The Promise of Stardust

by Priscille Sibley

  “You don’t want to see those letters,” I said.

  “Why? She considered having an abortion?” he asked, looking horror-stricken.

  I swatted a mosquito. “Yeah. And it’s weird because by the time she told me she thought she was pregnant, she had dismissed the idea, or at least she acted as if it was out of the question. In the last letter she wrote about it, she was leaning toward terminating.”

  “Any idea what changed her mind?”

  “None.”

  “Too bad. That’s the entry we’d need.” He smacked his forearm. “I’m going inside. These mosquitoes are wicked. You got any gin?”

  “No,” I said, standing to follow him. “Neither of us drinks much.” Gin. Gin made me think of Prohibition, and Prohibition made me think of Elle. Her great-grandfather ran whiskey during Prohibition all around Casco Bay. Elle said that was why there was a trapdoor in the attic. It was where he stashed his supply. The compartment was just one of many secret spaces we had stumbled upon. Elle discovered another just last spring in the butler’s pantry. Maybe she kept the missing letters in some other hidden closet I didn’t know about. Damn.

  “Listen, Jake, I’m going to crash. It’s after midnight.”

  He glanced at his watch. “Yeah. I’ll see myself out. I want to meet you for breakfast before the hearing.”

  As soon as he was gone, I bolted up the attic steps. Where were the other stash zones? Not necessarily in the attic, but it seemed the logical place to start.

  I tugged up floorboards. I moved the trunks and the dollhouse. Nothing—save the already discovered attic and pantry compartments. On impulse, I pulled out Alice’s diaries and quickly bundled them up in a bag.

  Where else would a bootlegger keep his bounty? Under the stairs? No. And by the end of the night, after ripping apart the attic, the basement, and the barn, I concluded that, if Elle hid her letters somewhere, she meant them to stay hidden. I slunk back inside, defeated.

  At the top of the stairs, I stopped in front of Dylan’s room, a room he never entered, a room I didn’t think either Elle or I addressed in the time since. We simply closed the door. At least I did. Now I switched on the light. The crib was still situated along the inside wall. I could hear Elle say, “This old house is drafty enough. We don’t want him near a window.”

  The morning light poured through the transom. Another night without sleep. Another futile night. The telephone rang and my adrenaline-driven heart leaped into a race with fear. No one called that early in the morning unless there was trouble. The caller ID said Longfellow Memorial, the hospital. “Dr. Beaulieu, this is Evie, your wife’s nurse. You asked me to call if there were any changes.”

  “And?”

  “We’ve had to increase her oxygen. Her blood gases deteriorated overnight. They’re shooting X-rays right now.”

  “Jesus,” I said, with sharp panic rising in my gut. “Make sure they shield the baby.”

  37

  Day 22

  I lost my bearings and stumbled at Elle’s bedside.

  Her attending physician, Clint Everest, eyed me. By way of explanation for my clumsiness, I said, “I haven’t slept more than an hour or two in days. I want to see her X-ray.”

  Hank interrupted. “You went home. Why didn’t you sleep?”

  “We can talk about that later. You should have called.”

  “Once I understood there was a problem,” Hank said, “I asked the nurse to phone you. I figured you’d have questions, and she could answer them better than me.”

  “Okay.” I turned to Clint.

  He shoved Elle’s film up on the light box. “It’s a lower-left-lobe infiltrate. See? Pneumonia. We started antibiotics.”

  “And the baby?”

  He set Elle’s lab work in front of me. “I called your wife’s perinatologist. She’s coming over to do an ultrasound after she delivers a set of triplets who don’t want to wait. You’re really pale, Matt. Go catch a couple of z’s in the on-call room. I’ll come get you if anything happens.”

  I kissed Elle’s cheek, put my palm on her belly, and said a silent prayer. Please, God. I’d found myself doing that, heathen that I was. Smoke and mirrors. Self-delusion. Anything. God, please.

  “Go. Sleep. I’ll stay awhile longer,” Hank said.

  I woke two hours later when Hank tapped on the door. “Dr. Clarke asked me to get you. She’s doing the ultrasound.”

  I didn’t remember passing through the ICU to arrive at Elle’s room, but my gut said the baby would have no heartbeat. Elle and I had done that dance before, and I was afraid this would be our last waltz.

  Through the glass wall, I could see Blythe’s white hair complete with the pink ribbonlike headband peeking over the ultrasound machine. Her conciliatory smile prepared me for the next words, but she didn’t deliver the expected line. Instead she beckoned me over.

  Keisha was standing close by. Her hand was pressed hard up against her mouth as she peered at the ultrasound’s monitor. She was supposed to sit with Elle while I went to court today and she must have arrived while I was sleeping.

  In the flash of faces I tried to ascertain the verdict. “Do you want to see him?” Blythe smiled at me.

  Keisha took my arm and pulled me toward the machine. “Come see him,” she said.

  “See him? Him?” I asked.

  “Well, it’s too early to tell gender,” Blythe said. “But he or she is awake, and evidently, he or she wants to be an acrobat. He’s doing somersaults.”

  “That’s my grandchild?” Hank pushed forward.

  Blythe nodded.

  Through the static, my child was indeed spinning around as weightless as his mother had once been when she orbited the earth. “He’s alive,” I whispered. It was as if Elle had taken my hand and placed it on her belly to feel the baby kick. I looked over at Elle’s face, somehow expecting recognition. It wasn’t there. And my sense of responsibility shifted to the baby. Our baby.

  Hank squeezed my shoulder.

  “It could as easily be a girl.” Blythe popped a disk in the machine and hit record. “Seeing the sonogram might help the judge decide. Or to convince Linney.”

  “I love you,” I said aloud. I meant the baby. I meant Elle. I would always love her. I loved Blythe, too, because she offered hope.

  “You think I’m right?” I asked.

  “It’s not my place to say. You know that, but given Elle’s reaction the night you lost the last baby, I’m pretty sure she would insist you try to save the baby.” Blythe turned off the machine. “Her heart is beating, but Elle’s already—brain-dead. Sorry, I don’t mean to be brutal.”

  “It’s all right,” I said. Fate or God had already determined that Elle would not survive. The baby had to live. God. Please.

  “Keeping Elle’s body alive over the next months, few days even, is iffy, you know, this pneumonia—” Blythe pulled her pager from her hip and looked at it. “I’m sorry but this is a stat page. I have to go.” She left the ultrasound machine in its place and darted out of the room.

  Hank dropped into the chair, silent and pale. Keisha quietly retreated to the window side of Elle’s bed and whispered something about being a mother into Elle’s ear.

  I checked the ventilator. Since I’d left Elle to take a nap, her oxygen requirement had doubled. Keeping her alive might take a miracle. Although I’d stopped believing in those the night of Dylan’s stillbirth, I was suddenly willing to pray one more time. I didn’t even care if it was smoke and mirrors—or electronic altar candles.

  38

  Eighteen Months to Six Months

  Before Elle’s Accident

  Many women miscarry. Usually, though, once a heartbeat is evident, the pregnancy will make it. Elle’s hadn’t. We had heard all three babies’ heartbeats and lost each one. Elle was thoroughly bereft. I needed to understand what was going wrong. Blythe discovered Elle had an autoimmune disorder called antiphospholipid syndrome, which caused abnormal blood clotting.

  E
lle said, “I don’t understand why NASA didn’t pick this up. I mean, they tested me for everything.” She dropped her hands to her lap and laced them together, a gesture she used to control her trembling when she was afraid.

  “It may be new or even pregnancy induced,” Blythe Clarke said. “It is, however, very easy to treat with a baby aspirin once a day. I’m going to have you see someone who specializes in autoimmune disorders. He may want to put you on something more aggressive, but make sure you tell him you’re trying to conceive. As soon as you get pregnant again, we’ll put you on heparin.”

  “That’s a blood thinner, Peep. And unfortunately it’s a shot that you have to take every day,” I said, knowing how much she hated needles.

  Elle cringed. After drawing a deep breath, she said, “All right. Shots.”

  The OB bit her lip. “Actually, the heparin is twice a day.”

  “I was trying to break the news to Elle gently,” I said.

  Elle’s eyes widened. “Twice? A day? Damn. Okay. I want a baby. We—” She met my eyes. “We want our baby to live, so I’ll do anything, anything for that. Just—how big are these needles?”

  I gestured about a foot.

  She reached across the arm of her chair and grabbed my hand then squeezed her eyes shut. “Okay, no problem, but you are joking, right, Matt?”

  “They’re little. I promise,” I said, almost smiling.

  We lost a baby, but a little heparin would ensure a new baby would receive the blood supply it needed. We found our answer, or I thought we had.

  Elle started taking a baby aspirin every day, and the next time we found out she was pregnant, her doctor put her on a heparin regimen.

  “It’s really not so bad,” she said, although she flinched as she injected her thigh.

  I assessed all the bruising she’d developed. Not only on the injection sites, but here and there, on her elbows, on her hip. “We need to make sure your blood-clotting times aren’t getting too far out of whack,” I said.

  “I love it when you use medical terminology. ‘Out of whack,’ ha!”

  “Peep, you need another test to make certain we aren’t thinning your blood too much.”

  “Okay, that’ll mean more needles, right?” But before I could answer, she added, “No big deal.”

  I didn’t want her to hemorrhage, so I did what any controlling spouse with a medical degree would do: I watched her and her lab results, took her to the best perinatologist and best rheumatologist in the area. I made sure she didn’t do one single dangerous thing, worrying that while on the blood thinner she could bleed from the most minor injury. Hell, I had Mike, my brother the mechanic, check the brakes on her car every frigging week.

  “All good,” he said, rolling out from the undercarriage. “You’ve got to relax, Matt. You’re going to have a fucking heart attack before you’re forty like Dad.”

  “No. I’m good. I watch my diet. I run.”

  “You stress.”

  I reached out my hand to him and pulled him up. “I’m healthy as a horse.”

  “The oldest in the family is supposed to be the control freak. You’re the baby. You’re supposed to be the comedian. What happened to you?”

  I slapped him on the back and joined him for a beer in the kitchen.

  Snow was falling lightly when I arrived home. Elle had just finished adding a log to the fire, which was snapping and hissing. She poked it and closed the woodstove’s door. “Come here and feel this.” She beckoned, reaching out with her hand. There was another black bruise.

  “Peep, Jesus, what happened?”

  “Nothing, I just bumped it. It doesn’t even hurt. Forget about that. Here, feel the baby,” she said, grabbing my hand. “He’s jumping all over the place.”

  I placed my palm on her belly. “In nine days, we’ll get a face-to face, kiddo. Your mother wants to call you Vladimir because of all the blood she’s had sucked out of her on your account.”

  “Shush, don’t tell him that. Dylan. We want to call you Dylan after the poet from Wales. Your daddy saw his house and lived in Swansea for a while.”

  “Sit down.” I tried to lead her to the couch, but she stopped in the middle of the room, clenching my hand so tightly the bruise on her hand blanched. “What is it?”

  Elle answered, “My back. It’s killing me today. Since I woke up this morning. I must have slept badly.”

  “But you stopped all of a sudden. Is the pain coming and going?” I thought of preterm labor, but I held back. Those were the days when everyone was telling me to relax and to stop worrying. Even I knew I was on the brink of a neurosis.

  “No, not really. It’s more like when I move certain ways. It’s muscular. I’m so fat; everything’s out of alignment.”

  “You’re not fat. You’re in your eight month.” I smiled at her. I didn’t enjoy seeing her in pain, but I was so grateful we’d come so far this time. “Come over here. I’ll rub your back. Lie down.”

  We walked to the seat by the bay window. She loved to read there on the wide bench, and I thought she would enjoy watching the snow fall. I had her lie on her side, and I massaged her lower spine for a long time, settling against the wall beside her. After a while Elle’s breathing became regular; she’d fallen asleep.

  I rose and covered her with an afghan.

  The wind had picked up and the petal-soft flakes had morphed into pellets that battered the windows. I stoked the woodstove while I considered how much snow had already fallen. A few inches, maybe more.

  I tromped out to the barn and tugged the snowblower outside, but it wouldn’t start. Instead of having my brother fix all my mechanical problems, I needed to learn how these things worked. I played with the spark plugs. And fiddled with the primer. I checked the gas, which was full. Nothing worked. It was dead. Time of death, I looked at my watch: 10:43. In a halfhearted effort, I cleaned up the stairs and threw rock salt on the walk. My father had his first heart attack on a night like this with wet snow. That’s why I’d bought the blower; but it looked like I’d have to clear the driveway the old-fashioned way this time in the morning.

  I went inside to wake Elle for her shot, but she wasn’t there. I assumed she woke up and went upstairs to bed.

  “Matt!” she called out through what sounded like gritted teeth.

  I rounded the corner and found her lying on the kitchen floor, wrapped in the granny-square afghan. Doubled over, she was pale as our white cupboards.

  I knelt beside her. “Did you fall?”

  “My water broke—just a minute ago,” she said, gasping.

  I pulled back the cover. Dressed only in a nightgown, and her legs were saturated with amniotic fluid and blood.

  The baby was premature, and he might be in trouble if he was born so soon, but that wasn’t my only concern. Elle was supposed to stop taking the blood thinner before a planned delivery. If she delivered tonight, she could hemorrhage to death.

  I dialed 911. “Breathe, Peep. It will be fine.” But it wasn’t.

  Miracles don’t always happen.

  39

  After Elle’s Accident

  Day 22

  Elle needed a miracle if she was going to survive this pneumonia. Jake said he’d make an excuse to the judge for my absence in court, downplaying Elle’s current medical crisis. However, today was the day my partner, Phil, would be testifying, and he’d probably tell the judge Elle was dying. Her body was dying. She was already gone.

  But inside her, the baby was still doing somersaults. I was holding on to that glimmer of life, replaying it over and over in my head while the nurse was doing Elle’s trach care.

  I heard a sputter and looked up. Elle was coughing. I jumped up.

  The nurse eyed me. “What’s wrong?”

  “She can’t cough. She lost that reflex,” I said.

  The nurse adjusted Elle’s oxygen upward. “The cerebral edema is down. She has some spontaneous respirations, too,” she said. “Not enough to sustain her, but some. Maybe once we
get the pneumonia under control, we’ll be able to wean her off the vent.”

  Jesus. I reached into my pocket. “You have a penlight?” I asked the nurse.

  “Sure.” She pulled one from her scrubs and passed it to me.

  I flicked the light across Elle’s eyes. Nothing. Her pupils remained fixed and dilated. I checked her corneal reflexes and her deep tendon reflexes. She did not respond to painful stimuli. Jesus. With just the smallest hint of hope, a cough, I flew into denial again. I needed to talk to Phil. I needed to talk to Blythe about the safety of doing an MRI on a pregnant woman. But cognitively I knew Elle’s brain damage was irreparable—and global.

  Was she in there somewhere? I wanted her to live long enough for the baby to be born. Hell, I wanted her to wake up, but that wouldn’t happen. If she did, she’d be profoundly disabled. She wouldn’t want to live—for years—in a vegetative state—not after the baby was born.

  The baby inside her was flipping around—our baby.

  I could still see Elle in her family’s driveway, telling me she would want to die if she were ever in her mother’s condition.

  “I’m going to try to catch a little sleep in the on-call room.” I grabbed my duffel bag and walked out of Elle’s room, grasping the implications of what I was doing to her. But—the baby.

  The on-call room was smaller than a freshman dorm. A set of bunk beds and one small desk outfitted with a computer for charting. I fell back on the bed and stared at the springs of the mattress above me. Instead of hearing my heart pound lub dub, lub dub, it was pounding calm down, calm down. As I lay awake in a frantic haze, I reached into the duffel bag for Elle’s journals and somehow pulled out one of Alice’s diaries instead. For a moment I flipped through it, fanning the pages. The writing almost looked like Elle’s, but Elle wrote letters and in composition books. I snapped the book shut and dropped it on the top of the pile. On the back cover, enclosed in a heart, Elle had scribbled the words: