Girls Don't Fly (29 page)
Authors: Kristen Chandler
“Erggg!” she yells.
“I’m going to have to take some of your clothes off,” I say. “Don’t worry, I won’t look.”
“Like I care!” screams Melyssa.
I wiggle to her side so I can help her scoot out of her underwear, but everything is so covered in blood, and we’re wedged in so tight it’s like the clothes are glued on. I remember the knife in my first-aid kit in the glove box. I grab it out and flip it open. I say, “This is for your clothes, not you.”
She’s crying. “Don’t leave!”
“Are you kidding?”
She smacks the seat with her forearm. “I mean it.”
I begin cutting her clothes. In any other moment of my life, the germs and blood in these two feet of space would paralyze me. But I’m dead calm. Just as I pull the clothes away, a baby, a terribly small, perfectly formed baby, comes from my sister’s legs in a wave of blood and water. The baby’s delicate body is purple and gray and is covered in white film. I catch her and tip her sideways like I saw online. Except there were doctors and they weren’t doing it in a Suburban. I take my red hands and lift her to me, but she’s still connected to my sister’s womb by a twisty cord the size of a pen, so I lean forward to be close.
Her body is warm, floppy, and about the size of an overgrown eggplant. But the precision of each unbearably small feature is so perfect, so full of what it’s becoming, that she’s unlike anything I have every imagined. She is divine.
I think my head is going to explode. I touch her back with my finger. She doesn’t respond. And yet I know she is alive. She fills every particle around her with life.
“It’s a girl,” I say quietly.
Melyssa yells, “Is she okay?”
I lift my thin, yellow dress around her to keep her warm, trying to think what I should do next.
Where are those doctors?
“Let me warm her up,” I say. I tear the gauze from my dress and tuck her into it.
“Is she all right? Hold her up so I can see her.”
“Let me warm her up.”
Melyssa lifts her head to see us. “Okay. Get her warm.”
Behind me the door opens and sucks all the air out of the Suburban. Someone grabs my shoulder. “Miss! Miss! I’m a doctor. I need you to give me the baby.”
I turn my head and see a middle-aged woman in bright green scrubs with a dozen other people behind her. It’s so cold outside I turn my back on them to stop the draft. I draw the little purple body to me. “Breathe, honey, breathe.”
“Where are you going?” says Melyssa.
“I’m giving her to the doctor,” I say.
I slide out of the doctor’s way. She’s holding a small blanket that she wraps around the baby. A second doctor comes up behind her with instruments. I push around the other staff and get into the backseat where I can hold Melyssa’s hand. “Doing great, Mel,” I say.
The second doctor doesn’t look happy. “Come on,” he says to the first doctor.
The first doctor puts the baby closer to Melyssa and the second doctor clamps off the umbilical cord and snips it.
The first doctor looks at the baby and then at the other doctor. There’s a little wrinkle in the baby’s forehead and a cry so faint it could be my imagination, except the man yells, “Go!”
Then the first doctor is running with another team of people in scrubs who are running to meet her and my sister is saying, “Where is she? Is she breathing? Myra! Myra!”
“She’s breathing.”
The doctor says, “You need to get out of this car and onto the stretcher. We need to get you inside too.”
He gets out of the car and stands there waiting for her like she’s just going to bounce off the seat onto the stretcher.
Mel looks up at me. Her eyes aren’t right. “Where is she?” she says.
“They took her into the hospital. She’s going to be fine,” I say.
“The baby needs oxygen,” says the man, looking at me. “And this woman needs a surgeon before she bleeds to death.” He calls to his staff. “Pull her out.”
Two men in scrubs get on both ends of Melyssa and lift her onto the stretcher. Once she’s on her back, I grab her hand and squeeze it.
The doctor pushes at my hand. “We have to go. You need to check her in.”
The stretcher starts moving. “Is she okay?” calls Melyssa.
I run alongside. “She’s perfect.”
“Don’t leave, Myra,” she says.
“I won’t.”
41
Hatchling:
A new bird.
My mom faints when she sees me. One look and ... Bam! I guess it’s the sight of me in an emergency room wearing a blood-covered sundress. Luckily, Dad grabs her quick enough that she doesn’t split her head open on the chair next to her.
She comes right out of it, so nobody puts her on a stretcher or anything. And she’s mad as she can be by the time she’s on her feet.
“What happened?” she says.
“When?” I’m not being sarcastic. It’s just that a lot of bad stuff has happened since I saw Mom last.
Dad says, “Why is there blood all over you?”
“I delivered the baby. Or at least I was there when she arrived. The blood got all over everything, including the car. The upholstery is a total mess.”
“I don’t care about the upholstery,” says Dad.
Mom says, “What was Melyssa doing driving the car?”
“She was coming to get me.”
Mom says, “I gathered that from Andrew. Why did you ask her to? You know she shouldn’t drive.”
“I told her to send Dad. I didn’t know she was coming, and when I did, she was already there.”
“Where are they now?” says Dad.
“They took them separately and told me to wait. Melyssa looked pretty good, but the baby was really small and purple. She wasn’t making much noise.”
Dad grabs my mom’s shoulder, just to make sure she doesn’t try to face-plant again.
She says, “Purple?”
“Kind of.”
“How long did it take for her to start breathing?” says Dad.
“She could have been breathing at the very first. But it took a few seconds to get her to cry.”
“Brain damage. Here we go,” says Mom. Her face is retracting in pain. I really hope she doesn’t faint again.
“We aren’t going anywhere,” says Dad. “Dear, for once in your life could you imagine the best thing happening? Maybe they’ll both be fine. Hospitals do amazing things these days. Now let’s sit.”
I sit.
“Except you, Myra,” says Dad. “You go buy something to wear in the gift shop.” Dad cracks open his wallet and hands me eighty dollars. My dad has never volunteered that much cash to me in his life, especially not for shopping. “Get something cheerful. We want to look ready when we meet the newest member of this family.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I say. “But I promised Melyssa I wouldn’t leave.”
Mom shakes her head. “You were supposed to keep her out of trouble.”
“That’s not fair and you know it, Marci. Melyssa is a grown woman. She did something reckless. That isn’t Myra’s responsibility.” Mom looks at Dad in total surprise. He looks back at her with sad frustration and then at me. “I’ll call you on your cell phone if we hear anything, Myra. You can’t stand here like that, you’re scaring the other people in the waiting room.”
On the way to the gift shop I get lost. Too much has happened for me to think clearly. I wander around the hospital entrance, trying to follow the gift shop signs with thin little arrows, but everyone gets so bug-eyed when they see me that I turn down a side hallway just to get away.
Before I know it I find myself looking into a room that looks suspiciously like a mini church. At least I think that’s what the cross and the weird lighting are all about. Why people would find that crucifix stuff soothing is beyond me. But the room’s empty so I go in.
I sit on the little bench they have just for this occasion. There is soft, morbid organ music playing. I know the whole room is designed to make you feel like someone or something out there in the universe cares about your problems, but all it does is make me sad. I think of all the other people who have been on this bench and I wonder how things turned out for them. Which is weird in a way, because if I’m thinking about those people’s problems now, then after the fact, someone is, or was going to be, out there worrying about them. I giggle. Clearly I’m in massive post-trauma denial mode.
Maybe things are worse than I thought. And maybe they aren’t.
But that’s the thing about me. I can’t accept that things are going to turn out badly for Melyssa. I just know they aren’t. It’s not even that I feel optimistic. I just know she’s going to be all right. I’m not so sure about the baby, because I don’t know the baby. But I think the baby will make it too.
And then what will happen? As selfish as it sounds, I ask myself, what is going to happen to me now? And then I know, as quickly as I ask myself the question. I know that Melyssa will find her way, but that I don’t want to be like her. I felt that amazing little baby come into my arms and I knew at that surreally beautiful moment that I wanted something else. The baby is here. Melyssa is going to be all right. And it’s my turn to have a life.
I look at the cross again. If there is a God, he/she/it can’t like that thing. If it means what I think it does, it’s all about death. Doesn’t the world, with all its elaborate plants and animals and perverted little microbes seem to be more about life than death?
I close my eyes so I won’t have to look at anything else, and I think,
We could use some help
.
We could use some help
.
Of course nothing happens. Except that closing my eyes makes me realize that I’m exhausted and I never want to open them again.
But first I have to find that stupid gift shop so I can stop looking like a stabbing victim.
I step into the hallway and look for the signs. Soon I’m back to the hospital entrance. And do you know who I find there?
I find Zeke, yelling at an admitting nurse. I recognize him instantly by his wrestling stance. But I’m thrown off by his clothes. He’s wearing a pair of nice black pants and a starched shirt, like a waiter. His hair is combed back and he’s shaved. In spite of the fact that he’s yelling, he looks good. Zeke looks like he has a job.
Zeke must feel me staring. He turns around and gets a load of my bloody dress, and he goes white as the wall behind him. And then ... Bam! Good thing that nurse knows how to catch. I’ve seen enough blood for one day.
After reviving Zeke and sending him off to find my parents, I buy a lilac sweat suit. It’s about the same color as the baby. The woman in the pink smock at the counter says, “Looks like you had an accident.”
“You have to watch those ketchup bottles in the cafeteria.”
She avoids touching me when she gives me my change.
I walk into the bathroom and come out a normal person. I stuff the evidence of my evening in the trash can. Suddenly my phone goes off.
“How are they?” I say.
“Melyssa feels good enough to cuss her doctors. They’re asking that you head up to neonatal on the seventh floor right away.”
“And what about the baby?”
“That’s going to take some time to figure out.”
I walk as quickly as I can to the elevator. I wish Pete was here. I’m in the mood for the Galápagos cheer.
You might as well step back,Uh-huh.You might as well step back.
42
Field of View:
What you see in your scope.
A week after the application deadline I go to see Pete at the pier. He’s not there. Ranger Bobbie is covering while he’s at school. “He’s getting that dang trip set up.”
“Oh,” I say lightly. “Have they picked who’s going to go yet?”
“I think so.”
“They have?”
“Well, at least I think so,” says Bobbie. “I think Pete said that the comedian and the jerk won. He didn’t see any of the entries, but he said the twins’ drafts were pretty bad.”
“Oh,” I say. I feel the blood rushing to my face. I have to leave.
“You okay, honey? You look a little pale.”
“No ... I’m fine.”
“I know it’s tough on you. You’d a won for sure if you had entered. But the bright side is maybe I can talk you into coming back to work here. I’m getting sick of things growing on that desk again, and I’m not talking about flowers either.”
“I’d like that,” I say. At least I think I say it. My brain feels like a Russian nesting doll, buried in layers of conversations with myself.
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