Calmness flowed through me, a quiet joy. I would get there, somehow. We’d find a way.
A clatter on the other side of the window startled me and I opened my eyes.
The back door to the room had opened, and a nurse in pink scrubs rolled a crib into the room. The paper sign taped to the top had Jenny’s last name, GILLESPIE, written at the top, crossed out, and then Chance’s last name, MCKENZIE, written below. I had to smile. Chance knew he had to get that right or Jenny would have a fit. The name change was the whole reason for her rushed ambulance wedding.
The nurse had just positioned the baby near the window when Darion and Tina turned onto the hall. I waved my arm to hurry them along. “She’s here,” I called out. “They are about to clean her up.”
But Tina didn’t rush. I could see the mixed emotions on her face, ones that mirrored exactly how I was feeling. I had gotten seven days with my Finn. Tina had gotten only a few hours.
When she reached the window, I took her hand. “You doing okay?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Probably about as well as you,” she said.
Her mascara was smudged. Like Darion, her long button-down shirt was spattered with paint, untucked over rainbow tights. Her signature short twiggy ponytails made her seem like a character on a kids’ television show. But her expression was tight. She wasn’t bothering to fake it.
She squeezed my fingers and let go, raising her cell phone to take shots of the baby. “They don’t have a name picked out,” she said as she clicked.
“It’ll come,” I said.
Tina lowered her camera to watch them unwrap the baby, whose feeble cry quickly ramped up into an all-out wail. “With Jenny, who knows what it might be,” Tina said. “She’s got the celebrity bug, so she’ll probably go with something crazy like Apple or Rainbow or Celery.”
This made me laugh. “Celery?”
“Or Rhubarb. Actually, don’t mention Rhubarb because she would totally go for it.”
Darion leaned his forearm on the glass. “Chance doesn’t have a say?”
“That boy is totally steamrolled by the force of Jenny,” Tina said.
It was true. Chance was a southern gentleman to the core, and he was no match for his whip-cracking fast-talking California media-junkie wife.
“They’ve really struggled with how to incorporate Hannah and Bryan into the name,” I said.
“Middle name, for sure,” Tina said. “It’s just too soon to be naming her after the sister. It hasn’t even been a year.”
Chance’s sister had died shortly after he and Jenny met.
“They’ll do what they think is right,” I said.
The nurse passed a wet cloth over the baby, whose face was bright red from crying. Chance looked like he was about to collapse from stress over watching her misery.
“This is going to be difficult, isn’t it?” Tina asked, her voice soft. She lowered her phone. “I already want to smash something.”
Her tone made tears spring to my eyes. “We’re holding up so far,” I said.
Darion cleared his throat. “This is probably the worst part,” he said. “From now on, Jenny will have the hard work of managing the baby, and that isn’t very glamorous. She’s going to be jealous of you most of the time.”
Neither of us answered. Maybe he was right, maybe not. But as we watched Jenny’s baby get swaddled into her blanket like a burrito and settle down, and as Chance got his opportunity to pick up the baby, love all over his face, Tina silently handed the phone to Darion to take over the photographs.
Then we both simply had to turn away. Some things were just too hard to be borne.
Chapter 6: Tina
When Chance left the nursery with the baby to head back to Jenny, I peeled away from Corabelle and Darion to stop by my art therapy room. I’d had enough of babies and happy-freaking-joy. I needed some downtime. Alone.
The lights were out in the classroom, and I left them that way as I stepped inside. The glow filtering in from the observation window was enough to provide a soft illumination on the low desks, the paints and clay and tiny easels.
Almost all my art therapy classes were children now. The program had grown in popularity, and we were in the process of hiring a second therapist to expand the number of classes for adults. The main roadblock had been space. Hospitals were notoriously low on empty rooms. Even my favorite Surgical Suite B, which had been used for storage — and sometimes for me and Darion— was now in operation.
I sat at my desk to pull myself together. I wanted to erase all the images from the last two hours from my head. Not the wedding. That had been hilarious. But the labor and birth. And the baby in that blasted room, getting cleaned and primped for her return to Jenny. I felt sick with bitterness. I wanted to wallow in it, dive headfirst into the sludge until it dragged me under.