by P. D. Cacek
She nodded and they walked into the room together.
And stopped.
HENRY ROLLINS
May 20, 1936 – August 24, 2017
Chapter Fourteen
Sara
He couldn’t remember when he’d stopped looking at her.
One night, as he was leaving the hospital after visiting and telling her about his day and how the nursery was all ready and waiting, Danny realized he hadn’t looked at his wife once.
He hadn’t planned it, it just happened.
He stopped seeing her as Sara, his wife and the mother of his soon-to-be daughter, Emily. She was just a body on a bed that he talked to but didn’t look at because some part of him knew that if he didn’t look at her, didn’t see her, it’d be easier.
Please, God, make it easier.
Easier to forget the way the skin around her eyes had crinkled up when she laughed, easier to forget the sound of that laughter, easier to let her go.
Please, God.
Danny cleared his throat as his father got up and walked across the narrow room. He was holding a cup of vending machine coffee.
“Did you say something, Danny?”
Danny shook his head. “No, I didn’t say anything.”
“Oh, I thought—” He held out the cup. “Want some? Still warm.”
“No. Thanks.”
His father nodded and Danny noticed the stubble on his chin. Either his father hadn’t shaved that morning or had decided to try and grow a beard again. There were pictures of his father as a young man sporting a very dark and close-cropped Van Dyke.
It had been a rainy Tuesday morning and he was home from school with a cold. His mom had brought in a box of loose photographs and they sat together on his bed and looked at the pictures and laughed.
God, how could he remember that but not when he stopped looking at his wife’s face?
When they arrived, Sara’s father had stayed in the room with him. They didn’t talk and Danny had let him have the only chair. After twenty minutes Sara’s father excused himself and left. His mother showed up next and then it was his father’s turn to stand the deathwatch with him.
Danny knew Sara’s mother wouldn’t be taking a turn and he didn’t blame her. No mother should have to stand by and watch as the last few minutes of her daughter’s life ticked down. It was something none of them ever expected they’d have to do.
So maybe it was okay that he didn’t look at her.
Their friends, those who could, had stopped by earlier in the week, putting on brave faces and light voices, and tried to hold back the tears for his sake. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t and then they apologized.
Just don’t look at her, he almost told them. It makes it easier.
Danny walked over to the chair and sat down, glancing at his watch. It was only 7:53. Dr. Palmer had come into Sara’s room soon after they arrived and taken Danny aside. The plan was to deliver Emily as early as possible then transfer her from the living incubator she’d been in to a manmade one in the NICU, where she would be monitored. Dr. Palmer had joked, tried to joke about giving him a few more weeks to hit the books and study up on being a father.
A single father.
When Danny didn’t laugh, Dr. Palmer began talking about the delivery. He didn’t anticipate any problems. The OR was scheduled for 8:00.
When they were ready, they’d hook Sara up to a manual respirator, detach the various monitor leads and wheel her into the OR where they would reattach her to machines that would keep her body alive during the caesarean section. Then he’d be brought in, dressed in a paper gown with matching booties and cap, and given a seat at the head of the table where he would be shielded from actually seeing his daughter being born. He would sit there, listening to the doctors talk and the respirator’s rhythmic breathing, holding the small digital camera he’d bought, and not look at her face.
Then, when it was over and Emily took her first breath, Sara would take her last.
And time of death could finally be called.
Danny looked up as a nurse wearing pale orange scrubs came into the room.
“All ready?”
No. “Yeah.”
“It’s time,” the nurse said and came forward, reaching out to him.
Standing, he nodded and made himself look at the woman in the bed.
But somehow it was okay.
The comatose woman only looked a little like the woman he’d loved. Whatever had made Sara special, made her real, wasn’t there anymore; she was already gone.
“Okay,” the nurse said, “you have to go down to labor and delivery, that’s on two. Another nurse will meet you there and get you ready.”
Danny left the room as two other nurses, a man and a woman, came in to get Sara ready to transport.
Jessie, whose shift he knew wasn’t supposed to start until late afternoon, was standing with another nurse in the hall outside the elevator when the doors opened. He stepped out and she pulled him into a hug and he hugged back.
“You gonna be there?” he asked.
“No, sweetie, but I just wanted to see you. You hanging in?” He nodded and felt her body shiver as she took a breath. “Where’s the family? Upstairs?”
Danny nodded again, not letting go.
“Okay, I’ll let them know what’s happening.” Her arms tightened and then she pushed him away. “This is Anne, you go with her and she’ll take care of you.”
“’Kay. Thanks for everything, Jessie. Sara would have liked you.”
He shouldn’t have said that. Tears immediately formed in the older woman’s eyes.
“Oh, go on, now. Shoo.”
Danny turned and followed the other nurse, the one he didn’t know, through a set of double doors, past the nurses’ station and into a narrow locker room.
“You’re probably a large, right?” When Danny nodded, the nurse pulled a pair of pale yellow disposable scrubs off one of the shelves. “Now, before you get all suited up in hospital chic, there’s a bathroom just opposite. Go in and wash your hands and arms…face too, if you’re feeling a little queasy. After that, use the floor button to open the door and come back here and get dressed. Try to get as much hair as you can under the bonnet and be careful when you walk in the booties, they can be slippery.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll bring you into the delivery and be nearby if you need anything. Oh, and don’t forget your camera if you have one.”
Danny patted his front right pocket. “It won’t be sterile.”
“It’ll be fine. Okay, you wash up and get dressed. I’ll be back for you in a few minutes.”
“Thanks.”
The nurse smiled at him. “It shouldn’t be long now.”
“Take your time.”
* * *
There was music playing in the OR, just loud enough to notice but not be distracting. Danny could hear the doctors and nurses and the steady, butterfly-fast beat of Emily’s heart from the fetal monitor perfectly.
“She’s strong,” Dr. Palmer said from behind the sterile barrier that separated them, and Danny almost asked which one? “This little girl wants to get out and stretch her legs.”
“Good,” Danny said. “That’s good.”
“Ready to meet Emily?” Dr. Palmer asked, peeking at Danny over the barricade.
“Yep.”
The doctor disappeared back behind the raised sheet and a moment later, Danny heard Emily’s voice.
She sounded pissed.
Danny didn’t think it’d be possible, but he started to laugh.
“Has a pair of lungs on her, all right,” Dr. Palmer’s voice continued, “and I’m not sure she’s very happy with us at the moment. Okay, Dad, here she is.”
Then suddenly she was there, his daughter…Emily appearing
above the sheet, her bottom cradled in one of the doctor’s bloody gloves, her head cradled in the other. A moment later she was handed off to a nurse to be weighed and measured and cleaned up.
“Bleeding’s stopped…do you want her packed?” a voice asked softly and another voice answered, “No.”
Dr. Palmer walked around to the front of the operating table and nudged Danny’s foot.
“Come on, Dad, go get acquainted. We got the lights, you bring the camera.”
“Yeah. Right.” Danny pushed aside the filmy paper gown and dug the camera out of his pocket. It felt very small and slick and he had to wind the strap around his wrist for fear of dropping it. It’d be like him to drop the damn thing before he’d taken one shot and if he did that Sara would….
He glanced at the body on the table as he passed. Sara’s head and shoulders were hidden behind the raised drape and they’d covered her body with a sheet so it could have been anyone lying there.
Any body.
Danny had an overpowering urge to take a picture for the baby book and caption it – Your Mother’s Last Picture – but didn’t want Sara to come back and haunt him.
“We’re ready for our close-up, Mr. DeMille,” said the nurse holding his naked squalling red-faced daughter. “Take a couple of shots so we can get her in the incubator.”
Danny did as he was told, taking five shots of Emily in the nurse’s arms, two more of her after she was wrapped, burrito-style, in a pink blanket and another couple when they covered the reddish peach fuzz on her head with a tiny pink knit cap. For the tenth shot, the nurse traded him Emily for the camera.
“Okay, smile, Daddy.”
Danny tried. “Okay. She’s so tiny.”
“Most thirty-four-weekers are – at first – but believe it or not, she’s on the big side. Your little lady came in a few ounces over five pounds.”
“Five pounds?” He’d eaten chickens that were bigger than that.
“And eighteen and a half inches…big for a preemie. Believe me.”
“Okay.”
“Ten toes, ten fingers, Apgar was seven at one minute…and that’s good.”
“Current?” Dr. Palmer asked from across the room.
“Solid ten.”
“She’s so small.”
“She’ll grow,” Dr. Palmer said, coming to stand next to him and make faces at his daughter. “She’s a beauty.”
“She looks like Sara.”
Someone cleared their throat, then, except for the respirator breathing for Sara and the machine that kept her heart beating, the room was quiet. Danny realized they’d turned off the music.
“She’s beautiful,” the nurse who’d taken his picture said. She was holding out the camera. “Okay, Daddy, I hate to do this, but her royal coach awaits. We have to take your little princess down to the neonatal nursery now.”
“In a minute,” he said and turned, catching the quick nod Dr. Palmer gave to the nurse when she started to interrupt. “I want to show her to Sara.”
As carefully as he could, Danny walked back across the room with Emily in his arms. It was amazing, but after just a few steps holding her seemed the most natural thing in the world. Sara had read him something about how quickly fathers can bond with their babies.
He hadn’t believed her.
“You were right,” he said when he got back to the operating table. They’d taken down the barrier and covered her with another blanket and she looked like Sara again.
“This is Emily,” he whispered, turning the baby toward her, “our daughter. She’s small but she’s perfect and she’s going to have red hair. I’ll tell her all about you. I know you wanted Melinda as her middle name, but I’m going to name her Emily Sara. Hope you don’t mind.”
Emily made a little noise as Danny leaned down and kissed his wife’s forehead, but she was quiet when the nurse took her from him and handed him back the camera.
“We’ll stop by the waiting room so her grandparents can see her,” the nurse said.
Danny nodded – “Thanks.” – and watched her put his daughter, his Emily, probably to be called Emmy, into the portable incubator and wheel her out of the room. Danny watched until the doors whooshed shut behind them, then slipped the camera under the paper scrub pants and into the pocket of his jeans.
“Okay,” he said, “I’m ready.”
Another nurse, still masked, handed Danny the clipboard holding the release form. He’d seen it before, so he didn’t have to read it. All he had to do was sign it and it would be over. Danny felt the weight of the camera, heavier now by ten pictures, against his leg as he signed and handed the clipboard back to the nurse.
She said something – “I’m so sorry” – then walked over and turned off the respirator and all the other machines that had kept Sara’s body alive, and the absolute silence that followed hurt Danny’s ears.
“It won’t be long, Danny,” Dr. Palmer said as he came around to the opposite side of the table. “Generally, you could take as much time as you want, but since Sara registered as an organ donor….”
“Yeah, okay,” he said and stood next to the operating table until his wife’s heart stopped.
Dr. Palmer said something almost in a whisper, a number, the time of death, then cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Danny.”
Danny squeezed Sara’s hand and wondered if he was.
SARA JENNIFER CORTLAND
March 3, 1986 – August 24, 2017
Chapter Fifteen
Jamie
Ryan sat hunched over his splayed knees and watched from the top row of steel bleachers as the D-Bs scored another goal off the Ampu-Dudes.
“YES! YES! WHOOOOOOOO-OOOOO!”
Before the match, Ryan had worried about his ability to look interested. But any fear he’d had vanished the moment the referee tossed the ball and the first volley or steal or whatever it was called in water volleyball literally erupted in a tidal wave of froth and foam.
And Jamie was fantastic.
Except for the rare beach volleyball game Ryan had managed to coerce him into, Jamie’s utter lack of interest in sports went far beyond the stereotypical gay norm. It’d been Jamie’s opinion anything that required you to sweat and pant without achieving an orgasm wasn’t worth the effort.
So it was with wide-eyed wonder and astonishment that Ryan watched Jamie’s waterlogged transformation into something resembling a jock.
Of the six men currently thrashing around in the water for the D-Bs, Jamie was always right there in the thick of things whenever the ball was snapped, tossed, or whatever it was called.
It was an amazing thing to watch.
A whistle blew, ending the match – D-Bs taking it 17–14 – and Ryan, along with all the other spectators stood en masse cheering and applauding as the players pulled themselves from the water. That was the only thing Ryan knew about the game: a player had to get in and out of the pool without assistance. An electric sling was provided for players like Jamie, but it was up to the player to swim into it under his own power and work the controls that hoisted him out of the water.
Jamie was holding onto the side of the pool, waiting his turn at the sling, when Ryan finally made it through the crowd. He kept his eyes on Jamie because he still found it difficult to look at the Ampu-Dudes, primarily ex-military men (and boys), without staring. The Ampu-Dudes were from the local VA Hospital and bussed in every Thursday afternoon for the weekly water polo match with their archrivals, the D-Bs…aka, the Dead-Butts, paraplegics like Jamie.
“Wow-zah!” Ryan said, punching the air for emphasis. “That was some game. YES!”
Jamie repositioned himself in the water as the empty sling started down. “Thanks.”
“Well, forgive me for being enthusiastic.”
“There’s enthusiasm,” Jamie said, treading water one-armed as he strai
ghtened the sling’s mesh seat, “and then there’s something that makes people’s ears bleed.”
Ryan stepped closer to the mechanical rig that operated the sling. “So, which one of these buttons is Down?”
“Hardy-har-har.” Jamie swam into the sling like a merman, dragging his useless legs behind him. Once settled, he scooped the tethered remote from the water and flipped the Up toggle. “Hey, Long-John!”
The young man with half a face and wearing a prosthetic left leg turned. “Whatcha want, Flipper?”
“Good game.”
The ex-soldier, captain of the Ampu-Dudes, raised the stump of his middle finger.
“Ah, don’t be like that. Tell ya what, next time we’ll give you guys a handicap. You know, to level the playing field.”
“I got your handicap right here,” the ex-soldier said, grabbing the crotch of his wet trunks. Ryan looked away.
Jamie smiled. “Mind grabbin’ my chair?”
“Whazza matter?” Grunting, the man cocked his head so his remaining eye could deliver its full withering glare. “You crippled or something?”
“As a matter of fact….” There was an icy moment of silence before Jamie and the soldier broke out laughing. Ryan still wasn’t used to the supposedly good-natured banter.
“Just wait until next week.”
Jamie feigned a yawn. “It’s so nice to have a dream. Hey, c’mon…give me a hand.”
The young man lifted his mangled left hand. “Sorry, already did. Besides, you know the rules…you gotta get in and out by yourself. If I helped you – ” he leaned over and yelled loud enough for everyone in the pool area to hear, “ – that would be cheating!”
Jamie winced. “Jesus, are you two related? You have the same lungs. I may be deaf by next Thursday.”
“That’s right, start your excuses now, bro, because we’re gonna cream you guys. Okay, pal – ” he thumped Jamie’s arm, “ – gotta go, m’lady’s waiting.”
While Jamie hauled himself into his wheelchair, Ryan watched the young man hurry across the room and into the arms of his beautiful and very pregnant wife.
“Guess what they say is true,” Jamie said, wheeling up to Ryan. “Love most assuredly is blind.”