Rules for Life (10 page)

The guy—his nametag said Dave Florentino—leaned around me. “C'mon, Anne,” he coaxed. “Breathe. Breathe.”

Anne was almost turned inside out with the pain, pale and sweat-sticky, her bottom lip chewed half raw. And he was telling her to breathe? Like that would fix anything.

I turned my head so I was right in his face. “Do something for her,” I said.

He didn't even look at me. “We are,” he said.

My free hand clenched into a fist again. I hoped they were. I just couldn't tell.

I climbed into the back of the ambulance behind the stretcher. I wanted Dad, Rafe, even Jason. I wanted someone who'd know what to do. I felt the same overwhelming, longing ache inside for my own mother that I'd felt in the first months after she'd died.

Anne hugged her belly with one arm as though she was trying to protect the baby. I reached over for her other hand. It was the only thing I knew to do. The lights flashed and the siren screamed. And I held on all the way to the hospital.

The emergency room was bright and loud and overflowing with people; arms at weird angles; bloody, swollen mouths; oozing welts; angry purple bruises; faces pinched, gray and frightened. Where had they all come from?

The paramedics wheeled Anne into a small room and I followed. Someone—a nurse—caught my shoulder. “You need to wait outside,” she said. I squeezed Anne's hand before I let go. It suddenly looked so much smaller than mine. “I'm just going to be there,” I said, pointing to the doorway. “It'll be all right.”

She nodded. “Find Marc, please, Isabelle,” she whispered.

“I will.” Outside the room I grabbed the arm of a guy in pale blue scrubs and streaked green hair. “Excuse me,” I said. “Can you tell me where I can find a phone?”

“Sure,” he said. “Just go down this hall, around the corner to the left and through the double doors. Phones are at the far end of the waiting room.”

Maybe I looked stupid or something because he smiled then and waved me to follow him. I watched for landmarks so I could find my way to Anne again, and wished for a pen so I could draw little arrows on the walls to point the way back.

“Right through here,” Spiky said, pointing at a set of doors.

“Thanks,” I said.

There were three pay phones. No one was at the middle one. I fished in my purse for change. I had enough for half a dozen phone calls.

Dad's cell phone rang five times. On the sixth ring I heard the stutter that meant the next thing I was going to get was the customer-away-from-the-phone message.

It was the middle of the night. Where was he?

I hung up and my quarter came back. I dialed home and waited for the machine. All I said was, “Dad, I'm with Anne at St. Sebastian's. She needs you.”

I stuck another quarter in the slot and remembered Rafe was at a hockey tournament. “Shit!” I laid my forehead against the phone box. Lisa had gone to a concert in Boston with her mother and Sean. Jason. It would have to be Jason.

The phone rang twenty-three times. I counted every ring. Where was Jason's answering machine? Where was Jason at 3:04 in the morning? Where was any of my so-called family?

I saw the nurse who had told me to wait outside head back through the swinging doors. I followed her to Anne's room. A different nurse was checking the IV the paramedics had hooked to Anne's arm. A sloshy, thumping sound filled the room:
whumpa, whumpa, whumpa, whumpa
. The baby's heartbeat? I felt like someone had grabbed me tight around the chest.

“Did you find Marc?” Anne asked as soon as she saw me. A second nurse was wiping her face.

“Not yet,” I said as the nurse rubbed a bit of some kind of cream on Anne's chapped lips.

Suddenly Anne closed her eyes and hunched her shoulders. “Oh God,” she moaned through her clenched teeth. I caught her hand again without really thinking.

The nurse who had been at the IV moved to another machine, strapped to Anne's belly. It looked like something that might be used to monitor an earthquake. All at once the room filled with people and I ended up shoved back by the door.

I didn't know what they were doing or talking about, but I could tell by how fast it was all happening that something was wrong with the baby. “Where's Isabelle?” I heard Anne ask.

“I'm right here.” I pushed my way back to the bed. An orderly had already grabbed the bottom, and a nurse was at the top.

“I'm … bleeding. They have to do a cesarean,” she said. The tears in her eyes looked like they'd spill down her face any second.

“That's okay.”

“It's too soon,” she whispered.

“Lots of babies are born early. It'll be okay. It will.” I leaned over and sort of hugged her.

“Let's go,” I heard someone say and the bed started moving.

This was not the way it was supposed to be. This was supposed to happen weeks from now. Dad was supposed to be holding Anne's hand and putting cream on her dry lips. Not some nurse. And I should have been with Rafe, eating pizza and kissing sauce off his mouth and complaining about my life.

The nurse who had wiped Anne's face came over to me. “Hi,” she said. “Your name's Isabelle?”

I nodded.

“I'm Julie,” she said. “Is there someone with you?”

“I'm trying to get my dad.” I pushed my hands into my pockets so she wouldn't see them shaking.

She touched my arm, steering me back down the corridor. “Right now you need to go out to the desk and help the unit clerk fill out some papers for your mom.”

“Anne is my stepmother,” I said stiffly.

“Your stepmother, then. After you're done, tell the clerk you're by yourself and she'll call someone to wait with you until your dad gets here.”

“Will the baby be all right?” I asked.

“We'll do our best,” Julie said.

“That's not yes.” I could feel panic start to rise, like fingers creeping up over the back of my head.

“We'll do everything we can.”

What else could she say?

23

I did the best I could with the forms.

“Are you by yourself?” the clerk asked.

“I called my dad,” I said. That much wasn't a lie. I didn't want some social worker coming to sit with me. I'd had enough of that after my mom's accident. “He's on his way up. Can you tell me where to go?”

I thought for a second that she was going to ask me more questions. Then a man came through the door with a large nail all the way through the cuff of his denim jacket—and, I was guessing, the arm underneath. At the same time, some skinny, pale guy in the waiting room vomited in his girlfriend's lap. The clerk pointed at the elevator. “Third floor. Follow the signs.”

I stopped at the phones and tried Jason again. I tried Dad again. I called the house, punched in the answering machine code and listened to my own message. Nothing.

There was no one in the elevator to the third floor. The hallway was empty as well. I went right, left, then right again and found the waiting room. There wasn't anything else to do but wait.

I sat in a lime Jell-O vinyl chair. There were four
Reader's
Digests
and a two-year-old copy of
People
on the table next to the chair. They all had pages missing. I went to the window and looked down at the parking lot. I sat for a while. I walked back to the elevators, where there were two pay phones, and listened to Dad's cell phone give its please-try-again message.

Why didn't he have voice mail on that stupid phone? Why didn't he have it turned on? I closed my eyes and pressed down on the top of my head with my linked hands, as if I could somehow press down my fear.

Maybe I should have let them call a social worker. At least I wouldn't be by myself. Except I didn't want someone to sit with me. I wanted someone who would know what to do. And all at once I knew who that was.

I fished some change out of my pants pocket, dropped it in the slot and pushed the numbers.

24

Mrs. Mac came down the hall with short, quick steps. Everything got blurry as my eyes filled with tears. She wrapped me in her arms and I laid my cheek against hers. Some of the tears spilled over. I couldn't help it.

Mrs. Mac led me to the sofa under the window. It was the same sticky green vinyl as the chair I'd been sitting in. She pulled a tissue out of her big black purse and handed it to me. I wiped my eyes and took a couple of shaky breaths. “Now blow,” she instructed, handing me another one.

I did. Mrs. Mac smiled and tucked the loose piece of hair behind my ear. And then the nurse from down in the emergency room came around the corner. I jumped up. Mrs. Mac stood up as well and her arm went around my shoulders.

“What's going on?” I said.

“I just wanted to check on you,” Julie said. “Your step-mother's fine. She'll be settled in a room in a little while. The baby is in the neonatal ICU.”

“Wh … wh … what's wrong?” I had trouble shaping the words.

“The baby is very small and her lungs haven't completely developed. She's having some trouble breathing.”

A high-pitched whine—a sound like crickets on a summer night—filled my head. “The baby … is she going to die?” I asked.

“We're doing everything we can for her.”

“That means you don't know or you don't want to tell me.”

“It means we're doing everything we can,” Julie said gently.

“Can I at least see her?” I asked.

“Not right now. Someone will let you know when your stepmother is in her room, though.”

“Thank you,” Mrs. Mac said.

Julie gave her one of those almost-smiles and nodded. Her shoes made soft little squeak-squeaks as she disappeared down the corridor.

I looked down at my hands. I'd picked the right side of my thumbnail raw. “I should try my dad again,” I said.

It was the same as all the times before. Suddenly my legs didn't seem to want to walk anymore. They kept sagging on the way back to the waiting room. Mrs. Mac steered me to the sofa. We sat side by side with her arm around me.

“Her name is Leah,” I said after a while.

“That's a lovely name,” Mrs. Mac said.

And then we waited, my head on her shoulder. There wasn't anything else to do. “Isabelle?”

I opened my eyes and sat up. Dad, unshaven, in jeans, a sweatshirt and his brown canvas jacket, stood in front of me. Through the window I could see that it was getting light outside. It was morning.

“Where's Anne? What's going on?”

“She had the baby,” I said. My voice was thick and raspy. I coughed a couple of times.

“It's too soon,” he said, raking a hand through his hair. “What happened? Where are they?” His voice was sharp with anger, like this was somehow my fault.

I felt my own anger rising from somewhere around my stomach up into the back of my throat. “What happened?” I got to my feet and got right in his face. “What happened is Anne was having a baby and no one knew where you were. What happened is she needed you.”

I shoved him, both hands flat on his chest. It was like pushing a wall. “You didn't even have your cell phone turned on.” I shoved him again. He didn't try to stop me. “You didn't bother telling anyone where you were. Springfield, somewhere. That was helpful. You shouldn't have been there—or anywhere—in the first place.” And again. “You suck as a husband and you suck as a father!”

Mrs. Mac caught my arms. “Stop, Isabelle,” she said softly. Her tiny hands were surprisingly strong. “Stop. Now.” She folded me against her and held on tightly. I was shaking, but there were no tears, only rage.

“I'm Rose McKenzie, Mr. Sullivan,” Mrs. Mac said. “Your wife had a cesarean. She should be in a room any time now.”

“And the baby?”

“She's very small. They have her in the neonatal ICU.” She stroked my hair. “I'm going to take Isabelle home with me for a while. She's exhausted. She took very good care of your wife. You should be proud of her.” She said it all without any judgment in her voice.

“I … uh … ” Dad hesitated.

He looked like crap. I was glad. Don't touch me, I thought.

“I am,” he finally said. He didn't say anything else and neither did I.

25

The air was cool, but the sun was warm when I stepped out of Mrs. Mac's building. She'd made me hot chocolate and toad in the hole—which turned out to be fried egg and bread. I had tried to sleep, but I was full of the kind of jumpy energy you get when you've gone way past tired.

Mrs. Mac must have had a lot of questions, but she didn't ask any. When I left she took my face in both hands for a moment and then kissed my cheek.

“Call me later, dear,” she said. “I'll be here all day.”

I didn't actually decide to go to Jason's apartment, although my feet turned that way, so some part of me must have. If I'd thought about going over there I would've had to think about why he hadn't answered the phone, and I didn't want to do that.

Rule #48: Be sure your brain is on before your body starts moving.

I climbed up the two flights of stairs to Jason's place and knocked. I didn't bother with the downstairs doorbell because he almost never paid any attention to it. According to Jason, the only people who ever rang his bell were trying to save his soul, and that was a lost cause.

I knocked harder the second time, pounding with the heel of my hand for a long time. Finally I heard someone frigging with the lock on the other side and the door swung open.

Jason was wearing a stretched-out T-shirt that might have been white once. Now, if grunge had a color, this was it. His gray sweatpants had a hole in one knee, and the cuffs were hiked up above his bare, bony ankles.

And he smelled.

“What do you want?” he said.

For a couple of moments I thought I was going to puke on the grubby gold tile in the hallway. Then, just as quickly as it came, the feeling went. I looked at him, dirty and still half buzzed on whatever it was he had used, and I just didn't care anymore. Somewhere inside I'd already known. While the phone had rung twenty-three times unanswered, some part of me had guessed what Jason was doing. I turned and started down the stairs.