Perfectly Undone: A Novel

by Jamie Raintree

  I sigh and push my hair behind my ear. While Megan is still turned away from me, I take a moment to gather myself. I remind myself that when I accepted Megan as a patient, I vowed I would get her through this, whatever it took. I plan to keep that promise. I refuse to buckle under the pressure, so I’ll have to learn to improvise quickly.

  Megan looks over her shoulder at me, fear written all over her face. With my gloveless hand, I take hers.

  “Feel like taking a relaxing bath?” I ask her. I’ve never overseen a home birth, let alone a water birth, but the nurse-midwives at the hospital have performed them for more than a decade. Since I have nothing else to offer Megan by way of pain relief, it’s the best I can do.

  Her smile looks more like a grimace when she says, “Relaxing, huh?”

  “Candlelit, even.”

  I remove my glove and help her off the floor. With one hand, I carry our single source of light, and with the other, I get her into the master bathroom, complete with a deep, round tub. I start the water running and help her in. Her oversize flowy white shirt floats around her, making her look like either a ghost or an angel. I can’t decide.

  “Are you okay in here for a minute?” I ask.

  She curls down over her belly and goes red in the face as she moans through another contraction. I hold her hand. When she lets up again, she nods me away.

  I find Cooper pacing in the living room. Rain pounds angrily at the roof, and with the glow of a streak of lightning, I catch a glimpse of Cooper with his hand wrapped around the back of his neck. I hope his stress is only because of Megan’s predicament and not because he’s upset with me. The last time he saw me was when I left his office with Reese.

  “Have you heard from Stephen?”

  “Yeah. A couple of minutes ago. He’s on his way.”

  I breathe a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness. She needs him right now. And it certainly can’t hurt to have another doctor in the house. What about your parents?”

  “I didn’t want to worry them. I’ll call when we have news.”

  I nod. “That’s probably for the best.”

  Megan moans again and Cooper flinches. “Is she okay?” he asks.

  “Her heart rate is normal, her water hasn’t broken yet and labor seems to be progressing as smoothly as can be hoped for.”

  I pretend that this is a term birth, and Cooper seems grateful for it.

  “Good.”

  “Dylan,” Megan screams from the other room. Cooper and I rush toward the bathroom where Megan is hunched over the side of the tub, panting.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask. I kick off my shoes, ready to get in if I have to.

  “Don’t...know. Rushing...between...my legs.”

  “Her water,” I mumble to Cooper, and with a quick check, it’s confirmed. Also, that she’s at nine centimeters. No more backup plans. The baby is coming.

  “Listen,” I say, squatting in front of Megan so we’re face-to-face. “I know this isn’t what we planned, but I promise you, everything is going to be fine. People have home births all the time. I know you can do this.”

  “But the baby,” she says. “What if its lungs aren’t developed? What if it can’t breathe?”

  She must have read in one of her books that the lungs are the last organs to develop. It’s my fear, too.

  “The ambulance will have oxygen,” I assure her. “And you know what, sweetie? You have one of the best pediatricians in the city here.”

  Megan nods. “Best in the country,” she says.

  “Best in the world.” I laugh, and she smiles weakly.

  When another contraction grips her, I find a scrub brush and offer her the handle to squeeze. I direct Cooper to grab a rag and wet it with fresh water to place on her forehead. I shush her and push her hair away from her face, struggling to keep my expression relaxed. My palms sweat.

  Once the contraction passes, I excuse myself to grab my bag.

  “She’s having the baby here,” I say to Cooper as he follows me out. Even I can hear the quiver in my voice. I pace the bedroom.

  “What can I do to help?” he asks.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know, Cooper.” I rub my hand over my forehead to bring my training to the surface. “I don’t have anything. I don’t have a heart rate monitor. I don’t have a contraction monitor. Heaven forbid she needs a C-section. I have one glove,” I shout hysterically.

  Cooper stops me with a hand on each shoulder. He puts his face close to mine. That helps. Breathing in his scent helps.

  “Dylan, you can do this. You’ve done this hundreds of times.”

  “But you don’t know what’s happened—” I start to say.

  “Yes, I do. Stephen told me.” Of course Stephen told him. “But that had nothing to do with your ability. People have been giving birth without all that equipment for thousands of years with a lot less training. Let’s get creative.”

  I nod, exhale, run through the list in my head. “I’ll just have to keep my hands as clean as possible. Can you find some scissors and sterilize them the best you can to cut the umbilical cord? And...a rubber band to tie it off?”

  If he smiles, he hides it quickly. “See. You’ve got this.”

  “What if I screw this up? She’ll never forgive me. You’ll never forgive me.”

  I’ll never forgive myself.

  “Dylan, you are not going to screw this up.”

  “If that baby needs a NICU—”

  “Dylan,” he says more sternly. “I’m here.” I can hear in his voice that he doesn’t only mean as a pediatrician.

  “Okay,” I say. I grab my bag off the dresser and walk to the bathroom, but turn back. “Coop,” I say.

  He stops, already to the hallway. I want to thank him for his support, for making me feel like I can do this. He’s always made me feel like I could do anything I set my mind to, even when I was just a young, heartbroken med student trying to find my place in the world.

  “I...”

  His lips twitch into a smile. There’s not enough time to express what he’s done for me over the years, but he understands. He nods and falls into the darkness.

  “How are you feeling?” I ask Megan in the bathroom. Her elbows are hooked over the side of the tub, her eyes are closed. The contractions are so close together that she keeps up a steady stream of controlled moans, like she’s fallen into a meditative state.

  “I have to...start pushing.”

  “Let me check you again,” I say. But before I can reach between her legs, another contraction hits, and I can tell from her cry that this one is different. This one is pushing the baby down with or without her help.

  “I have to push,” she says through gritted teeth. “I have to push.”

  “Okay,” I say, channeling my own peace because procedure will do me no good here in this bathroom. It’s me and her. “I trust you. Trust your body. I’m right here.”

  “Where’s Stephen?” she asks.

  “I’m sorry, Megan. Right now it’s about you and your baby. Let’s focus on that.”

  Her face crumples and tears leak from her eyes, but after a moment, she pulls herself together and breathes deeply.

  “It’s coming,” she says in a whisper. She takes control of her breathing, and I know she’s found that place. She’s ready.

  “Need an extra hand?” Cooper says, slipping into the room.

  He sets out supplies on the bathroom sink. Megan nods and holds her hand out to him. He lowers himself onto the floor and takes both her hands in his, holding them tightly. Then he looks at me and smiles, and in this awful situation, when so many things could go wrong, his optimism makes me believe that just maybe, things will go right.

  I take a deep breath and utter my favorite words.

  “I
t’s time.”

  * * *

  “Everything is going to change,” Abby said the night she told me she was pregnant. We were in my bed, and, unable to sleep, I’d pulled my blinds all the way open to let the moonlight shine in, brightening all the clean, organized surfaces in my room. It was one of the rare times Abby had sneaked into my room instead of me sneaking into hers. She had tucked her head into the nook under my arm, like a toddler, and in that moment I felt like the older sister. I felt like I was the strong one—strong enough to get both of us through this.

  “Not everything,” I said. “You’ll still be you. I’ll still be me. We’ll still have each other.”

  She looked up at me and smiled. It faded quickly, and she turned her head back down again.

  “I won’t be able to go to college,” she said. “I won’t be able to travel. How can I be a good journalist if I can’t travel?”

  “Maybe not at first. But you know Mom will help with the baby. And when he or she gets older, you’ll find a way to make it work.”

  “I hope it’s a she,” Abby whispered.

  I grinned. “Me, too.”

  Abby sighed. “I’m going to end up stuck here, Dylan. People have a small window of opportunity to break out and create a life of their own away from their parents, and I’m going to miss it.” She was less than a month away from graduating high school. She’d been planning on fleeing like a baby bird from its mother’s nest the moment the rolled-up certificate landed on her palm.

  “Ab—”

  “I don’t want to be comforted right now. Please. I just want to be realistic, okay? No one is going to want to date a single teenage mom. No one is going to hire a journalist without a degree who can’t travel. All the adventures I’ve wanted to have, all the places I’ve wanted to see...they’re just a sad dream now.”

  Abby sniffed, and a small patch of moisture bled through my shirt onto my shoulder. I wanted to say something to encourage her, but what did I know about life? If my older, more experienced, more courageous sister couldn’t see a way out of this, what advice could I offer?

  “Maybe you can come up with a new dream?” I asked her.

  “You can’t just come up with a new dream, Dylan,” she said, like I’d suggested she grow a third arm. “Each of us is born to do something important with our lives. You can’t just pick something different out of a hat.”

  I thought she was probably right, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that maybe most people didn’t actually know what that important thing was at eighteen years old. Maybe what she thought was important now would change.

  “What’s your dream, Dylan? Basketball?”

  “No,” I was quick to say. I liked basketball. I was good at it. But if I had only one important thing to do with my life, I didn’t think basketball was it. “I don’t know. If I figure out anything to do that could be considered ‘important,’ I’d be happy.”

  Abby shifted so she could look up at me. Today, I felt like I was already doing something important.

  “That’s a cop-out answer,” she said. “There has to be something you want to do.”

  I sighed, thinking. “There was this one time last year when one of the girls on the team was having trouble in math—”

  “Who?” Abby asked.

  I laughed. “Uh-uh. No gossip tonight. So she was having trouble with math, and her parents had threatened to take her off the team if she didn’t get her grades up. We were talking about it in the locker room after practice one day, and I offered to help her with it. I didn’t mean for it to be a big deal, but she was really grateful. We met at lunch for a few weeks, and I helped her with her homework and showed her how I calculated the problems. Sometimes the way teachers explain things is just stupid—” Abby hummed her agreement “—but the way I approached it seemed to work for her. Before two weeks was up, she was doing it on her own, and she finished the year with straight As. And she hasn’t even needed my help at all this year.” I shrug. “It felt good to help her feel like she could handle it.”

  “So you want to be, like, a teacher or something?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not. I just like helping people.”

  I said it quietly and waited for her to laugh, to tell me I hated people. It was a common misconception. In truth, I hated small talk, gossip, petty arguments. I loved being with people when we could break through all that and get to the heart of things. That’s how Abby and I had always talked, and I never understood why I couldn’t find a friend like that. Maybe I never worked hard enough to get past the getting-to-know-you phase.

  Instead, Abby said, “I think you have a lot to offer people. You’ve always been there to help me.”

  I couldn’t help it. I laughed. What could I have possibly done to help Abby—the one who had everything figured out?

  “I’m serious, Dylan,” she said. “I know I give you a lot of crap about not getting out more and meeting new people, but you’re the only person I’ve ever been able to truly count on. You’re always there when I need you, even when I don’t deserve it. That’ll get you a lot further in life than chasing adventure. Speaking from experience.”

  The sullen mood fell over the room again, but her compliment fanned the spark of hope in my belly. Maybe I had a dream after all—even if it wasn’t fully formed yet.

  “Promise me you’re not going to give up,” I said. I rolled onto my side and scooted down until we were face-to-face. I was already taller than her. “We’ll find a way to make this work. I’ll help you.”

  “See, you’re doing it already.” I pushed her shoulder and we both laughed. When we fell silent, she said, “I’ll tell you what. I promise not to give up if you don’t.”

  “Give up on what?” I asked.

  “Whatever your dream turns out to be. And...a little bit of adventure.” She held her thumb and forefinger half an inch apart in the space between us. I smiled and stuck out my pinky finger. It was what we’d always done to seal a promise, and I wanted Abby’s word that she would never stop being the girl I looked up to, the kind of woman I hoped to one day be. Abby stuck out her pinky, too, and locked it with mine.

  “Promise,” she said.

  I held her pinky tight and kissed my thumbnail for extra assurance.

  “Promise,” I said.

  * * *

  As the overcast sky begins to brighten with the morning sun, the red ambulance lights flash color onto every wall in the house. Megan and Stephen both lie on the bed, the baby in Stephen’s arms, as medics look over mother and child to make sure they’re fit for travel. Megan has changed into a long nightgown and looks tired but more happy than I’ve ever seen her. Stephen is still in awe.

  Cooper checked out the baby immediately after birth, and he’s shown no signs of being anything but healthy, aside from a little jaundice, though doctors will probably want to keep him at the hospital for a couple days for observation. It’s unbelievable. With Erika’s baby, the scene was set for the best possible delivery, and the worst happened. This time everything went wrong, and yet, it all turned out fine. Great, even.

  “I don’t want to go to the hospital,” Megan says. She reaches across the bed and runs the back of her finger over the baby’s head. The black woman examining her raises an eyebrow at me, questioning whether or not we’re going to have a problem getting Megan into the ambulance. I smile and give her a discreet shake of the head.

  “I know,” I say. “But I need to make sure you don’t need any stitches, and I’d feel better knowing the baby has been checked over by a clocked-in pediatrician, just to be sure.”

  “This little boy is perfect,” she says to her son in baby talk.

  “Yes, he is.”

  A knock on the door frame makes us all look up. Cooper stands at the threshold.

  “See,” Megan says, �
�there’s our pediatrician.”

  Cooper grins and takes a seat at the edge of the bed, admiring the sleeping boy. He runs a finger over the baby’s toes as a young male medic crouched next to Stephen listens to his little heartbeat.

  “You know,” Cooper says, “I see babies all the time...but this one just feels different.”

  Megan laughs. “That’s what Dylan has said at all of our prenatal appointments.”

  Cooper grins at me. “It’s because he’s family.”

  A smile plays at my lips, but I look away.

  “Do you want to hold him?” Megan asks Cooper.

  “If he’s finished,” he says, nodding to the medic. “I don’t want to interrupt.”

  “I’m done here,” the medic says. “We’re going to grab the stretcher.” He stands and leaves the room, his colleague right behind him.

  Stephen passes the baby over to Cooper like he’s made of paper, and Cooper takes him just as gingerly. He pulls the baby close, and even though the little one is fast asleep, Cooper rocks him and shushes him naturally. He has years of experience as a pediatrician, but something tells me this movement is more instinctive.

  “You want to hold him?” Cooper asks, turning to me like he’s ready to hand the baby off before he accidentally shows his sensitive side. I stifle a laugh.

  “No. That’s okay.”

  “Go on,” Megan says. “He’s still your nephew. And godchild...I hope.”

  I take a step back and put my hands up, my cheeks warm with emotion. It’s overwhelming, this gesture of unconditional love.

  Stephen rises from the bed and places an arm around me.

  “C’mon,” he says. “This isn’t a moment you’re going to want to miss.” He guides me forward. Cooper holds the baby out and places him in my hands. He’s so warm and soft and can’t weigh more than six pounds. His skin really does feel like paper against my lips as I lean down to place a kiss on his forehead. I leave a tear there, as well.

  “He’s beautiful,” I say. “He has Stephen’s nose.”

  Stephen and Megan both laugh through their happy tears. “He does, doesn’t he?” Stephen says. “It’s a good nose.”