Mother Load (20 page)

Her euphoria was lost when she pulled onto the Santa Monica Freeway. The inside lanes were stacked, and it took her forever to get out to where the traffic flowed. No sooner had she patted herself on the back when the cars in front of her came to a screeching halt. This was one part of her day she wouldn’t miss at all, the eighty-minute crawl between her home and office. Not driving to and from work would add almost three hours to her day, time she could spend napping, reading or just sitting out by the pool thinking of baby names.

She had been studying on that question for months, hung up not just on how the names sounded but on who came to mind. Rod was definitely off her list, and Samuel too, for that matter. She would have liked naming her son after someone as wonderful as Hal, but he and Kim had used Harold as Jonah’s middle name. Another man she really admired was her boss Tony, but he and Colleen had named their son Anthony, which was too much like Andres anyway.

The bottleneck gave way and she surged ahead again. By the clock on her dashboard, it was only two, which gave her just enough time to get to Andy’s school before the final bell rang. He would be excited by the change in routine, even more so when he heard they were going out together for pizza tonight.

Sometime soon she had to schedule their childbirth classes at the UCLA Women’s Center. That would be quite a feat, getting Anna to commit to two nights a week.

“And starting tomorrow I’m taking my kitchen back,” she said aloud. Anna had been the perfect partner through all of this, but now she would have time and energy to do more at home. It was hard to believe that only a year ago they were heading off for their second try at getting pregnant. Now they were only eleven weeks away from—

Lily slammed on her brakes as the cars in front of her came to a dead stop. A sickening crunch hurled her forward and her head snapped back against the headrest. A split second later another crunch jolted her and her airbag exploded.

Tears erupted instantly as a sharp pain reverberated from somewhere deep inside her head. She was barely aware of a woman charging toward her window, screaming at the top of her lungs. A man began yelling too, and soon her door was snatched open and they looked at her in horror.

Her babies…

A fiery sensation ripped through her abdomen when she tried to move her leg, and she realized her skirt was wet.

“…and I promise I won’t ever fire you,” Anna said over her shoulder as she exited her father’s office. They had made up rather easily after their little tiff, with him acknowledging that the recession made him stingier about his assets. She had reminded him how, during the gas crunch, he had allowed all of Premier’s employees—from the garage mechanics to the office staff—to fill up their cars on the company account once a week. It was one of the things she had admired about him, and one of the reasons she too put people first.

As she neared her office she recognized Lily’s ringtone again. “Hey, baby. I just told Dad that you were picking Andy up.”

“…Michelle…told me to call you.” The background noise was overpowering, but it definitely wasn’t Lily’s voice. “…helicopter.”

“I can’t hear you,” Anna shouted. “Say it again.”

After a few seconds she heard what sounded like a car door slamming.

“My name is Michelle. The woman asked me to call you—the pregnant woman. There’s been an accident on the 10 at Fairfax.”

Anna’s pulse raced as she groped for her keys. “What’s happening? Is Lily hurt?”

“They’re putting her in the helicopter right now. The guy says they’re going to UCLA Medical Center. That’s all I know.”

“Tell her I’m on my way. And tell her I love her.”

Hal and her father had heard the commotion and were standing in her doorway.

“Somebody go get Andy and bring him to the Medical Center. Lily’s been in an accident.” She pushed past them and raced to her car.

An ice bag over her face prevented her from seeing much on her first ride in a helicopter. The pain in her head was now only a dull ache, but the one in her belly was coming in agonizing waves. Over her protest, someone had started an IV drip, but they promised not to give her anything that might hurt the babies.

The ride ended with a bump and within seconds she found herself at the center of organized frenzy. Through bright sunlight she glimpsed the chopper’s blades whipping overhead as blue-clad people clustered around her gurney shouting numbers and terms she didn’t understand. She was whisked across the building’s roof and into an elevator, where it went deathly quiet the moment the door closed. An African-American woman, her hair tightly braided in rows and decorated with brown and ivory beads, was shining a penlight into her eyes.

“Take care of my babies, please.”

“It’s your lucky day, sugar, ’cause ol’ Darla here don’t lose babies, and she don’t lose mamas neither. Tell me what hurts most right now.”

Lily shook her head. Didn’t they understand that her pain didn’t matter?

“Come on, sweetie. Don’t you play tough with me. I’m asking ’cause I need to know.”

She focused and realized her abdominal pains were coming mostly from one side and she indicated the area just as a cramp seized her.

The doors opened and her gurney lurched forward. “Her doctor’s waiting in ER,” a male voice behind her said. She was wheeled into an examination bay where a swarm of nurses seemed to talk without words as one went to work cutting her suit from her and another started taping leads to her bare chest and belly. A third snapped a hospital gown to her shoulders.

She had only a vague recollection of the chaos on the freeway, where she had given them Beth’s name and told the paramedic she was having twins. What she remembered clearly was the woman running back to say Anna loved her.

More cuffs, clips and leads were attached, and a nurse mounted her IV bag to a pump. In only seconds, the machines hummed, beeped and clicked to life. Someone laid a fresh cold compress across the bridge of her nose, but she pulled it aside at the sound of Beth’s familiar voice. She needed to see what they saw, as well as the looks on their faces.

“Lily, we weren’t supposed to meet like this. I see they gave you my best obstetric nurse.”

Darla nudged her shoulder. “See, I told you.”

Beth went right to work, checking her eyes, ears and extremities. Then she touched the tender points across her lap where the seat belt had grabbed her, causing her to grimace. “Looks like you were buckled in just right. That’s in our favor.”

As Beth finished her cursory pelvic exam, a thin, bald man in a striped shirt and tie entered holding a clipboard. “Anything for me?”

“Nothing pressing,” Beth answered, pulling a sheet across Lily’s exposed abdomen. “Probable broken nose…some bruising. We may have woken up a pair of sleeping babies though, so I’d like to get her moved upstairs for a sonogram.”

He shrugged. “Call if you need me. I’m here till midnight.”

Beth continued the assessment, pressing a stethoscope to various points around her abdomen. “Someone page Dr. Saint-Laurent to obstetrics.”

Lily studied her face for signs of concern. The attention she was getting from everyone seemed steady and methodical, not at all frantic. “What’s happening?”

Beth blew out a breath that rippled the hair on her forehead. “Well, I’ve got two strong heartbeats, which I like very, very much, and no bleeding. But you’ve lost some amniotic fluid so we have to see if that’s a permanent problem or something that will fix itself. I’ll get a better look upstairs.” She snapped off her gloves and left, setting off another burst of activity among the nurses and orderlies.

Frustration gripped her—along with another contraction—as she tried to make sense of the cryptic clues Beth had given her. “Darla, what did she mean about it being a permanent problem?”

“She said you woke up the babies. Now she got to see if they going back to sleep or coming out to say hello.”

“Say hello? You mean they might be born now?”

“That’s right, sugar. But don’t you worry. We got you covered.”

The next few minutes were a blur of faces, doorways and lights as they navigated the hospital’s maze to the obstetrics floor, and into a room filled with the familiar equipment she had seen in Beth’s office. She wished Anna would hurry. If there were decisions to make—

“On three,” Darla said, grunting as they lifted and transferred her to the bed. Then they went about their flurry of tasks again, reconnecting her equipment and activating the machines.

She pulled the blanket they had draped over her torso up around her neck and lay perfectly still, concentrating on her various points of pain. Her knee had hit something on the dashboard, the ignition switch perhaps. The worst of it—besides the all-too-frequent searing contractions—was her nose, which radiated an ache throughout her whole head.

“In here,” the nurse said, and suddenly there was Anna rushing to her side.

“Sweetheart, you’re hurt.”

“I’m all right, but they’re worried the babies might come.” In a rapid jumble of words, she related everything she knew, which wasn’t much. “Beth has that look again…you know, the one where we know she’s worried but she won’t say anything.”

Anna’s hands were all over her face and arms, checking…caressing. “They just have to make sure they cover all their bases. I’m sure it’s all going to be okay.”

“What you doing, mama?” Darla barked, setting the compress back into position across her nose and cheeks. “You leave that there or your nose be looking like my sister’s butt, and believe me, you don’t want that. No, ma’am.”

“This is Darla,” she said drolly to Anna. “Don’t give her any shit.”

Beth returned with a woman of about fifty wearing a crisp white lab coat and a pageboy haircut that suggested an all-business persona. “Glad you got here, Anna. I want you both to meet Dr. Saint-Laurent. She’s a neonatal specialist and I’ve asked her to sit in on the sonogram.”

The new doctor greeted them brusquely with a pronounced French accent and positioned herself to peer over Beth’s shoulder as the graph came to life.

“There’s some good news,” Beth proclaimed.

Braving the wrath of Darla, Lily whipped off her compress again and twisted so she could see the image.

Beth used a pointer on the screen to indicate what pleased her. “See how your babies are positioned? It looks like most of the pressure from the seatbelt was against the buttocks of this one…and the feet of this one.”

“Placenta remains adhered,” Dr. Saint-Laurent said with a steady nod, “but the amniotic sac was clearly breached. Did you give the antenatal steroids?”

“About thirty minutes ago, as soon as they got her off the helicopter.” Beth looked up at Anna and Lily. “Steroids speed up the lung development in case we have to deliver…which we’d do by C-section.”

Lily clutched her abdomen as her panic rose. “Deliver? But I’m not even seven months along.”

“That’s why Dr. Saint-Laurent’s here. My job is to take care of you, Lily, but hers is to take care of your babies.”

Anna gripped her hand and mouthed a silent reassurance before addressing the doctors. “Do you see anything that makes you worry about them?”

Dr. Saint-Laurent nudged Beth to the side and took her stool. With a few clicks of the mouse she drew lines on the screen and busied herself with computations. “Both fetuses appear viable, in particular, the female. She is—”

“Female?” Anna asked. “We’re having a girl?”

“Indeed, and a boy as well. You did not know?” She looked at Beth and winced. “Apologies.”

Lily barely gave herself a moment to think about her babies’ genders. “Is there something wrong with the boy?”

“I can’t say with absolute certainty, but he looks perfectly fine considering the trauma of having his pool drained while he was swimming in it,” the neonatal doctor said perfunctorily. “He is significantly smaller than his sister, probably less than two and a half pounds. However, survival rates are quite high at gestations above twenty-eight weeks, though admittedly they are clinically exacerbated in the instance of multiple births.”

Beth put a hand on the other doctor’s shoulder and gave her a stern look. “Doctor, this is what people are talking about when they say you sometimes scare patients half to death.”

“Oh, apologies again. Perhaps I should just tell you that I don’t see anything here beyond our usual scope of treatment for preterm births, if it becomes necessary to deliver these babies early. We’re quite good at what we do, if I do say so myself, and we have the best neonatal facilities your tax-free endowments can buy.” She turned to Beth. “That said, if we continue without distress I’d recommend waiting a few hours for the sac to regenerate. Could be this was just a pressure pop around the cervix that’s already sealed itself, and once the little ones stop squirming they’ll go back to sleep. Then we monitor fluid volume for forty-eight hours before we send the patient home for permanent bed rest. We can discuss delivery options a few weeks down the road.”

“Agreed,” Beth said. “The contractions have decreased in frequency from what the paramedics reported so maybe they’re settling back down already. And if it turns out our leak continues, at least we’ll have given some time for the steroids to work. In the meantime we’ll start a course of antibiotics. We don’t need an infection to complicate things any worse.” She turned to Darla. “Let’s go ahead and do the prep just in case we get surprised. Small sips of clear liquids only until further notice.”

With the doctors and nurses gone from the room, Anna perched on the side of the bed. “They don’t seem as worried as I thought they’d be. Sounds like we’ve got all the bases covered.”

“How can you tell? I never know how to read Beth, and this Dr. Saint-Laurent talks about survival rates like she’s taking bets at the horse track or something. Did you get the idea she’s had a few problems with her bedside manner?”

“I don’t care if she comes off like Attila the Hun as long as she knows what she’s doing. I can’t imagine Beth would have called her in here if she didn’t.” Anna gently set the compress back in place. “Tell me what happened.”

Lily recounted the accident as best as she remembered. “The guy in the helicopter said my nose was broken.”