One Sweet Day

by Elle Tyler

  As I walked through the doors of Presbyterian Hospital for the first time since I graduated, I had come full circle. I sat in the back of Brighton’s class as he led a lecture, admiring the center of the room where Everly Anne and I first met. The feeling of the classroom was too wide open, as if I could breathe. By the end of the class, I went to his desk, and he only glared up at me.

  “I came for Everly,” I said.

  Brighton nodded but looked down to his papers. “When?”

  “Sorry?”

  “When did she pass?”

  “Oh,” I replied. “No, sir. Everly is very well. She’s... We’re married, now.”

  He glared at me again. “I didn’t get an invitation to the wedding. Forgive me.”

  “It was small, on the Fourth of July. Everly didn’t want a big fuss.”

  “Who walked her down the aisle?”

  I shook my head. “I walked with her. It was short. I told you.”

  “Was Andrew there?” he asked, his eyes darkening.

  “It was at our beach home in Montauk. So yes, he was there.”

  “But not Everly’s father,” he scoffed.

  “Would you have come?” I challenged. “If we’d asked, would you have come to our wedding, Dr. Brighton?”

  “Doesn’t really matter now, does it?”

  “Well, I have one better for you, Dr. Brighton. I came to ask if you’d help with the birth of our baby.”

  That shut him up.

  He rose from his chair, fists on his desk as he leered at me. “You got her pregnant?”

  “We’re going to have a son. Yes, sir.”

  “You idiots.” He sunk back into his chair. “You damn fools.”

  “This is why we didn’t invite you to our wedding.”

  “Do you understand con-gen-it-al, Trovatto?”

  “I understand that we love each other, and sometimes that kind of love results in creating a child. Are you going to hear my question, or am I beat before I even ask, sir?”

  He groaned and then thumped his fists to the desk. “What do you want from me?”

  “I don’t want anything. But Everly wanted me to come here and ask you if you’d be there during the delivery. She’s scared, and she thinks all of your experience with her will help. I love her, so here I am.”

  Timothy was quiet for a long measure but then said, “She needs to be here. I can’t treat her in Georgia.”

  “She wants Andy to be born in Red Pine.”

  He whipped his head up. “What did you say?”

  “She wants our son to be born in—”

  “No,” he interrupted, “what did you call him?”

  “Andy. She wants to name him after my father.”

  “Oh, that’s rich.”

  “Will you help or not?” I sighed. “I already banked on you telling me to screw myself, so just say it and let me leave. I can go back to Everly and tell her what we already knew, and life can continue as blissfully as it has for the last eight months.”

  He stared. “She’s that far along, and you’re only coming to me now?”

  “I don’t need you,” I declared. “But Everly wants you to be there when he’s born.”

  “She’s all right? And the child—the child is all right?”

  “Everything is perfect so far. She’s tired, she’s anxious, worried, and she needs more rest than most, thanks to the anemia, but she’s been eating steadily, and all her labs have come back fine. She’s very... She knows herself. Everly’s intuition is strong. Her will is strong.”

  “Yet you’re here,” he said.

  “Her love is strong, too. And there isn’t anything that she wouldn’t do for our son.”

  He stared at me. “What if she dies, Callum? What will you do then?”

  I stared right back at him. “I’ll let her.”

  “Sorry?”

  “I’ll let her go. I’ll allow fate to decide what happens to us.”

  He nodded. “You say that now. It’s easy to act brave now. But you have no idea what you’re talking about. Still as green as the first day you walked into my classroom.”

  “I’m not green, and I’m not an idiot, and I’m not unmoved by the thought of Everly dying. The year I knew she was alive in this world but unreachable, I could barely breathe. But I won’t allow all of the life Everly has given me—literally will give to me, in the form of our son—go to waste by wallowing in the grief of her death. I will miss her, and I will wish for her, but I won’t be crippled by the pain. I will welcome the agony, because it will remind me every day—every goddamn day—how lucky I am to have ever felt something that could spear me in such a way.”

  He looked down to his desk and shuffled around papers. I was about to turn on my heel, but he stopped me with his words. “I never abandoned my daughter.”

  I stared at him until he raised his eyes to mine.

  “I might have given her to you,” he lamented. “But I didn’t abandon her, and I never would.”

  ***

  “This is beyond insane.” Tatum watched from the corner of the hospital room as Everly thumbed through a magazine and I waited for Dr. Saul to confirm what I already knew.

  My name had never been screeched louder and my legs had never (if ever) leapt over a staircase banister faster in order to rush to someone’s aid.

  A puddle surrounded her feet when I found her standing in the bathroom.

  “I think I broke it,” she said, staring at the floor.

  I tried not to laugh. “Can you feel any pressure? Any kind of contractions?”

  “I... I don’t know. Maybe?”

  “Lie on the bed. I’ll check you.”

  “And I’ll die of embarrassment. No thanks. Let’s just call Dr. Saul.”

  “Not to point out the obvious, but I am a doctor, Everly Anne.”

  “Not to point out the obvious, Callum Andrew, but one look at this hula hoop and you’re never going to desire me again.”

  I stifled my laughter. “It’s called va-gi-na, first of all.”

  Hands on her hips. “I assure you, after this baby comes out it will in fact be closer to resembling a hula hoop.”

  “Hula hoops are a lot of fun to play with, so, bearing that in mind, I’ll agree with you, Everly Anne.”

  “If you keep trying to charm your way into seeing my hula hoop I’m going to say two words and one starts with F. I’m not a fan of cursing, Callum Andrew.”

  I finally laughed. “Then I’d say it’s a lucky thing you can’t feel pain, Everly Anne. Because today, you’d be saying more than one dirty word that begins with F.”

  But she won. We called Dr. Saul.

  “She’s fully dilated,” he concluded with a snap of his glove. “We can begin pushing.”

  Everly scoffed, “We.”

  “I mean,” Tatum continued, “I know women get epidurals and shit, but this is just one for the books. She’s seriously not in any pain whatsoever!”

  Everly looked over at her. “I’m a bit pained about the hula hoop my body is about to become, Tatum.”

  If it hadn’t been for the ogre shoved in the other corner of the room, I’d have fallen to pieces laughing. Brighton was the statue of Satan’s scorn as he watched a man less equipped than himself oversee the birth of our child.

  “Ya’ll thought of a name, yet?” a nurse asked as she checked Everly’s vitals.

  “Andy,” Everly answered.

  “Thor,” I argued.

  Tatum snorted. “Thank God these things don’t come out of a man. It’s the only way most people are named semi-decent.”

  Everly flipped the page and smiled as she read. “Exactly.”

  The stirrups made an appearance, and I was suddenly very nervous. Watching her give birth didn’t bother me; not knowing how it would go drove me to the brink of insanity. Pregnancy had brought severe anemia back into the picture, and she would experience child birth pain-free—I wasn’t sure how that would work. No one truly knew—it had never been done
before, not like this. Timothy was still silent, brooding Satan from the sidelines, but he turned slightly away as to avoid the view.

  In between pushes and three hours later, Everly begged Tatum, “If I don’t make it, promise me you won’t let him name our child Thor.”

  “I swear it, sister. But you’re gonna make it. Don’t even start with that crap.”

  “I’m so tired, Callum Andrew.” She squeezed my hand. “I don’t feel anything but pressure, but holy buckets, I’m so tired.”

  “You’re doing great, topolina. Almost there.”

  I kept her face cool with a wet cloth, blowing softly to her forehead. Brighton stood bedside, and I wanted him so desperately to be the one who would tell her she could do this. If I said it, she’d only get what she expected from me, but if it came from him, it would have been that extra shove toward the finish line. But this was Scornful Satan, and he only knew how to order people around. So the nurses placed cooling blankets on her arms and legs, ice packs under her armpits, and I helped her down chips of ice, tracing spare pieces along her neck and lips.

  The fourth hour of pushing brought two too-fast heartbeats.

  The fifth hour brought silent pleas for Brooding Satan not to have the last laugh.

  And the six hour brought charm, hope, and wailing.

  Loud, mountain-moving, time-stopping, heart thunder-thumping wailing.

  Our son, Andrew “Andy” Trovatto came into the world with a voice that could not be ignored.

  Naked and strawberry-cream-cheese-covered, he lay across Everly’s chest searching for something familiar and comforting in this new, foreign world. She offered him her voice as she cooed, “God Bless America. Little Wonder, you are more than divine.” Her arms cradled and her eyes closed. “So I did feel you, didn’t I?” She kissed his wrinkled face. “Because you feel the same as your daddy has always felt. You feel just like fireworks blooming inside my heart.”

  ***

  I came home from work one night and found Everly standing in the bathroom with Andy in her arms. The tub was full, and she was in her robe. He was against her chest, under the robe. She looked away as soon as I caught her eye.

  “What’s wrong, peach?”

  “I can’t.”

  I settled my things down outside of the door and stepped into the bathroom. “Can’t what?” I looked at Andy as he wriggled.

  “I don’t know if the water is hot or cold.”

  I glanced to the tub. “The thermometer is hanging right on the faucet.”

  “What if it’s broken?”

  I sighed. “It’s not broken.” I cupped her face. “You know it’s not broken, Everly Anne. Take a breath.” She listened. “You’re fine. Give me Andy and get in the tub. I’ll hand him to you.”

  “Will you feel the water first?”

  “No. Climb in.”

  “Callum.” She started to panic. “Please tell me it’s okay.”

  I touched her cheek again. “I already told you it’s fine. Now trust me, and yourself, and get in the tub.”

  She handed me Andy but sat on the floor, putting her head between her legs as she suffered through her attack. I sunk to the floor, holding Andy on my shoulder with one arm and rubbing her back with my free hand. “Would I hurt you, Everly?”

  “No,” she panted.

  “Would I hurt our son?”

  “Never.”

  “Would you hurt yourself or our baby?” I asked.

  “Never,” she repeated. “I want to be a good...” Breath. “Mom.” Breath. “A good...” Breath. “Wife.”

  “You’re exceptional at both. Look at this boy.” I rested him on my legs and smiled down at his chubby, cooing, face. “Couldn’t be any healthier. Couldn’t be any happier. What? What was that?” I leaned my ear to his face. “Oh, he said he wants Mommy to clean him up. He’d like a bath with his beautiful mommy. Can’t say I blame him. Tell you what, Andy, I’ll climb into the tub if your mommy does. I’ll wash her hair and her back and kiss her on her shoulder and that space just under her ear how she loves. But she needs to get in the tub, first.”

  I waited because this was routine.

  I waited because I knew she would get up.

  I waited because tomorrow wasn’t promised, and all we had was that moment, right then.

  Everly pulled herself up and slowly slid one foot and then another into the tub before she tossed the robe away. I handed her Andy and then undressed. I did as I promised and washed her hair, soaped her back, and wrote messages in the suds as she tried to guess, and after I washed her, I kissed her clean, warm skin until Andy fell asleep in her arms.

  But one evening, she wasn’t making up fears inside her mind. I was called to bed #53 and found Everly Anne, pale as a ghost with a faint pulse. A neighbor had checked in on her after I couldn’t get her on the phone for over an hour and found Andy wailing in his crib. Everly Anne was unconscious on the floor of his room.

  I lifted her lids, shining my light into her eyes as I spoke softly. “Topolina, can you hear me? Everly Anne, open your eyes. Look at me. I want to see your bright hazel eyes, farfalla. Look at me. Find my voice in the darkness. Find me staring back at you with that look you know, that look that says you’re my beautiful treasure. Like I’m staring at you in your short dresses that I love.” Because I didn’t want her to hear my voice panicked, ordering people around, as her last memory, if that was our last moment. I was only her husband who loved her enough to be a form of comfort, despite my own torment.

  ***

  “I can barely lift him,” she said, putting Andy into his crib one night. “He’s getting big so fast.”

  “It’s you and your delicious breasts.” I grinned. “I told you.”

  “They are quite something.” She laughed, looking down at herself. “Too bad they won’t stay like this after I’m done with breastfeeding.”

  I reached to her hair, combing my fingers through. “You’re beautiful. Always have been.” But as I pulled my hand away, blonde strands of hair were twisted around my fingers. “What the hell?”

  “It’s the anemia,” she said. “You should see when I brush it. I don’t know how I’m not bald.”

  “Everly Anne,” I began with reservations, “we need to talk about a blood transfusion.”

  She stepped out of Andy’s room and closed the door. “I don’t want another transfusion.”

  “But you need one.”

  “I don’t need some stranger’s blood in my body.”

  She turned, but I grabbed her arm and pulled her into me. “I thought you wanted to stay with us?”

  “I thought you wouldn’t make me suffer?”

  “I won’t, but I can’t be silent about my feelings, either.”

  “You want me to get a blood transfusion?”

  I cupped her face in my hands. “I want you to live.”

  And we spent our year like this. Up, down. High, low. It was the yin and yang of our life. No joy existed without the fear of it ending.

  THE TICK TOCK OF CROCODILE CLOCKS

  34.

  “‘SHE LIKED HIS TEARS so much that she put out her beautiful finger and let them run over it. Her voice was so low that at first he could not make out what she said. Then he made it out. She was saying that she thought she could get well again if children believed in fairies.’” Everly closed Peter Pan. “Time for bed, little wonder.”

  “Mama? Is it true?” He twisted his neck to see her face as he sat all potato-sack slumped in her lap. “You get better if I baweeve in fayweeze?”

  “It’s only a story.” Into the bed he went with one fell swoop of her arms. “Say your prayers, beautiful beat.”

  Her hands washed over his dark, half-curled head of hair as he cupped his hands and closed his eyes, lost in silent prayer. Everly watched him with a look I knew all too well. She was once again questioning her purpose—and perhaps his, too.

  “Mama?” He peeked at her. “Is God like a faywee? Can He make you better if I beweeve?”


  She paused. “It depends on what ‘better’ means to you, Andy. Words have different meanings depending on how you intend them. I trust God, if that’s what you need to know.” She pulled the covers higher and turned off his pirate-ship lamp. “Dream. That’s what little boys should do. They should dream.”

  In the dark and quiet, she spotted me spying from the doorway. There was no smile or toying in her inflection as she said, “Besides, it’s all the work of the tick-tock croc.” She was peaceful as she slid past me, her hand ghosting across mine. “Ain’t that right, Callum Andrew?”

  Her smile materialized when my phone alerted me of a message. I kissed her forehead and closed Andy’s door softly behind us. My phone buzzed a second time, refusing to be ignored.

  “I’d say someone better be dying... but...” Dutifully I surrendered to the message waiting on my phone. “Well, what do you know?”

  “Someone’s dying.” She leaned in and kissed me. “It’s okay, go. But come back to me before morning.”

  I returned her kiss. “It would be impossible not to, Everly Anne.”

  But she held on to my hand as I tried to leave. “He wants to know,” she said quietly. “I mean he does know... He knows something is wrong with me.”

  I closed the small space between us. “He knows that going to the doctor kicks rocks.”

  “He’s smarter than that,” she argued. “More intuitive. He deserves to know the truth, Callum.”

  “He’s not going to understand, and truthfully, Everly, I don’t want him to know.”

  “Are you saying that as his father or as the boy who lost his mom?”

  “Both.” My phone sounded again. “I promise we’ll talk more about this when I get home.”

  “Callum,” she began, “I only asked because I want to tell him as someone who never got a voice in what happened to me as a child.”

  I wanted to hold her, to tell her that I understood, and smooth out the wrinkled lines of this problem, but the damn phone insisted on me leaving.