by Grace Palmer
“Fine,” Eliza said. Her voice trembled as the word slipped out.
The nurse glanced at the machines around Eliza’s bed. They were beeping loudly and often.
Somehow, Eliza had tuned them out. The noise in her head was plenty loud enough.
“That’s fast enough to be the baby’s heartbeat, but it’s yours,” the nurse remarked, eyes going wide. “Do you need something to settle you down, darling?”
“I’m okay.”
She did feel out of breath, though. Like her lungs were too big for her chest. Like someone was tightening a vise around her ribcage.
“Maybe we could open the window?” she suggested.
“They don’t open, I’m afraid.” The nurse watched the monitor again and then plucked up Eliza’s wrist, pressing two fingers to her pulse. “Hon, your heart is about to jump out of your chest.”
Is this what served for good bedside manner these days? Surely these were not medically accurate terms. Settle down. Jump out of your chest.
Maybe she should have gone to the mainland to have the baby. Found a reputable doctor from a bigger city. Maybe these island people didn’t know what they were doing, after all.
“I need to call my husband,” Eliza said. “I think I need to get out of here.”
She started sitting up, but the nurse placed a hand on her shoulder. It was a gentle touch, her fingers pliant. But the woman’s arm was stiff, elbow locked. The heel of her palm pinned Eliza to the bed.
“We are working on finding his number,” she said. “If you remember his number, just press the call button. We’ll take care of it.”
“I know his number,” Eliza bit out.
“Great. What is it?” The nurse reached to the bedside table for the pad of paper with the hospital letterhead up top.
Eliza did her best to focus. Tried to make sense of the sudoku puzzle in her mind. Numbers whirled around, eights and fives and sevens and threes, but none of them stayed in place long enough for her to be certain they belonged.
And then the fruits came flying in—pumpkins and sweet peas and plums—and it was all chaos in her head and she had to open her eyes right away or else she was afraid she might vomit right on this poor woman’s shoes.
“Well, I do know it, but not right now,” she corrected. “I just need some air. I can’t breathe. This place smells like bleach, and I’m—”
“Panicking,” the nurse interrupted. Her brows were pinched together as she reached to hit the call button. “Take a deep breath for me, honey.”
Deep breaths were extremely out of the question. Not when there was so little air in the room. Not when her chest felt like it was caving in.
It was the IV, Eliza decided. The tape around her elbow was too tight. Probably cutting off circulation, if she had to guess.
“In and out,” the nurse said. “Breathe in and out. Nice and slow.”
The woman’s voice seemed far away. Like she was yelling down a long tunnel, her words an echo of an echo of an echo.
Eliza ignored her and reached for the IV.
“Oh, no. Let’s not.” The nurse grabbed her hand and pinned it to the bed. “You need that, honey.”
“Don’t call me that.” Oliver had more creative pet names. They at least made Eliza laugh a little. This one was annoying. And patronizing.
She wanted Oliver here instead.
“Don’t cry, dear,” the nurse said. “Someone is coming to help. Okay?”
Cry? Eliza wasn’t crying.
Except that, when she licked her dry lips, she tasted salt.
She was crying. A lot.
But Eliza Benson Patterson didn’t cry.
No outward displays of extreme emotion. No jumping and screaming for joy. Certainly no crying.
But this? Weeping in front of a stranger? This wasn’t Eliza. She didn’t even recognize herself.
“I’m sorry, I—”
The nurse squeezed her hand. “Don’t apologize. I’ll be right back.”
She turned and left the room.
Eliza let her head loll back on the pillows. She didn’t know how much time passed as she stared at the thin slit of sunlight shining between the buildings and through the window. It seemed like it was moving across the floor quickly. Like she was in a time lapse, the sun arcing in fast forward across the sky.
Then the door opened and the same nurse returned with more of her colleagues in tow.
Eliza should learn their names. It wasn’t polite to think of them all as “Nurse.” They had names.
She tried to ask them, but they eased her back in the bed and hung a new bag from her IV pole.
“This will help calm you down, honey,” the nurse who looked like Holly said.
Another nurse with spiky black hair nodded. “It’s not good for the baby for you to be so worked up. An operating room is freeing up for you, so we’ll move you in just a few minutes.”
“We’ll take care of you,” someone else added.
A hand—which of them was it attached to? It seemed important that she know that—smoothed down Eliza’s arm with the IV in it. Eliza tried to turn her head, but her vision swirled.
It was hard to even tell who was speaking. The comforting words seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
“Breathe.”
“It’s okay.”
“Try and relax, honey.”
Eliza had had a panic attack once before. It brought her here, in a weird sort of way. From Manhattan to Nantucket. And it felt just like this. Like she’d been locked in a cage, her mind and body separated by metal bars she couldn’t get through no matter how many times she rammed up against them.
She felt that same disconnect now.
“Wait?” she slurred. “A medication?”
“Anti-anxiety. It will help you relax,” another voice or voices said.
Eliza tried to speak, but an indistinct sound came out instead of words.
What she wanted to tell them was that she’d always responded extremely strongly to downers. A simple Xanax could knock her out for hours.
Blackness seeped into the edges of her vision. Eliza couldn’t help but give in to the sensation. She let her lids fall closed, even as her mind warred against her body.
Stay awake.
Call Oliver.
Get up!
Eliza mouthed Oliver’s name, hoping somehow, he’d be able to sense her need for him and show up. She couldn’t do this without him. She needed him with her.
Then everything went black.
Eliza got her wisdom teeth removed her junior year of high school.
Her dad had driven her to Dr. Jackson’s office and waited in the waiting room during her surgery. Afterward, he’d helped her to the car, but Eliza didn’t remember that part. She didn’t remember much, really. Just snippets. The sound of her dad laughing, amused by her clumsiness. A Nirvana song on the radio.
Her dad had buckled her into the passenger seat. But whenever he hit the brakes, Eliza started slumping forward.
Seatbelts were designed to stop a human body moving at a fast rate of speed. But, Eliza, still groggy and out of it from the anesthesia, had fallen forward gently, like a feather floating to the ground. So slowly that the seatbelt in her dad’s pickup truck hadn’t registered anything was wrong and just let her go, go, go.
Her dad laughed about it for years afterward, telling the story anytime anyone mentioned surgery or anesthesia. “The poor girl was helpless,” he’d cackle. “There’s a first time for everything.”
And a second time, apparently.
Eliza felt helpless now. Like she was swimming in wet cement and moving an inch felt like moving a mile.
Then, suddenly, there was a hand on her arm.
A warm hand. Calloused. Roughened at the fingertips from years of plucking strings and tapping away at keys. Eliza knew that touch, even in her foggy state.
Oliver.
She strained against the heavy pull of her lids, trying to see him.
His voice was warm and smooth, but there was a tinge of worry there, too. Something Oliver’s voice was usually free from.
That’s one of the reasons their relationship worked so well. Eliza worried; Oliver eased. They struck a delicate balance that allowed each of them to be better.
Now that Eliza was unconscious, however, Oliver had to strike that balance on his own. He had to worry for her. Eliza didn’t like being the cause of that.
Besides, she was fine. Whatever the nurses had pumped into her IV had knocked her out, but Eliza did feel more calm now. More in control. In control of her mind, at least.
Even if her body still hadn’t roused, Eliza’s mind felt sharp. She could even remember Oliver’s phone number now. Though that hardly seemed necessary since he was sitting by her bedside. Someone must have called him.
“Liza?” Oliver asked, voice more urgent now. “Hi, babe. Can you hear me?”
She blinked. This time, light came through.
A blurry world came into more and more focus with each flutter of her eyelids. Eliza could tell she was regaining the use of her body.
She tried to lift herself onto her elbows to show Oliver she was okay. That she was in control of herself. He didn’t need to worry.
His hand moved from her hand to her shoulder, pushing her down. “Whoa, cowgirl,” he said, easing her back down to the mattress. Eliza could tell it didn’t take much of his strength. Even though sitting up had taken all of hers. “Too early for that.”
Too early? To sit up?
She didn’t understand what he could mean. Why couldn’t she sit up?
“You might rip stitches,” Oliver explained, as though reading her mind.
Stitches?
Eliza wracked her brain for several second. His words made no sense in her hazy state. Then, suddenly, she realized.
The baby.
Oliver’s hand rubbed from her shoulder down to her elbow. “Everything is okay. Relax.”
The baby. Where is the baby?
“Breathe, Eliza. I’ve called a nurse.”
Eliza realized she was talking out loud. She could feel her mouth moving, but only distantly. And her voice sounded like it was traveling through water to get to her.
She took a deep breath like Oliver said.
Finally, when she tried again, she found she could open her eyes.
Oliver stood over her, hair curled and long over his ears. His stubble was thick. He had on a t-shirt with a rip around the collar—the one he usually only wore when he was working on a house project like fixing a leaky pipe or cleaning the gutters. He must have dressed in a hurry.
His skin was even paler than usual, even after he’d caught some sun the week before at the beach. His green eyes shined with unshed tears.
The machine over her shoulder beeped along to the quick rhythm Eliza was setting. She took another deep breath, but the beeping picked up pace.
She licked her dry lips. “Where’s the baby?” she croaked.
Oliver shushed her, smoothing a hand through her hair. “Everything is okay.” He glanced at the machines behind her head, worry creasing his face.
Eliza wanted him to look at her, not the monitors. “Oliver.”
“The doctor is on his way,” he said. “I called the babysitter and Winter is fine, too.”
Of course Winter was fine. Why wouldn’t she be? Why was Oliver telling her things she didn’t care about?
Eliza didn’t want to know where Dr. Geiger was. She didn’t want him to call a nurse. She didn’t want to hear about the babysitter.
There was only one thing she wanted to know, and Oliver needed to tell her. Now.
She squeezed his hand as hard as she could—which, under the circumstances, wasn’t very hard.
And then, with as much strength as she could dredge up, she rasped four words.
“Where is my baby?”
8
Brent
114 Howard Street
Brent shoved the mobile with the unfamiliar name back into the bag and did his best to forget about it.
Clearly, no one had intended for him to see it.
Besides, he needed to pick Susanna up from daycare. This would have to wait until later.
He brushed the dust and cobwebs from his shirt, closed and locked the workshop doors tightly, and drove across town to get in the pick-up line.
“We ate hotdogs in the shape of an octopus and played hair salon and Maggie didn’t know the colors of the rainbow, but I knew purple because purple is my favorite color,” Susanna said, speaking so fast in the backseat she had to stop and catch her breath. Her shoulders rose and fell with the effort. “Rory said it was violet, but Miss Katherine said we both were right, and I didn’t even stick my tongue out at him.”
Asking Susanna about her day at daycare opened the floodgates. She remembered everything and she spared no details.
“You did or didn’t stick your tongue out at him?” Brent asked.
Susanna’s eyes widened and she hesitated before shaking her head. “Didn’t.”
Brent raised a skeptical brow. “I’m thinking maybe you did stick your tongue out at him.”
The girl’s cheeks went pink, and she stammered through a few partial explanations before she heaved a huge sigh. “Only a little bit of my tongue.”
She couldn’t keep a secret. Like Brent’s mom, Susanna wore the whole truth on her face.
When his parents threw him a surprise birthday party the year he turned sixteen, Brent had known about it for weeks. His mom’s ears turned pink every time the topic of his birthday came up in conversation.
Mae Benson being an open book had always been a given. A surety.
But suddenly, Brent wasn’t so sure.
As it turned out, she was capable of keeping some things very secret indeed.
“…See? Just a little bit. Like this.” Susanna pinched the tip of her tongue between her front teeth.
Brent blinked, coming out of autopilot mode, remembering all at once he was driving. He looked at her in the rearview mirror and grinned.
“Well, that’s better than your whole tongue, but worse than no tongue sticking out at all. Mixed progress.”
The summer sun beamed down from straight overhead now, the shadows on the cobblestone streets almost non-existent. The breeze that rolled through the open window was refreshing and salty.
He wished he’d spent the day at work. It was a great day to be on the water. Being out on a boat always helped him clear his head.
Suddenly, Susanna gasped. Brent jerked the wheel slightly in surprise. “What is it?”
“I’m supposed to go to Jemima’s house today!”
“Is that so?”
Susanna leaned out of her booster seat towards the window. “Mom told me she’d pick me up there. Oh no, we forgot!”
Brent laughed and shifted the car into park. “No, you forgot. I remembered.” He tipped his head towards Jemima’s two-story brick house in front of them. “We have arrived at your destination, young princess.”
She sagged in relief and was unbuckled, bouncing in the backseat by the time Brent pulled the car door open. The moment he did, she lunged out, arms spread wide, certain he’d catch her.
And he did. Of course he did.
Brent swirled her through the air for a second before plopping her sparkly sneakers in the grass. Then she ran for the front door, knocking before Brent could even mount the steps in her wake.
Susanna’s friend Jemima and her mom answered the door. Rose had told Brent the woman’s name half a dozen times, but he couldn’t remember. He was terrible with names. And Rose was usually responsible for scheduling the playdates, so he was out of practice.
Susanna and Jemima squealed like they hadn’t seen each other in months, even though they’d just been at daycare together. They ran into the house, disappearing at the end of a long hallway.
“Sorry I couldn’t bring Susanna home with us,” Jemima’s mom
said. “My car is overflowing with cinnamon rolls that need to be delivered. This is the last time I sign up to be the delivery driver for a fundraiser.”
“For the cheerleading team, right?” Brent vaguely remembered filling out an order form for a tray of cream cheese cinnamon rolls.
She groaned. “Yes. I keep telling people to find me in the daycare pick-up line, but no one does. I’m one day away from dumping them in front of the doors and putting a ‘FREE’ sign on them.”
“Our order isn’t one of those, right?” Brent asked, wincing slightly. “I forgot we got some.”
“No, no, nothing to worry about. Rose took care of it two days ago.” She pressed her hands together in gratitude. “Bless her.”
“Great. There’s a reason I let her handle those kinds of things.”
“But feel free to take another! I’m positive half of these will never be claimed.” She hitched a thumb over her shoulder. Brent could see a stack of disposable aluminum pans sitting on the counter.
“Tempting, but I’m actually headed into work.”
Brent had made that decision all at once. He couldn’t imagine going back to his house right now. Spending the rest of the afternoon alone with his thoughts.
He needed to do something.
“Perfect. Then you’re definitely taking one.” She jogged into the house and returned with a tray, practically shoving it into his hands. “These were for Isabel Morris, but I tried to wave her down yesterday, and she practically sprinted away from my car. I think she just started a new diet.”
“If you’re sure…”
“I’m positive,” she said. She backed quickly into the house, as if Brent might change his mind and chuck the cinnamon rolls through the door like a grenade at the last minute. “Take care!”
As he walked back towards his car idling on the curb, Brent couldn’t believe his life.
Dropping a kid off for playdates, buying fundraiser cinnamon rolls, and going into work on his day off.
If Brent could tell Past Him that this was how his days would look, he would have spewed his beer in the bartender’s face.