Red Light

by J. D. Glass

  I explained to my mother what I knew before I handed the phone to Jean to fill in the blanks. “She’ll be here in twenty minutes,” Jean told me as she returned my phone.

  I took it from her and tightened my arm around her waist, and she draped hers across my shoulder.

  “What do you think?”

  “Abruptio, hopefully a partial,” she added as we walked around to the regular entrance.

  “I was thinking the same thing,” I sighed.

  It was a harsh diagnosis; any of them could die, since it basically meant a sudden separation of the placenta from the uterine wall. If it was a complete abruption, it was possible for the little ones to die, possible for Nina to die if she’d bled too much internally. If it was a partial…there were options: if it wasn’t too severe, the recommendation would be complete bed rest, either at home or monitored in the hospital.

  If it was severe, or worse yet, a complete abruption, the docs would probably opt for an emergency caesarean section and hope they could save everyone. This had risks too. At twenty-eight weeks, and twins no less, well, the neonates would be small, not much more than a pound each, more than likely, maybe two at most. They’d be about the size of apples all curled up, and their lungs were probably not developed enough, and different systems were probably incomplete.

  “Jean,” I said as we walked, “do you think this happened because she was so stressed out over…the last few days?”

  Her arm tightened around me. “No, baby. I don’t. Sometimes things just happen.”

  “I hope they’ll all be okay,” I said, then stopped walking as it hit me. “Twins, Jean, twins. I knew something was up. Christ…”

  Jean rubbed my shoulder. “We did everything that could be done, I think,” she said, then reviewed everything aloud. “And we got her here fast, really fast. We had a rig in less than two minutes. Up to the surgeons and whatever else from here.”

  I pulled her closer in silent agreement and we went up to Obstetrics, and once there, we were told to go to Labor and Delivery; they were bringing my cousin in for the emergency C-section.

  “Victoria, where is she?”

  Aunt Carolina’s voice broke the silence that reigned in the waiting room where Jean and I waited to hear anything about what was going on.

  I sat up straight, not letting go of Jean’s hand as I watched my aunt walk in, hand in hand with my mother, while my cousins and Nina’s father trailed behind with Elena.

  My aunt, plainly put, looked like hell, and my mom patted her hand repeatedly as Jean and I explained what we knew.

  During the wait that felt like several hours, although it really couldn’t have been, because these things are supposed to go fast, Fran showed up, and after greeting everyone, she refused to sit and instead waited by the door until Samantha walked out into the waiting room, her face so very pale over the scrub gown hospital staff had put on her, and obviously exhausted.

  Everyone stood and Samantha buried her head on Fran’s shoulder and wept. “Nina’s still in surgery…she lost a lot of blood, they said, and…” Samantha took a deep breath, then straightened, but didn’t let go of Fran. “One girl, one boy, both in NICU…they’re so tiny, so fucking tiny…”

  It took three days for Nina and the little ones to be stabilized enough to be transferred to another hospital, the one where Nina’s doctor was, where there would be no issues about whether or not Sam could stay with her family. Since it was our last day off before we returned to work, when the private ambulances that would transfer them came, Samantha and Nina had absolutely no issues with Jean’s and my insistence that we each ride with one of the infants to the other hospital in Manhattan.

  Fran rode with Nina and Samantha—she barely left Samantha or Nina’s side the entire time, once visitors were allowed.

  It was hard riding in that rig with that plastic case and the machinery that helped my niece breathe. As feared and expected, both neonates lacked surfactant, the protein that would enable their lungs to stay open so they could breathe on their own, and had to be fed intravenously.

  Her skin was red and translucent; I could see the fine network of blood vessels that ran under it. She had no name. Samantha was reluctant to name either one of them yet, and, much to my surprise, Nina went along with her choice.

  “Give her a week,” Nina said to me privately right before we left after the transfer was complete, “she’ll come around.”

  *

  Jean and I stayed in the apartment that night, for the first time since everything that had happened. “You sure you’re ready to go back to work?” Jean asked as I pulled out our uniforms and she made some coffee.

  “Yeah, sure, I’m fine.” In fact, I was looking forward to it because I really enjoyed it.

  “Okay.” She handed me a mug. “Are you all right with sleeping here tonight?”

  It was a strange question, and I stopped what I was doing so I could read her face. She kept her expression carefully neutral as she sipped and watched me over the rim of her cup.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s just that…you seemed, you know, like you felt comfortable there, and I don’t—you just seemed happier, I guess.” She shrugged casually.

  Her controlled casualness didn’t fool me. This was something serious, and I carefully put my mug down and stepped closer.

  “Baby, the only thing I’m not happy about is that I’m not going to be with you all day tomorrow,” I said and put my hands on her waist. “That, and I’m a little worried about, you know, things.”

  I closed my arms around her, and Jean hesitated only a moment before she buried her face in my neck and murmured into my hair.

  “What was that, baby? I didn’t hear you.”

  “I just thought that maybe,” her breath caught as she raised her face to mine, “you didn’t feel safe with me, like I can’t—”

  “Can’t what, baby?” I asked gently. Her eyes shone brightly, filled with emotion, with the threat of tears, and I couldn’t help but stroke the long strands of hair behind her ear. “Come on,” I said and led her to the sofa, “sit with me. Can’t what?” I ran my thumb along her cheek.

  “Like I can’t protect you,” she said finally, her voice hoarse, “because I should have been there.”

  “Jean…I’m the one who asked you not to go. I thought it would upset you, that it would be the weirdest sort of wrong to show up with someone’s ex-girlfriend to a wake or a funeral and…you…I’ve really fucked us up, haven’t I?”

  Jean hugged me tightly. “You’re not the fuckup here,” she said, the words choked as she spoke them. “I knew better than you who she is, how she is. I should have gone with you.”

  I could feel the tension in her back as she tried not to cry, and while I held her closely and murmured, “It’s not your fault, Jean, baby, it’s not your fault,” all I could think was that my mother had been right—this was something we were both going through. The question now was how did we both get through it?

  *

  Although I got a clean bill of health at my follow-up appointment, it forcibly reminded me why I had to go in the first place and it left me jumpy and shaken. I was glad every time I hit the station and got to work; it kept me focused, busy, and so long as I wore a T-shirt, nothing rubbed against the constant itch that were the slowly healing lines under my navel.

  “You and Jean must sure be enjoying the honeymoon,” my partner, Diaz, teased me with a bright grin as we reloaded the stretcher into the rig after a routine my-chest-hurts, I-just-smoked-crack call and my cell had gone off.

  I grinned back at her as I answered. I felt no compulsion and hadn’t shared the events of the last weeks, at least not my personal situation, with either of my work partners, although we did discuss my cousin and my still-unnamed niece and nephew.

  “Scotty,” I answered my cell.

  “Hey, baby.”

  “Hey yourself, what’s up? You get banged with overtime?”

  “No. Just ran i
nto Pat while I was on a call, and? My dad phoned. He called me Sinead and spoke in garlic. Dinner day after tomorrow at my parents’?”

  I winced. Sinead was Jean in Gaelic, or “garlic” as Jean called it, and if her father was using it… We hadn’t visited them in a few weeks, and no matter what the reasons might have been, they were Jean’s family, and it wasn’t fair for her not to see them.

  “Sure, no problem.”

  “Great! Oh, and he asked if we’d bring Dusty and stay the night.”

  “Sure,” I said again. I didn’t mind, not at all. I just felt a little guilty that we’d neglected Jean’s parents.

  We had a great time. Mom Megs made her absolutely fabulous mashed potatoes, while Jean’s da insisted that a barbecue wasn’t working right if the flames didn’t jump out of the grill.

  We ate in the yard, where Jean and Pat’s playful verbal sparring amused us all until the first threat of flung food.

  “Don’t disrespect the mash!” Jean warned, eyeing Pat carefully as he loaded his fork a little too fully.

  “You disrespected the piper on Saint Patrick’s Day! And I know where you were while I was playing!” he retorted, waving his cutlery with menace.

  “Paidrig!”

  Their da’s voice cut through the bickering like a clap of thunder, and we all looked at him.

  “Patrick,” he said, and his voice lowered, “you…killed…the trees. The grass? Has not recovered, and my ears still hurt. Jean and Tori’s absence during your murder of tone and all things green has at least ensured that your mother and I will have grandchildren. Put the fork down…and after dinner, you get to seed the lawn, again.”

  “You would have made a hell of a hostage negotiator, Da,” Pat muttered as he returned his attention to his plate.

  Jean’s da reached behind for the cooler, then handed us each a beer. “Speaking of grandkids, how are Logan’s?” he asked, focusing on me and Jean.

  We caught everyone up on the latest. Jean’s parents remembered Samantha as a girl, as Fire Captain Logan Cray’s daughter, and I learned that in a firefighter’s household, a 911 household, the memories of the fallen are honored forever.

  *

  When Jean and I curled up together that night upstairs in the Scanlon home, I had a hard time falling asleep. Jean held me carefully, her arm curled over my waist, but as I listened to her breathe over my shoulder, I wondered if it was the not completely healed mark on my skin or the fact that it was Trace who’d left it there after she’d…if that was the reason behind why Jean and I hadn’t really shared more than hugs and the occasional tender kiss.

  I could understand why in those first two weeks, given the shock, the stitches, and the concern over Nina, as well as the surprise and fear for the twins, we had refrained, but I was fine now. I’d been fine for a few weeks.

  I wondered if maybe something was wrong with me. I’d always enjoyed sex, and I loved making love with Jean. It was literally the best thing I could think of doing, since I loved her so much and we felt so good together.

  Maybe I wasn’t supposed to want to yet? Or maybe Jean thought I wasn’t interested? What scared me more than anything was wondering if maybe Jean simply didn’t want to, didn’t want me.

  The more I thought about it, the more this seemed like it had the makings of a huge misunderstanding one way or another. I knew Jean loved me; I just didn’t know if she still desired me. The only way to find out for certain was to ask.

  Tomorrow, after we left here, we’d planned to stop by the hospital and visit Nina and the twins. Since the last update we’d learned they might be released in another week or so (Nina had been released after the first six days, but she and Sam practically lived at the hospital). Jean and I, in conjunction with my mother, my aunt, and Fran, who spent almost as much time at the hospital as my cousins did, had picked up everything Nina and Sam might need for the nursery, and it was amazing what “everything” meant for twins. After we visited the hospital, Jean and I planned to stop there in the afternoon and put it all together.

  I’d discuss it with Jean then, I mused, because it would be just the two of us, and with our hands focused on the tasks before us, we’d have time to talk, time for me to ask the important questions.

  If things were still okay between us, then fine, wonderful—perfect, even. And if we weren’t okay, if Jean felt differently about me, about us? I would improvise and adapt. I didn’t know if I could overcome, but I would definitely try. First, though, I needed an answer.

  *

  Once at the hospital, I was shocked, and Jean equally so, to find that neither twin had yet been named. They had reached what would have been thirty-four, almost thirty-five weeks gestational age, had slightly more than doubled in weight, were breathing on their own, and while they still needed a little help eating, they’d learned to swallow. They finally had eyelashes over their little new-baby blue eyes, and their skin had lost that frighteningly delicate translucency. They looked much more like tiny babies than the weak chicks that had been transported to the hospital more than a month before.

  I found myself alone with Samantha in the hallway as the nurses and doctors did whatever it was they did behind the lowered curtain.

  “Sam, can I ask you something?”

  “Yeah, go ahead.”

  “Why haven’t you named them yet? Nina could, but she’s waiting for you. They’re healthy, they’re going home soon. They need names. Besides,” I said in as light a tone as I could muster, “I’m tired of describing them to my coworkers as simply my niece Baby A and my nephew Baby B.”

  Samantha shook her head. “It’s too soon, nothing’s certain yet.”

  I touched her arm gently. “Sam…” I started. How did I explain that some children lived and died nameless, unloved, unwanted, young and old? That no matter whose child or what age, live or die, everyone deserved to have an identity?

  I thought of Mr. Wheeler and of the seemingly countless patients I’d had since then, of the bodies I’d worked on, fighting for life as it poured out, the hands I’d held of the dying who had no will to fight and no wish to be fought for, those who fought and lost anyway, and those who knew it was simply their time. How did I explain that I loved them, every single one of them, even though I’d never met them before, that those moments together bound me to them and them to me? They were strangers, complete strangers, yet each one became the entirety of the universe to me, my whole purpose for being, and I hoped, I so deeply hoped, that each one knew they hadn’t left this world for the void—or for whatever else might exist—unloved, unknown, in those last breaths.

  How much more would I feel for these tiny, innocent beings, beings I shared blood with, had watched grow in Nina’s body and Samantha’s heart, had felt kick and shift under my hand? I knew, because it was so obvious, that Samantha loved them. The fact that she was so fiercely afraid of losing them screamed it, but that fear…they needed her more than she needed it.

  “Samantha, they’re your babies, and they deserve to know that you love them. Name them so when you hold them, they know who they are, no matter what happens.”

  She twisted her face away and jammed a hand into her pocket.

  “There are no guarantees, Sam. I know you know that. They’re missing out on you, and you’re missing out on them, for however long you’re all here.”

  The silence was so absolute I could hear the sound of the cloth moving as Samantha shifted a shoulder.

  “You’re hurting your wife,” I added softly, because I had read the pain that flashed in Nina’s eyes when the subject came up, and I knew Nina: she’d forbear and forgive only for so long, and the damage it might do between them…Samantha had to realize that. “I know you don’t want or mean to do that.”

  Samantha faced me then, her mouth set, a tight, thin line. “Really?” she said dryly. “You’re neglecting yours.”

  Stunned by the harshness of her delivery as well as the words that plucked at the strings of my own self-doubt and played
its exact tune, I merely stared.

  I wasn’t sure what Sam meant, but I knew my own misgivings. Maybe, just maybe, Jean and I had spent too long being loving, but not sensual. And maybe…that change was obvious. If it was? Then I didn’t think it was something that we could recover.

  Or maybe Sam meant that I was spending too much time concerned about her family and not enough with mine. Either way, it seemed like I had really fucked up again.

  “Hey, there you are!” Jean said as she ambled up and clapped a friendly hand on my shoulder. “Hey, Sam.”

  “Jean.”

  The guarded friendliness in that touch did something to me, and I snapped to a new awareness.

  “I’ve gotta go,” I said abruptly as I stepped out from Jean’s grasp. “Got some stuff to take care of. Jean, you can stay if you want. I’ll see you later.”

  “Tor, what…?” Jean asked with that same friendly tone, a slightly puzzled look creasing her forehead.

  It cut me to hear it, that tone that was so clear in my new ears, to see that expression with my eyes opened this way.

  “Yeah, you know, stuff,” I told her. “Later, Sam. Tell Nina I said good-bye.” I strode to the elevator quickly, and I didn’t look back.

  I took a subway down to the ferry that would take me back to the Island. From there, it was a short bus ride to the house. The first thing I did after letting Dusty out of the apartment to play in the yard was to go inside the house and upstairs. I scanned the room that had been mine, removed anything that was still there, then after another inspection to make sure I’d left nothing, I stripped the bed and put up the laundry.

  I’d promised to put the baby furniture together, so I did that next—two cribs, one changing table, and two drawer sets—then went into their room and attached something called a “side along” to the bed frame, a three-sided crib that would allow Nina and Sam to keep the infants next to them at night. It was quick work; altogether it took perhaps an hour, maybe an hour and a half. I owed them that, at the very least.