’d already guessed. Aisha’s water had broken, and yes, there was blood in the mix. Unlike him, however, the nurse wasn’t concerned. Apparently a flow of fresh blood, coming away all at once, was normal for some women at the end of the first stage of labor—exactly where Aisha seemed to be, as her cervix was very soft and quite dilated. They’d attached a heartbeat monitor to Aisha’s belly, and baby seemed fine. No distress. They’d notified the doctor Aisha had seen in Greenridge and he was conveniently already on site doing his evening rounds. He’d check on her as soon as he finished.
Charlie hadn’t chewed his nails since he was a teenager, so he was startled to find himself worrying away at a rough corner of his thumb with his teeth. He shoved his hands into his pockets, trying desperately to avoid thinking of Maureen—pre-cancer, pre her ever being sick, in those awful years when they’d tried and tried to have their own biological children and she miscarried and miscarried and miscarried, the last and final time at a devastating six months. Nowadays their little girl would likely have lived—
His thoughts flew to his living, breathing daughter. Please God, don’t take her, he thought. Don’t take either of them. Please God. Please.
Parents shouldn’t be in the labor room with their children, he thought still later, after being informed by a somewhat impatient nurse that Aisha was fine—young and healthy and having a “perfect” labor. This was perfect? It went against every fiber of his being to see her in so much pain. “Maybe you should consider the epidural before it’s too late.”
A look to kill flashed in Aisha’s eyes—eyes so alight and focused on her purpose that they seemed to burn.
“Okay, so no drugs yet, but at least consider it . . . if you need them, right?”
A rapid panting breath. “Most parents want their kids off drugs, Dad.”
“Har, har—look, is there anything I can do for you?”
“Yeah, get away from me. You’re driving me crazy.”
The nurse checking Aisha’s vitals smothered a smile, and Charlie scowled. This was serious business. They shouldn’t be taking it so damn lightly. He sighed and paced to the window—then felt gratitude that Aisha had gone into labor when she had. The sky was dumping every kind of weather you could imagine all at once. The trees glittered black and icy under the streetlights and were bent almost in half by the assaulting wind. The parking lot was a slough of slushy snow and water. A car barreled through and literally left a wake behind it.
“Dad?” Aisha’s voice. Conciliatory. “You don’t really drive me crazy. Usually.”
He turned, smiling—and remembered how he and Mo used to wonder which one of them she’d inherited her wit and occasional razor sharpness from. Now, so often when Aisha talked, Sam’s face popped into his mind. And he’d only known the woman a few weeks.
There was a flurry of activity and whispers by the bedside. One of the nurses said she’d call. Call who? Charlie wanted to know. Aisha moaned, falling into a crevice of deep pain, when mere seconds earlier she’d been fine. Charlie’s guts churned with dread. He hated this waiting. These pauses of calm peace, shattered by excruciating anxiety.
“I wish Mom was here,” Aisha wheezed, then moaned again.
Charlie’s heart squeezed.
“Can . . . can you call Sam? Please.”
Charlie froze. “Absolutely. Are you sure?”
Aisha nodded once. Her voice was an exhaled whoosh. “Yes. Am sure.”
He conferred with the nurses. They figured Aisha was progressing “nicely” and was close to delivering. They’d alerted the doctor that it wouldn’t be long. Yet they still insisted he had time to make phone calls.
The smile-smothering nurse practically shoved him from the room. “Even if she starts pushing, it’s her first and she’s young. It won’t be a quick process.”
Charlie’s hands shook and he sat down in one of the blue vinyl chairs outside Aisha’s room, instead of making the call standing up. He checked his phone for the time before dialing. It was only 8:00 p.m.—a fact that flummoxed him. It was the strangest thing. It felt like it should be the middle of the night or something.
Jo answered on the first ring. “Hey, Jo. Charlie here. Do you have Sam’s cell number, by chance?”
There was a pause, then a cautious, “Of course . . . what’s up?”
Charlie wasn’t sure what to say. Aisha had instructed him to call Sam, but he doubted she’d care if Jo knew, too. Besides Sam would probably tell her sister anyhow. “Nothing serious—or nothing serious-bad, I mean. Aisha’s in labor. At the hospital. She wanted—”
Jo interrupted, rattling off a number so quickly he had to ask for it again. Realizing he’d forgotten to grab notepaper, he wrote it on his hand as she repeated it.
He dialed Sam’s number the moment he and Jo disconnected.
Sam’s voice was groggy. “Hello?”
“Sam?”
“At your service.”
“It’s Charlie.”
“So?”
So? What the hell kind of response was so?
“Charlie?”
“Yeah, yeah—I’m here. At the hospital. It’s Aisha. She’s in labor. It’s pretty rough.” Pretty rough? That was the wrong thing to say. She’d totally freak out.
“Rough how?”
“Er . . . hard to watch your kid go through that kind of pain.”
There was a second of silence and he sensed she nodded. He pushed on. “She asked me to call you.”
“Really? Why?”
Charlie shook his head. Why indeed? It was anyone’s guess. “I think she’d like you to come . . . if you can, if it’s not too much trouble.”
The sound of a rapid exhale filled his ear, then a rushed, “Yes, yes, of course. Does she need anything? Or do you? Can I bring something? Should I?”
“No, no—just yourself.” Before he could add another word, she said good-bye and ended the call.
Samantha strode into hospital hallway, where Charlie sat waiting for her as per Aisha’s request. She was there so quickly, he shuddered to think how fast she’d driven, then was momentarily taken aback by what she was wearing. Yoga pants. A thick eggshell blue hooded sweatshirt. Running shoes.
She flicked her ponytail over her shoulder and shrugged. “Yeah, I know. It’s a terrible outfit—but I don’t want to get baby gunk on my good shoes.”
He chuckled, but it was cut short by a worried-looking nurse and a hurrying doctor who dashed into Aisha’s room without giving him or Samantha a glance.
“Just a second.”
Sam nodded and he bolted for the room, too—only to be shooed out. “There’s a bit of a complication, Mr. Bailey.”
“No, no, there’s not. They assured me, they told us, me and my daughter—everything’s going fine. Everything’s good.”
“Unfortunately, there’s been a bit of a development, but there’s no need to panic.”
The words, of course, sent a zip line of that exact emotion—panic—racing through Charlie. Sam closed the distance between herself and him, standing close but not quite touching.
“The umbilical cord is wrapped around the baby’s neck. It’s common—happens in almost one in three deliveries—and usually isn’t a serious complication, but the baby’s big and Aisha has a narrow pelvis. Her contractions aren’t as effective as we’d like, and the fetal heartbeat has dropped. We’re booking an emergency C-section to be proactive.”
“Can I accompany her, for . . . support?” Charlie could barely get the words out.
“Normally, yes—but they’re moving in a hurry. Let me go and chat with the doctor who’s prepping her and I’ll let you know.”
Chapter 15
How long had it been,
minutes, hours? Sam had no idea. She perched rigidly on the edge of an ancient, ugly blue chair beside Charlie and tried to distract herself with thoughts about how the dingy dump that called itself a hospital desperately needed an upgrade.
The halls looked like the aftermath of a garage sale for obsolete equipment. Old beds lined the walls, piled high with folded bedding. (God, they didn’t really use bedding that was stored open in the hallway, did they?) Wheeled contraptions with paint-peeling oxygen tanks that looked circa World War Two sat in depressive huddles. A janitor cart with an overflowing waste bucket on one end and three tiers of gray plastic bins full of dirty dishes and discarded food jutted out at an angle from the wall, creating a germ-breeding nightmare, an eyesore, and a tripping hazard all in one genius move.
She did everything in her power to avoid thinking about how Charlie’s hand had gripped her knee when the nurse told him they thought it was better for him to wait here until Aisha was out of surgery. And she tried to fight her hyper-awareness of that same hand, resting in hers now, their fingers interlocked.
His heartbeat pulsed against her flesh where their wrists touched. It had been rapid fire at first, but had slowed a little now—
Oh yeah, she was doing a marvelous job “fighting her awareness” of Charles Bailey. Just marvelous.
Directly across from where they sat, but about twelve feet off the floor, hung a round-faced clock, like the ones Samantha remembered from school. Black-framed, white-faced, with a long arrow for the hour hand, a shorter arrow for a minute hand and a skinny red arrow to tick out each second. The time crept along slowly, but audibly. A metronome of anxiety.
She cast a sideways glance at Charles just as he looked her way—and, he, ever the stalwart champ, tried to smile. She squeezed his hand and returned the smile, hoping hers wasn’t as feeble an attempt at reassurance as his was. She had no idea about the risks or possibilities of a good outcome when labor went wrong. She’d spent her one and only experience with pregnancy, carrying Aisha, in denial, gaining as little as possible, though making sure she stayed within what wouldn’t hurt the baby’s development, and wearing control top pantyhose.
She’d given birth in six hours from start to finish and checked herself out of the hospital within twenty-four hours, preferring to huddle on her uncle’s couch in front of the TV with a huge container of ibuprofen and snacks (even way back then, Ray’s place had been too much of hoarder’s hell for her to have her own room—and Jo stayed there more often than she did, so she had dibs). She pretended she was enduring the world’s worst period and hadn’t just had a kid. After forty-two hours she called her mom, got an answering machine and left a terse message. “You can stop worrying. Everything went fine.” Which was hilarious now that she thought about it. Like her mom had ever worried.
Charlie shifted beside her and she thudded back to the present, her cheeks burning. Thinking about her own sorry past did not help Aisha.
Sam didn’t notice she was rubbing slow gentle circles along Charlie’s fingers with her thumb until he turned sideways in his seat to face her. She stopped abruptly, mortified, and started to pull her hand away.
Charlie tightened his grip, and his eyes locked on hers. “No, don’t stop. It helps.”
If her body temperature was any indicator, Sam knew her face was fuchsia. She couldn’t free her hand now unless she tugged hard—and worse, she didn’t really want to free it. Holding hands helped her too, and though she knew full well that Charlie was only taking comfort from her because she was there—that it wasn’t personal—for the time being it didn’t matter. When was the last time she’d held hands with a boy anyway? A long time obviously—considering she’d thought “boy” instead of man.
She sighed and Charlie looked concerned, so she forced another smile, relaxed her fingers and continued the soothing-to-them-both circles.
How long did it take to extract one tiny infant? Good grief.
It was almost midnight when the Maternity ward door banged open, making them both jump. Shift had changed and an unfamiliar nurse with short black hair and pink cheeks strode toward them.
They dropped hands. Stood.
“I have excellent news,” the nurse said, beaming. “Aisha’s doing great, and if you want to wash up and put on fresh gowns, there’s a robust little someone anxious to meet you.”
Samantha’s knees went weak, and she almost buckled under the weight and the relief the words carried. “You—you go,” she said. “I don’t want to intrude. Tell Aisha . . . congratulations.”
“No, you’re coming too. Aisha asked for you, and she’ll want you to meet the baby. I know Aisha. She’ll be proud as punch and will want everyone to meet the baby.”
The nurse’s grin broadened. “Yes, she’s a firecracker, that one. Even in the middle of surgery, she was asking questions—and she insisted on not having a curtain. She watched the whole procedure.”
Ugh. That sounded beyond hideous. “I don’t know—”
“You’re coming.” Charlie’s hand was on her again, this time on her forearm. How she hated that his smallest touch warmed every part of her.
“Fine,” she said grouchily. The nurse shot her a surprised look. Charlie just smiled.
Aisha’s room and hospital bed were empty, and Sam looked around uncertainly. Maybe they’d misunderstood where they were supposed to go?
A different nurse bustled in, a bundle of butter-yellow flannel in her arms. Sam caught sight of a miniature face—red and furious with a tiny rosebud mouth—and inhaled sharply.
“Mr. and Mrs. Bailey, meet your granddaughter.”
Sam looked at Charlie, but he was staring at the little girl, enrapt, and didn’t correct the nurse—maybe didn’t even hear her. And Sam didn’t care. It was so nice to pretend she belonged to this sweet family scene, even just for a moment—and he was letting her.
The nurse held the child out to Sam. She stepped back, right into Charlie’s firm body.
“Take her,” he said softly.
And Sam did. Oh-so-gingerly, heart hammering in her chest, she reached out and took the first baby she’d held in seventeen years into her arms.
“Hey there, little one. Hello,” Charlie crooned. Sam didn’t say a word. Just stared and stared. This tiny little creature carried her blood, and in a strange and wonderful way—albeit one she wasn’t arrogant enough to take any credit for—existed, sort of, because of her. It was mind-blowing.
Samantha lowered her face to the baby and breathed in. A flood of memories rushed back to her, memories she’d never really let herself focus on. Oh, it was going to be hard to leave all this behind. What had she done? She never should’ve agreed to meet Aisha—to come here. She should have stuck to her old plan.
The baby returned her study, wide-eyed and solemn, with that excruciating see-through-you wisdom babies sometimes seemed to possess. When do we lose that? Sam wondered. Wisdom would be nice about now. The thought startled her.
The baby yawned, then turned its head and made a sucking motion with its mouth. “Your turn,” Sam whispered. She was just about to pass the baby off when another nurse came into the room. “Your wife looks young enough to be the mama, not the grandma.”
Charlie’s eyes locked on Sam’s again and for a second time, he didn’t bother to correct the nurse. Just smiled, his chocolate eyes soft with warmth and kindness. “Prettiest grandma I ever saw,” he said.
Sam’s heart—corny as it was, she berated herself—seemed to go pitter-pat. He was so silly and kind, but he was also right. She was a grandma. Beyond bizarre. For the first time since Aisha had arrived back in Sam’s life, she let the question in. What if. What if Aisha would let Sam be a continued part of her life in some capacity? Sam tried to stamp out that spark of hope, knowing all too well that only pain and rejection lay down that path of thinking, but it was too late. The yearning had articulated itself and now sat like a burning coal at the back of her throat.
Charlie held the impossibly tiny human and Sa
m had to glance away. She couldn’t handle the expression that blanketed his face and moistened his eyes. Love. That was the only thing you could call it. Pure, unadulterated love. For the second time in two days, Sam felt her choice to give up Aisha solidly affirmed—even as her heart ached for all the things she’d never had.
Chapter 16
Rainbow cabin was aglow when Charlie rolled into his usual parking spot in the wee hours of dawn. Kind of Sam, he thought, to think to leave lights on for him. She’d left half an hour or so after Aisha came back to the room, but he’d stayed to visit longer, both of them falling asleep intermittently, then waking when the baby stirred. Aisha was in love with her child, anyone could see it, and Charlie had felt his own questions fade away.
He would always respect—and appreciate to a depth words couldn’t express—people who carried babies to term and chose adoption for their children—but in this case . . . Aisha’s case, their family’s case . . . keeping little Mo—a.k.a. Maureen Katriana Bailey-Brown (quite a mouthful for one little girl!) felt infinitely right. Not that it would always be easy, but he suspected the reverse was true as well: letting someone else raise your child might be right, but it was no doubt difficult as hell in some ways too. He thought of the expression that kissed Sam’s face when she first looked down at Mo. Completely unguarded. She wasn’t the hard case she liked to pretend she was. Far from it, he suspected. Maybe the furthest thing from it.
He was smiling as he opened the door, then jolted with happy surprise when a blanketed bump on the couch shifted. Sam had waited up for him.