The ambulance waited for them, doors opened wide, at the bottom of the hill. The technicians smoothly slid the stretcher into it, and Claire watched as the doors closed, blocking out the faces of her husband and daughter and Little Jimmy. Although Jimmy wore an excited expression, Kathy looked stunned. She hadn’t made a sound the entire time. She stared at her mother as if Claire had become someone new. And Peter, Claire thought. Peter’s jaw was set hard, his mouth turned down, and his eyes filled with disappointment.
With the doors closed on all of that, Claire finally managed to ask the question that she could not say out loud in front of her family.
“Is my baby all right?”
The technician didn’t meet her eyes. He lifted her head gently and placed fresh gauze beneath it.
“I don’t know,” he said.
The ambulance lurched forward, its siren wailing. To Claire, it sounded like the cries of a newborn, sharp and insistent, demanding your attention.
In the Emergency Room, a doctor stood over Claire frowning.
“How many weeks?” he asked.
“Is my husband here?” Claire asked.
The doctor raised one eyebrow, a talent Claire’s lover also had. It was charming, Claire used to think. But now she found it disarming.
“How many weeks?” the doctor repeated.
Claire tried to see over his shoulder, where people were milling about. She couldn’t locate Peter there.
“Twenty-six, I think,” she said.
That eyebrow again. “Not sure?”
She shook her head.
“How many live births have you had?”
The word live made her shiver.
“One,” she answered.
Were there un-live births? But she immediately realized that of course there were. She remembered reading that Jackie Kennedy had had a stillborn baby girl before Caroline. But surely this baby, her baby would be all right. She willed the baby to move. Claire closed her eyes and thought as hard as she could: Move. She pressed on her stomach, trying to initiate a little game she’d played with the baby: she pressed against its foot or elbow until it pressed back. But she couldn’t even feel any part of the baby when she pressed now.
“What in the world inspired you to go sledding?” the doctor asked. No eyebrow-raising this time, just a steely stare. “In your condition?”
“I lost sight of my daughter and I was afraid of getting knocked over by all the sleds,” Claire said. The words sounded ridiculous, and she stopped talking.
A nurse came in with a tray of equipment.
“We have to sew up your head,” the nurse said cheerfully.
“Sew it up?” Claire said, her hand shooting to her head and landing on warm, bloody gauze.
“You’ve cracked it good,” the doctor said.
For some reason, he reminded Claire of Connie, the way they both seemed to see right through her, to know everything she’d done.
“I think I’ll give you a little something to relax you,” the doctor said.
Within minutes of the shot the nurse gave her, Claire grew woozy and thick-headed. She listened as the doctor explained that he was giving her an injection to numb her wound, and then that he was going to start stitching it. His voice sounded like he was at the opposite end of a tunnel. Claire closed her eyes, giving in to the way her body seemed to float, the way her mind drifted from one thought to another effortlessly. She could feel the tug of the needle and thread on her head, but nothing hurt her. Instead, she felt light and almost happy.
She wondered where Peter had gone to. Probably brought the children back to his mother’s house. Then she thought of his mother, upstairs in this very hospital. Was she still alive? Claire wondered, but as soon as she wondered that her mind veered off to a night with her lover. For the first time in a long time, she let herself linger there, remembering his face. He had blue eyes and black hair. Black Irish, he’d called it. Although he wasn’t as handsome as her husband, there was something about his face that was more inviting. When he listened to her, he had a way of cocking his head, as if he needed to catch every word.
Claire drifted again, to the afternoon they’d escaped the city heat and gone to the beach in Delaware. It had been a feat, that excursion. To find someone who could take Kathy all day without appearing suspicious. To invent a believable story to tell Peter; she’d landed on telling him she was going on a women’s-only full-day tour of the Corcoran Gallery of Art. He liked when she took an interest in things like that. He’d even said, “Bravo, Clairezy,” when she’d told him her lie. The truth was, as a girl she’d been the best artist in her class. She’d painted the scenery for all the school plays, and always helped paint the front windows for Christmas. Claire enjoyed wandering that gallery. She especially liked Mary Cassatt’s Young Girl at a Window. The girl’s blue-and lavender-tinged white dress and hat really did look like changing natural light to Claire. And the girl looked so thoughtful Claire couldn’t help but wonder what she might be thinking.