by Sarah Smiley
My eyes filled with tears, and just as if I was in a bad dream, I felt unable to move. “But I didn’t even know she was pregnant. Did you?”
“Now, dammit!” Jody yelled and threw my car keys at me.
When I got to Melanie’s house, she was lying on her bathroom floor with a pool of blood seeping from between her legs and making a puddle around her drenched nylon slip.
“Hi, Sarah,” she said in a weak voice and tried to lift herself up. I rushed to grab her arm. “I’m glad you came.”
I tried not to look directly at her or at her exposed undergarments. “I think I should call an ambulance,” I said.
Melanie put up a hand. “No. I don’t need an ambulance. Just drive me to the emergency room. OK? Everything will be fine.”
“Melanie, I don’t think I can handle this. I don’t think—”
“Sarah,” she said. “I asked Jody to send you. I need you.”
Me? But why?
I was unsure how to act as I got Melanie into the car and drove. Did she want air, or no air? Music, or no music? Christian music, or regular music? It seemed that everything I said or did was clumsy and awkward. But Melanie didn’t notice. She mostly sat with her eyes closed and her head lolling back and forth on the seat each time I turned. She was sitting on a pile of towels and I tried not to look at them for fear of getting sick. But the heat radiating from her body was beginning to make me feel feverish anyway. I was even starting to have cramps.
At the hospital, the double doors pulled apart, forcing a gush of heated air—mixed with the smells of vomit and peroxide—across our faces. Melanie didn’t seem to notice. She was hunched forward, one arm protectively around her waist, the other arm embraced in mine for support.
“We just go straight to the nurse triage,” she said and pointed me in the direction of a small cubicle to the left of the waiting room.
A nurse with Mickey Mouse scrubs saw us coming and rushed to take Melanie’s arm. Once her weight was released from mine, I began to feel dizzy and sank onto a hard plastic chair. I was dressed in red high heels and a skirt—for the baby shower—and felt, shall we say, a little out of place. From across the room, I watched the nurse take notes and fit Melanie’s arm with a blood pressure cuff. Melanie doubled over in pain a few times, and beads of sweat formed on her temples. She was sitting on a pile of towels, the same ones she had sat on in the car, and they were already soaked with red blood. The nurse didn’t seem concerned about that, so I started to relax, but when Melanie’s face suddenly turned pale and pasty, the nurse put down the clipboard and laid Melanie on a gurney.
Everything happened fast from there, with words like “hemorrhage” and “shock” shouted across the room. I followed the nurse and her squeaky tennis shoes as she wheeled Melanie through a narrow corridor with harsh fluorescent lights. I had to hurry to keep up, and my high heels echoed down the hall, making me feel intrusive and clumsy. I tried walking on my tiptoes but then I fell behind and had to run to catch up again. I was holding my pearl necklace against my chest with one hand to keep it from bouncing up in my face.
At a pair of swinging doors, the nurse turned to me and said, “You’ll have to wait in the waiting room now. I’m sorry, but only family can go beyond this point.”
Melanie grabbed for my hand and squeezed it. “I’ll be OK,” she said. “Call the Red Cross and get a message to Paul.”
The nurse pushed the gurney through the doors, which flapped closed behind them. I stood with my arm still outstretched and reaching for Melanie’s.
I walked back to the waiting room in a daze and found a phone to call Jody. I had no idea how to contact the Red Cross, and if she didn’t know, Courtney certainly would. The baby shower was in progress and I could hear voices and laughter in the background. Obviously Jody hadn’t told them about Melanie. She probably didn’t want to make Leslie feel awkward about the party, and that made sense, but I knew I might not have been as tactful. For instance, how did Jody explain the last-minute change of plans? These things just don’t occur to me. Maybe that’s why they sent me to the hospital instead.
After passing off the responsibility of calling the Red Cross to Jody, and promising to keep her informed of Melanie’s status, I hung up the phone and went to find a seat in the waiting room. There was a pile of wrinkled magazines on a faux-wood end table, and I flipped through them mindlessly. My choices were either to read or eat Peanut M&Ms (not a good idea), but there was nothing on the table except AARP magazine and Retired Officer. So I did what any hypochondriac on a diet would do: I found a brochure about GERD (Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease), got a pack of M&Ms from the vending machine, and settled into a chair. The intercom above me blared occasionally about some doctor who was needed on a particular floor, but I only became concerned when I heard things like “code blue.” That was when I noticed my breath quickening considerably. I was waiting for them to call “code red” for fire because I’ve rarely been to the Navy hospital when there wasn’t a fire emergency or false alarm. I was even the cause of the “code red” once. I had asked a health administrator to help me with my insurance form, and his computer actually caught on fire. That was the last time I ever tried to understand the military’s insurance system.
But there were no code reds this night. In fact, the waiting room was unusually empty and quiet. Every once in a while a nurse squeaked by in stiff leather shoes, but there were no other patients. Each time the doors swung open and closed, I looked up eagerly, hoping for the nurse in Mickey Mouse scrubs to come with news. But for long stretches of time, there was no one except an occasional custodian, who whistled while he mopped.
Sometime around nine o’clock, I had fallen asleep and was woken up by someone shaking my shoulder.
“Mrs. Smiley? Mrs. Smiley?” a voice said.
I opened my eyes and saw a nurse, but no Mickey Mouse scrubs.
“Mrs. Smiley,” the voice said again. “Your sister would like to have you come back now.”
“My sister?” I said, confused. Then, “Oh, yes, of course—my sister.”
I followed the nurse back to the emergency room. Most of the patient beds were settled behind partitions with curtains, but Melanie was in a private ob-gyn room, with the shades pulled down over the windows. She was curled up on her side under several layers of white hospital blankets when I came in, and she lifted her head and smiled as I came to her bedside.
“Your sister?” I whispered once the nurse had left.
Melanie winked and reached for my hand. “They wouldn’t let anyone except family back here.”
“How wonderfully naughty of you,” I said, laughing, but immediately covered my mouth and apologized. It felt a little unseemly.
Melanie squeezed my hand. “Thank you, Sarah. Thank you for bringing me here. Where are your boys?”
“Don’t worry about that, Melanie,” I said. “They’re home with Lauren, and Jody will go get them after the party. They can sleep at Jody’s house if they need to.”
Melanie’s eyes were bloodshot and dark purple half-moons hung below them. For the first time, she looked her age.
“But what about Hannah?” I said. “Do you need me to go get her?”
“No, stay here with me,” she said. “The babysitter will take care of it.” She paused a moment to sip some water. Her lips were dry and cracked. I helped her get the cup back on the table beside the gurney and she said, “No one knew I was pregnant. Except Paul, of course.”
I was relieved she brought this up first, so I simply nodded and listened. Her eyes were wet with tears. “This is my second miscarriage. I don’t know if you knew that or not.”
I shook my head and felt guilty for getting so much personal information. I had no words to say, so I shifted on my feet awkwardly. I couldn’t imagine someone more deserving of a baby. Melanie embodied everything that was motherly. She even knew how to make oatmeal cookies and had visible purple-blue veins on her hands.
“How do you go on?” I blurted
out, feeling a little childish. “How are you not totally breaking down right now?”
“Because obviously this is the plan for me,” she said. “It’s not in the plan for me to have more children, and I’m learning to be OK with that.”
“But . . . how . . . I mean . . .” I was stuttering and flustered.
Melanie put a finger to her lips to hush me. “I have faith, Sarah,” she said.
There was a knock at the door.
“Yes?” Melanie said softly, and the heavy wood door began to creak open.
“Is it OK for me to come in?” a familiar voice asked.
“Yes. Please,” Melanie said. Then she turned to me. “This must be the doctor.”
I saw the shoes first—running shoes that looked like they had taken more than a few laps around the hospital. Then I saw blue pants and the white tie that held them at the waist. And finally I saw his face staring at me with a surprise I can only guess was visible on mine as well.
“Sarah?” Dr. Ashley said.
“You two know each other?” Melanie asked, looking back and forth between us.
I was aware that my face had turned hot and probably red. “Um, yeah . . . kind of. I mean, yes, this is my doctor . . . er . . . Owen’s doctor . . . and my doctor.”
Dr. Ashley stepped forward to the other side of Melanie’s bed. “I’m Dr. Ashley,” he said, extending his hand to her. “It’s nice to meet you, Melanie.”
Thin sprouts of hair were sticking out of the V-neck of his scrubs, and I wondered why I hadn’t noticed that before. Or did he usually have on an undershirt? Because surely I would have noticed something as sexy as that.
Shame on me, I thought suddenly, averting my eyes toward Melanie and straightening my posture.
“Well!” I said—probably a little too eager and loud—“I guess I’ll just step outside now. I need to make some phone calls.”
Melanie smiled and squeezed my hand. “I’ll be OK,” she said.
Dr. Ashley’s eyes traveled up from my hand clasped in Melanie’s, to my shoulders and neck, and then finally our eyes locked. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Melanie’s in good hands.”
“I know,” I said and slipped out the door.
My heart was pounding so hard, I could feel it in my ears when I closed the door behind me and leaned against it with my back. I stared down at the strappy high heels and skirt meant for the baby shower. How did it look now, outside the context of a girly party with petits fours? Did Dr. Ashley think I knew he’d be here? Did he think I had dressed up for him? I shook the thoughts from my mind and my long, beaded earrings bounced against the sides of my neck. God, I was ridiculously overdressed for the military emergency room.
I wasn’t sure when it would be appropriate to go back into Melanie’s room—the worst possible scenario I could imagine was walking in during her exam with the doctor . . . my doctor—so I went to the waiting room and watched Growing Pains reruns on a television with bad reception. Eventually I made a bed for myself by combining some chairs, and I managed to fall asleep.
Sometime around midnight, I awakened to shoes squeaking on the floor beside me and someone stifling a laugh. I opened one eye at a time and saw Dr. Ashley standing above me.
“Comfortable?” he said and took a seat to the left of my feet with the bright red heels.
I pulled myself up to sit and smoothed my hair. “How’s Melanie? Is she going to be OK?”
There was a pile of crumpled M&M wrappers to my right, which, of course, I could never let Dr. Ashley see, so I sneakily tucked them under my leg.
“Melanie needs to stay here overnight,” he said. “She’s lost a lot of blood and we want to monitor her for a while. I understand this is her second miscarriage?”
“Yes,” I said. And then the babbling started. “I mean, I think that’s what she said. I didn’t know it before. But I know she’s been trying for a while.”
The word “trying” implied “sex,” and I blushed.
Dr. Ashley looked me up and down and I felt the need to stare at my lap. “And how are you, Sarah?” he said. “I called to check up on you but got the machine. Have you gone to see the counselor yet?”
His breath smelled like stale coffee and I tried clinging to that to make him less attractive.
“I can’t really think about that right now,” I said. “My head is still reeling from tonight. One crisis at a time, you know?”
He put his arm around my shoulders. “I understand. Just remember, you have my number if you need it.”
“Yes, it’s right beside my phone,” I said.
“That’s a great place for it,” he said; then he stood and reached for my hand to help me up. “I think Melanie wants to see you again,” he said. “Nurse Shannon will escort you back in just a moment.”
He gave me a thumbs-up sign and turned to leave, and I couldn’t help but stare at his cute rear end in the scrubs as he walked away. There was a noticeable pep in his step; then he glanced back over his shoulder and said, “Oh, and, Sarah, you’ve got some wrappers stuck to the back of your leg there.”
Melanie was even paler—and somehow thinner—the second time I went in, and the room smelled like sweat and vomit and blood.
“Thanks for getting the message to Paul,” she said. “He called about an hour ago.”
“Are they in port?” I asked, already gearing up to be mad at Dustin for not telling me himself, but also berating myself for being so selfish in front of Melanie.
“No, I don’t think so,” she said. “The CO let him use the phone in his room. It was very quick. . . . We only talked a minute or two.”
I sat in a chair beside the bed. I wanted to take off the pinching high heels and massage my feet, but I’d rather have belched in front of Dr. Ashley than let my bare feet touch the filthy hospital floor. So I settled for propping them up on the metal bar of Melanie’s bed.
“Your doctor is very handsome,” Melanie said, looking at me with such innocence, I felt like a total harlot.
“Oh, well, I guess so,” I said. “I hadn’t really noticed.”
I had to look away as I lied to her.
“He’s very attentive, too,” Melanie said. “Did you know that he’s single? I wonder why someone like that hasn’t been snatched up already.”
I stared at the ground, and willed her to stop talking about Dr. Ashley, but she continued. “The world is funny, isn’t it? So often things don’t make sense.”
“Like when bad things happen to good people,” I said, trying to change the subject.
“Yes,” she said, “and how a man like that can’t find a wife for himself.” She sighed and looked up at the ceiling.
“Is there anything I can do for you right now?” I asked. “Is there anything else you need?”
Melanie didn’t hesitate before saying, “You could say a prayer for me.”
“Me?” I said. “But, I don’t know . . . I mean, I don’t really have any . . . I mean . . .”
Melanie smiled and thin crow’s-feet creased the edges of her tired red eyes. “Just pray for me, Sarah,” she said.
Her eyes were already closed in preparation, so I bowed my head and pulled at my hands. “Ummm . . . let’s see. A prayer. Well, OK, here goes.” I cleared my throat and began the only prayer I could remember from my childhood: “God is great, God is good. . . .” What was I thinking? “Let us thank Him for our food. . . .” I finished weakly. I peeked out one eye and saw Melanie grinning. I bowed my head again. “Um, I mean . . . OK, let’s see . . . ah . . . Thank you, God. Thank you for Melanie and the blessing she has been to me. Please watch over her while she is, ah, sick, and make her well again soon. Amen.”
I looked up sheepishly and saw that Melanie was crying.
“Thank you, Sarah,” she said. “That was beautiful.”
10
THE GIRL IN A COWGIRL SHIRT AND FLIP-FLOPS
Eventually the rest of the Spouse Club heard about Melanie’s miscarriage, and an emergency meeting was h
eld at Margo’s house to decide who could make dinners and help with child care. Jody and I volunteered to keep Hannah, and she went back and forth between our two houses for several days.
Hannah was an exceptionally easy child to care for, and just as dignified as her mother, so I felt like a slob any time I accidentally burped in front of her. She even walked softly. There were a few times I was afraid I might forget her when we were leaving the house because she was so quiet. It was a condition made even worse during those few days, because although Hannah didn’t understand exactly what was happening with her mom, she knew it was something scary. She knew, at least, that neither Jody nor I could make oatmeal cookies or meat loaf to suit her. (When I fed her hot dogs and macaroni and cheese one evening, she said, “Where’s the vegetable?” and I tried to remember the last time Ford had eaten anything that wasn’t made of bread or noodles.) But given the careful way Hannah looked at me with pouting lips and wide clear blue eyes, I knew she was feeling—possibly fearing—more than she could express, and I dug deep into my maternal instincts to help her.
Taking care of a girl didn’t come naturally to me. This should be easy, I thought. I’m a girl. I know girls. I once was a child, too. But the first time Hannah asked, “Where’s the Barbies?” I felt horribly unprepared. “This plastic Superman will have to do,” I told her, and she wasn’t impressed, but eventually settled on playing house, with Ford, of course, acting as the unwilling “baby.”
Somehow, having Hannah around made me feel closer to my own mom . . . and closer to my childhood self. Maybe it was Hannah’s thin, blunt bangs, which she unconsciously swept away from her eyes from time to time. Or maybe it was the way the bumps of her knobby knees seemed to knock together every time she walked. Or how she called me “Miss Sawah.” But whatever the reason, Hannah stirred up in me emotions I hadn’t considered in a long time. How would I have felt when I was her age if my mom was sick? How would I have felt if I had to go live with the neighbors?