Unburying Hope

by Mary Wallace

  The nurse’s face was kind and she motioned to the door. “You’re here for your daughter?”

  “She had an accident,” Celeste said.

  The locked door buzzed open and Celeste walked through. The nurse gently took her arm and led her in to a small cubicle behind the first curtain where Celeste found Rosalinda on a bed, her small body taking up only a little bit of the twin mattress.

  A tall, dark haired woman stood up from a chair, extended her hand and introduced herself as LeAnn Donahoe, the school nurse.

  Rosalinda had tears in her fazed eyes and she yelped with pain, reaching for Celeste, pulling her into a fragile hug.

  “How are you,” Celeste asked, worriedly pushing Rosalinda’s hair off her tear-stained face with a feathery touch.

  “They’re going to put her into the MRI in a few minutes.” Mrs. Donahoe said, “and they need family to approve treatment. We’ve got Rosalinda’s emergency form from school but it’s always better to have mom or dad or grandparents in case they have to do any surgery or keep her overnight, which they are already saying they need to do.”

  “Surgery?” Celeste felt Rosalinda grip her waist.

  “I wanna go home,” her little voice was soft with fear.

  “I know you do,” Celeste said, “but we need to make sure you’re okay, first.” She lay her arm carefully over Rosalinda’s waist to comfort her.

  “What kind of surgery?” Celeste asked LeAnn.

  “If the MRI shows brain swelling,” LeAnn whispered intently, “they sometimes lift out part of the skull to let it heal itself.”

  “But she’s awake.” Celeste straightened up, feeling a growing mix of terror and helplessness that Eddie was not around.

  “You’re right. I’m sure she’s fine. They’re just doing the MRI as a precaution.” Mrs. Donahoe sat down, looking away. “I shouldn’t have scared you. I watch too many hospital shows.”

  Rosalinda turned her head sideways and closed her eyes, tears clinging to her eyelashes. She opened her eyes and looked hazily at Celeste, who stopped and looked back in fear, Rosalinda was physically fading in front of her.

  “They gave her a little sedation,” Mrs. Donahoe said, “it makes the MRI easier for kids. They sometimes fall asleep in that machine, the clicking of the cameras will be soothing for Rosalinda, I hope.”

  “Mommy, mommy, mommy,” Rosalinda mumbled and Celeste felt something inside her move. It wasn’t physical, it wasn’t intellectual. It was primal. Some part of herself stood up to be counted, and she leaned forward, whispering into Rosalinda’s ear, “It’s me, honey, it’s going to be okay, you go to sleep now and I’ll be with you.”

  The little girl’s face relaxed and her mumbling grew louder and then faded, “Momma, momma, Celeste,” until she gave herself over to the chemical sleep that was now coursing through her veins.

  Celeste looked up and realized that the orderly and the nurse, and even Mrs. Donahoe were all sure that the plaintive ‘mommy momma Celeste’ was all one call but Celeste knew in her heart that it wasn’t. Rosalinda, half asleep, spoke out to her dead mother, and then to her.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  “We ask all of our families to consider donating blood. Especially since we’re on an island and trucking blood in on short notice isn’t possible.”

  Celeste craned her neck to find the source of the voice. She was surprised to see an elderly man in a striped apron staring intently at her, handing her a clipboard with an authorization form.

  “Me?” she said. She’d given blood at the office a few months back. It was a big deal to roll up your sleeve to be punctured by the very sharp needle with its tubing connecting you to an enlarging collection bag. Frank talked her into it. He lay back and cracked jokes, saying he should have brought his almond scrub mask or hired a pedicurist to loofah his feet while he sat for the blood draw.

  She didn’t know why, but the blood technician always felt the need to tell her that she’d have regular draws when she got pregnant, so donating was good practice. She’d said a few times, ‘um, over my dead body am I having kids’, but the techs never took her seriously. Apparently her youth implied an obligation to continue the species.

  The old man pushed a brochure towards her. “You go up to the lab by the pharmacy. They’ll get you taken care of, with a guarantee that you won’t wait more than half an hour to start.”

  “I don’t think so,” she shook her head. “I’m going to be too worried to leave her side,” she reached for Rosalinda’s warm hand and clasped it defensively. Rosalinda’s stitches were in, they were keeping her overnight as a precaution. The MRI had shown very little inflammation.

  “Okay, but it might be your family member who needs blood someday and you’ll wish you’d been generous.”

  “I’m not being selfish. I’m here to take care of her.”

  His eyes flashed with anger. “That’s what they all say, but, boy, when you need the blood, you suddenly go crazy when the hospital doesn’t have your type.”

  “What are you talking about,” Celeste rose in anger, aware that Rosalinda was trying to open her eyes.

  A nurse pulled back the hanging curtain and saw the look on Celeste’s face. She shooed the old man away, but not before Celeste spat out, “How dare you!” and he responded with, “Selfish!”

  The nurse looked at the bag of clear liquid hanging on the IV pole and she punched a few buttons on the machine that monitored Rosalinda’s vital signs. “It’s a bad time, I know, and he’s got no social skills, but his wife died and after her car accident he’s convinced we didn’t have enough of her blood type available.”

  Celeste breathed out her anger. “Did you run out?” She could still feel the old man’s crepe hands shoving the pamphlet at her and she wondered if maybe he’d been at his wits’ ends, as she felt now.

  “Well, like our little girl here, she had the rarest blood, AB+. And we were low. But the sad truth is she bled out within minutes of being thrown through the windshield, she didn’t have her seatbelt on, and she was barely alive when she got here. She lost her pulse within minutes of the first blood we gave her.”

  Celeste, in her exhaustion, blurted out, ‘I’ve got that blood type too!’ with such surprise and strength that the nurse stopped and looked at her quizzically.

  “Well, of course you do, honey,” the nurse said, and she repositioned Rosalinda on her pillow, gently brushing Rosalinda’s bangs off her face to look at the huge goose-egg bump on her temple.

  “The stitches are strong, her hair will grow back,” she said, feathering a hair or two back into the bobby pin that pulled Rosalinda’s hair away from the shaved area and the stitches. “Giving blood should definitely be your priority,” she said, looking at her watch. “I’m just about to give her a light pain killer so she’ll sleep through the night and not twist and touch the stitches. “Why don’t you go to the lab?”

  Celeste felt a chill in her lungs. Leaving Rosalinda, laying down to bleed into a tube alone in the dark felt undoable.

  Then there was always the terrible chance that a blood draw would cue up a DNA mismatch. What if she stood up from the blood draw and returned to a sleeping Rosalinda, only to be arrested for impersonating a relative? Could they do that?

  Her mind raced. Right now, in the cool dark with the backlit machines and Rosalinda’s breathing slowing down from its frantic rattle to a gentle rowing sound, Celeste realized a terrible truth. Beautiful in its perfect horror.

  Eddie hadn’t responded to her calls and texts.

  She was all Rosalinda had.

  Rosalinda didn’t know that, though, and Celeste had kept up the chatter that Eddie was on the other side of the island, offshore doing some oceanographic diving, finding places to take out a boat of tourists.

  So far, everyone nodded and stayed present to Rosalinda’s immediate needs. First they had staunched the bleeding, then sedated her for stitches, then shaved part of her head and sewed together the ripped flesh after cleaning play
ground pebbles out of the sinewy flesh under her skin.

  Celeste’s heart ached as she thought about how lonely Rosalinda must have felt when the treatments happened. She stroked Rosalinda’s hand as the little girl went into a medicated deep sleep, her brown face relaxing from its frozen fear, her mouth opening into a sweet half smile, her little teeth barely flashing.

  “Come on, Missy,” the nurse cajoled her. Celeste gasped, remembering the endearment Frank called her. She missed him fiercely.

  “Get yourself up to that blood bank, your little girl needs you there more than here.”

  Celeste felt her muscles freeze as if in rigor mortis. “I don’t think I can,” she bleated.

  “None of that, now, it’s bravery time. Your daughter needs you. She really does. If she has brain inflammation and we have to go back in and do a couple surgeries, we might really need your donation. If it will make you feel better, I’ll sit here with her until you get back.”

  “I just can’t,” Celeste said. “I faint when I see blood.”

  “No you don’t, you’re a very strong mother. When she was afraid and crying, you were great. You stared right into her eyes and got her to breathe better. That hyperventilating can cause problems in little kids. I mean, it’s understandable, but it makes it harder for us when kids are out of control. She’s the first little one in a while that we didn’t have to straightjacket in the MRI. You can be very proud of yourself. That was all your doing.”

  Celeste looked over at Rosalinda, sleeping so soundly that she didn’t move or twitch when Celeste let go of her fingers.

  “She’s really out for at least 6 to 8 hours. Go. Now.”

  Celeste stood up slowly, her own head pounded. “I’ve never done it alone.” That was not true of so many moments in her life, she suddenly realized. She’d trusted her own solitary momentum on an almost daily basis since she was small.

  “Well, it’s dark and lovely. They play music quietly at night; it’s like a planetarium show if you ask them to turn on the ceiling projector. You can lay in the dark and watch constellations move across the ceiling. It’ll be over in the blink of an eye and you’ll be back down here with your little girl.”

  “Okay,” Celeste forced the affirmative thought up her throat, “I’ll go.” She stumbled a bit but righted herself by leaning on the steel bars at the end of Rosalinda’s mattress. “I have a question. Can she use the rare blood donated by strangers? I mean people who aren’t related to her? Or does it only work if it comes from blood relatives?” She averted her eyes as she pushed off the bed frame, steering herself out of the little hospital room that had eclipsed her life in the last few hours.

  “Oh, silly! Blood from anyone will do. Now get along! I’ll rustle up a blanket and pillow so you can rest better when you come back.”

  The hallways were cool with a sterile smell, lit by all-seeing fluorescent lights. She lowered her head and said a silent prayer to her own mother not to be caught taking care of a daughter that she could not legally claim as her own.

  She found her way to the empty blood lab, let the technician settle her into a chaise lounge. She put her feet up and covered them with the light quilt he gave her, turning her head away so she didn’t have to see the needle going in. She couldn’t ask any of the jumbled questions gumming up her brain, about platelets and blood types, connectivity and DNA and family similarities. She couldn’t get the dull thud of worrying about Eddie out of her own temples.

  With a silent flip of a switch, the tech turned on a golden blue light that danced and dissipated on the ceiling. Thousands of little filament lights masqueraded as stars, cosmic confusion gathered as clouds every few minutes. It was an exquisite show and Celeste fought to keep her eyes open, wondering if her mother could intercede for her through the electricity flashing over her head. Could she? Could she take a little scalpel and cut and paste Celeste’s DNA so that it would be close to Rosalinda’s? She smiled a tiny smile at the thought, and felt her mother’s arm around her shoulders like when she was little. She looked at a momentary shock of pain at her elbow. The needle lay straight but she had crooked her arm, pulling at it.

  She thought of Frank and knew that he would want to be there with her too, staring up at the almost hallucinogenic blue cosmic clouds and golden points of light morphing above her head. A few deep breaths and she herself fell asleep, deep breaths replacing her quickened inhalations. The stars took her, she felt, letting her black out into her own exhausted darkness.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Her phone vibrated on her lap and a shrill bell rang, waking her up.

  The blood draw was over and the technician was sitting off to one side of her lounge chair, reading a magazine under a pinpoint light.

  She sat up and pushed the button to answer, but it wasn’t a phone call coming in.

  It was Skype.

  “Frank,” she said, shock woke her up. “It’s 4 a.m., what are you doing?”

  “Half the day is gone here,” he said. He stumbled a bit, “Celeste, I went to Hamtramck. The papers. They were there, I got them. In an envelope, the front door mat, I’m so sorry,” his voice cracked.

  “Thank you so much,” she responded. “That will help us.”

  “Celeste, I’m so sorry,” he repeated.

  “What is it?” she asked. She held the phone up so she could look straight at him. “What are you sorry about?”

  “Eddie’s mom had already passed away.”

  Celeste’s heart sank. “You got the papers, but she’s dead?”

  “I got to her place. There were a couple of day’s worth of newspapers piled up, like no one had picked them up after morning delivery. I knocked but no one answered. When I looked down, I saw the envelope sticking out from under her doormat. So I opened it.”

  Celeste felt an incredible sorrow welling up.

  “She’d put the papers in it, with a house key, so I let myself in. She’d left notes all over the house,” he raised a small sheaf of yellow pad pages, all hand written notes. “She really must have been adorable, Celeste, you should read these things. I’ll Fed Ex them to you with the custody papers. She wrote a lot of little stories about how Eddie used to watch out for her when he was little. They are love notes to Eddie and Rosalinda, and even to you. You said you never met her?”

  “No,” Celeste answered. “She wrote to me?”

  “Maybe Eddie told her about you, then. Anyway, they are the kindest writings I’ve ever read. And you never told me that you are going to be Rosalinda’s mother!”

  “I’m not,” Celeste shook her head.

  “Oh yes, you are, Missy. The custody papers name Eddie and then you. She’s your kid if something happens to Eddie.”

  “That’s crazy. I saw a note she wrote with Rosalinda’s birth certificate asking me to make sure someone nice raises her. I think that’s how she put it.”

  “Well, the court documents say you’re the custody holder if something happens to her father. She must have seen so much death around your little girl that she wanted to make sure there were other options.”

  Celeste asked, “How do you know she died?” Maybe Frank was wrong, it just wouldn’t be fair to Rosalinda if her grandmother couldn’t send her birthday or holiday cards.

  “A neighbor came to the door, she thought I was Eddie. She told me that an ambulance had come a few mornings ago to take his mom to the hospital. She didn’t make it. She died in the ambulance. I’m so sorry.”

  Celeste felt her skin get clammy. Why was she here in this darkened room? Why was a constellation lit up on the ceiling? Nothing made sense, her brain was misfiring. “Frank, this is too much for me.”

  “Well, I’ll send all this to you before close of business tonight. I’m on a flight tomorrow, my parents are meeting me at the airport back home. Do you want me to fly out to you, instead?”

  “That’s not necessary,” she said, working back through how she got here. Rosalinda was in a room in the hospital. Eddie hadn’t texted her
back.

  She slipped off the chaise and stood up. “Frank, I’ve got to go. I’m so sorry, Rosalinda’s in the hospital, she fell off a climber in the school playground. She got a bunch of stitches in her head.”

  “Holy crap,” he whistled. “I should come!”

  “No, don’t. I’d love to have you come but go home first and I’ll get things settled here.”

  “Are you sure? I’m family, you know.” He put his face close to the screen and kissed it. “You’re my family, Celeste.”

  Her heart pounded. “I love you too, Frank. I’ll call you back as soon as I can.”

  She hung up the call and moved quickly out of the room, into the corridor, propelling herself back towards Rosalinda, whose beloved grandmother was now dead. How would she tell her?

  Chapter Forty-Five

  An imposing police officer in a navy blue uniform with brass buttons hulked outside Rosalinda’s hospital room door. Another officer stood down at the end of the darkened hallway, staring out the small windows on a pair of closed swinging doors.

  “ID?” The tall cop put out his hand when she tried to pass him into the doorway.

  “Why?” she challenged.

  “Don’t ask questions, just show me an ID.”

  Celeste pulled out her Michigan driver’s license.

  “Where’s your Hawaiian drivers license?” the cop huffed, his voice bitter.

  “I didn’t know I had to get one.”

  “Of course not, you tourists never know,” he sneered.

  “I’ve been here for weeks,” she protested.

  “About time to trudge back to the airport,” he said, making little walking legs with his two pointer fingers.

  “You’re not very welcoming.”

  “The hospitality office is back at your hotel.”

  “I’m not staying at a hotel. I live here,” she said, “in Makawao.”

  He stiffened, “You can pronounce it, yippee for you.”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” she stood her full height, still a half foot shorter than his bulk. Without thinking, she pulled her hand out of her purse where she’d put her drivers license and, her anger flaring more at being kept from Rosalinda than having to deal with this neanderthal, she took her own pointer fingers and walked them emphatically up his chest, her words biting from an inner well of confusion and fear, “Look, I am here to see my,” her words choked but she recovered quickly, “Why are you here, anyway? She’s a little girl.” She stepped back, unsure. “Maybe they moved Rosalinda?”