Girls Don't Fly

by Chandler, Kristen

  “Mel, why are you answering the phone? Can you send Dad to get me?”

  “I thought you went to the dance. Are you okay? Why are you breathing so hard?”

  “I’m perfectly fine,” I say. I talk loud so Pete will hear. “I’ll be at the tollbooth entrance to Antelope State Park.”

  “Antelope Island? Alone? What’s going on?”

  “I’m fine. Really. I’ll be at the entrance. Thanks, Mel.” I hang up my phone. I turn to Pete, who is right behind me, “They’re on their way.”

  “I’m not leaving you here in the dark.”

  I still have Mel’s shoes in my hand. It’s a nice night. The moon is out. I start walking. I figure it will take about as long to get to the tollboth as it will for my dad to exceed the speed limit to get here. The blood is pumping so hard in my brain I nearly forget that Pete is still behind me.

  He whistles to remind me.

  I don’t turn around. “They’ll tow your van if you leave it here.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because I feel like it. I’m an adult now. I get to do things without a chaperone.”

  I keep walking. Pete isn’t whistling. After a few minutes I turn around and he’s gone. When he passes me on the causeway I don’t look up.

  40

  Altricial:

  Naked, blind, and helpless at hatching.

  When I get to the tollbooth the ranger is closing up for the night. He gives me a look like I’ve lost my mind. I ignore him and keep walking until I see Pete’s crummy old van parked on the other side of the road. For the ranger’s benefit I wave. He waves back. I don’t cross the street.

  There is no sign of Dad. I pull out my phone. No signal. Perfect. I move over to the side of the road and lean against the fence. Even if I have to sit here until the sun comes up, I’m not getting in that van with Peter Tree.

  After a painful ten minutes or so I see the Suburban. I can tell by the way Moby is coming toward me in the dark that it’s not my mother or my dad at the wheel. Only one person in my family drives that badly. And it makes me sick. How could she?

  I wave and she flips the car around to the gravel shoulder. I go over to the driver’s side and open the door. “What are you doing?” I say. “Where’s Dad?”

  “Are you okay?” she says. “Where’s Pete?”

  “I’m fine. Why are you driving?”

  Her face is ghostly, but she laughs softly as she slides over to the passenger side. Thank goodness for the bench seating. She says, “Right before you called, Mrs. Bridgestone discovered that Danny had turned on their hose and flooded their yard. Can you believe it? Dad had just left to do damage control. Mom’s at work. I didn’t want you stranded here. Some creep might grab you.”

  “I would have waited until Dad got home.”

  “You’re welcome, idiot.”

  I look up in time to see Pete’s van driving away.

  All the things I’ve read about preeclampsia fill my head at once. It can be deadly for the mom and the baby. It can cause birth defects. It can come on like a freight train and you can’t stop it. But she’s here, rude and laughing, so I try not to completely freak out. Maybe her case isn’t as bad as what they describe in the books. Maybe the doctors are just being cautious. Maybe the worst part of this is that my parents are going to kill me.

  I step up on the running board to sit down in the driver’s seat. I look down at the seat. My stomach drops. Maybe it’s worse than I thought. “Melyssa,” I say.

  “What?” She’s tipped over a little so I can’t see her face. “I’m fine,” she says, but her voice is brittle.

  “Show me your backside.”

  She doesn’t stop hunching over. “That’s pretty personal.”

  “Look,” I say.

  Without straightening up she twists to look at the red smear on the upholstery. “What’s that?”

  Before I can answer she yells and jackknifes forward, hitting her head against the glove box.

  “Melyssa!”

  I jump into the car, willing myself to sit on top of the bloodstained seat. Germs not important. Premature baby important.

  I say, “There’s a hospital up the road. You can’t have the baby until we get you to the hospital. I’m serious.”

  She lets out a high piercing cry, like an animal would make.

  I put my face down where I can see hers. “What’s happening?”

  She shouts into the floor of the car. “It feels like somebody’s stabbing me in the stomach, that’s what’s happening.”

  I look behind me and pull out onto the road. Traffic is light but slow. I pull onto the soft shoulder and pass three cars on the right. A car honks. I pull back onto the pavement and have a clear road. “Just give me ten minutes. I’ll get you there.”

  Melyssa shouts, “I’m not having this baby yet!”

  “Fine with me. Just wait until we get to the hospital.”

  I see the route to the hospital in my head. If I can get her inside, they’ll know how to stop the bleeding. Maybe they can even stop her from going into labor. “Does your head hurt?”

  She breathes heavily. “I just smacked it into the dashboard.”

  “Before. Did you have a headache before?”

  She sits up but clamps back down with pain. “Three days.”

  I speak calmly, even though I want to kill her myself. “You’ve had a headache for three days and you didn’t tell me?”

  She groans. “Do not lecture me right now!”

  A man pulls in front of me and I have to brake hard not to hit him. The last thing we need right now is an accident, especially since I don’t think I’m getting my writhing sister into a seat belt. I have to stay in the middle of this thing. Focus on what’s happening. Keep everything calm. Not think about the blood on the seats and the blood on my sister.

  Melyssa says, “Oh, no way. I think I just peed all over myself.”

  I look away from the road quickly and see red fluid on the floor, the seat, her clothes, and speckled on my arm. It’s like someone knocked over a Super Big Gulp of fruit punch, except it’s sticky and it smells like stale salt water.

  I concentrate on my driving so the stench doesn’t drive me off the road. I think about finding the emergency room. When she’s in the hospital I can clean this all up. I can take Moby to a car wash and they’ll make it like it never happened.

  “I’m dying,” says Melyssa. She doesn’t yell this, so I know she believes it.

  “No, you aren’t,” I say. “Your water just broke. You’re going to be fine.” I don’t tell her that it’s her baby that’s in trouble now.

  She breathes hard, probably because she’s having a contraction, then she sits up. “What does that mean? Is it bad if my water breaks?”

  “It means you have to have the baby now.”

  She groans and twists in her seat.

  “We’re close. I can see the roof of the hospital.”

  “What?” says Melyssa. She leans back and closes her eyes with her head against the door. I switch on the child safety locks. As if this is going to help. I turn into the parking lot. She jolts again and lets out a scream. Her eyes fly open. “Ah, ah,” she says. She grabs at the seat. “Myra?” She looks at me and grabs my arm so hard I nearly swerve. Everything in her face is pain. “Make it stop.”

  I look around and realize I’m on the wrong side of the hospital. “We’re almost there. It’s going to stop. We’ll find someone. You’re going to make it. You and the baby are both going to make it. You were born to do this.”

  “You’ll stay with me?” she says.

  “You couldn’t pry me away.”

  “People have babies early, right?” she says.

  “Every day. You’re going to be just fine.” I don’t mention that at twenty-nine weeks the baby’s lungs aren’t developed fully and the chances for birth defects are still in the probable zone.

  “Okay.”

  “Breathe,” I say. “Come on. You can do t
his.”

  “I can’t!” screams Melyssa.

  “Breathe. In and out. Just like you practiced.”

  “I can’t!”

  “You have to,” I say back, sharp as a knife.

  “I know!” she yells. Then she grunts loudly. I know she’s bearing down. There are three cars in front of me moving impossibly slow while they look for parking. What, is there like a discount for emergency room visits today? I honk and the man in front of me flips me off.

  Melyssa grunts again, her eyes closed, lost in a tunnel of pain I can only imagine. Then she opens her eyes. “Are we there?”

  “We’re close.”

  She groans again. “Oh my holy hell, Myra, it’s coming. Right now. I can’t stop it. “

  “Yes, you can.”

  “Help me!” she yells.

  We’re a hundred yards from the emergency entrance, but I have two cars in front of me. I turn off the engine in the middle of the parking lot and throw on the hazards. The car behind me honks. I jump out of Moby and yell at the woman behind me. “My sister’s having a baby! Get a doctor out here!”

  Then I fly to the passenger side and throw open the door. Warm brackish air from Melyssa’s body covers me. Germs not important. Sister important. I climb up onto the running board and turn her to face me. “Slide back,” I say. She is pushing hard. I help her back against the seat and I climb in between her legs and wedge the door shut behind me. Good thing she’s wearing the hideous tent dress.

  “Erggg!” she yells.

  “I’m going to have to take some of your clothes off,” I say. “Don’t worry, I won’t look.”

  “Like I care!” screams Melyssa.

  I wiggle to her side so I can help her scoot out of her underwear, but everything is so covered in blood, and we’re wedged in so tight it’s like the clothes are glued on. I remember the knife in my first-aid kit in the glove box. I grab it out and flip it open. I say, “This is for your clothes, not you.”

  She’s crying. “Don’t leave!”

  “Are you kidding?”

  She smacks the seat with her forearm. “I mean it.”

  I begin cutting her clothes. In any other moment of my life, the germs and blood in these two feet of space would paralyze me. But I’m dead calm. Just as I pull the clothes away, a baby, a terribly small, perfectly formed baby, comes from my sister’s legs in a wave of blood and water. The baby’s delicate body is purple and gray and is covered in white film. I catch her and tip her sideways like I saw online. Except there were doctors and they weren’t doing it in a Suburban. I take my red hands and lift her to me, but she’s still connected to my sister’s womb by a twisty cord the size of a pen, so I lean forward to be close.

  Her body is warm, floppy, and about the size of an overgrown eggplant. But the precision of each unbearably small feature is so perfect, so full of what it’s becoming, that she’s unlike anything I have every imagined. She is divine.

  I think my head is going to explode. I touch her back with my finger. She doesn’t respond. And yet I know she is alive. She fills every particle around her with life.

  “It’s a girl,” I say quietly.

  Melyssa yells, “Is she okay?”

  I lift my thin, yellow dress around her to keep her warm, trying to think what I should do next.

  Where are those doctors?

  “Let me warm her up,” I say. I tear the gauze from my dress and tuck her into it.

  “Is she all right? Hold her up so I can see her.”

  “Let me warm her up.”

  Melyssa lifts her head to see us. “Okay. Get her warm.”

  Behind me the door opens and sucks all the air out of the Suburban. Someone grabs my shoulder. “Miss! Miss! I’m a doctor. I need you to give me the baby.”

  I turn my head and see a middle-aged woman in bright green scrubs with a dozen other people behind her. It’s so cold outside I turn my back on them to stop the draft. I draw the little purple body to me. “Breathe, honey, breathe.”

  “Where are you going?” says Melyssa.

  “I’m giving her to the doctor,” I say.

  I slide out of the doctor’s way. She’s holding a small blanket that she wraps around the baby. A second doctor comes up behind her with instruments. I push around the other staff and get into the backseat where I can hold Melyssa’s hand. “Doing great, Mel,” I say.

  The second doctor doesn’t look happy. “Come on,” he says to the first doctor.

  The first doctor puts the baby closer to Melyssa and the second doctor clamps off the umbilical cord and snips it.

  The first doctor looks at the baby and then at the other doctor. There’s a little wrinkle in the baby’s forehead and a cry so faint it could be my imagination, except the man yells, “Go!”

  Then the first doctor is running with another team of people in scrubs who are running to meet her and my sister is saying, “Where is she? Is she breathing? Myra! Myra!”

  “She’s breathing.”

  The doctor says, “You need to get out of this car and onto the stretcher. We need to get you inside too.”

  He gets out of the car and stands there waiting for her like she’s just going to bounce off the seat onto the stretcher.

  Mel looks up at me. Her eyes aren’t right. “Where is she?” she says.

  “They took her into the hospital. She’s going to be fine,” I say.

  “The baby needs oxygen,” says the man, looking at me. “And this woman needs a surgeon before she bleeds to death.” He calls to his staff. “Pull her out.”

  Two men in scrubs get on both ends of Melyssa and lift her onto the stretcher. Once she’s on her back, I grab her hand and squeeze it.

  The doctor pushes at my hand. “We have to go. You need to check her in.”

  The stretcher starts moving. “Is she okay?” calls Melyssa.

  I run alongside. “She’s perfect.”

  “Don’t leave, Myra,” she says.

  “I won’t.”

  41

  Hatchling:

  A new bird.

  My mom faints when she sees me. One look and ... Bam! I guess it’s the sight of me in an emergency room wearing a blood-covered sundress. Luckily, Dad grabs her quick enough that she doesn’t split her head open on the chair next to her.

  She comes right out of it, so nobody puts her on a stretcher or anything. And she’s mad as she can be by the time she’s on her feet.

  “What happened?” she says.

  “When?” I’m not being sarcastic. It’s just that a lot of bad stuff has happened since I saw Mom last.

  Dad says, “Why is there blood all over you?”

  “I delivered the baby. Or at least I was there when she arrived. The blood got all over everything, including the car. The upholstery is a total mess.”

  “I don’t care about the upholstery,” says Dad.

  Mom says, “What was Melyssa doing driving the car?”

  “She was coming to get me.”

  Mom says, “I gathered that from Andrew. Why did you ask her to? You know she shouldn’t drive.”

  “I told her to send Dad. I didn’t know she was coming, and when I did, she was already there.”

  “Where are they now?” says Dad.

  “They took them separately and told me to wait. Melyssa looked pretty good, but the baby was really small and purple. She wasn’t making much noise.”

  Dad grabs my mom’s shoulder, just to make sure she doesn’t try to face-plant again.

  She says, “Purple?”

  “Kind of.”

  “How long did it take for her to start breathing?” says Dad.

  “She could have been breathing at the very first. But it took a few seconds to get her to cry.”

  “Brain damage. Here we go,” says Mom. Her face is retracting in pain. I really hope she doesn’t faint again.

  “We aren’t going anywhere,” says Dad. “Dear, for once in your life could you imagine the best thing happening? Maybe they’ll b
oth be fine. Hospitals do amazing things these days. Now let’s sit.”

  I sit.

  “Except you, Myra,” says Dad. “You go buy something to wear in the gift shop.” Dad cracks open his wallet and hands me eighty dollars. My dad has never volunteered that much cash to me in his life, especially not for shopping. “Get something cheerful. We want to look ready when we meet the newest member of this family.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” I say. “But I promised Melyssa I wouldn’t leave.”

  Mom shakes her head. “You were supposed to keep her out of trouble.”

  “That’s not fair and you know it, Marci. Melyssa is a grown woman. She did something reckless. That isn’t Myra’s responsibility.” Mom looks at Dad in total surprise. He looks back at her with sad frustration and then at me. “I’ll call you on your cell phone if we hear anything, Myra. You can’t stand here like that, you’re scaring the other people in the waiting room.”

  On the way to the gift shop I get lost. Too much has happened for me to think clearly. I wander around the hospital entrance, trying to follow the gift shop signs with thin little arrows, but everyone gets so bug-eyed when they see me that I turn down a side hallway just to get away.

  Before I know it I find myself looking into a room that looks suspiciously like a mini church. At least I think that’s what the cross and the weird lighting are all about. Why people would find that crucifix stuff soothing is beyond me. But the room’s empty so I go in.

  I sit on the little bench they have just for this occasion. There is soft, morbid organ music playing. I know the whole room is designed to make you feel like someone or something out there in the universe cares about your problems, but all it does is make me sad. I think of all the other people who have been on this bench and I wonder how things turned out for them. Which is weird in a way, because if I’m thinking about those people’s problems now, then after the fact, someone is, or was going to be, out there worrying about them. I giggle. Clearly I’m in massive post-trauma denial mode.

  Maybe things are worse than I thought. And maybe they aren’t.