The Wedding Quilt (6 page)

“Oh, don't tell me that,” warned Gwen, with a vigorous shake of the head that sent her beaded necklaces clicking. “You'll force me to do something to prove you wrong.”

Everyone laughed, and for a moment Sarah forgot her anxieties, her weariness. But soon Gwen, Agnes, and Diane departed, explaining that they didn't want to wear her out and they thought they should try to beat the worst of the storm home. Before leaving, each hugged Sarah and assured her all would be well. As they headed out the door, Agnes reminded Sylvia to call them regularly with any news, even if the only news was that they were still waiting. If they didn't receive timely updates, Gwen might return and make good on her threat to set up a Webcam.

After they left, Sarah felt fatigue settle over her like the snow blanketing the winding mountain road into the Elm Creek Valley. She didn't want her book or her music or her quilting. She lay in bed with her eyes closed, relaxing while Gretchen or Sylvia rubbed her back or stroked her hair. She half listened and half dozed as her friends chatted quietly about the upcoming camp season, new classes, the long-arm quilting machine they had recently purchased and set up in the ballroom. From time to time the nurses came in to check her vital signs and the babies' heart rates, and occasionally Dr. Granger appeared to check her progress. Sarah dilated to seven centimeters, then eight. She had reached nine when her mother dashed into the room, unwinding her scarf and peeling off her gloves, her gray hair sparkling with melting snowflakes. “There's my girl,” she exclaimed, hurrying to Sarah's side. Her quick, appraising glance took in Sarah, her chart, and her companions. “I assume Matt's out getting a sandwich or something?”

“Hmph.” Sylvia glanced up from feeding Sarah ice chips and shook her head. “He's on his way, we hope.”

“He's on his way,” said Gretchen firmly, rubbing Sarah's back. “He'll be here soon, and even if he doesn't make it, we'll be fine.”

Carol draped her coat over the back of an armchair and sat down. “He should have come home days ago.”

“That's what I've been telling him all along,” said Sarah wearily. “If he misses everything, I won't get any pleasure out of saying, ‘I told you so.'”

“He won't miss everything,” said Sylvia, rubbing her shoulders and stroking her sweaty hair off the back of her neck.

Carol frowned. “He'd better not.”

The epidural had completely worn off by then, but Sarah couldn't have another dose out of concern that it might slow down the labor. An hour after her mother arrived, Dr. Granger checked her again, but her brow furrowed slightly when she explained that Sarah had not progressed beyond nine centimeters. “We'll give you Pitocin to help move things along,” she said, but her reassuring smile had lost its power to comfort.

“Why am I not fully dilated yet?” Sarah fretted wearily.

“I thought you were holding back on purpose to give Matt more time to get here,” remarked Sylvia.

Sarah managed a smile, but it quickly faded as she continued inhaling and exhaling in rhythm. Matt had not called or texted since leaving Uniontown, not that she had expected him to. She wanted his hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road. He should have come home days ago. He never should have agreed to spend the winter away from Elm Creek Manor. “If Matt misses the birth of his children, after I begged him time and time again to come home,” Sarah gasped between contractions, “I'll kill him.”

“If Matt misses this, you won't need to,” her mother replied, massaging her feet. “You're in no condition to kill anyone. I'll do it.”

“Mother!”

“Don't look so shocked. It was your idea.”

“I was speaking metaphorically.”

“So was I.”

“You sounded serious.”

“So did you.”

“Well, you sounded like you'd enjoy it a little too much.”

Carol seemed about to reply, but her attention was suddenly drawn to one of the many monitors beeping and blinking around Sarah. “What is it?” asked Sarah. Her mother, a nurse, knew much more about what was going on than she did.

“I'll be right back,” Carol said, and stepped out of the room.

Moments later, through a haze of fatigue and pain, Sarah was aware of her mother and a nurse holding a quick, hushed conference at the end of the bed. “We're going to give you some oxygen, dear,” the plump nurse said, and quickly placed a mask over Sarah's mouth and nose. She could barely hear anything over the steady hiss of rushing air.

Moments later Dr. Granger appeared, examined her, and conferred with the nurse. “I'm afraid you still haven't progressed beyond nine centimeters,” Dr. Granger told her, barely audible, wearing the same rueful look with which she had announced the delay of Dr. Jamison's flight. “And one of the twins is starting to experience heart decelerations. We're going to keep an eye on it, but I want you to consider the possibility of a C-section.”

“What's a heart deceleration?” Sarah gasped, her voice muffled by the mask. Sweaty bangs clung to her forehead and fell into her eyes, but she felt a sudden chill.

“It's a transitory decrease in the baby's heart rate. It may suggest that the baby isn't receiving enough oxygen to withstand the rigors of labor.”

Sarah propped herself up on her elbows and searched the doctor's face for clues. “Is . . . my baby going to be okay?”

“Just try to relax,” her mother said, placing her hands on her shoulders and easing her back against the pillows. “Breathe deeply.”

Sarah obeyed, suddenly terrified. She closed her eyes and took deep breaths, tears trickling down her cheeks. “I think a C-section right now would be a very good idea,” she said shakily, and felt her mother squeeze her hand in reply.

The hiss of the oxygen mask filled her ears, drowning out the words of the doctor and nurses, but she knew from their carefully studied expressions that the matter was serious. Through her pregnancy, she had skimmed the chapters on Caesarian sections with a foolish superstition that if she prepared for such a measure, she would need it. She knew women carrying twins often required Caesarian deliveries even after a smooth labor, but she had dreaded surgery and had prayed she would avoid it. Now all she wanted was to deliver the babies as swiftly and as safely as possible, never mind what happened to her. The thought of the small, steady heartbeat faltering was too much to bear.

After what felt like an agonizingly long wait, though later she learned it lasted only a few minutes, Dr. Granger confirmed her recommendation for a Caesarian delivery. Sarah immediately assented and with a shaking hand signed the forms someone put in front of her on a clipboard. Once the decision was made, the team moved swiftly. The nurses prepared Sarah; Dr. Granger disappeared for a time and returned dressed in scrubs. Her heart pounded as an orderly pushed her bed out of the birthing suite and into the hallway.

“Sarah,” said Matt, suddenly at her side, snow dusting his coat and hat. “I'm sorry. I'm so incredibly sorry I didn't get here until now.”

None of her frustration and disappointment over his absence seemed to matter anymore. “I have to have a C-section.”

“I know.” He tore off a glove, held her hand, and walked beside the bed as the orderly wheeled her toward the operating room. “They told me.”

Her words came out in a sob. “I don't know if the babies are okay.”

“They're fine,” he said firmly, squeezing her hand tighter. “I promise you everything's going to be fine.”

She nodded, but how could he know? How could he promise her that?

“Are you the father?” someone unseen asked Matt. She heard him confirm that he was. “If you want to attend the birth, you'll have to put on these and scrub up.”

Matt clasped her hand with both of his. “Sarah, I have to go for a minute but I'll be right back.”

“Promise?”

“I swear I won't be gone long. I'll be right beside you the entire time.”

She released his hand and heard him go. The operating room was unnaturally bright and cold. Dazed and exhausted, she sat up, supported by two nurses, and held her breath as they inserted the spinal block. By the time she was fully anesthetized and prepped for surgery, Matt had returned, barely recognizable in blue scrubs, cap, and mask, but she knew his eyes, full of love, concern, and reassurance. He stood by her side, just out of her range of vision, as Dr. Granger began the surgery, blocked from Sarah's view by a blue drape. She felt pressure but no pain, and then there was a wrenching, and then a sudden flurry of activity and a baby's cry and Dr. Granger declaring that she had a daughter, a beautiful baby girl.

“Can I see her?” Sarah called out feebly. “Can I see my daughter?”

Matt bent close to her ear. “They took her away, honey. They rushed her off to the neonatal unit.”

“Is she okay?”

“I'm sure she's just fine.” Matt rested his hand on her shoulder, and she could tell he was shaking.

He had barely finished speaking before Dr. Granger announced that she had a son—a strong, healthy son, by the sound of his wail, which was so outraged and indignant that the attendees laughed. “Can I see him?” Sarah called out, only to be assured that he was being examined and would be cleaned up, and she would be able to hold him soon. Matt could accompany the babies, if he wished.

He seemed torn between concern for the children and his determination to keep his promise not to leave her. “Go with them,” she begged him. “Make sure they're okay.”

Matt nodded and hurried away. Blinking away her tears, Sarah started at an unexpected touch on her shoulder. “They looked perfectly healthy—strong and beautiful,” a woman hidden in blue surgical garb said. Sarah would have known the eyes even if she had not recognized the muffled voice—her mother's eyes, shining with unshed tears. Sarah had not realized Carol had been allowed into the operating room, and she was suddenly overwhelmed with gratitude that she was there. She placed her hand on her mother's and held on while the doctor closed her incisions. Her mother walked beside her as she was taken to the recovery room, and there, when she shivered from the cold, her mother made sure she was draped with heated blankets. When Sarah felt warmer and less disoriented, Carol stepped away for a moment and quickly returned to report that Sarah's son had an Apgar score of nine and her daughter's initial score of six had risen to eight five minutes after her birth. Matt had been allowed to hold both of the children, and Sarah would be able to soon. It was the same answer as before, and yet Sarah seemed no closer to holding them. After months of waiting and hours of labor, to be unable to cuddle or even see her children now that they had finally arrived frustrated and worried her.

“This is routine,” Carol soothed when the nurse stepped away. “I know it's annoying, I know it's hard, but it won't be much longer.”

The wait seemed interminably long, but at last she was taken back to the birthing suite where she had labored so long. Gretchen was waiting, and as a nurse attended to Sarah, two aides entered, pushing two contraptions that Sarah could best describe as tall, wheeled bassinets. Above the edge of one, Sarah glimpsed a tiny pink fist waving in the air, and she gasped out a happy sob. Her babies, at last. Her children.

Then Sarah was allowed to hold them, one at a time, while a nurse stood at her side watching attentively, since Sarah was still recovering from the anesthesia. “We're filling out the birth certificates,” another nurse asked. “Do you have names for the children?”

“Yes, please do divulge the secret at long last,” said Sylvia, seated on the sofa with the baby boy in her arms. Beside her, Gretchen held out a fingertip for the child to grasp with a tiny fist. “You've been keeping us in suspense for ages.”

“Not ages,” said Sarah. “Only nine months.”

“Please tell me you haven't selected any of those silly names you were teasing us with before,” said Carol, leaning over to tuck a corner of the soft striped blanket out of the way so she could better see her granddaughter's sweet face. Sarah smiled, knowing her mother longed to wrap the babies in the pink-and-white and blue-and-white Sawtooth Star quilts she had painstakingly made for them, the first and second—and only—quilts she had made in her brief career as a quilter. Sarah was saving them for the babies' trip home to Elm Creek Manor.

“You mean Barnum and Bailey?” said Matt, who had just returned from the waiting room where he had shared the good news with Andrew and Joe. They had accompanied him into the birthing suite, looking as pleased and proud as if they truly were the baby's great-grandparents. “Peas and Carrots? Skipper and Gilligan?”

“That last one's not so bad,” Andrew mused, mostly to see the look of alarm on Carol's face.

“Bagel and Schmear was always my favorite,” Sarah remarked, but considering how attentive and helpful her mother had been throughout that long, difficult day, she couldn't bear to torture her a moment longer. “Yes, we've chosen names. Sylvia's holding James Matthew, and this little sweetheart is Caroline Sylvia.”

A gasp of delight and recognition went up from the gathered friends, and Sarah thought she spotted tears of pride behind the loving smiles of the two women who had lent their names to the newborn girl. And their son, called James after Sylvia's first husband and Matthew for his father—he, too, had a proud, honorable name that paid tribute to the McClure family as well as the Bergstroms. In the years since Sarah had moved to the Elm Creek Valley, the Bergstroms had come to seem like a second family to her, although she knew them only through Sylvia's stories and the quilts and words they had left behind.