The Promise of Stardust

by Priscille Sibley

  “She? Do you know something I don’t?”

  “I know everything you don’t.” Elle smirked. “It’s a girl.”

  “A girl? Celina?”

  “Not Celina. This one is our hope, a miracle, a reason for you to keep believing. Put your hand here. She’s kicking. They can’t feel her yet, but you can. You saw the ultrasound. She’s alive. Doing somersaults. And no one will fight for her if you don’t live.”

  “Peep—you let me feel the baby kick.”

  “Of course I did. This is our baby.”

  “Our baby. Yes. Why didn’t you tell me about the advanced directive? Why didn’t you name me?”

  Elle shrugged. “You’re off topic.” She pressed my palm to her belly, which suddenly looked full term. I felt the kick again. It was so real, so certain.

  “She’s the only part of me that’s alive, Matt. She’s all that matters.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. Elle mattered. To me. Elle mattered to me, and I couldn’t let her out of my sight. Not ever again. Not even to blink. When I opened my eyes wide, Elle was holding a newborn baby, all swaddled in pink. “Don’t you want to know her name?”

  The baby had white-blond hair and Elle’s pointy chin.

  “Her name’s Hope,” I said.

  “Do you want to hold your daughter?” Elle beamed at me.

  “Yes. God, yes.” I reached for the baby, our baby.

  “Then you have to live.” And just like that, they both melted away.

  48

  Days 32 Through 35

  I couldn’t bear witness to what occurred over the next five days although I’ve read my chart. In simple terms, I did my damnedest to die. I arrested again before they got me to the OR. I hemorrhaged. They even had trouble restarting my heart when I came off bypass.

  Did I see a loving, white light? No. I saw Elle, a dream, a hallucination, or endorphins flooding my brain. Whatever it was didn’t matter. I’d never believed in bullshit like that before, but now I wasn’t so certain.

  Sometimes it’s a matter of what a man chooses to believe. Father Meehan called it faith and my faith was always in Elle. I didn’t see any reason to change course. I wanted to believe in her and that we’d had a way to say good-bye.

  Father Meehan came to visit me, and when I told him about seeing Elle, he asked why I assumed it wasn’t real.

  Because—these things didn’t happen.

  He reminded me my Confirmation name was Thomas, the Doubter, and said I’d chosen aptly. “But remember, Matt, in the end Thomas believed. He was the one who first proclaimed Jesus as ‘my Lord and my God.’ ”

  Sure, I thought with a heavy dose of skepticism, but maybe, just maybe, there was something to the smoke and mirrors.

  Dr. Zane told me to call him Randall as he removed the dressing from the zipperlike scar over my sternum. “You’re good for another forty years or hundred thousand miles, whichever comes first.”

  “Only a hundred thousand? I put that on my car in three or four years,” I said.

  He snickered. “Then this go-round, you’d better watch the kind of oil you put in your engine, unsaturated and no trans fats.”

  “Great, a comedian with a scalpel.”

  “Yes. I kept everyone in stitches while massaging your heart. Stitches, get it?”

  “Okay.” I laughed, holding my incision. “Now that is painful.”

  “The entire surgical team earned our fee, keeping you alive, Beaulieu.”

  “And I appreciate it,” I said.

  My heart attack and subsequent near death made headlines, something I should have become accustomed to but wasn’t. As if I’d deliberately added to the drama, some people condemned me and others drew me as a tragic hero. Although neither of us tried to kill ourselves, I was suddenly Romeo to Elle’s Juliet. But all I knew was that when I regained consciousness, Elle had woken up.

  She hadn’t really awoken, but that’s what the papers said. That’s what the Pro-Lifers contended. And that was what Hank believed at first. “I told you my little girl would come out of this.”

  Not exactly. She started to breathe on her own again, but her gag reflex was still gone. She still had no corneal reflex, and she didn’t respond to painful stimuli. She was in a different kind of persistent vegetative state, more like the one that made it to the press with Terri Schiavo seemingly smiling.

  Elle, however, did not smile, not even once. I couldn’t say she grimaced or that she appeared to be in pain, yet it was harder to look at her in this condition when she appeared to be conscious. I wanted her to respond to me; the nonneurosurgeon part of me still expected her to respond to me.

  “But,” Hank said.

  I shook my head from my own hospital bed. “Elle is still gone. She isn’t suffering. And the baby has a better shot now. This is good.”

  Hank turned to my mother. “Linney, don’t you think it’s possible Elle might continue to improve? You changed your mind.”

  Mom averted her gaze and shook her head, too. “I know Elle’s your baby, Hank, but no. We have to accept that she’s gone, but we’re going to try to save your grandbaby.”

  “Your grandchild, too, Mom,” I said.

  “That’s right. This baby is all of ours.”

  For two days the nurses let me see Elle on a webcam, an idea Jake came up with. Thank God for Jake. He had soldiered through the hospital days, signing consents on my behalf, making health care decisions about things that went well beyond any lawyerly duties he anticipated when he signed on.

  Once I was well enough to leave intensive care for a telemetry unit where they could monitor my heart rhythm constantly, they moved Elle into the same room with me. She was doing well enough that she no longer required ICU either.

  Always bossy, my mother insisted it would be stressful for me to be in the same room with Elle, but it wasn’t. I could look across and see her, then be assured that she and the baby were safe and secure because they were close. I could finally sleep.

  Keisha snapped the green-and-brown quilt in the air, and it settled over me like a loon landing on a northern lake. “There,” she said.

  I didn’t know quite how to respond to the gesture. When Keisha brought the other quilt in for Elle, I knew it was a way for her to do something when there was nothing to be done. “Thank you,” I said.

  She nodded, barely looking my way. I sensed something was bothering her, but I was three and a half hours into my pain medication, I’d just finished walking the length of the corridor twice, and the ache was escalating. In thirty minutes I could ask for more. I closed my eyes for a minute, longing for the reprieve of sleep and figuring Keisha was here to visit Elle, not me. Besides, the burden of small talk fell on the visitor.

  “Will the baby be all right now?” she asked suddenly.

  Or her question felt sudden because I had dozed off. “I don’t know,” I mumbled, rubbing my eyes.

  “I need a happy ending,” she said. “I’m sorry. It’s just …”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, raising the head of my hospital bed.

  “Nothing.” She feigned a thin smile, then, with an uncomfortable twist, she added, “Guy doesn’t want to try to have a baby anymore. He says enough is enough. And he doesn’t want to adopt.”

  The four of us, Elle and me, Keisha and Guy, had founded something of a wannabe-parents-lonely-hearts club, although mostly Elle and Keisha commiserated while Guy and I talked about whatever sport was in season in front of the TV. But he said he wanted kids, and I was a little surprised he’d given up.

  “Sorry to hear that,” I said. I blinked a few times while I tried to come up with words Elle might say to make Keisha feel better.

  “Elle told me you kept pushing her to consider adopting a child,” Keisha said.

  “After Dylan, yeah.” I looked over at Elle. “I didn’t want to lose her. Maybe that’s what Guy is telling you. He doesn’t want you to have to pump any more fertility drugs into your system or to be disappointed every goddamn
ed month. In our case, every time Elle miscarried. Guy doesn’t need you to produce a kid. He just needs you. At least that was how I felt. I wanted to forget the losses. And if we adopted … but …”

  “But what?” Keisha asked.

  “The wait. It can take years. And birth mothers change their minds sometimes after they see the babies—pretty often, we heard. I just wanted her safe. I wanted to be happy again.”

  “Did you ever tell her that?” Keisha asked.

  I pictured Elle the day before her fall, standing on the lawn. She said we should make a baby. I wish we hadn’t argued.

  “I tried to,” I told Keisha, “but I don’t know if I said it right. I don’t know if she was listening—the right way. Next time you talk to Guy, listen to what he means. He’ll listen, too. You can work it out. Elle and I would have worked it out.”

  Jake entered my room with a little more color in his face. “The doctors are releasing you tomorrow.”

  “I know. Now that I’m semiliving again, they tell me these things. I appreciate that you acted on my behalf, though.”

  “You’ll get my bill.” He snickered. “Don’t look so worried. I’m not charging you for acting as your health care agent. That I did as a friend.”

  And I wondered, were we friends?

  “You think I’d spend the better part of a week walking the halls of a hospital for a regular client? Only for a friend or family,” he said.

  Maybe I had suffered hypoxic brain damage during my multiple cardiac arrests because I could swear Jake was reading my mind.

  I swung my still-sore, vein-harvested legs over the side of the bed. “Okay, friend.”

  He rolled his eyes. “The point is, once they discharge you, you shouldn’t be alone, and the farmhouse is too remote.”

  “Probably not for a couple of weeks, anyway. I’m trying to figure it out. Mike offered to let me move in while I recuperate, but he’s in a three-bedroom with four kids. My mother wants me to stay with her, but I don’t see it. I’m still pissed. Not as pissed since she withdrew her participation in the case, but—”

  “You can stay with us. In fact, Yvette insists. We have a guest room on the first floor, and we’re two minutes from the hospital. No arguments. It’s all set.”

  “Seriously?” I asked. A guest room in Jake’s nineteenth-century Georgian would be considerably more comfortable than sleeping on my nephews’ bunk beds even if it required me to make small talk with Yvette. “Thank you.”

  “Of course I’m charging you rent.” He winked. “Are you up to talking about the case?”

  My head jerked up. “But my mother dropped the suit, right?”

  Jake nodded but grimaced. “I have bad news. Adam Cunningham has produced the original of his advanced directive. And Christopher is still insisting that Elle be taken off life support.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “Yeah, so we continue on. Cunningham has filed a complaint. I haven’t heard who’s going to represent him.”

  “Not Klein?”

  “No. Klein is out. It would be a conflict because he represented your mother, who is now siding with you.” Jake began to whisper. “But since Elle’s breathing now, it becomes much more difficult to withdraw her life support. Death from dehydration is slow and inhumane.”

  Tension seeped into my muscles, burning my already raw flesh. That Elle had started breathing on her own made the baby’s survival more likely, but it also meant Elle could live on in a vegetative state indefinitely—against her wishes. It meant even if the baby lived, even if, God forbid, the baby died, Elle could linger forever.

  “Are you okay?” Jake asked. “Should I call a doctor?”

  “I’m fine. Have you found Elle’s diaries?” I asked.

  “No one’s seen them,” Jake said.

  “Damn. I swear I left them in her hospital room. When’s the next court date?”

  Jake looked at his Rolex. “In an hour.”

  “What?” I couldn’t get discharged and to court in an hour.

  “Wheeler strongly discourages you from walking into his courtroom ever again. Well, maybe not ever, but until you’re well, so don’t get any ideas. When you went down on the floor, Wheeler froze. The press corps noticed and mentioned something about ‘his impotence on the bench,’ which was absurd. It had nothing to do with his competence as a judge. He was just taken aback.”

  “I’m sure you could relate.”

  “Yeah, but I managed to dial 911 while Blythe and your mother took over pounding on your chest.” Jake looked at me as if I’d come back from the dead, which, in a manner of speaking, I had. He shook his head. “I have to leave for court.”

  “I want to come with you.”

  “In your dreams. I’ll report back. I’m putting Father Meehan on the stand. You know what he’s going to say. After that, I’ll file the petition for fetal guardianship. I’m hoping the judge will give that its due consideration, that he won’t dismiss it outright. But if he does dismiss it, we’ve got grounds for an appeal on constitutional grounds. We’re looking for time, time for the baby to grow. We only need three months, and I can’t imagine that anyone would turn off her life support with a viable baby on board.”

  “Three months isn’t enough.” The baby needed more time or she could suffer from a million health issues of her own—blindness, lung problems, brain damage.

  “Elle will be twenty-five weeks pregnant.”

  “That’s still extremely premature.”

  “That’s why the judge will wait. We hope.”

  Hope—I was clinging to mine with more determination than ever.

  After Jake left, the evening-shift nurse, Ava, took my vital signs, listened to my lungs, and checked my wounds. The visible ones.

  Ava was a five-foot-tall powerhouse. Although my patients didn’t often land on the telemetry floor, from time to time I found myself making rounds on a patient who warranted a bed on that unit. She and I had met on entirely different terms. She was formidable and reminded me of Elle in some ways, but not in her appearance; Ava, like Elle, exuded confidence and still managed to be as warm as melted butter.

  “Am I going to live?” I was half serious, half sarcastic, with a pinch of challenge thrown in.

  “Looks like it. The question is whether or not you’re going to sleep. Rumor has it lack of sleep over in ICU was part of what landed you in this situation.”

  “High cholesterol. Familial.”

  She glanced over at Elle. “Not to mention a little stress.” Ava set about assessing Elle, doing her vital signs, changing her trach dressing. “So, Elle is sleeping like a little lamb. What are we going to do about you tonight?”

  Elle wasn’t exactly sleeping; however she did appear to be at rest—whatever that meant—when you don’t wake up—when you were never going to wake up. At least she wasn’t in pain.

  “You have an order for a sleeping pill if you need it for bedtime. Or I can give you Percocet,” Ava said.

  “I’ll take the pain pills. Wouldn’t mind having the Percocet now, actually,” I said.

  “And I had one other thought. What if, just for tonight, I pushed the two beds together. Bet you’re used to sharing the bed with your wife. Would you sleep better that way?”

  I had a momentary urge to hug Ava. “Oh, yes,” I said. “Most definitely, yes. Thank you.”

  She unlocked the wheels on Elle’s bed with a kick and rolled her near me. I took Elle’s hand in mine. “Peep, I’m right here.” I slipped my hand onto her belly. “Right here, kiddo. Dad’s right here.”

  There is an interlude in the hospital after visiting hours are over and before the night shift arrives when there is quiet. Not silence. Quiet. An occasional call bell rings. Footsteps continue to pad up and down the corridors, but there is a calm certainty, ever briefly, that for now Death is not in charge.

  I was sleeping in such conditions, lulled by Elle’s proximity and by the dampened awareness of the narcotic analgesic. I ignored the disinterested
and distant clinical sounds. I didn’t hear Christopher enter the room or pull the squeaky chair over to his sister’s side of the bed. In fact, after I finally awoke, he told me he’d been there for hours and that he’d come long before visiting hours had ended so we could talk. But I slept, and slept restfully with Elle close. He allowed me that quiet time. For that, I was grateful.

  Christopher possessed one gift his sister did not, a sense of pitch. He was singing a lullaby to Elle. Softly. It was one I remembered their mother singing, Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral. Too-ra-loo-ra-li. His voice possessed a gentle tone, rich and mellow.

  I opened my eyes and searched the near darkness. Only a slit of light broke from the bathroom.

  “Hey, Matt. How are you feeling?”

  I grunted and reached for a glass of water on the over-the-bed table. Hospital air is directly imported from the Sahara.

  He circled the bed, took the cup, and bent the straw to make it easier for me to drink.

  What the hell? “Thanks,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Visiting Elle. And visiting you.”

  “I’m trying to sleep.”

  He nodded. “And I let you. I was thinking about leaving you a note, but since you’re up now, I just wanted to tell you I’m glad you’re okay.”

  I didn’t respond. I had nothing to say.

  “I wanted to talk to you about something,” Chris said.

  “You can talk to my lawyer. I’m not in any condition for a fight.”

  “I don’t want to fight, and we don’t need lawyers. You almost died, and even if we’re on opposite sides of this, I want you to be okay. You’re my brother-in-law. Linney said you’re going home tomorrow.”

  “They’re discharging me, yeah.”

  “I wanted to let you know I brought Elle’s car back to your house today. And I didn’t want you to go home and see it, not expecting to. I mean, it might be weird. I keep going to call her, and then I remember I can’t. It hurts, you know? I don’t want to stress you out any more than I have to. The car’s at your house. I just wanted to warn you for when you get home.”

  “Yeah, sure. But I’m not going back to the farm. Not yet. I’m planning to stay with Jake for a while.”