Tell Me a Secret (16 page)

A pinch on my backside awakened me, pulling me out of the twists and tunnels of my mind. It was dark in the room, like a warm nightmare. I heard someone say, “Three twenty
A.M
. Another dose of beta metha…
whatever in twelve houuurrsss…
” And the room spun again, and I was back in a writhing meeting of time and space, drowning my lungs in liquid and parching my tongue with the most unbearable thirst.

“Water,” I mumbled, wondering if some other tunnel was a flood while I had chosen the desert.

Kamran was here, and now he wasn’t. Further down this shadowy passage was Lexi, a miniature copy of my sister, with accusation in her eyes. Her father—I’d sent him away. Would she hate me for it? But at least here she was still alive.
In another passage, translucent through the depths, her cold form lay wrapped in Xanda’s arms.

As if through a thick layer of consciousness, I could feel my body tensing—slowly, murkily, in the way it had been since I last saw my mother. I could hear her voice echoing.
It’s better this way
.

“I don’t want you here,” I said, and she vanished as quickly as she came. Then Nik appeared—or was it Shelley? They merged and divided, holding a tiny white bird.

The darkness parted, making way for a hazy light and voices.

Placental abruption,
they whispered.
Twenty-six weeks. Too early
.
Magnesium sulfate, watch for lung fluid
.
Still having contractions
.
Blood
. The voices were underscored by a low, mechanical moaning and an insistent
blip blip blip
.

“Make it stop,” I whispered, but the blip wore on. Another pinch, a poke, and darkness fell again. I lost track of space and time, though the terrible thirst hounded me through my dreams and nightmares. The floodwaters in my lungs and the waves of pain and the taste of acid refused to recede.

I knew I must be dreaming again. Because Xanda was there, holding Lexi in her arms and smiling like they were very old friends. Because the dark tunnels I had been traveling for so long were flooding with cold, fresh water, washing past our ankles and rushing into the hidden corners. Because I could almost breathe again. Because an angel who looked just like the ob-gyn hovered over me.

“Miranda,” the angel’s voice said gently, like the ob-gyn
would have done. She had long hair, bright blue eyes.

“Miranda, I’m here now. I came as soon as I heard you were admitted.”

Admitted where? “To heaven?” I asked.

A strong odor hit my nose, smelling of metal and sulfur. Heaven smelled like the hospital. The ob-gyn angel laughed softly and stroked my cheek. “No, not yet.”

My eyes blinked open, and it was true, though I didn’t dare try to sit up. I was in a new place, a room with a wall of windows lighting up the ob-gyn’s halo of hair. She stopped stroking my cheek and offered me a cup of ice chips. “Miranda, can you talk to me right now?”

I nodded, my mouth full of ice. I felt like I hadn’t had a drink in days. “Your mother has been in the waiting room—”

“No,” I said, too loud in my own ears. “No, I don’t want her here.”

“But—”

“No,” I pleaded, my heartbeat getting louder on the monitor hovering over my head. “Please don’t make me.”

“We can’t make you do anything, Rand,” the ob-gyn said, patting my hand. “No one can come in without your permission.”

I reached for my belly and felt Lexi’s foot move underneath. Alive. Still alive. “What about Lexi?”

“She’s okay, for now. But things are going to be difficult for both of you. Lexi needs you to be strong. Do you understand?”

I nodded my head, not really understanding anything. My
muscles began to clutch again. She gripped my hand as she watched the monitor needle arch upward, plateau, and then ebb. “We’ve been giving you a drug to try to stop your labor, but it’s not working.”

“It’s making me sick.”

“I know. But that part is over—it should be wearing off. You were having side effects—hallucinations and your lungs filling, which is why we couldn’t give you any water. So our next step is getting the baby here safely.”

“What is happening?”

“You are twenty-seven weeks pregnant right now, almost six months. Babies are supposed to be born at forty weeks, at the earliest thirty-six. But Lexi is different. She’s trying very hard to come early, and we’ve been trying hard not to let her.”

“Is she going to die?”

The ob-gyn took a breath. “The good news is, medicine has come a long way. It used to be that babies born at twenty-seven weeks had no chance, but now…it’s better now. The bad news…”

I didn’t know if I wanted to hear the bad news.

“Babies born very early can have problems,” she continued. “Their lungs aren’t developed, they are vulnerable to viruses…so many things. That’s why we were trying to slow down your labor, to give her a few more days.”

It was daylight outside, filtered by the cloud cover, and I couldn’t tell how long I’d been there. A day? A week? The
ob-gyn was wearing a wreath pin. Was it Christmas yet? How long had my mom been here?

“If she survives, she’s going to be in the hospital for a long time. We’re going to have to keep her in neonatal intensive care until she’s strong enough to breathe and eat on her own. That’s going to be a very long journey, with no promises.”

She was still patting my hand, and the touch was starting to hurt. My skin hurt. My head hurt. My neck hurt, but I couldn’t lift my head to make it stop.

A nurse came into the room and began to check my vitals. She nodded to the doctor.

“I need to check on another patient, but I will be back. The nurse will watch over you. Are you sure you don’t want me to get your mother? Or do you have a sister who could come—”

“No.”

“All right,” she said. “But it would be good to have someone with you. The next twelve hours or so are going to be…difficult. You shouldn’t have to face it alone. Here is your cell phone, just in case.” Seven missed calls. “I’ll see if I can track down the anesthesiologist for your epidural.” She left me alone with the nurse.

No promises
. At the same time I was seized with pain, I was also seized with a kind of feverish hope. She had said
if
. Like it was entirely possible Lexi would be born, and be okay. That she and I could still flee, like that white bird.

Still, it wasn’t enough to hush the voices of fear splintering
through my bones. What, I wondered, does faith do when it has nowhere else to go?

Faith manages,
I could almost hear Nik saying in my head. She had a voice like Shelley’s. One that could keep glass from shattering.

My cell phone still had three bars of juice, still on silent from being stuffed under the counter at work. I scrolled through my contact list until I found Nik’s number, stored there since the BabyCenter days. Maybe it wasn’t Shelley. Maybe she wouldn’t hate me when she found out I’d been lying all along—no marriage, no art school. The only true thing was Lexi.

And Nik’s baby. Micah James.

Help,
I punched out carefully.
Baby dying. Need U. XandasAngel
.

Once I hit
SEND
, it was too late to go back. No matter what, I would have some explaining to do.

She was probably sitting down for breakfast with her family. Maybe she had finally made it through a night without nightmares. Maybe today was the first day she woke up without crying. My message would be a jagged hook from the past.

So I couldn’t believe it when, seconds later, my phone vibrated with a text message. FemmeNikita, reaching out for the hook I offered and grasping it like the hand of a friend.
Where r u?
Then,
I’m coming
.

I texted my location:
er uw hosp
.

The nurse checked my vitals—blood pressure high,
oxygen count low. She would need to hook me up to the oxygen again. “Your mom is out in the waiting room. Want me to show her in?”

“No.” The baby’s heartbeat was quick. Frightened.

A loud knock at the door sent my own heartbeat skyrocketing. Who would pound like that?

“Maybe that’s her,” she suggested cheerfully. “She’s been out there for days.”

The door started to open, and I panicked. “Don’t!” I shouted. And before I could even see the face, I felt her judgment filling the space and suffocating me. Making me pay for the sin of missing Xanda too much.

A young man in gray scrubs appeared, bringing a gust of fresh air with him. He looked like Kamran, with the same olive skin, dark hair, and golden-green eyes, reminding me of how I had sent him away. I couldn’t have him here, not when I knew what he thought of me. “I stopped by to see if she was ready for an epidural.”

I reached out to the nurse and clutched her arm. “I don’t want to see anyone.”

“Not even your parents? You don’t want family here with you?”

Xanda was a preemie
. Was it her fault this was happening to me now?

“No. I don’t want anyone here.”

The anesthesiologist stood there awkwardly, looking back and forth between me and the nurse. “Um, maybe I should
come back later?” The nurse held out her hand as if to say,
wait
.

“Maybe after an epidural you might want to have them with you. The contractions will be a lot easier then,” she suggested.

“I don’t want to see them! How many ways do I have to say it?” The oxygen monitor beeped impatiently.

The nurse’s eyes widened like they might suddenly pop out of her head, then took on a look of deep sadness. “Oh, honey.”

“I’m going to come back after I see my next patient,” said the anesthesiologist, edging toward the door and silently slipping out.

The monitor next to my bed continued to draw mountains and valleys onto the ribbon of paper spitting out, tracking my contractions, minute by minute. Another one was coming. I had to relax. “Please don’t let them come,” I said with my last, deep breath.

She waited until I unfurled myself. “Well, let me know if you change your mind. Is there anything I can get for you? Some ice?”

I nodded my head. I couldn’t speak. It was all I could do not to cry. A few minutes later she came back with a cup of ice chips, and I sucked them down fast.

“Oh,” said the nurse, “and you have a visitor.
Not
your mom. At least, I think it’s for you. Are you Xanda’s Angel?”

I nodded.

“Yeah. There’s a Nichelle Jones here to see you. Is she allowed into the fortress?”

“Nik?” I asked. The nurse nodded.

The only Jones I knew was Shelley.

Alexandra. Lexi. Xanda.

Miranda. Mandy. Rand.

Nichelle. Nik. Shelley.

I knew Nik. Nik knew me. And I knew I was fired for sure.

A moment later, the door opened slowly behind the curtain. And suddenly the room wasn’t big enough for me and this enormous presence entering the room, this person who took one look at me and dropped the super-sized purse she was carrying, so that every pen, mint, and roll of quarters came tumbling into the room.

Her face transformed from surprise to reproach to pity in a matter of seconds. “Rand?” Her voice was soft and hoarse. “Rand? Is that you? You’re Xanda’s Angel?”

The weight of my lies gripped me in another contraction, one I was totally powerless to stop or even prepare for. The full force of it knocked me into a curled up, crumpled fold.

The spilled-out purse lay on the floor, totally unnoticed, while Shelley rushed to my side and wrapped her strong arms around me. “Breathe into it,” she whispered. “Relax, and breathe into it. It’s almost over. You’re past the hardest part. Just a little bit longer.”

I tightened up, almost wishing it wouldn’t stop. I knew
when it was over, I was in terrible, terrible trouble.

“Nik?” I stammered.

She pulled away from me and took my face in her pink palms threaded with brown. She was going to hit me. Or hate me. Or tell me my job, my career, my life, was over.

But instead, she said, “Rand. It’s okay.” She stroked my cheek gently, so gently it felt like a whisper. “I’m here now. For Xanda’s Angel.”

“
I’msorryI’msorryI’msorry
,” I kept saying, as if chanting the words would not only pacify Shelley but would keep the fog of drugs and nausea and contractions away for a moment longer. My voice came out in a raspy crack.

Shelley held me tighter, stroking my hair. “Shhhh. It’s okay.”

“But you’ve got to understand,” I panted, “I didn’t mean to lie. I thought…because of Micah James.” I winced and Shelley’s eyes widened. “I’m sorry.” If she wanted to leave right then I would have understood.

Instead, her face softened. “You remembered his name.”

I thought of Xanda, whose name was right up there with the Lord’s, taken in vain. It didn’t occur to me no one would
mention Micah James.

“It means he touched your life, for you to remember his name.” Her eyes watched me with kindness I had never seen in my own mother’s eyes.

“Will you stay with me?” I asked.

“Don’t worry, I’m going to stay here. You’re going to be okay. You’re going to survive this.”

Another contraction. They were somewhere around three minutes apart now. Shelley hugged me to her, her breath on my cheek.

“What about DaShawn? Is he okay? Is somebody taking care of him? You’ve got to have somebody taking care of him.”

“Shhhh,” she said, wiping my hair away from my forehead as if I were her little girl. Gently, her soft hands continuing to stroke my hair, so softly I wanted to cry. “He’s okay. He’s taken care of.”

The wave crashed over me, worse than ever.
Thirty seconds. Twenty. Ten
. I could hold on for a few more seconds. Shelley’s touch, comforting in the valleys, felt like fire on the mountains.

Four and a half hours later, I could understand why Jesus would say
It is finished
, after going through the worst pain of his life and coming out the other side. Outside the bank of windows, we could see the moon rising over the mountains.

Through the hardest parts Shelley had fed me ice chips, given me a pillow, taken it away, given it back and let me
scream, scream, scream,
wondering if my parents could hear me down the long hall and across the valley between us. I wanted them to hear me scream, the way they had never screamed for Xanda.

The pediatrician came into my room, conferring first with the nurses and then coming to my bedside to explain what would happen next. Orderlies wheeled in more equipment—a clear plastic baby bed on wheels with tubes growing out of it like snakes and gloves for reaching into it on one side. “This is the ventilator,” the doctor explained, “for when the baby comes. She will need extra oxygen, and we’ll need to take her straight to the NICU—the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.” She nodded her head several times, as if that would be enough to convince me.

I rested in the valleys between the mountains, even though they got shorter and shorter. The anesthesiologist never did come back, but the ob-gyn did, along with a crowd of medical people, checking to see my progress and Lexi’s and then disappearing again until I screamed at Shelley, “What are they doing here, if Lexi’s going to die?”

“Now you listen to me,” Shelley said, staring hard into my eyes. “Nobody said this baby is going to die. You don’t know that. Nobody knows that. They’re doing everything they can.”

I was breathing in short, hard puffs. “What about Micah James? Why would he die and Lexi live? It doesn’t make sense!” I threw the pillow onto the floor again, knocking the
rolling table and sending the cup of ice exploding across the linoleum.

“A lot of things don’t make sense until down the road, after you’ve had some time. That’s why we’ve got faith, baby girl.” Her voice lowered to a whisper, or maybe I was caught up in the next whirlwind and couldn’t hear. “Keep your eyes on the future, because that’s where the answers are. It’s where the hope is.”

“That’s not true,” I heaved. “We make choices, and we pay for them.” I couldn’t lie down anymore. The pain in my back was killing me. I pulled myself to a sitting position on the edge of the bed, hooking my feet on the ledge below.

A mountain was pushing its way through my back so that I couldn’t argue anymore. “Hold me!” I called to Shelley, and she pressed her full weight against me, pushing the mountain back.

The ob-gyn came in a heartbeat. I wondered for a split second if she was strong enough to catch the force sure to come out of me.

“Is it too late to stop the labor?” I demanded.

“Yes,” the doctor said, smiling. “Way too late.” I felt like slapping her for smiling. But I settled for grabbing my knees while Shelley held me, keeping me from coming apart at the seams. “Now slow down,” she said, “and push when I tell you.”

I stopped. And when she said to push, I did.

Then quite suddenly I was on the other side, barely
conscious, and here was this tiny, translucent thing like a wax-works doll, except she was purple and spindly and weighing not much more than a beanie animal, and looking more like a raisin than a human.

But beautiful still.

She had the shape of Kamran’s head. Lips like mine. A heart-shaped face, like Xanda. Like in the ultrasound, except curves only hinted at in the shadows were rounded and palpable. And real. Absolutely, shockingly real.

“Time of birth: five forty-two
P.M
.,” said the ob-gyn, and the nurse jotted it down.

“Five forty-two on Christmas Eve,” said Shelley. “Your very own Christmas gift.”

“Nothing good ever happens on Christmas,” I panted. Still, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the baby. Wrinkled skin gathered around her joints with a layer of whitish flakes, protecting her from fluid and now from the world, which assaulted her with light, sound, air, and a roomful of people.

When she cried, she sounded like a new kitten. I could almost see her lungs through the tissue-thin skin.

They didn’t even let me touch her before they put her into the little rolling ventilator and whisked her out of the room.