She's No Angel

by Janine A. Morris

  She found a few sites, including the Big Brother and Big Sister programs, and she was looking for which one worked primarily with ill-advised young girls. For the first time in her life she felt passionate about something that didn’t deal with herself. The more Charlene thought about it, the more she really was excited about it. She even hoped that she could somehow make it a new career. She knew that she could make a difference by sharing with these girls her stories of being loved and left, and of mistaking sexual attention for anything more than what it is. She wanted them to know that what they needed to do was learn how to love themselves—that that was the key to being a self-confident young lady and a well-rounded adult. It’s easy for females to rely on males to solidify their worth, Charlene thought, but if we left it solely to them we would never know how great we are. Charlene only wished that when she was younger she had known what she knew now.

  She was printing out some information when she felt this sudden pain in her side. She took a deep breath and tried to wait out the pain. After a few inhales and exhales, she still felt the pain. She continued to breathe in and out heavily until the pain subsided. She went ahead and started grabbing some of the documents off the printer to make sure it was printing the right stuff and correctly. After she reached over to get the second sheet, she felt the pain again. This time it was close to excruciating and she shrieked with pain. She remained still until the pain passed, and then as soon as the relief set in she burst out in tears. She instantly panicked and called Isaac. The phone rang five times and then went to voice mail. Charlene quickly hung up and called Paige.

  “What’s wrong?” Paige asked as soon as she heard her sister sobbing on the phone.

  “I don’t know. I am having pains and they hurt really badly,” she said.

  “Where?”

  “On my side.”

  “The side of your stomach?”

  “Yes, and it’s really sharp.”

  “Maybe it’s contractions, I’ll be right over.”

  “Hurry,” Charlene said through her tears.

  Charlene patiently waited for her sister to arrive, as well as another pain. She lay flat on her back holding her stomach with both of her hands, praying that she wouldn’t feel another one. For another ten minutes, she was pain free and almost relaxed when she felt another one. This one wasn’t as severe but enough to make her hold her breath for a second. When the pain let up, more tears came down. She was so afraid and worried about the pains and where they were coming from. Last checkup she had, all was going well with the pregnancy, and her bed rest wasn’t to begin for a few days so she didn’t quite understand what she had done wrong. Her scheduled Cesarean was over two months away, and these pains represented warning signs to her. She tried to think of all the things she’d eaten, and if she had overworked herself at all that day. All she’d had to eat was some Polly-O cheese strips, and she had been cleaning up before she started research on the computer, but nothing strenuous that she could recall to trigger the pain she was feeling.

  Paige arrived soon after and immediately grabbed some of Charlene’s things to get ready to head to the emergency room. Once she had Charlene ready to go, they started to walk out together. Paige was holding Charlene’s arm in case another pain started and overwhelmed her. They hadn’t said too much to each other, and Paige seemed as worried as Charlene was. They both knew that this could be a bad situation, so they didn’t want to say too much about it. They remained fairly silent until they got in the car.

  “You’re feeling OK?” Paige asked.

  “Scared, but a little better ... I haven’t had any pains since you came.”

  “That’s good, then. What did Isaac say?”

  “I called him twice, I can’t get him, I think he’s still stuck in a meeting for work.”

  “We will keep trying him. He’ll probably be pissed off if we don’t try hard enough to get him. Leave him a message and tell him we are going to Lawrence Hospital.”

  Charlene reached in the backseat to get her phone out of her purse, and suddenly let out a loud groan as she felt another sharp pain in her side. She immediately sat forward and tried to brace herself through it. Paige looked at her frantically and with sympathy. After a few seconds, Charlene released her clenched hands from the seat and started breathing heavily. Her eyes began to well up with tears again.

  “They’re probably contractions, Leen,” Paige said in a low tone.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  They left the obvious unsaid: that if they were contractions, she would be having the baby prematurely. Neither of them wanted to discuss the possibility of losing the baby, or of it being too undeveloped to make it outside of Charlene.

  Paige handed Charlene her phone and reminded her to call Isaac. Charlene took the phone and dialed his number. As much as Charlene was yearning to speak to Isaac she didn’t want to talk with him about how this could mean losing the baby. She didn’t want to hear the fear in his voice, or put the thought in his head that they may not have this child. She prayed that she would leave the hospital today with some medicine or information, and everything would be fine. In the back of Charlene’s mind she also didn’t want this to be a reminder of why she was having such a fragile pregnancy to begin with. She was hoping that this was just a scare and that it would all be over with soon. Despite all her fears, she wanted Isaac by her side more than anything right now. She dialed the number and waited for his voice mail to leave a message.

  “Hey, Charlene,” he said when he answered the phone, obviously having looked at his caller ID.

  “Isaac?” she asked, surprised he’d answered.

  “Yeah,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  Isaac could hear it in her voice.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, sounding alarmed.

  “I am having some pains and I’m on my way to Lawrence Hospital with Paige.”

  “Are you OK?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure,” she replied, trying to sound optimistic.

  “I’m leaving now, I’ll meet you there.”

  “OK, we will probably be there in a few minutes.”

  Charlene hung up the phone and sat quietly beside Paige. A million thoughts ran through her mind. She was worried, afraid and optimistic all at the same time. She kept telling herself she hadn’t come this far to lose the baby. She loved this little person inside of her, and it would crush her and Isaac both.

  “What did Isaac say?” Paige asked, breaking Charlene’s train of thought.

  “He is going to meet us there,” she responded.

  “Good, he needs to be there, Charlene. Regardless of its big or small, he should be there.”

  “I know,” Charlene mumbled back, in no mood to talk.

  Then, suddenly, the sharp pain returned. This time it caused Charlene to lift out of her seat in search for a comfortable position to endure it. With her upper body suspended halfway out of the seat, Charlene breathed her way through it. Just when she thought that the pain was going to subside, it started back. She once again started breathing as heavily as she could and clutched the seat. She continued to do this for a few minutes until she realized there was going to be no relief this time. Paige kept looking over at her, rubbing her leg as she drove as fast as she could.

  They eventually reached the hospital. Paige jumped up and went around to Charlene’s side of the car. Charlene was still clenched up in pain as Paige helped her out. They managed to make their way through the hospital doors and up to the nurse’s station.

  “She is pregnant, and it looks like she is in labor very early,” Paige said in a crackly voice.

  It must have finally hit Paige, all the emotions and fear she had felt for her sister, because she began to cry. She wished she could remain calm and optimistic for Charlene, but she lost it.

  The nurse, seeing the look of pain on Charlene’s face and Paige’s emotion, picked up on the sense of urgency and hopped out of her seat to assist
Charlene into a wheelchair. Then she wheeled Charlene down the hallway into a Labor and Delivery room and placed her next to the table. Charlene tried to ask questions along the way, but she could barely respond. She’d had no relief from the pain since it had started in the car. She couldn’t even cry, she couldn’t release that energy because she needed it all to bear the pain. Paige answered most of the questions about the timing of the pains, and Charlene tried to describe what it was like.

  A few moments later, another nurse arrived and with the help of both nurses, Charlene was up on the delivery table with a fetal monitor attached to her. They were taking vitals and all other information when the first nurse said to the other nurse, “She is bleeding some.”

  “Where?”

  “Her panties have blood in them.”

  Charlene looked up to see what the second nurse’s expression conveyed but it was too late, she had run out to get a doctor. Charlene then glanced at Paige—she was standing in the corner with her hand over her mouth, sobbing. Everything had gone so bad, so quickly that she had completely lost all her composure. Charlene started crying as well, and she reached out her hand to her sister. Paige hurried over and held it.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Paige said.

  Both of their faces drenched from tears, it was obvious that neither one of them thought this was going to turn out okay, but it was the right thing to say. Paige rubbed Charlene’s hand as they held on as tightly as they could.

  Soon the doctor walked in. He immediately checked the fetal monitor. He then sat down at the foot of the bed, put on his gloves, lifted the cloth over her waist and began to examine her.

  He told the nurse to connect an IV, they didn’t have much time.

  “You are fully dilated, you are about to have this baby.”

  “I’m supposed to have a Cesarean,” Charlene managed to get out.

  “Miss, this baby is heading out, its head is too low to wait. If I prep you for a C-section by the time I go in there to get it, the baby will already have come out and there would be nothing to get,” the doctor said.

  “Can you call my doctor, Dr. Ginyard?” Charlene asked.

  “You do not understand, there is no time for all of that.”

  As soon as he made that point, Charlene shrieked with pain from another sharp contraction.

  The doctor and nurses then started all that other medical preparation that they do. Paige stood over Charlene, looking like a mess. Her eyes were bloodshot, and her nose and eyes were running. Charlene was trying to see what was going on around her, and yet remain as calm as she could to endure the pain. There was so much noise and chaos, she could barely comprehend any one thing.

  “I’m breaking your water,” the doctor informed Charlene.

  Charlene could feel the large gush of moisture release from her body.

  Then the doctor told to her push. Charlene hadn’t taken any Lamaze classes, but she had seen childbirth portrayed enough on television to know what she was supposed to do. She began to push, and the pain was so overbearing, she let out a loud yell and stopped. The doctor began saying something to a nurse, and she came and injected something into the IV. The machine attached to Charlene was beeping and blinking, and the doctor and nurses kept watching it. Along with the machines in the room, nobody seemed to be calm. Everyone—from the nurses, to the doctor and Paige—looked frantic and focused on what was going on. Poor Charlene was the only one oblivious to what everyone else saw, but if it looked down there anything like it felt to her she could understand the panic.

  “Doctor, please bring my baby out alive,” she said with tears streaming down her face.

  The doctor and the nurses looked back at her with looks of sympathy, none of them responding right away.

  “OK, I’m going to need you to push for me.”

  Charlene tried to push once again for as long as she could before the pain forced her to release.

  “She is hemorrhaging, we have to try something else,” the doctor said to a nurse as he gestured for her to get something.

  Charlene could still hear the machines beeping and could see one of the nurse’s sad facial expressions. Charlene held out her hand again, and Paige walked over and held it tight. They both cried and held hands while the doctors and nurses worked around them. After a moment went by, Charlene was completely calm and oblivious to her surroundings. She had her sister’s hand in hers, and she could feel the love and support right in her fingertips, telling her that it was going to be all right.

  Chapter 42

  Isaac walked in, and the first person he saw in the waiting room was Jasmine. Paige had called her when she was sent out of the room for a few moments. He went up to the nurse behind the table and asked for Charlene Tanner.

  After a few moments of pacing, a doctor walked out and greeted him.

  “Are you the father?” the doctor asked.

  “Yes, I am,” Isaac answered.

  “Come with me.”

  The doctor walked Isaac down a long hallway. The farther they got, the more Isaac could hear baby cries and noises. He felt a flutter in his stomach from the excitement and the fear that he was feeling. The doctor passed a few rooms with families and nursing mothers in them, and Isaac peeked in each one looking for a sign of Charlene or their baby.

  Finally the doctor stopped. Isaac looked to his left and there was a window looking into a room of babies.

  “It’s a girl,” the doctor said, pointing to one of them.

  Isaac looked in and saw the little bin, with the tiny body wrapped in a pink blanket with the last name Tanner on it. He immediately began to tear up. He tried to wipe his tears, but the emotion was taking over.

  “She is premature, but she is breathing on her own and it looks like she will be just fine.”

  “That is so great, thank you, doctor,” Isaac said, trying to gain his composure.

  “You can hold her very shortly.”

  Isaac couldn’t break his stare from the little lady inside the plastic bin. She was gorgeous.

  Just as he turned to ask to see Charlene, he saw Paige walking up the hall with the phone to her ear.

  “Can I see Charlene?” he asked.

  The doctor gave him a look, one that Isaac wasn’t prepared to see or understand.

  “What?” Isaac asked.

  As he saw Paige getting closer, from the look on her face he could tell that the doctor’s expression was self-explanatory.

  “Where is Charlene?” Isaac asked in a panicked tone.

  “I am so sorry, but she didn’t make it,” the doctor replied.

  Isaac jerked his head and neck back in disbelief about what he had heard. It was almost as if he was going to shake himself back to reality. He took a few steps backward to sit in the seat beside him. He put his face in his hands and shook his head several times as the doctor tried to explain.

  “Giving birth is strenuous on the body. Her uterus ruptured during labor, and she was hemorrhaging really badly and her pressure began to fall. We managed to save the baby, but we couldn’t control the bleeding. Despite all of our efforts, it wasn’t successful. I’m so sorry.”

  Just at that point, Paige reached the area where Isaac and the doctor were standing.

  “I was holding her hand, I felt her let go,” Paige said as she burst out in tears.

  Paige was completely hysterical. She looked like she had been through hell and back. Her eyes were bloodshot; her face was flustered and blotchy. She stood there with tears rolling down her face, sobbing uncontrollably. Isaac was numb, and at first didn’t react to the sight of Paige’s pain. After a few seconds of watching Paige, he stood up to hold her.

  The doctor took this as a sign to walk away. There was nothing more he could say at this point.

  The more Paige shook in his arms, the more he began to feel the pain in her heart and his own. Then his own numbness began to wear off, and the tears began to roll down his face. Charlene’s angelic face was all he could see. He mumbled som
e things to himself as his tears got bigger and his shakes heavier.

  “Why? Why?” he mumbled.

  He was speaking to himself or God.

  He was saying a lot through his tears, some that couldn’t be understood. He was in pain. The joy from the birth of his child was completely smothered by the pain from the death of his fiancée. First his father, now Charlene. Isaac felt like his world was crashing down right before his eyes.

  Paige and Isaac stood there, just holding on tightly to each other, trying to squeeze out the pain. A few people walked by them, and one even stopped to look through the window at the babies not too many steps away. Still, they didn’t move. Isaac was hoping that it wasn’t real, that the doctor was going to come back and say something different. The longer he stood there, the more it set in. This was one time Isaac didn’t want to hear the truth.

  Chapter 43

  Four months had gone by, and Isaac was carrying his daughter, Charese Tanner Milton, into her grandmother’s house. It was unusually warm for a fall night and Isaac thought it would be a great chance to make good on the visit he had promised Mrs. Tanner for two weeks already. The door opened and Ann Tanner was standing on the other side with a big smile on her face. She stepped out of the way as Isaac eased by with Charese in his arms. Once he was inside, he turned back to give Mrs. Tanner a kiss on the cheek.

  “Hi, Isaac,” she said as she leaned her cheek outward to receive his kiss.

  As Isaac walked toward the living room he unraveled the blanket that little Charese was covered in. When he reached the couch, he placed the blanket on an arm and pulled off Charese’s little baby beanie hat. By that time Mrs. Tanner was standing beside him with her arms extended to take Charese off his hands. Isaac carefully placed the baby in her arms. As soon as Charese was pressed close against Mrs. Tanner’s chest, just like most grandmothers, she lit up with joy.