The Night Olivia Fell

by Christina McDonald

  Inside, the sudden quiet was unsettling. I rushed to the elevator, feeling as if something terrible was waiting.

  Sarah was brushing Olivia’s hair when I entered the room, long, languid strokes. In that moment, I loved my sister more than ever just because of how much she loved my daughter.

  “How is she?” I dropped my purse in the chair next to the door.

  “The baby’s fine,” Sarah said. “She’s sleeping, actually. Dr. Maddox just finished the ultrasound.”

  I groaned, disappointed. I’d tried to make it to the hospital in time, but the court proceedings had taken longer than expected. Tyler’s parents were fighting tooth and nail for their son. I understood. But I would fight back just as hard for my daughter. For justice.

  The police had charged Tyler with assault causing bodily harm, a charge that would change to voluntary manslaughter when Olivia died. It wasn’t a slam-dunk case, by any means—proving that he’d intended to kill her when he punched her and that the punch rather than the fall rendered Olivia brain-dead would be difficult. But his crime of passion meant a pregnant teenager was never coming back. He hadn’t even tried to help her. Instead, he’d rushed in a blind panic back to the Stokeses’ barbecue and pretended he’d been there all along.

  He would be punished.

  “Miss Knight?” A knock sounded at the door to Olivia’s room, and I looked up.

  “I thought I’d find you here,” Detective Samson said, smiling. Her expression wasn’t warm exactly, but at least the blank slate was gone. I guessed everybody had their own way of coping with the ugliness in the world.

  “Detective Samson,” I said, rising and shaking her hand. “Has something happened?”

  “We’ve pressed charges against Kendall Montgomery for obstruction of justice. We got access to her phone and found texts she’d sent to Tyler. She was blackmailing him. She suspected he’d hurt Olivia, so she threatened to tell the police if he said anything about her being there that night. They were each other’s alibi. And each other’s downfall.”

  I was glad. Kendall bore some responsibility for what had happened. We would have known the truth sooner if she’d only told us about being with Tyler that night. She’d thought she could use the situation to frame her dad. I couldn’t fathom how much hatred she must hold in her heart for him. In the end, it turned out she was just like him: selfish and manipulative to the core.

  “And Gavin?” I asked.

  After the media had caught wind of Tyler’s arrest and the truth started to emerge, whispers began to swirl that Olivia was Gavin Montgomery’s daughter. Once word leaked that he’d bribed the Portage Point police chief to bury Olivia’s case, those whispers turned to a roar. He lost spectacularly in the election, and shortly afterward his wife had filed for divorce.

  Samson nodded. “We’re charging him with bribery of a public official. The Portage Point chief flipped on him right away. Montgomery could get a year or more in prison, but he’ll probably get a lot less. It’s a first offense, and he’s cooperating with the investigation. His political career, however, is almost certainly over.”

  I couldn’t even bring myself to be pleased about Gavin’s disgrace. He was to blame for a lot of things, but in the end, not for what happened to my daughter. He wasn’t exactly the bad guy I’d thought he was.

  The FBI was now investigating the Portage Point police chief. They’d found out he’d taken bribes and improperly accepted gifts from numerous politicians and high-profile businessmen. He was facing charges of extortion, falsifying reports, and obstruction of justice, to name a few.

  “What about McNally?” I asked.

  Samson rolled her eyes, a complete break from her usual professionalism.

  “He took the easy option the chief gave him and basically ignored Olivia’s case, didn’t ask any questions. I know it’s no excuse, but he’s going through a divorce right now, and I think he’s burned out. He won’t get any big cases for a while, but it doesn’t look like he was actively malicious.”

  “Thank you,” I said to Samson. “I mean it. I appreciate you working so hard on this.”

  “I’m glad we found the truth.”

  She turned to go, but I called after her. “Samson?”

  She stopped in the doorway, waiting.

  “Did you put that note through my door?”

  “What note?” she said. Her face returned to that emotionless mask, but I saw a flicker of a smile twitch at the corner of her mouth before she pulled the door shut behind her.

  I turned to Olivia and stroked her hair, full of gratitude. After a moment Sarah said what had been in the room all along: “Olivia isn’t doing very well.”

  “I know.” I sighed and grasped Olivia’s hand tightly in mine. “Dr. Maddox called me.”

  I looked at my daughter. She’d changed so much in the past few months. She was pale, her skin thin, almost translucent, wrinkled as if she’d been sat in water for too long.

  Olivia still had no corneal reflex and didn’t respond to painful stimuli. She didn’t smile, didn’t grimace, didn’t twitch. Even though her hand was still warm in my grasp, her chest rising and falling in time with the hissing of the oxygen machine, I could accept now that she wasn’t coming back.

  In the past few weeks, Olivia had been plagued by kidney infections caused by the catheter and recurrent bouts of pneumonia. The tube feeding her intestines to keep the baby growing had also become infected a number of times, leading to fears of septicemia. Dr. Maddox was now giving her ultrasounds daily to make sure the baby continued to grow.

  Tears leaked from my eyes. I watched as one splashed against Olivia’s pillow. Sarah put her arms around me. I leaned my head on her shoulder and sobbed as she held me.

  Even in the midst of my pain, I was grateful for one thing: I’d learned to take comfort from my sister. Grief, it turned out, was easier to bear when you had somebody to share the burden with. Knowing that I wasn’t alone, that there was somebody to throw me a line if I needed it, was a huge comfort. It reminded me there was life and a normal world I would one day be able to return to.

  “Hello, ladies,” Dr. Maddox called as she bustled into the room.

  Sarah and I pulled apart, eyes wet, as Dr. Maddox pressed her stethoscope gently to Olivia’s chest, then to the bump at her stomach. After a few minutes, she turned to me. She looked exhausted, blue half-moons standing starkly beneath her eyes. She’d worked tirelessly to keep both Olivia and the baby healthy throughout more than four months on life support, the longest on record. I trusted her implicitly, but I was terrified of what she was about to say.

  “It’s time, Abi.”

  43

  * * *

  ABI

  february

  I heard Sarah’s sharp intake of breath.

  “Is the baby okay?” I asked.

  Dr. Maddox hesitated. “She isn’t thriving. She hasn’t grown much the last few days. Olivia has pneumonia again, and her kidneys are shutting down. Also, her blood pressure is dipping very, very low, so she isn’t getting enough blood to the baby.”

  She sighed and flipped the stethoscope over her head. It settled like a black snake around her neck. She fixed me with a solemn look as an array of emotions flickered across her face: resignation, pity, sorrow.

  “We need to deliver the baby, now.”

  I exhaled hard, blowing air out of my mouth through the pursed circle of my lips. “It’s too early,” I argued weakly.

  “She’s over thirty-two weeks now. It’s a better outcome than we’d hoped. We can be optimistic about this. And now, with Olivia having so many problems, the baby’s safer outside Olivia’s body than inside.”

  Suddenly there wasn’t enough air in the room, my lungs sucking through narrow straws.

  I’d known all along that when the baby was born, Olivia would die. But somehow that knowledge didn’t make this moment easier.

  “I’ve given Olivia another round of steroids for the baby’s lungs and I’ve called ahead
to make sure the OR is ready for a cesarean,” Dr. Maddox said. “We were just waiting for you to get here.”

  I looked out the window and chewed my lips. A swirl of leaves spun dizzyingly past the window. The trees along the edge of the parking lot bent submissively under the onslaught of wind, and rain galloped down the windows, thrashing against the roof.

  I hadn’t been able to keep my mother from leaving me, or my daughter, but I could hold the family I did have together. The baby had to come first now.

  “Okay.” If Olivia had taught me anything, it was that I had to let go of control. I had to release my fears of the past in order to face the future. Sometimes the rest of your life arrived by simply saying good-bye.

  “Let’s do this.”

  × × ×

  Derek rushed into Olivia’s room as Dr. Maddox was handing me sterile blue scrubs and a cap. His hair was standing on end, his blue eyes wide and panicked.

  “Derek!” I hugged him briefly, and he started to cry. “It’s okay. You made it in time.”

  He accepted the scrubs and cap Dr. Maddox handed him and pulled them on over his clothes. I sent Anthony a text letting him know what was happening. He was getting his mom settled into her new home at an Alzheimer’s care facility today, but I knew he’d be here as soon as he could.

  Sarah gently kissed Olivia’s cheek, then gave me a quick, hard hug good-bye, blinking fiercely. Only Derek and I were allowed in the OR. It wasn’t strictly allowed, but I’d fought hard for it. I wasn’t there when Olivia found out she was pregnant. I wasn’t there when Tyler pushed her off that bridge. The one person she should’ve been able to count on no matter what hadn’t been there when she needed me most.

  I wasn’t leaving her side now. I wanted it to be the last thing I showed her: that she could count on me not to abandon her. And Derek deserved to see his daughter being born.

  Derek and I followed Dr. Maddox through the double doors to the operating room. When we got there, the surgical team transferred Olivia onto the hospital bed, started an IV in her hand, and adjusted the ventilator and pulse oximeter. Two chairs were set at Olivia’s head, and Derek and I sat in them as a nurse pulled a wide screen above Olivia’s shoulders, blocking off the rest of her body.

  “Baby’s heart rate is dropping,” one of the nurses called.

  Will the baby be okay?

  “Get these scrubs on me,” Dr. Maddox barked. She held her arms out and one of the junior doctors pulled the blue scrubs on her, then a pair of gloves, and she disappeared behind the screen.

  A few seconds later the NICU team came, walking fast, three doctors in scrubs flocking to Olivia’s lower half.

  Please, baby, I pleaded silently. Please be okay.

  I pulled Olivia’s hand to my mouth and kissed my daughter’s limp fingers, struggling to catch my breath. Suddenly everything seemed to be moving in fast-forward.

  A monitor clanged, and Dr. Maddox cursed. Something splashed on the floor.

  “Oh, my God,” Derek whispered, his face pale as he stared at the ground.

  When I looked, a shiny ribbon of crimson liquid was splashing the floor. It sloshed across the papered feet of the surgeons, staining them red.

  I stared at that blood in horror, and I couldn’t help it, I stood up, gawking over the edge of the screen. My mind couldn’t seem to piece together what I was seeing.

  When my brain finally caught up, I saw that Olivia’s stomach was a bloody, gaping hole, held open by silver clamps. Blood was everywhere: smeared across the doctors’ face masks, soaked into the sheet draped across Olivia’s chest, dripping from the hospital bed onto the floor and squelching under the surgeons’ tennis shoes. Dr. Maddox’s arms were cut off at the elbow, and it took me a minute to understand they were buried in the cavity of my daughter’s belly.

  And then she pulled out the tiny body of a limp, blue baby girl covered in blood. Something thick and white and veiny was wrapped around her neck.

  A nurse from the NICU team grabbed the baby as Dr. Maddox untangled and cut the cord. The nurse rushed the baby to the warmer, rubbing her briskly with a white towel. She murmured unintelligible words, a lullaby, in the baby’s ear.

  The silence went on and on.

  Come on, baby, I pleaded silently. You have to live!

  Silence.

  The only sounds were Derek sobbing, the thud of my heart pulsing in my ears, the occasional clang of metal on metal, the squelch of feet on blood.

  And then, like a miracle, from the corner of the room came the thin, reedy cry of a baby.

  44

  * * *

  ABI

  february

  The heart’s electrical system can keep it beating for a short time, even after a person becomes brain-dead. It’s an amazing organ, the heart. In fact, it can even beat outside the body. But without a ventilator to keep blood and oxygen moving, the beating stops very quickly.

  The doctors were tying blood vessels, working to stop the blood, to sew her up. But I knew Olivia, my girl, wasn’t here anymore.

  “We have to let her go,” I murmured to Derek.

  He knuckled his eyes, swiped at the tears cutting his face. “I know,” he replied.

  He took a long, ragged breath and bent over Olivia’s still face. Then he did something that broke my heart. He covered my daughter’s face in dozens of tiny, butterfly-soft kisses.

  “Good-bye, my love,” he whispered.

  He stood then, his face a map of pain, one I could trace from the agony in his eyes to the torment pulling at his mouth.

  “I can’t be here when they turn it off,” he said. “I don’t want that to be my last memory of her.”

  A few seconds later, he was gone.

  In a way, he was right. I didn’t want this to be my last memory of Olivia either. I wanted to think of the sweet baby-powder smell of her pressed against my neck when she was a newborn. I wanted to think of her building sandcastles on the beach on a hot summer afternoon when she was a child, or smiling at me on Mother’s Day when she was ten and brought me a breakfast of runny eggs and burnt toast in bed. I wanted to think of her dancing that last day, her crimson scarf twirling around her neck, her face softened by her secret.

  I wanted to think of her happy and alive.

  But I wouldn’t leave now.

  I stood up again so I could see Dr. Maddox.

  “We have to let her go,” I said.

  Dr. Maddox stared at me, her eyes pale-blue orbs above her white face mask. Finally she nodded and murmured something to one of the other surgeons.

  A few minutes later a plump, creamy-faced nurse pushed a mobile incubator to me, Olivia’s baby inside. I peered in at her from my seat next to Olivia’s head. She was tiny but perfectly formed. A nasal cannula was fixed under her nose, a heart monitor attached to her chest, and two more orbs stuck to either side of her stomach.

  She was beautiful: tiny and pink, with her little face all scrunched up like a fist. Her movements were slow, as if she were swimming in gel. Her perfectly rounded head was soft, with fine wisps of blond hair. Her tiny fists were curved under her chin, her petal-thin eyelids closed; her chest moved up and down with each breath.

  Looking at her, I felt as if I were falling headlong in love. All the love and hope and optimism I’d tried to tamp down my whole life came flooding out. I loved her, this tiny magic bean. She’d floated at the center of everything, growing into something completely unexpected: hope for the future.

  “Zoe.” I reached for Olivia’s daughter, brushed my fingertip across her rose-petal cheek. It was Greek for “life.” “Her name’s Zoe.”

  “It’s perfect,” Dr. Maddox said. Her eyes behind her glasses were puffy and red. She cleared her throat and pulled her mask down, stripped her gloves off. “Zoe’s doing well, but we need to take her to the NICU.”

  “Can I have a minute with her first?”

  Dr. Maddox glanced at Olivia and hesitated.

  “Please. I need to . . .”

 
Dr. Maddox held my eye for a long moment. Unspoken words passed between us. I needed to say good-bye, and to do that I needed Zoe to say good-bye.

  “Okay,” she said finally. “But only for a minute.”

  The doctors detached the drape from Olivia’s neck. They tossed towels onto the floor to soak up the blood. Then the room emptied, and it was just Dr. Maddox and Zoe and me.

  I looked around, feeling abruptly winded.

  “Here,” Dr. Maddox said. She carefully extricated Zoe from the incubator’s tubes, nudging the white blanket up around her small head. Zoe woke briefly, her eyes flicking to see what had roused her. She yawned hugely, and the clear tube taped to the side of her face moved as her tiny mouth searched for something to suck. Dr. Maddox gently placed her tiny body in my arms. I brushed my lips across her velvety cheek, breathing her in.

  I held Zoe, feeling the warmth of her body curling into mine. She was so small, barely the weight of a breath.

  Dr. Maddox looked at me and I nodded. She bent and unplugged Olivia’s ventilator from the wall.

  Olivia’s heart didn’t stop right away. Her strong, beautiful heart, a heart that had loved me so well, that had struggled to stay beating to see her daughter alive, it kept beating; but it slowed.

  I knew we were running out of time.

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” Dr. Maddox said. She turned and left very quickly.

  Before I knew it, I was alone with them: Olivia and my granddaughter.

  “Olivia,” I whispered, wishing more than anything in the world that she could hear me. “Your daughter’s here.”

  I carefully moved the tubes and lines off Olivia’s body and clasped Zoe tight as I stood and laid the baby on her chest.

  I slid onto the bed next to Olivia, positioned her in my arms so I could hold her and prop Zoe against her. I clasped Olivia to me, feeling the sharp ridges of her shoulders beneath the hospital gown, the prominent bones of her rib cage.