Not My Heart to Break

by W Winters

  “I don’t know what deal you made, but if he tried to kill her—”

  I cut him off, realizing that he doesn’t know. “It was Aiden’s mother, the manager’s mother.” The words rush out but my inhale is slower, attempting to steady myself.

  “Just an accident?” he questions with disbelief.

  “The ice…” I can’t finish. I saw the older woman, banged up and looking scared while she sobbed uncontrollably. “She was bringing him something for lunch.”

  Fuck, the pain. I hate it. I hate this.

  But it’s what I deserve, isn’t it? They don’t deserve it though. They don’t deserve any of it.

  “I’ve never been able to protect her.” I speak without looking at Jase even though he sits down next to me. With my shoulders hunched over, I explain. “That’s why I did it, why I planned it the way I did. Because I knew I couldn’t protect her. I couldn’t save her.”

  I see him lower himself, hunching like me, trying to look at me, but I don’t let him. A hand covers my face.

  “I would do anything for her, but I can’t protect her.”

  “Say it.” Jase’s voice is firm.

  “Say what?” I ask him, ready to say whatever he needs to hear. I don’t have it in me to fight anymore. Whatever he wants to know, I’ll tell him.

  “Say she’s going to be okay. Say she’ll be fine.” His words come out harsh but I can hear him swallow the pain down. “She’s going to be okay and you need to say it.”

  I nod, even though I don’t know that I believe it.

  “She’s going to make it,” he says and he’s firm.

  “She has to.” My eyes burn. “Both of them are going to be fine.”

  Seth

  It was an eighteen-hour surgery in all. I sat there, in that worn-out chair, staring at the pile of dog-eared magazines with torn pages and counting every second.

  Jase is silent, apart from comforting Bethany.

  There’s a heavy weight on my chest that still won’t let up. Even when the doctors came out, all three of them, the weight only got heavier.

  They did all they could.

  Beep, beep, beep.

  The room is simple; there should be flowers in here. She loves flowers.

  “Seth, is there anything…” Jase starts to ask as Bethany’s silent cries break into hysteria. She has both of her hands on Laura’s. Her body collapses with the next sob and her knees hit the floor. Her colorful scrubs are the only bit of life in this room. Everything else is bland, stark white, and dated.

  She wouldn’t like this room at all. There’s nothing with any personality in it.

  “Flowers. I want her to be surrounded by flowers when she wakes up.” I give him the answer, but all I’m met with are sad eyes from the doctor.

  “Mr. Roth,” Doctor Tabor begins, pausing and breathing in deeply, but her dark brown eyes never leave mine.

  I almost correct her, I almost tell her it’s King, but I don’t. Instead, I prepare for my rebuttal to whatever is going to come out of her mouth. The doctor is short, plain with no makeup at all, but she’s determined and logical more than anything. A powerhouse in her field. Next to her is the neurologist, the one who can’t look me in the eyes as the cardiologist tells me we have to prepare for the likelihood that Laura is never going to wake up.

  “I understand what you said, and I know you understand what I said. I want extraordinary measures to be taken. She just needs time,” I say although I lose the upper hand I have on the last line because my stern voice cracks and my eyes glaze over.

  Beep, beep, beep, the steady sound of her heart beating is what keeps me going. It’s steady. Her heart is a good heart. She’s going to be okay now.

  She finally got a good heart, so she should be able to use it. I’ll be better with this one. I won’t break it. I’ll make sure it never breaks if she’ll just wake up.

  Wake up, Babygirl, please. Wake up.

  “The surgery went well,” I say, giving her the words she gave me. “You said the surgery went well. All of them.”

  The surgeon, the one who fixed her heart, nods, and as she does, she swallows. She’s frail and skinny, but something tells me it’s simply the way she’s built. Clasping her hands professionally in front of her buttoned-up white coat, she answers, “That’s correct, the transplant went perfectly and now we monitor her to make sure her body accepts it.”

  “And so far?” I question.

  “So far everything looks well but we need twenty-four hours to be sure.

  “All of her injuries are stable and at this point we’re just waiting for her to wake up, but she sustained various trauma. We lost her in surgery and she was gone for a number of minutes… and sometimes patients don’t recover.”

  “She should have woken up by now, Mr. Roth.” The neurologist speaks again, not giving me a chance to thank the other doctor who just spoke.

  “She hasn’t slept in days. She’s just tired,” I answer them and part of me really believes it. Like she’s just in a deep sleep because she’s exhausted from all this bullshit. God knows she needs it.

  Laura’s hair is pulled back with a bandage that wraps around her head. The rest of it is a messy halo on the stark white pillow. There’s another bandage on her wrist that travels up to her elbow, where her arm was placed in a splint and they set the bone. But other than the bandages and the bruises, she looks like she’s just sleeping. She’s only resting.

  “She’ll wake up.” My confidence forces Bethany to look at me, and I can see in her eyes that she wants to believe me but she doesn’t.

  No one says anything. They just stare at me.

  “And what about our son?” I ask the nurse closest to me and my throat gets tight. “We will wait for her to wake up and I want to see my son.”

  Bethany’s been quiet, her grip never loosening on Laura’s hand, but her focus moves to the doctors now. She wants to know too.

  “We had to intubate him as he wasn’t breathing on his own. Other than that, he appears to be stable. It’s a good thing that we started the steroids early, but he’s still not in a good condition. The pediatrician is with him now. Statistically, every day is a better outcome, but he will be here for weeks so long as he remains stable. We have to monitor him closely and the likelihood of permanent damage is very high. His quality of life, if he does make it, is unknown at the moment.”

  “Can he be brought up here? So he can be with his mother?”

  “Unfortunately not. Given his condition, he needs to stay where he is in the neonatal intensive care unit right now…. You should prepare yourself.”

  Bethany’s cries are accompanied by Jase shushing her, calmly trying to soothe her. As if words and a tender touch can heal this kind of brokenness.

  “Is there anything at all I can do to help either of them?” I ask, somehow still standing on both of my feet although I know for a fact I’m shattered and everything that makes me human is on my knees, crying and begging. Yet here I stand, asking questions.

  “At this point, we wait.” The neurologist is the one who answers, and I hope he can feel how much I loathe him.

  I hate all of them.

  “You can pray, Mr. Roth.” The cardiologist, a woman I didn’t at all suspect to be religious, with her cold manner of speaking, offers me. She nods once, looking only at Laura before leaving us and saying one more time, “Praying is all we can do.”

  It’s quiet for a moment, and they mumble something about leaving us alone and letting me know when I can see our son.

  “Of all the ways it could happen… a fucking accident. A car crash,” Bethany says and barely breathes as a suffocating sob leaves her. She buries her head in the white sheets. Her head brushes against Laura’s arm and Jase is there all the while, stroking her back.

  “I need to get her flowers and a different blanket,” I say then clear my throat, noting how tight it is before continuing. Jase’s gaze reaches mine and he doesn’t have the same wounded look as all the others. �
��When she wakes up, I want her to smell flowers and be as comfortable as she can be.”

  Dropping my eyes to Laura’s closed ones, I take in the bruising on her face that travels from her jaw to her neck.

  When Jase makes Bethany leave, that’s when I finally go to her, letting my fingers gently trail along where she’s not bruised.

  I kiss her head and remind myself how she hasn’t been sleeping. She’s only tired. That has to be it.

  She’s the strongest woman I know. She’s only tired. There’s fire in her blood and we finally have a family. “Wake up, Babygirl, we have to see our little prince. Wake up.”

  Beep, beep, beep.

  The pediatric floor is one level below and it’s silent on the walk, silent in the elevator. I pass rooms and halls, desks and plenty of other people, but all I see whenever a bed comes into view is the image of Laura, lying in that bed, her skin pale and her body motionless. The only indication that she’s alive is the steady beeping of the monitors.

  She can’t leave me this way.

  She can’t do it.

  She promised she wouldn’t leave me. She said if it was up to her, she wouldn’t. All she has to do is wake up.

  It’s been twelve hours and I drifted in and out for four of them. At least now I can finally see my son.

  I do something I haven’t done in a long damn time; I pray on the walk to pediatrics. I pray for both Laura and our son to make it. Really pray. I pray for them, and I pray for myself. If they don’t live, I don’t want to live either.

  When we get to the glass wall with all the little carriages and babies sleeping soundly, or otherwise, I anticipate walking through those doors, but we don’t.

  “He’s back here,” a nurse tells me, her expression sympathetic. Of course my son wouldn’t be in there; he’s not healthy, he’s not well. He isn’t with the others because those babies are going to make it out of here just fine.

  Tears would come easily if I wasn’t so beat down already, as reality grips me. I don’t stop moving, even when my throat squeezes so tight that my breath is absent. I walk steadily, listening to my footsteps and following the older woman with kind eyes and pink scrubs to the far corner of the floor, to a room without large glass panes. A room they don’t want bystanders to see because it’s so tragic.

  There are only two other babies in this room and all of them have plastic walls covering their tiny plastic cribs. There are two with pink blankets and one with blue. So I know which one is mine.

  All of them have tubes, the smallest ones imaginable. I can’t stand to look at the other two children. Even when one of them moves, her little fist making a sudden motion, I see it but I can’t look at her. It’s crippling. They’re so small and alone. It’s the saddest thing there is in life.

  “Here’s your son,” the nurse tells me, as brightly as she can although the sadness lingers there.

  I take one more step forward and then another, until my hand lays against the plastic. He’s so small. So tiny I could hold him with one hand.

  “Did you two have a name?”

  “Not yet,” I answer her and take in an unsteady breath. “We weren’t expecting him so—” The words refuse to come out to finish the sentence. They stay back, choking me instead.

  “If you want to sit, you can hold his hand, here.” She points to a small opening in the plastic enclosure. A slot is all I have.

  This is my fault. The truth is a landslide of accountability.

  They’re suffering for my sins and it’s not fair.

  None of this is fair.

  He hasn’t even had a full day to live. And Laura is all that is good with the world but the two of them are here in critical condition, helpless and their lives uncertain. While I get to breathe freely. Please God, don’t do it to them.

  It’s not fair and it’s all my fault.

  “When we remove the tubes from his mouth, you can hold him, so long as everything is steady.” I can’t speak for a long time and the nurse doesn’t pressure me to. Instead, I slip my pointer finger onto my son’s tiny palm. And he squeezes. It’s not very strong but I’ll teach him. He’ll get better. He’ll hold on.

  I have to believe that. If there’s any mercy in this world…

  “What is the likelihood of…” I catch myself using the word “likelihood” because that’s what the doctors upstairs kept saying.

  Likelihood she won’t wake up.

  Likelihood he won’t make it past tonight.

  “We’re monitoring him closely and doing everything we can. If we make it through tonight, it’s likely we’ll be able to remove the breathing tubes. He has other issues and he won’t be able to leave, but you could hold him then.”

  I can only nod, not trusting myself to speak.

  Four days pass and it only gets harder because my confidence and hope wane. Nothing is getting better. Laura is stable but unmoving, unchanging and there’s nothing we can do.

  I thought, if I lay next to her, if I talked to her, if I reminded her of everything we have to look forward to, she’d wake up. If she knew her son was just downstairs, I could’ve sworn her eyes would open and she’d demand that I take her down there right now. And I would, God I want that more than anything.

  But she doesn’t respond to a damn thing. She doesn’t give me any signs at all. No one knows why she doesn’t wake up. Sometimes, it just happens. That’s what they tell me and I hate them more and more with each passing day. Especially the cardiothoracic surgeon who only peers through the door. She never comes in here, but she watches and waits. I hate her the most. She was supposed to fix her, but what good is a heart if Laura can’t use it?

  I’m helpless with my Laura, but even more so with our baby boy.

  Staring at him through the plastic box is the second-worst thing in the world.

  Even yesterday, I couldn’t hold him. He wasn’t stable. He’s a fighter, though. So is his mother but I don’t know why she won’t wake up.

  Tonight Doctor Peters, the pediatric surgeon, said I could hold him. She said it would be good for his body to be against mine. Tummy to tummy, although really it’s chest to chest. She said it’s so his heart can learn to beat and I wish his mother were here. I wish Laura were here because her heart is good now, and she could do this if she were here. I know she’d love that.

  “Right there is fine,” she says and I take the nurse’s orders of sitting down and unbuttoning my shirt. Yesterday was the first day I showered since the accident. I had to leave when the nurses all rushed in to save my son from dying and I couldn’t remain. They forced me out as I screamed and demanded they save him. I had to leave the hospital for a bit; I couldn’t stand to be so helpless. So I showered and packed clothes to wear. And I went back to the hospital to tell Laura she needed to wake up.

  I held one of her hands in both of mine and prayed when she didn’t grip my hand back. I just needed a sign, any sign. I’ve never cried this much. Never in my life. I’ve never felt this low.

  The worst part is that I know this is my fault. I couldn’t protect them and all I’ve given Laura is the consequence of my sins. I’d take it all back. All of it. I’d take it all back for them not to suffer.

  What came from me praying for her to hold my hand back was a nurse three hours later telling me our son made it.

  Our son.

  But not Laura.

  That was yesterday and today I can hold him. Doctor Peters promised me I could.

  “Okay now, there are some wires here to monitor him so just be careful, all right?” She sounds more hopeful today, happy even, and I take it as a good sign as Nurse Morison sets my little prince down against me.

  My hands are on him in an instant, both of them even though my fingers overlap. With the way I’m leaning back to look down at him, I’m sure he’d stay put, this tiny little baby without being held at all, but I have to hold him just to be sure he’s okay.

  “There we go,” Nurse Morison says and quickly grabs a little blue blanket to c
over him and I move one hand to hold the blanket to him, but the other is still firm against his back.

  I can’t move it, I can’t let go, because I can feel him breathing.

  From his chest to mine, I can feel his heart beating so fast. So much faster than mine.

  Even when I lean down to kiss his little head, covered with a small smatter of fine dark hair, I keep my eyes on him. I can’t let go and I can’t look away. Today is his best day yet.

  “I’ll leave you be.” Her voice is so quiet, I barely hear her but I hum a response and rock side to side ever so gently, watching as my little prince yawns. It’s the smallest movement in the world, but it’s everything.

  “You’ve got to make it for Mommy,” I whisper as I rock. How could he not make it? He’s perfectly fine, this little bundle. Look at him, he’s got to make it.

  He’s going to be okay. I know he will. He can’t leave me too.

  “Mommy is going to be so happy to see you when you wake up,” I tell him and he wriggles against me. See, he’s fine. He’s healthy and fine. He’s going to make it. He has to.

  “I love you, little prince. When Mommy wakes up, we’ll give you a name,” I promise him. With my thumb stroking against the side of his little head, I tell him about Laura, about his beautiful mother and how perfect she is. I tell him how much she loves him because she can’t tell him right now, but I can. “Let me tell you a story about your mother. She’s a fighter like you. Even more than me, I think. She’s going to be so proud of you. Probably even more proud than I am and that’s… that’s...” That’s when I have to wipe my eyes. I don’t stop rocking and I don’t stop holding him though.

  Not for the whole night. They let me hold him for hours and hours.

  I kiss his head in between stories about Laura. And when the nurse comes back, she lets me stay, holding him to me, as she checks on him throughout the night.

  The only reason I leave him at all is because sleep comes hard just before morning and they say I can’t hold him if I fall asleep.