by Susan Gloss
“I’ve never received something like that before,” Walt said. “Usually it’s a silk scarf or little cakes or something. I promise.”
“Well, you must have gone up in their estimation since then,” Betsy said.
“Last time I was here, they asked me about your interests. I said you liked art.”
Betsy shook her head. “Why couldn’t you have just told them I like chocolate?”
Chapter Fourteen
Nell
PIECE: Wolfgang Beltracchi, oil painting of a floral bouquet. Purchased at auction as a known forgery of a painting by Moïse Kisling.
I finally heard back from Grady, the contractor I hired to do some updates at the mansion,” Nell told Josh over takeout from a Laotian restaurant in their neighborhood. “He found some subs available to finish up the wiring and plastering work, so with any luck, we’ll have internet by next week. And hopefully no more holes in the walls.”
She pushed a floppy rice noodle from one side of her plate to the other. These days, they ate most of their meals in near silence, both scrolling through whatever came up on their phone screens, or sometimes just giving up on conversation altogether and turning on the TV. Today, Nell felt relieved to have something to talk about, even if it was as mundane as renovations.
Josh finished chewing a bite of spring roll. “Maybe you should get the number of the subs. I was thinking we might want to get started on some of the updates around here we’ve talked about. Now that you’re working, we should have a little extra money, right?”
Nell took a sip of water, swallowing the guilt she felt. “I’ll get their numbers,” she said.
The phone rang. Both Nell and Josh put down their forks and stared at the cordless receiver affixed to the kitchen wall. No one ever called the landline. The only reason they had one was in case of emergency. None of their family or friends had the number. When filling out forms that asked for a home phone number, Nell was usually hard-pressed to remember it.
The thought jogged her memory. Forms. Shit. The fertility clinic. Credit applications.
She pushed her chair away from the table, poised to lunge for the phone.
Josh got up and beat her there before she could get up. “Hello?”
Nell watched his face for some sign of who might be on the other end.
Please be a telemarketer, she thought. A robocall. A political poll. Anything. Her heart hammered inside her chest.
“I think you must have the wrong number,” Josh said.
Nell exhaled. Sure. Wrong number. That works, too.
“Yes, she lives here, but I’m sure there’s some sort of mistake. I don’t think we have a credit card with that bank.”
Nell’s face felt hot, and her dinner sat uneasily in her stomach.
“Yes, please do send written confirmation,” Josh said. “Who can I contact about clearing this up?” He balanced the phone between his ear and shoulder and grabbed a pen from the counter. He scribbled something on the back of an envelope. “Will do. Thanks.”
He placed the phone back in its cradle, then turned to look at Nell. “So that was a debt collection agency.”
Nell started to sweat. She’d known she would have to tell Josh about the credit card bills at some point, but she’d been hoping to be able to bring it up on her own timeline, once she’d gotten a few more paychecks and had the chance to pay down some of the balances.
“What did they want?” Nell asked. As soon as the words came out of her mouth, she realized how ridiculous they sounded.
“Well, they’re debt collectors, so . . . I guess they’re trying to collect a debt.” Josh dropped his arms to his sides and gave her a pleading look. “Tell me this is a mistake.”
Nell put her face in her hands. She couldn’t stand the earnest expression on her husband’s face as he waited for an explanation. “It’s not a mistake,” she said through her fingers.
He took a step closer to where she sat at the table. “What? You’re mumbling.”
Nell looked up at him through tears that had welled up. “I said it’s not a mistake.”
Josh paced the room—something he did whenever he was stressed out. “They said we owe forty thousand dollars, Nell. I don’t even understand how that’s possible. I don’t see a new car parked in the driveway.”
“IVF,” Nell said, blinking back the tears. “Every single charge was for fertility treatments.”
Josh furrowed his brow. “I thought that was covered by our insurance.”
“Some of it was covered, for the first round. But not all of it. I put the rest on credit cards—ones we never use.” Nell’s voice wavered as she choked on the guilt of keeping such a big secret. “You thought the procedures were covered, so I let you believe that.”
“We did three rounds.” He stared at her, arms crossed. “And it never occurred to you to tell me they weren’t covered?”
“Of course it occurred to me.” Now the tears fell freely, dripping off Nell’s face and onto the table. “But I wanted to tell you when I had good news to give you as well—if I got pregnant again, it seemed like the lies would have at least been worth it, on some level. But that never happened.”
Josh resumed his pacing, shaking his head. “The treatments took months. So it’s not like this was a snap decision on your part. I’m guessing there were multiple times you could have told me about what was going on. Shit, I was just saying something a few minutes ago about doing house renovations.” He crossed his arms. “But I guess we don’t have the money for that, do we?”
Nell shook her head.
Josh pressed his palms into his temples. “I just . . . I can’t believe this.”
“I know,” Nell said. She was getting angry now, and the anger over everything she’d endured—with nothing to show for it—burned past the sadness. “I can’t believe it most of the time, either. I can’t believe this is my life. I don’t even know how to apologize. I didn’t think we would ever be having this conversation without good news to go along with it. I couldn’t let myself even think about that possibility.”
Josh stopped pacing. “I knew this whole infertility thing had changed you. Had changed us. But I had no idea how much, until just now. I feel like I don’t even know who you are anymore.”
Me neither, Nell thought. But she knew that saying it aloud wouldn’t help. After a moment of tense silence, she said, “I know this doesn’t fix things, but I’ve been putting all of my paychecks toward paying off the debt.” She reached out and touched his arm. He yanked it away and took a step back from her.
“You know, I was sad, too, about losing the baby,” he said. “I’m still sad. But I would never keep a secret like this from you.”
“I wasn’t thinking straight. It seemed like a baby was the only thing that would even begin to make everything we went through okay—not okay, it will never be okay, but just maybe more bearable.”
Josh just stared at her, almost looking past her as if he were looking at a stranger, and left the room.
“I’m sorry,” she said to his back.
A moment later, she heard the back door slam and the car start up.
She was sorry. And ashamed. But she was also angry. Angry that their daughter had died and no one could tell her why. Angry that what was so hard for them seemed to come so easily to other people.
After giving birth, most people leave the hospital not only with a baby, but also with all kinds of gifts and gear. Receiving blankets, flowers, knit hats, and cards. A car seat carrier swinging off the father’s elbow. One couple Nell had seen during a tour of the hospital was so weighed down with baby paraphernalia, they required a double-decker cart to roll everything out to their car.
When Nell was discharged, she and Josh took nothing with them but a white box tied with a pink ribbon. She didn’t even take home the clothes she’d been wearing when she checked in. She knew she’d never again want to wear the elastic-waist jeans she’d been wearing on the day she was admitted to labor and delive
ry, one day shy of twenty-two weeks gestation. The day her body betrayed her. The day she lost her daughter.
NELL’S OBSTETRICIAN HAD been concerned, but not full-on panicked, when she and Josh first arrived at the hospital, with Nell’s contractions strong and close together.
“We need to get you to at least twenty-four weeks,” he said. “That’s when the scale for viability outside the womb tips to the baby’s favor.”
“But you can stop labor, right?” Nell asked, breathing hard as a fresh ripple of pain clutched at her abdomen.
“We will do everything we can,” the doctor said. “More often than not, we have success in stopping or at least significantly delaying labor. But not always. Even with the best medical care, ten percent of women who go into preterm labor give birth within the following seven days.”
“What if that’s us? What if we’re in the ten percent?” Josh asked.
“I’ve ordered some tests that can give us a pretty good idea of how likely that is,” said the obstetrician.
A nurse wrapped an elastic belt around Nell’s belly and hooked her up to a fetal monitor. “See there?” she said. “That’s your baby’s heartbeat.”
A line staggered up and down on the screen, a green mountain range against a black abyss. The constant peaks and valleys gave Nell some comfort, but also terrified her. Her baby was alive now. But what if the doctors couldn’t keep her inside? What if Nell couldn’t keep her safe?
As if he’d read her mind, Josh turned to the doctor and said, in his lawyer voice, calm but firm, “You didn’t answer my question. What happens if the baby is born today? Or tomorrow?”
Nell balled up on the bed with the onset of another contraction, clenching every muscle in her body. Even through her pain, she could see the doctor’s face change.
“I have the on-call neonatologist on the way here to talk to you about that. But we will do absolutely everything we can to keep the baby inside as long as we can.”
The doctor kept his promise. They did try everything. They flooded Nell’s veins with IV medications that made her feel even more nauseous than she already was, causing her to vomit between contractions. Nurses elevated Nell’s feet above her head to take advantage of gravity and discourage the baby from dropping down into the birth canal. But none of it helped. When the test results came back, her obstetrician’s face went from worried to panicked. Nell could see it even through her blurred vision, a side effect of one of the medications. The neonatologist arrived, a woman who looked not much older than Nell, and the two doctors conceded that the baby was coming soon.
In between surges of searing pain, Nell listened as the neonatologist explained the chances of survival for a baby delivered at twenty-one weeks, six days gestation. They were very slim. Even if they took the baby by C-section, which would pose greater risk to Nell’s health, the chances that their daughter would survive, even with intensive medical measures, were very slim. And if she did survive, she would most certainly suffer health problems throughout infancy and beyond.
“So what do you recommend?” Josh asked.
“Of course, the decision is up to the two of you. But I can tell you that even with our top-level NICU, no baby this premature has left the hospital alive. So I can’t in good conscience recommend that we provide lifesaving measures. Even the tiniest of breathing tubes cannot be inserted without causing organ damage. Are you familiar with the Hippocratic oath?”
“First, do no harm,” Josh said, his shoulders shaking.
Nell grabbed his arm with a desperate force. “I don’t want to do harm to our baby.”
Josh put his hand on top of hers and held her gaze, his eyes brimming with tears. “Neither do I.”
“Then in these cases, we recommend comfort care,” the neonatologist said. “Swaddling and holding your baby, keeping her warm, and bonding with her as much as you can.”
Nell’s mind commanded her body to stop, but her body would not obey. The uncontrollable urge to push possessed her, and the room filled up with a dozen more medical professionals. One of the nurses came over to Nell’s bedside and put a hand on her shoulder.
Nell shook her off. She wanted to feel the physical pain of her baby’s birth. Wanted to shift her focus to the tearing, barreling sensations ripping through her torso. Because the physical pain was almost, but not quite, forceful enough to overtake her emotional anguish, if only for a few seconds at a time.
After a particularly intense contraction ended, the nurse spoke to her. “I know you don’t want to think about this right now, but I need to let you know about something so that you can make a decision.”
Nell looked at the nurse through a hazy film of tears and sweat.
“There’s a photographer and her assistant out in the hall,” the nurse continued. “They’re from a volunteer organization for bereaved parents. If you are willing, they’d like to take some photos of the two of you with your baby after you deliver.”
Nell’s ears rang as she caught her breath, still recovering from the contraction. The word “bereaved” reverberated in her brain. She still could not believe this was happening, even as she wiped the sweat from her face.
Josh, who had been squeezing Nell’s hand, turned to the nurse. “This is the worst day of our lives,” he said, his voice shaking with anger. “Why would we want pictures?”
“Many people feel that way at first,” the nurse said. “But later, you may be happy to have them. As the doctors explained, we don’t know if the baby will survive delivery or, if she does, how long she’ll live. Some babies this young live for a few hours, some only for a few minutes. If you do decide you want pictures, we need to let the photographers know now, so they can be ready.”
Nell looked up at Josh. His face was white, his eyes large and hollow. “Can we just have them take the pictures and then decide later if we want them?” he asked.
“Of course,” the nurse said. “Lots of people do that. That way the pictures are there if you ever want them.”
A wave of pain rippled through Nell’s back and wrapped around to her abdomen. She writhed on the table, giving herself over to the inevitable.
Through clenched teeth, she told the nurse to let them in.
NELL DIDN’T REMEMBER what the photographer looked like. Nell remembered only that she was female and that when Nell came in, she said in a gentle voice, “Pretend we’re not here. Or, if you can’t do that, pretend we’re just one of the medical staff.”
Baby Girl Parker came on a tidal wave of pain, followed by silence. A nurse cut the umbilical cord, and Nell felt instantly helpless and empty. Another nurse whisked the baby away and placed her on a warming table, where she was rubbed clean, weighed, and wrapped in a blanket before being placed in Nell’s arms.
At less than a pound, the baby felt lighter than a kitten. She was not red, as Nell had imagined she’d be. Rather, she was translucent, her skin as thin as rice paper. Her eyes were fused shut, two perfect crescent moons underlined by fine, thread-thin lashes. Perfect fingers and toes curled at the ends of skinny arms and legs. Everything about her, actually, was perfect. Just far too small and far too delicate. Her chest and belly rose and fell at an erratic, belabored pace.
Nell took her eyes off her daughter, swaddled in her arms in soft white flannel, for only a second—just long enough to realize that the swarm of people who’d been in the room during the delivery was no longer there. This, Nell knew, was the worst sign of all. She had heard the neonatologist say that medical intervention was not recommended. She and Josh had confirmed that they did not want to take any measures that would cause their baby suffering. But Nell now realized that at the time, with all the doctors and nurses bustling around her, and the machines beeping and the monitors blinking, she’d still been hoping that a miracle might happen. That the baby would come out and somehow be bigger or stronger than anyone had anticipated, and that everyone would swoop in and save her.
Instead, the room had cleared out. Other than Nell, Josh, a
nd their impossibly tiny baby girl, only one nurse and the two photographers remained.
Josh got up onto the hospital bed, ducked under the IV lines still attached, and positioned himself behind Nell, so that she was leaning against him as she held their daughter. They marveled over her fragile beauty. Cried over her tiny perfection. But even as Nell cradled the limp, almost weightless baby and covered her in tears and kisses, Nell understood that she was slipping away.
Nell tried to stretch each second, but in the end her daughter lived only four minutes.
WHEN NELL WAS finally cleared to go home, a nurse—there had been so many, she could not keep track—gave her and Josh the option of leaving through a back door of the hospital so they wouldn’t have to ride in the elevator with people leaving the maternity floor with living babies. It was a merciful offer, and they took it. But riding in the service elevator, with its padded walls and scratched-up stainless steel floor, only made Nell feel more alone. Normal parents left the hospital happy and nervous, checking car seat straps, snapping photos, and saying thank you to the nurses who’d tended to them in their first hours as moms and dads. She and Josh were not normal parents. They left with nothing but the white box, tied with pink ribbon.
NELL KNEW THE contents of the box by heart. The same volunteer organization that had lined up the photographer had given it to her and Josh at the hospital. Before everything they went through, Nell hadn’t even known such an organization existed. She, like most people, had never considered what a person did with the tiny keepsakes belonging to a baby that never went home from the hospital. Since then, she’d looked at the contents of the box hundreds of times. As far as she knew, Josh had never once opened it.
Inside, along with the hospital blanket Nell had worn throughout her stay and the flannel blanket the nurses had wrapped around the baby, was a copy of their daughter’s Certificate of Live Birth. Because, even though she’d lived only a few minutes, their baby had been born alive. The hospital required Nell and Josh to fill it out, for their record-keeping purposes, they’d said. Nell learned later, upon receiving a bill in the mail, that the certificate served the practical, but rather crass, purpose of establishing a separate insurance account for Baby Girl Parker’s medical bills, which were substantial, despite her very brief existence. Still, the certificate was important to Nell. It was proof that their baby had lived, even if no one but Josh, Nell, and the few people who’d been in the hospital room ever got to meet her.