At First Sight (26 page)

“You sound like you’ve had a couple of beers.”

“Feel that way, too,” Lexie said. “It’s a lot better than the way I was feeling. I like this epidural. Why would anyone want to do this naturally? Labor pains hurt.”

“So I’ve heard. Do you need any more ice chips?”

“Nope. Doing great now.”

“You’re looking better, too.”

“You’re not so bad yourself.”

“Well, I showered this morning.”

“I know,” she said, singing out the word again. “I can’t believe you did that.”

“I wanted to look good for the pictures.”

“I’m going to tell all my friends.”

“Just show them the pictures.”

“No, I mean about you taking your own sweet time while I was writhing in agony.”

“You were on the phone with Doris. You weren’t writhing.”

“I was writhing on the inside,” she said. “I’m just tough and don’t show it.”

“And beautiful, don’t forget.”

“Yeah, that too. You’re a lucky man.”

“Yes, I am,” he said, reaching for her hand. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she said.

It was time.

The nurses went into a flurry of preparations in the delivery room. The doctor eventually appeared and, like the nurses, checked Lexie’s cervix again. Then, leaning forward on his stool, he explained what was going to happen. How he would ask her to push once the contraction started, how it might take two or three pushes to get the baby out. That in between she should conserve her strength. Lexie and Jeremy hung on his every word.

“Now, there’s still the issue of the amniotic band,” he said. “The heartbeat has been good and steady, so I’m not expecting anything unusual in the birth. I don’t think it’s attached to the cord, and the baby doesn’t seem to be in any distress. There is a chance, however, that it could still entwine the cord at the last minute, but by then there’s nothing we can do except get the baby out as fast as we can, and I’m prepared for that. We’ll have a pediatrician in the room, and she’ll examine the baby, checking for amniotic band syndrome, but again, I think we got lucky.”

Lexie and Jeremy nodded, looking nervous.

“You’re going to do fine,” he said. “Just do what I tell you, and in a few minutes you’ll be parents, okay?”

Lexie drew a long breath. “Okay,” she said, reaching for Jeremy’s hand.

“Where do I go?” Jeremy said.

“Right where you are is fine.”

As the doctor finished up with everything he needed to do, another nurse entered the room, along with the pediatrician, who introduced herself as Dr. Ryan. A sterilized tray of surgical tools was rolled toward the bed and uncovered. The doctor seemed completely at ease; Dr. Ryan chatted easily with the nurse.

When the next contraction started, the doctor told Lexie to grab her legs and push. Lexie grimaced with the effort, and the doctor checked the baby’s heartbeat once more. Lexie strained, squeezing Jeremy’s hand as hard as she could.

“Okay, good,” he said, moving into a better position. He got comfortable on the rolling stool. “Now relax for a minute. Catch your breath and we’ll try this again. Push a little harder if you can.”

She nodded. Jeremy wondered whether it was possible to push harder, but Lexie seemed fine with it and began to push again.

The doctor was focused. “Good, good,” he said. “Keep going.”

Lexie kept pushing; Jeremy ignored the pain in his hand. The contraction ended.

“Relax again. You’re doing fine,” he assured her.

Lexie caught her breath as Jeremy wiped the perspiration from her brow. When the next contraction came, she went through the process once more. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her teeth clenched, her face flushed with effort. The nurses stood at the ready. Jeremy was still holding her hand, amazed at how fast things seemed to be moving now.

“Good, good,” the doctor said. “Just one more big push and we’re there . . .”

After that, everything went foggy, and he couldn’t explain how it happened. Later, he would realize that he could remember only bits and pieces, and he sometimes felt guilty about that. His last clear memory of Lexie was one of her pulling up her legs as the next contraction started. Her face was shiny with perspiration, and she was breathing hard as the doctor told her to push one last time with everything she had. He thought he saw her smile.

And then? He wasn’t sure, for his gaze was drawn toward Lexie’s legs, toward the quick and fluid movements of the physician. Though he considered himself knowledgeable and worldly, it suddenly struck him that this was the first-and possibly only-time that he would witness the birth of his child, and at that point the room itself seemed to shrink. All at once, he was only dimly aware that Doris was still in the room; instead, he heard Lexie groan and watched as Claire began to emerge. First her head, and then with a quick shift of the physician’s hands, the shoulders slid free, followed almost immediately by the rest of her body. In an instant, Jeremy had become a father, and he stared in amazement at the new life before him.

Covered in amniotic fluid and still attached to the umbilical cord, Claire was a slippery mass of gray and red and brown and seemed at first to be gasping; in an instant, Dr. Ryan placed her on a table, a suction tube was inserted in her mouth, and her throat was cleared. Only then did Claire begin to cry. The pediatrician began to examine her. From his spot, Jeremy couldn’t tell whether the baby was doing okay. The world was still closing in. Vaguely, he heard Lexie gasp.

“I don’t see any signs that the amniotic band attached,” Dr. Ryan said. “She’s got all her fingers and toes, and she’s a cute little thing. Good color, and she’s breathing fine. Apgar is an eight.”

Claire continued to wail, and Jeremy finally turned toward Lexie. At that point, everything moved so fast that he was still having trouble processing it.

“Did you hear that?” he asked.

It was then, while looking at her, that he heard the long, steady beep on the machine behind him. Lexie’s eyes were closed and her head lay back on the pillow, almost as if she were asleep.

His first thought was that it was strange that she wasn’t craning her neck in search of the baby. Then, all at once, the physician rose from his stool so quickly that it shot out toward the wall behind him. The nurse shouted something about code, and the doctor yelled to the other nurse to take Jeremy and Doris from the room immediately.

Jeremy felt a sudden contraction in his chest. “What’s happened?” he shouted.

The nurse grabbed his arm and started dragging him from the room.

“What’s going on? What’s wrong with her? Wait . . .”

“Please!” the nurse shouted. “You’ve got to go now!”

His eyes widened in terror. He couldn’t turn away from Lexie. Nor could Doris. As if from somewhere far away, he heard the nurse shouting for help from the orderlies. The doctor was over Lexie now, pushing on her chest. . . .

Looking panicked. They were all panicked.

“Nooo!” Jeremy screamed. He tried to shake free from the nurse.

“Get him out of here!” the doctor shouted.

Jeremy felt someone else grab his arm. He was being pulled from the room. This couldn’t be happening. What was wrong? Why wasn’t she moving? Oh God, she’s going to be okay. This can’t be happening. Wake up, Lexie . . . oh, please, God, wake up. . . .

“What’s happening?” he screamed again. He was led to the hallway, barely hearing the voices telling him to calm down. From the corner of his eye, he saw a stretcher being rushed down the hall by two orderlies. They vanished into the room.

Jeremy was being held against the wall by two other orderlies. His breathing was shallow, his body as tense and cold as cable wire. He heard Doris sobbing but could barely process the sound. He was surrounded by rushing people and all alone at the same time. This was what true terror felt like. A minute later, Lexie was being rushed from the room on a gurney. The doctor was still on top of her, giving her CPR. There was a bag over her face.

Then, all at once, time seemed to slow. His body finally loosened once Lexie vanished through the swinging doors at the end of the corridor. Suddenly he felt weak, and he could barely stand. He was dizzy.

“What’s wrong?” he asked again. “Where are they taking her? Why isn’t she moving?”

Neither the orderlies nor the nurse could look at him.

He and Doris were led to a special room. Not a waiting room, not a hospital room, but someplace else. Blue vinyl padded chairs lined the two walls of the carpeted room. An end table was littered with magazines, a garish mess beneath cold fluorescent lights. A wooden cross hung on the far wall. An empty room but for the two of them.

Doris sat pale and trembling, staring without seeming to focus on anything. Jeremy sat beside her, then rose to pace the room, then sat again. He’d asked her what happened, but Doris knew no more than Jeremy. She brought her hands to her face and began to cry.

Jeremy couldn’t swallow. He couldn’t think. He tried to remember what happened, tried to piece it all together, but he couldn’t concentrate. Time slowed.

Seconds, minutes, hours . . . He didn’t know how much time passed, didn’t know what was happening, didn’t know if she would be okay, wasn’t sure what to do. He wanted to rush back into the corridor to find the answers. More than that, he needed to see Lexie to know that she was okay. Doris continued to cry beside him, her trembling hands clasped in a desperate prayer.

Strangely, he would always remember everything about the waiting room, but as much as he tried, he couldn’t picture the face of the hospital counselor who eventually came to find him, and even the physician looked different from the way he’d appeared in the delivery room or during any of their previous appointments. All he would really remember was the cold terror he suddenly felt when he saw them appear. He stood, as did Doris, and though he thought he wanted answers, all at once he didn’t want them to say anything at all. Doris held his arm, as if hoping he were strong enough to support them both.

“How is she?” Jeremy asked.

The doctor seemed exhausted. “I’m so sorry to have to tell you this,” he began, “but we think your wife had what’s called an amniotic fluid embolism. . . .”

Again, Jeremy felt dizzy. Trying to steady himself, he focused on the specks of blood and fluid that had splattered on the doctor’s gown during the delivery. The words echoed as if from a great distance as the doctor went on.

“We don’t think the amniotic band had anything to do with it . . . they were completely separate events. . . . Amniotic fluid somehow must have entered one of the vessels in the uterus. There was no way we could have predicted it. . . . There was nothing we could do. . . .”

The room closed in around him, and Doris sagged against him, her voice going ragged. “Oh . . . no . . . ,” she said. “No . . . no . . .”

He strained to draw breath. Numbly, he heard the doctor going on.

“It’s very rare, but somehow, once the fluid entered the vessel, it must have traveled to her heart. I’m sorry, but she didn’t make it. The baby’s fine, though. . . .”

Doris staggered, but Jeremy was able to hold her upright. How, he wasn’t sure. None of this was making any sense. Lexie couldn’t be gone. She was fine. She was healthy. They were talking a few minutes ago. She’d delivered the baby. She’d pushed.

This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t be real.

But it was.

The doctor seemed to be in shock himself as he continued to attempt an explanation. Jeremy stared through his tears, light-headed and nauseated.

“Can I see her?” he suddenly croaked out.

“She’s in the nursery, under the lights,” the doctor said, as if glad to finally have a question he could answer. He was a good man, and this was obviously hard for him. “Like I said, she’s doing fine.”

“No,” Jeremy said in a strangled voice. He struggled to form the words. “My wife. Can I see my wife?”

At First Sight

Twenty

Jeremy was numb as he made his way down the corridor. The doctor walked half a step behind him, saying nothing.

He didn’t want to believe it, couldn’t force himself to process the doctor’s words. He had made a mistake, Jeremy thought; Lexie wasn’t really gone. While the doctor had been talking, someone had noticed something, brain activity or a faint heartbeat, and they’d sprung into action. Right now, they were working on her and she was somehow getting better. It was like nothing they’d ever seen, even miraculous, but Jeremy knew she would make it. She was young and strong. She’d just turned thirty-two and she couldn’t be gone. She couldn’t be.

The doctor stopped outside a room near the intensive care unit, and Jeremy felt his heart leap in his chest at the thought that he might be right.

“I had her moved here, so you could have some privacy,” the doctor said. His face was grim, and he placed a hand on Jeremy’s shoulder. “Take all the time you need. I’m so very sorry.”

Jeremy ignored the doctor’s words. His hand trembled as he reached for the door. It weighed a ton, ten tons, a hundred, but somehow he was able to open it. His eyes were drawn to the figure in the bed. She lay unmoving, with no equipment hooked up, no monitors, no IVs. She’d looked this way a hundred times in the mornings. She was sleeping, her hair spread over the pillow . . . but strangely, her arms were at her sides. Straight, as if they’d been placed in that position by someone who didn’t know her.

His throat clenched and his vision became a tunnel, everything black except her. She was the only thing he could see, but he didn’t want to see her like this. Not this way. Not with her arms like that. She had to be okay. She was only thirty-two. She was healthy and strong and a fighter. She loved him. She was his life.

But those arms . . . those arms were wrong . . . they should have been bent at the elbows, one hand over her head or on her belly. . . .

He couldn’t breathe.

His wife was gone . . .

His wife . . .

It wasn’t a dream. He knew that now, and he let the tears flow unchecked, sure they would never stop.

Sometime later, Doris came in to say good-bye as well, and Jeremy left her alone with her granddaughter. He moved through the hallway in a trance, only vaguely noticing the nurses he passed in the hallway and the volunteer who was pushing a cart past him. They seemed to ignore him completely, and he didn’t know whether they avoided looking his way because they knew what happened or because they didn’t.

He returned to the room where he’d met the doctor, feeling drained and weak. He couldn’t cry anymore. There was nothing left, and he simply didn’t have the energy. It was all he could do not to collapse. He replayed the images from the delivery room countless times, trying to figure out the exact instant the embolism had been triggered, thinking he might have seen something to warn him of what was coming. Had it been when she gasped? Had it happened a moment later? He couldn’t shake the feeling of guilt, as if he should have convinced her to have a cesarean section, or at least not to strain as much as she had, as if her strenuous efforts had triggered it. He was angry with himself, angry with God, angry with the doctor. And he was angry with the baby.

He didn’t even want to see the baby, believing that somehow, in the act of receiving life, the baby had taken one in exchange. If it weren’t for the baby, Lexie would still be with him. If it weren’t for the baby, their last months together would have been devoid of stress. If it weren’t for the baby, he might have been able to make love to his wife. But all that was gone now. The baby had taken all of it. Because of the baby, his wife was dead. And Jeremy felt dead as well.

How could he ever love her? How could he ever forgive her? How could he see her or hold her and forget that she’d taken Lexie’s life in exchange for her own? How was he not supposed to hate her for what she had done to the woman he loved?

He recognized the irrationality of his feelings and sensed their insidious, evil character. It was wrong, it went against everything a parent was supposed to feel, but how could he silence his heart? How could he possibly say good-bye to Lexie in one moment and say hello to the baby in the next? And how was he supposed to act? Was he supposed to scoop her in his arms and coo sweetly, as other fathers would be doing? As if nothing at all had happened to Lexie?

And then what? After she came home from the hospital? At the moment, he couldn’t imagine having to take care of someone else; it was everything he could do not to curl up on the floor right now. He knew nothing about infants, and the only thing he was certain about was that they were supposed to be with their mothers. It was Lexie who had read all the books; it was Lexie who’d baby-sat as a child. Throughout the pregnancy, he’d been comfortable in his ignorance, assured that Lexie would show him what to do. But the baby had other plans. . . .

The baby who had killed his wife.

Instead of heading to the nursery, he collapsed into one of the chairs in the waiting room again. He didn’t want to feel this way about the baby, knew he shouldn’t feel this way, but . . . Lexie had died in childbirth. In the modern world, in a hospital, that just didn’t happen. Where were the miracle cures? The made-for-television moments? Where in God’s name was any semblance of reality in all this? He closed his eyes, convincing himself that if he concentrated hard enough, he could wake from the nightmare that his life had suddenly become.

Doris eventually found Jeremy. He hadn’t heard her enter the room, but at the touch of her hand on his shoulder, his eyes flew open, taking in the swollen, tear-streaked wreck of her face. Like Jeremy, she seemed to be on the verge of breaking apart.

“Have you called your parents?” she said, her voice ragged.

Jeremy shook his head. “I can’t. I know I should, but I just can’t do it right now.”

Her shoulders began to shudder. “Oh, Jeremy,” she gasped.

Jeremy rose and wrapped his arms around her. They cried together, holding on, as if trying to save each other. In time, Doris pulled back and swiped at her tears.

“Have you seen Claire?” she whispered.

The name brought all his feelings rushing back.

“No,” Jeremy said. “Not since I was in the delivery room.”

Doris gave a sad smile, one that nearly crushed what was left of his heart. “She looks exactly like Lexie.”

Jeremy turned away. He didn’t want to hear that, didn’t want to hear anything about the baby. Was he supposed to be happy about that? Would he ever be happy again?

He couldn’t imagine it. What was supposed to be the most joyous day of his life had suddenly become the worst, and nothing in life could prepare someone for that. And now? Not only was he supposed to survive the unimaginable, but he was supposed to take care of someone else? The little one who had killed his wife?

“She’s beautiful,” Doris said into the silence. “You should go see her.”

“I . . . uh . . . I can’t,” Jeremy mumbled. “Not yet. I don’t want to see her.”

He felt Doris watching him, as if reading him through the fog of her pain.

“She’s your daughter,” Doris said.

“I know,” Jeremy responded, but all he could feel was the dull anger pulsing beneath his skin.

“Lexie would want you to take care of her.” Doris reached out to take his hand. “If you can’t do it for yourself, then do it for your wife. She would want you to see your child, to hold your child. Yes, it’s hard, but you can’t say no. You can’t say no to Lexie, you can’t say no to me, and you can’t say no to Claire. Now come with me.”

Where Doris found the strength and composure to deal with him, he was never certain, but with that, she took his arm and marched him down the corridor toward the nursery. He was moving on autopilot, but with each step he felt his anxiety growing. He was frightened at the thought of meeting his daughter. While he knew that the anger he felt toward her was wrong, he was also afraid that he wouldn’t be angry when the time came, and that seemed wrong as well-as if somehow that meant he could forgive her for what happened to Lexie. All he knew for certain was that he wasn’t ready for either possibility.

But Doris wouldn’t be dissuaded. She pushed through a set of swinging doors, and in the rooms on either side, Jeremy saw pregnant women and new mothers, surrounded by their families. The hospital buzzed with activity, nurses moving purposefully around them. He passed the room where the embolism had occurred and had to put a hand to the wall to keep from falling.

They passed the nurses’ station and rounded the corner, toward the nursery. The gray-speckled tile was disorienting, and he felt dizzy. He wanted to break free from Doris’s grasp and escape; he wanted to call his mother and tell her what happened. He wanted to cry into the phone, to have an excuse to let go, to be released from this duty. . . .

Up ahead, a group of people clustered in the hallway, peering through the glass wall of the nursery. They were pointing and smiling, and he could hear their murmurs: She’s got his nose, or, I think she’ll have blue eyes. He knew none of them, but suddenly he hated them, for they were experiencing the joy and excitement that should have been his. He couldn’t imagine having to stand next to them, to have them ask which child he had come to see, to listen to them as they would inevitably praise her sweetness or beauty. Beyond them, heading toward the offices, he saw the nurse who had been in the room when Lexie had died, going about her business as if the day had been utterly ordinary.

He was stricken by the sight of her, and as if knowing what he was feeling, Doris squeezed his arm and paused in midstep.

“That’s where you go in,” she said, motioning toward the door.

“You’re not coming with me?”

“No,” she said, “I’ll wait out here.”

“Please,” he pleaded, “come with me.”

“No,” she said. “This is something you have to do on your own.”

Jeremy stared at her. “Please,” he whispered.

Doris’s expression softened. “You’re going to love her,” she said. “As soon as you see her, you’ll love her.”

Is love at first sight truly possible?

He couldn’t fathom the possibility. He entered the nursery with tentative steps. The nurse’s expression changed as soon as she saw him; although she hadn’t been in the delivery room, the story had made the rounds. That Lexie, a healthy and vibrant young woman, had suddenly died, leaving behind a husband in shock and a motherless newborn. It would have been easy to offer sympathy or even turn away, but the nurse did neither. Instead, she forced a smile and pointed toward one of the cribs near the window.

“Your daughter is on the left,” she said. Her expression faltered, and it was enough to remind him of how wrong this scene was. Lexie should have been here, too. Lexie. He gasped, feeling suddenly short of breath. From somewhere far away, he heard her murmur, “She’s beautiful.”

Jeremy moved automatically toward the crib, wanting to turn back but wanting to see her, too. It seemed as if he were watching the process through someone else’s eyes. He wasn’t here. It wasn’t really him. This wasn’t his baby.

He hesitated when he saw Claire’s name written on the sheathed plastic band around her ankle, and his throat clenched again when he saw Lexie’s name. He blinked away his tears and stared down at his daughter. Tiny and vulnerable beneath the warming lights, she was wrapped in a blanket and wearing a hat, her soft skin a healthy pink. He could still see the ointment that had been applied to her eyes, and she had the strange mannerisms of all newborns: The movements of her arms were occasionally jerky, as if she were working hard to get used to breathing air as opposed to receiving oxygen from her mother. Her chest rose and fell quickly, and Jeremy hovered over her, fascinated by how oddly uncontrolled her movements seemed. Yet even as a newborn she resembled Lexie, in the shape of her ears, the slight point of her chin. The nurse appeared over his shoulder.

“She’s a wonderful baby,” she said. “She’s been sleeping most of the time, but when she wakes, she barely utters a cry.”

Jeremy said nothing. Felt nothing.

“You should be able to take her home tomorrow,” she continued. “There haven’t been any complications, and she’s already able to suck. Sometimes that’s a problem with little ones like her, but she took right to the bottle. Oh look, she’s waking up.”

“Good,” Jeremy mumbled, barely hearing her. All he could do was stare.

The nurse laid a hand on Claire’s tiny chest. “Hi, sweetie. Your daddy’s here.”

The baby’s arms jerked again.

“What’s that?”

“That’s normal,” the nurse said, adjusting the blanket. “Hi, sweetie,” she said again.

Beyond the window, Jeremy could feel Doris staring at him.

“Do you want to hold her?”

Jeremy swallowed, thinking she seemed so fragile that any movement would break her. He didn’t want to touch her, but the words came out before he could stop them. “Can I?”