That was the reduced rate? I nodded uncertainly. “I think so,” I said. I thought I’d been wealthy when Hunter gave me that thousand dollars. It would only cover a couple of weeks in New York. But Myra had said Temporal Solutions could help me. I hated to ask her for that much.
“It’ll be a studio apartment with a little kitchenette,” Liz said. “Once you have the surgery, you’ll need to be on modified bed rest and—”
“Bed rest!” I said. How was I going to manage that with no one to help me?
“Modified,” she assured me. “That means you can get up, move from room to room … although the studio apartment is only one room…” She chuckled. “You can go to the bathroom, take a shower, make yourself a meal, take a cab back and forth to the hospital. You just can’t go sightseeing or shopping. Your building will have concierge service to bring in groceries, though of course that will cost you extra. Can you manage it?” she asked again.
“Yes,” I said. I would make this work, though I was frankly terrified. This was going to be more complicated than I’d anticipated.
“We’re scheduling you for Tuesday, May eighth,” she said. “That’s a little over a week from now and you’ll need to check into the hospital the day before. All right?”
“Yes,” I said again.
She gave me more details about the surgery and all it would entail, and although I nodded and reassured her that I understood, I felt as if I were inside a dream. All I hoped was that it wouldn’t turn into a nightmare.
16
By the time I arrived back at Myra’s house in Princeton, it was nearly six o’clock. Myra ordered pizza and she and Hunter and I sat around the small table in the kitchen as we ate it.
“So what did they tell you about where you’ll live?” Myra asked, balancing a slice of pizza on her fingertips.
“It’ll be a studio apartment not far from the hospital,” I said, “but I’m afraid even with the reduced rate, it’ll be expensive and I’ll understand if you can’t help me financially. It’s four hundred and fifty a week, and I don’t—”
“For a studio apartment in the Upper East Side?” she interrupted me. “That’s nothing. Don’t worry about it. Use your money for food and incidentals. Temporal Solutions will pick up the tab on your housing.”
My eyes burned with gratitude. “Thank you,” I whispered.
“How do they do it?” Hunter asked. “How do they get to the baby to operate on it?”
I could see the wheels turning inside his head as he considered the mechanics of the surgery, and I smiled. “Through my abdomen,” I said, and I tried to repeat back to them what I’d learned that day. “But three of the nine babies the doctor’s performed this surgery on have died before they were born,” I said. “So I’m pretty nervous.”
“Wow,” Hunter said. “Thirty percent? That sucks.”
“Hunter,” Myra chided, “that doesn’t help. Nearly sixty-seven percent have survived. Let’s focus on that.”
“None of the babies have been born yet, though,” I said. I felt particularly disheartened tonight, exhausted from negotiating Manhattan and the corridors of the hospital, and all the tests, which now blurred together in my mind. When I thought of having to go back to New York and live alone for months in that huge, crowded, cluttered, noisy city, I felt overwhelmed with longing for the peace of the Outer Banks, and especially for my sister. But it seemed as though every time fear seized me, Joanna gave me a little kick to remind me why I was here.
* * *
The week sped by. I continued what I was coming to think of as my “2001 lessons” by watching plenty of TV and reading the Times online. I read everything I could find on HLHS and fetal surgery. It encouraged me to find Dr. Perelle’s name in much of the literature. His experience went back twenty years and he was clearly well respected.
In the evenings, I spent as much time as I could with Hunter. If he wondered why this woman, twelve years his senior, took such an interest in him, he didn’t let on. I wanted to feel the comfort of being close to him, and I thought he enjoyed the attention. His favorite topic was music, and he told me about all the bands featured in the posters on his walls. Myra was badgering him to take those posters down to get his room ready for their upcoming move, but he was in no hurry.
“I finally got them just right,” he griped to me. “Now I’m going to have to start all over again.”
“Are you sad about moving to Virginia?” I asked him. “Leaving all your friends?”
He shrugged. “No big deal,” he said. “I’m pretty good at making new friends.”
I asked him if he had a girlfriend and he said he was interested in several girls and hadn’t decided which one he’d focus on yet. He seemed to think it was a fait accompli that whichever girl he chose, she would like him back. In many ways, adolescent Hunter seemed like an entirely different person from the grown-up Hunter, but the one characteristic both of them shared was that self-confidence. He could have his pick of girlfriends. He would ace his exams. He would make friends wherever he went. Just as the grown-up Hunter was confident he could bring me—and Joanna—home from 2001.
So my daytime and evening hours were full. I was learning what I needed to learn and getting to know my future brother-in-law better. But at night, I lay alone in bed trying not to panic. I felt trapped, and I hadn’t even left Princeton yet. Once I had the surgery, I wouldn’t be leaving New York until Joanna was born … if she made it that long. I tried to stop myself from ruminating on the worst that could happen, but only daybreak seemed to put an end to my nighttime fears.
On Sunday morning, Myra gave me one of her old suitcases for my new clothes. The suitcase was on wheels—a brilliant invention. I packed it, then sat in the living room as I waited for the taxi that would take me to the train station. Myra and Hunter waited with me. They shared the sofa, both of them reading the print version of the New York Times while I stood at the window watching for the cab. It was going to be particularly hard to leave Hunter. Would I ever see him again in 2001? I wanted to ask him to come to New York to visit me, but I thought that would strike him as odd. Could I at least hug him good-bye? That would probably embarrass him. So when the taxi arrived, I simply said good-bye to them both and walked out the front door to change my life once again.
17
May 2001
New York City
I arrived at the Fielding Residential Hotel wearing my mustard-yellow backpack and rolling Myra’s suitcase by my side. The building was eight stories high and old, the brick front dark with age. A doorman—the first I’d ever seen in the flesh—opened one of the double doors for me and offered to help me with my suitcase, but I told him I was fine. Inside, the small, spotless lobby was nothing like the aging exterior of the building. It gleamed with white marble on the floor and walls, and an elaborately carved wooden registration desk nearly ran the length of the room. The young woman behind the desk told me it was too early for me to check in.
“Check-in is at three,” she told me. Her name tag read Becky Danson. I asked if she could make an exception, explaining that I had to check in at the hospital at three. Becky didn’t exactly roll her eyes, but she did sigh in annoyance as she poked a few keys on her computer with her very long fingernails. Those nails were painted in a red and white striped design, vivid against her dark skin. “Give us an hour,” she said. “You can leave your suitcase here.”
Outside, I was still amazed to find so many people on the sidewalk. This was going to take some getting used to. On a busy day in downtown Raleigh, I might pass five or six people in the space of a block. Where were these people all going? Some were dressed to the nines, others in shorts and T-shirts—the day was quite warm—and no one looked at anyone else. There would be eye contact in Raleigh. Smiles and nods. None of that here. A few people wore headphones similar to Hunter’s. Two of the men I passed looked like they were talking to themselves and I wondered if they were mentally ill, but when I saw a third person—a woman—also
talking to herself, I realized they were actually speaking into microphones attached to their phones. There was still so much—too much—about this future world that I didn’t know or understand. I’d learned a lot about 2001 by watching the news and reading the paper, but I wasn’t sure I’d learned how to actually live in it.
I found a bank close to the hotel and opened a checking account with eight hundred dollars of the money Hunter had given me. Between that account and the credit card from Myra, I felt financially secure. It was the only sense of security I had.
There was a restaurant on the corner near the hotel, and though I was too anxious to be hungry, I thought I’d better eat. I had no idea if they’d give me a meal at the hospital the night before a surgery. The restaurant seemed to have no name. The sign on the awning out front simply read DELICATESSEN. I’d never seen a delicatessen in North Carolina; I didn’t think they existed. I stepped inside and found it packed with people, the mouthwatering scent of pickles strong in the air. I sat at a small table near the window and studied the menu. Knishes and kugel and latkes. I had no idea what they were. Was this a Jewish restaurant? I’d never even met a Jewish person, as far as I knew, and I felt even more out of place and conspicuous than I had out on the sidewalk. Glancing around, though, I could see there were all types of people dining here. Men and women. White and black and brown. Some of the women looked like they’d stepped out of a high-powered business meeting with their impeccable suits and high heels, while the woman at the table closest to me wore a sleeveless white T-shirt, and a tattoo on one of her bare arms read SAUCY BITCH. I could fit in here, I thought, relaxing. Anyone could fit in here.
Feeling momentarily adventurous, I ordered matzo ball soup. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I’d heard of it and it sounded comforting. The waitress didn’t bat an eye as she wrote down my order. She had no idea I was any different from anyone else in this place.
The soup was delicious and I ate nearly all of it, suddenly glad my apartment would be so close to this deli. Maybe walking the short distance to it from the hotel might count as part of my modified bed rest. Paying my bill, I felt the tiniest sense of having a home. The tiniest sense of being safe.
* * *
The studio apartment was small and clean with a huge bed, a sofa, a dresser, a flat television even larger than the one at Myra’s house, a small refrigerator, and a microwave oven. No stove. I would have to master cooking in that microwave. I opened the curtains to reveal a view of the fire escapes attached to the building behind me. Becky at the front desk had informed me the apartment came with daily maid service, a doorman, and that concierge service Liz had told me about. She gave me a cable I would need to use to connect my iBook to the internet, since the hotel didn’t have Wi-Fi. The apartment was really quite nice, I thought, though it was hard for me to imagine living here for the next ten weeks. That was what I needed to hope for, though. The only way I’d be leaving any sooner was if my baby didn’t survive the surgery. Thirty percent. I wished I could get that number out of my head. Right now, Joanna was alive inside me. Would she still be alive after tomorrow? I hoped I wasn’t making a terrible mistake. A small and ever-shrinking part of me was still in denial that there was anything wrong with her. She was so lively and she’d looked perfect to me on the ultrasound. I was blind to whatever Dr. Perelle had seen that was so ominous. But I had to face facts. The surgery was the only chance my baby had.
It was a few minutes before two as I hung my clothes in the tiny closet and folded my underwear into the dresser. There was a safe on a shelf beneath the TV and after a few false starts, I figured out how to open it. I put my iBook inside and wondered if I should leave my phone there as well. “Don’t bring valuables to the hospital with you,” Liz had told me as I was leaving her office last week. “Just your ID and insurance card in case it’s needed.” So I put my phone and wallet in the safe as well, tucking my ID and insurance card in the pocket of my new straight-legged jeans. Then I took one last look around the apartment and headed for the door. My hand was on the knob when I heard my phone ring. I raced back to the safe, struggled with the combination, and answered the phone on the fifth ring.
“Calling to wish you luck tomorrow,” Myra said, and I began to cry. Whether it was from fear or loneliness or simply the sense of being estranged from all the people and places I knew and loved, I couldn’t have said, but it was a moment before I could pull myself together.
“Thank you,” I said finally.
“You’ll be fine,” she said with such firmness that I wondered if she somehow knew my future.
“Do you know that for a fact?” I asked. “I mean, have you seen me in the future sometime with my baby?”
She laughed—or at least she made a sound that approximated laughter. Myra was not a lighthearted woman. “No,” she said. “I’m in the dark as much as you are. But it sounds like you’re in good hands and I think it’s going to go well for you.”
I sniffled like a child, trying to keep the sound from reaching the phone. “I hope you’re right,” I said.
“Call me when it’s over,” she said.
“All right. Thank you so much for calling. I needed it … I needed to hear a familiar voice.”
“You’ll be fine,” she said again, and then she was gone without saying “good-bye.”
* * *
I decided to walk to the hospital. It was less than a mile and I knew this would be the last decent walk I’d be able to take for a while—as long as things went as they should.
I checked into the hospital without a problem and was disappointed when I was taken to a private room. I would have liked to have a roommate. Someone to talk to. Someone I could get to know. I changed into the silly hospital gown—one thing that was no better in 2001 than it had been in 1970—and noticed my hands were already shaking. A nurse took my temperature and blood pressure, which was much higher than it should have been. Liz came in to tell me everything was ready for my surgery in the morning. She had one of those faces that always wore a smile, even when she was talking about something mundane.
“You’ll be given general anesthesia before the surgery and will stay overnight tomorrow night,” she said. “We’ll want to be able to monitor you and your baby for at least twenty-four hours. In a little while, they’ll bring you a light dinner, but you can’t have anything to eat after that.” She patted my foot through the blanket. “Hope you have a good night’s sleep,” she said.
Dinner was chicken and potatoes and Jell-O. I tried to watch a movie on TV after I’d eaten, but I couldn’t concentrate, and I was happy when the nurse brought me a sleeping pill. I took it gratefully. I wanted time to speed up now. I wanted tomorrow to be over.
18
The following morning sped by as I was readied for surgery. Nurses bustled around me, hooking me up to an IV, shaving my belly, taking my blood pressure, and asking me for the hundredth time to tell them my name and my new birth date—which I had to struggle to recall. Someone wheeled me into the operating room, where it seemed like a dozen people stood in masks and blue gowns, waiting for me. I turned my head from side to side to take them all in. My teeth chattered and my body trembled uncontrollably, I was so anxious and cold.
Dr. Perelle leaned over me, recognizable only by those blue-green eyes that smiled above his mask.
“You ready to do this?” he asked.
I nodded, and the next thing I knew, I was waking up, groggy, nauseous, and disoriented. I blinked against the bright lights in the ceiling above me. The whole world seemed to be pale yellow. I heard voices. Beeping sounds. Low chatter.
“Cough,” someone instructed me, and I did. My belly felt bloated and my skin stung beneath the hospital gown.
“You’re in the recovery room,” a nurse told me. “Your surgery’s over.”
“My baby?”
“Dr. Perelle will be in shortly to talk with you,” she said.
“But … is she okay?” I tried to grab her hand but missed.
/> “Your surgery went well,” she said. She was doing something—pushing buttons or turning knobs—on a piece of equipment behind my head. “Dr. Perelle can give you more specifics. Cough for me again, now.”
She left me alone to worry, and I slowly became aware of the IV still attached to my arm and monitors hooked up to my belly. Some sort of compression device tightened and loosened on my legs. Something else—an oxygen tube, I guessed—pressed into the skin below my nostrils.
I must have dozed off and when I woke up again, Dr. Perelle was standing next to my bed in his white coat.
“It went fantastically well,” he reported. “I’m very pleased. Your baby cooperated in every way. I can honestly say it was the smoothest I’ve done of this procedure.”
“Do you say that to all your fetal surgery patients?” I tried to smile.
“I wish I could,” he said, “but no. Just to you.”
“Is she … do you think she’ll survive?”
“I think we’ve given her the best chance she could possibly have at survival and a healthy heart, Caroline,” he said. “We’ll keep an eye on her as well as on you for the next ten weeks. Right now I have you on antibiotics and medication to prevent preterm labor. You feel a little nauseous at the moment?”
I nodded.
“That’s more from the medication than from the anesthesia, so I’ll get you something to deal with it. You’ll be on that medication till tomorrow morning. Then home … or in your case, the Fielding Hotel, right?”
I nodded again.
“I’ll be frank with you,” he said, two sharp lines between his eyebrows. “I don’t like that you have no help here in the city. If there’s anyone you can call to come lend a hand, please do so. Bed rest is no picnic when you have to do everything yourself.”
“I’ll be okay,” I said. At that moment, I felt sure I would be. If Joanna was okay, so was I.
* * *
I barely remembered the rest of the day. Whatever Dr. Perelle prescribed to be added to my IV for nausea helped, and by that evening, I ate half the meal brought to me in my room. In the morning, a technician performed yet another echocardiogram, this one through the transparent bandage that now covered my belly. Then Liz stopped in to give me discharge instructions and my next appointment, just three days away. She told me how to do leg exercises while on bed rest and said I should eat six small meals a day, drink six to eight glasses of water, avoid very hot bath water, and lift nothing over ten pounds.
The Dream Daughter Page 13