The Blackstone Chronicles

Chapter 6

Bill McGuire turned into the nearly deserted parking lot of Blackstone Memorial Hospital and pulled the car into the space closest to the emergency entrance. He’d driven for nearly three hours, leaving the motel in Port Arbello minutes after he’d gotten the call from Mrs. Goodrich, pausing only long enough to drop the room key through the mail slot in the office’s locked front door. Throughout the frantic drive to Blackstone, he’d had to force himself time and again to slow down, reminding himself that the objective was to get home as quickly as possible, but in one piece. Still, the drive seemed endless. He managed to reach the hospital three times on his cellular phone, but all three connections ended in a frustrating crackle of static.
All he’d been able to find out was that Elizabeth had gone into labor, and that things were “going as well as can be expected.”
Oh dear God, let her live, he prayed. Dear merciful God, let the baby be all right.
Oh God, why, why did I have to leave them tonight, of all nights?
Tensed over the wheel, he felt sharp, stabbing needles of guilt as he raced through the darkness, returning from a trip that now seemed utterly unnecessary. He’d won the condo project, but even while putting together the final figures in the motel room, he’d known he could have done the whole thing on the phone from his desk in the library at home.
Slamming the car door behind him, barely able to wait for the automatic glass doors to open for him, Bill raced into the waiting room and immediately spotted Mrs. Goodrich, still wearing her old chenille bathrobe, sitting on a sagging green-plastic upholstered sofa, her arm wrapped protectively around Megan, whose forehead was partially covered by a bandage. Mrs. Goodrich, in her fear for the welfare of the person she loved best in the world, looked almost as small as Megan, but as Bill approached he saw a determined glimmer in the old woman’s eyes, and she made a gesture as if to shoo him away.
“We’re all right,” she told him. “Just a little cut on Megan’s forehead, but it doesn’t even hurt anymore, does it, darlin’?”
Megan bobbed her head. “I just fell off the shelves, that’s all,” she said in a small voice.
“You go see to Elizabeth,” Mrs. Goodrich went on. “We’ll be right here. You tell Elizabeth we’re praying for her.”
A few seconds later Bill was following a doctor down the hall, listening to a brief explanation of what had happened. Then he was in the room where Elizabeth lay in bed, her face ashen, her blond hair, darkened only slightly over the years, spread around her head like a halo.
As if sensing that at last he was there, Elizabeth stirred in the bed, and when Bill took her hand, he immediately felt her respond with a weak squeeze. But it was enough.
She was going to be all right.
For Elizabeth, waking up was like trying to rise through a pool of molasses. Every muscle in her body felt exhausted, and even breathing seemed an almost impossible chore. Slowly, she began to come back to consciousness, and then, feeling Bill’s hand in her own, she forced herself to open her eyes.
She was not in her bed.
Not in her home.
Then the nightmare began to come back to her.
“Megan,” she whispered, straining to sit up, but barely managing to raise her head from the pillow.
“Megan’s fine,” Bill told her. “She and Mrs. Goodrich are out in the waiting room, and all Megan has is a little cut on her forehead.”
“Thank God,” Elizabeth sighed. She dropped her head back onto the pillow, and her left hand moved to touch her belly in the nearly unconscious gesture she’d developed during both of her pregnancies.
At the movement, fear lurched inside her.
Then it came back to her: the terrible flash of pain, the breaking of her water, and the first violent contractions of labor. Contractions so unbearably painful that they’d caused her to pass out.
“The baby,” she whispered. Her gaze fastened on her husband’s, and though Bill said nothing for a second or two, Elizabeth could read the truth in his eyes. “No.” The word emerged as a despairing moan. “Oh, please, no. The baby can’t be …” Her voice faded away as she found herself incapable of uttering the final, terrible word.
“Shhh,” Bill whispered, holding a finger to her lips, then brushing a lock of hair away from her suddenly clammy forehead. “The important thing is that you’re all right.”
The important thing. The important thing …
The words ricocheted through Elizabeth’s mind, leaving bruises everywhere they went.
… you’re all right …
But she wasn’t all right. How could she be all right if their baby—their son—was … was …
“I want to see him,” she said, her hand tightening in Bill’s. “Oh, God, please let me see him.” Her voice started to break. “If I can see him, I can make him all right.” She was sobbing now, and Bill moved from the chair to the bed, gathering her into his arms to hold her close and comfort her.
“It’s all right, darling,” he whispered. “It’s not your fault. It’s just something that happened. We knew it might happen. It was hard enough when you had Megan, and maybe we just shouldn’t have tried again. But it’s not your fault. Don’t ever think it’s your fault.”
Elizabeth barely heard the words. “The case,” she whispered. “I put the doll in the case, and it fell on her. My fault. My fault.”
“It was an accident,” Bill said. “It wasn’t anybody’s fault.”
But Elizabeth still heard nothing of her husband’s words. “I lifted it off her. I lifted it up so she could get out. And it killed our son. It killed our son.…” Her words dissolved into broken sobbing. For a long time Bill held her, stroking her hair, soothing and comforting her. Finally, after nearly half an hour, her sobbing began to ease, and the terrible convulsive shaking that had seized her slowly lost its grip. A little while later Bill heard her breathing drift into the long rhythmic pattern of sleep, and felt her body at last relax in his arms. Kissing her gently, he eased himself up from the bed, then tucked the sheet and blanket close around her. He kissed her once more, then quietly slipped out of the room.
The strange numbness had already begun to set in as he walked back down the corridor toward the waiting room.
His son—for indeed the baby had been a boy, just as he and Elizabeth had hoped—was dead.
Dead, without having ever taken a breath.
Should he ask to see the baby?
The thought alone made him wince, and instantly he knew he would not. Better to keep an image in his mind of what might have been: a happy, grinning, gurgling son for whom no dreams would be too great.
Better to cling to the memories of a future that might have been than to gaze directly at the tragedy that had just befallen him.
To see the child who might have been would bring far more pain than Bill McGuire could bear, and in the days to come Elizabeth—and Megan too—were going to need everything he had to give.
He pushed through the doors to the waiting room, and it seemed to him that neither Megan nor Mrs. Goodrich had moved at all. The old housekeeper still held his daughter close, and though Megan’s head rested against Mrs. Goodrich’s ample bosom, her eyes were open and watchful.
Cradled in her arms, she held the doll.
For an instant, and only an instant, Bill was tempted to snatch the doll from Megan’s arms, to tear it apart and hurl it out into the night, to destroy utterly the thing that had come into their house only this morning and already done such damage to their lives. But that thought, too, he discarded from his mind. The doll, after all, was not at fault, and Megan, at least, seemed to be taking a certain comfort from it.
Pulling a chair close to the sofa, he sat down and took his daughter’s hands.
“Is he here?” the little girl asked. “Has my brother been born?”
Bill felt a sob rise in his throat, but determinedly put it down. “He’s been born,” he said quietly. “But he had to go away.”
Megan seemed puzzled. “Go away?” she repeated. “Where?”
“To Heaven,” Bill said. A gasp of sorrow escaped from Mrs. Goodrich’s throat. Her arm tightened around Megan, but she said nothing. “You see, Megan,” Bill went on, “God loves little children very much, and sometimes He calls one of them to come and be with Him. Remember how He said, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me’? And that is where your brother’s gone. To be with God.”
“What about my Elizabeth?” Mrs. Goodrich whispered, her eyes wide with fear.
“She’s going to be all right,” Bill assured her. “She’s asleep right now, but she’s going to be just fine.” He stood up. “Why don’t I take you and Megan home?” he said. “Then I’ll come back and stay with Elizabeth.”
Mrs. Goodrich nodded and got stiffly to her feet. Her hand clutching Bill for support, she let him guide her out to the car. Megan followed behind them, the doll held tightly in her arms.
“It’s all right,” Megan whispered to the doll as they passed through the glass doors into the night. “You’re better than any brother could be.”