“You’ll feel better when the medicine wears off,” he said.
Claire closed her eyes. She would never be better. Her baby was dead and she would never be over it.
“Don’t cry, Clairezy,” Peter was saying. “The doctor said it went well. You can get pregnant again, we just have to wait a couple of months.”
“Where is she?” Claire managed to ask. “Where’s the baby?”
“They took her right away,” Peter said. “She’s gone.”
“I want to see her,” Claire said, opening her eyes and trying to get up, to get out of that bed and find her baby.
“They don’t do that,” he said, holding her in place.
“Did you see her?”
“God. No.”
The doctor came in, wearing his inappropriate tan, his stethoscope swaying.
“I want to see my baby,” Claire said before he spoke.
“You think you do,” he said, “but you don’t.”
He gently pushed her down into a lying position.
“It was a girl, right?” she asked.
The doctor pressed her stomach. “Tender?” he asked.
“Right?” Claire said, her voice rising.
“A girl, yes,” the doctor said, sighing.
“We have to name her,” Claire said to Peter. She felt hollow, like she’d been literally emptied out.
“In my experience,” the doctor said, “that just makes it worse. Better to move forward.”
“Peter?” Claire said.
“Listen to the doctor,” Peter said. “He’s done this hundreds of times.”
“We’ll keep her overnight,” the doctor told Peter. “But then she’s good to go.”
Peter extended his hand. “Thank you.”
Claire watched the two men shake hands and exchange goodbyes, as if nothing had happened here, as if the baby she had felt moving inside her had never existed. Twenty-six weeks. At twenty-six weeks, a baby had a heart and lungs. She was perfectly formed. Claire knew this from her obstetrician back in Washington. At her checkup just a few days ago, the doctor had shown her a poster that explained all of that. That baby weighs a couple of pounds now, the doctor had said. Your job is to eat well and fatten that baby up. Claire had told him that when certain songs came on the radio, the baby kicked more. Well maybe you’ve got a rock-and-roll star in there, he’d laughed.
Claire realized the doctor had left and she and Peter were alone in the room now.
“Arabella,” Claire said.
“Who?”
“That’s what I want to name her,” Claire said. She didn’t tell him that was the name of the baby Jackie Kennedy had lost.
Peter sunk back into the chair.
“It’s done,” he said again.
After Peter left to go back to his mother’s house and get some sleep, Claire did exactly the opposite: she struggled to stay awake. She didn’t want to forget even one minute of this: the cramping in her stomach, the darkness of the room, the smell of blood and disinfectant in the air, the hospital sounds on the other side of her closed door—crackling intercoms, soft hurried footsteps, the murmur of voices. I will remember everything about the night Arabella died, Claire promised herself and her dead daughter. Even if everyone else pretended that a baby had not been lost here tonight, Claire would not.
She was startled by the ringing of a phone by her bed. Peter had spared no cost, apparently. Here she had a private room, and a telephone.
“Hello?” Claire answered hesitantly, because who knew she was even here?
“Oh, sweetie!” Dot’s voice rang out.
At the sound of her friend, Claire began to cry.
“Peter called and told me what happened,” Dot was saying. “I don’t even know what to say, except that we are all so sorry.”
“It was a girl,” Claire told Dot. “A little girl.”
“He didn’t say,” Dot said softly.
“Arabella. That’s what I named her.”
There was an awkward silence. Claire cried into it until Dot said, “Guess what? You won.”
“What do you mean?”
“Jackie wore white tonight. To the inaugural ball,” Dot said. “She looked gorgeous, Claire. The gown was strapless and embroidered with beads and silver thread, so that it kind of shone, you know? And it had a silk chiffon overblouse that made it sophisticated. Of course she would think of something like that. They said she helped design it.”
“Sounds pretty,” Claire said.
“And can you picture this? She wore full-length white kidskin gloves.”
“That’s a special touch,” Claire said.