The woman in pink scrubs waited for me by the hall door. “For Gavin?” she said.
I nodded. She gestured for me to follow. We walked past a couple closed rooms, then the hall opened into a large area sectioned with curtains. She pulled one aside.
Gavin lay back on the bed, his hand covering his eyes.
I leaned over him, ruffling his hair. “How are you feeling, tough guy?” I asked.
“Like I’ve been run over by a truck,” he said.
The girl laughed. “He’s coming out of it. I’ll bring him some juice and crackers.”
Gavin moved his hand, squinted in the light, then covered his eyes again. “You’re going to change my ice packs for me, right?”
I glanced down at his groin. He was extra bulgy. “And here I thought you were just happy to see me.”
He groaned. “Don’t even talk like that. We don’t want to encourage it —” He groaned again. “Maybe I should have had Mario pick me up.”
This made me laugh. “Sorry. I’ll try to avoid disturbing the equipment until it’s fully functional.”
The girl popped back in and set a package of graham crackers and a little container of orange juice on the tray by the bed. “We’ll give him about ten minutes, then I’ll come by with a wheelchair. He can sit up if he wants.” She hurried out again.
“Slam, bam,” Gavin said. “Snip, wake up, out the door.”
“That’s the way they do it now. Saves costs.” I pressed a button on the bed to lift the top section. “Let’s get you up and at ’em.”
Gavin dropped his hand, reconciled to having to face the rest of the day.
I opened the top of the juice. “Some calories will help,” I said. “I swear fasting is half the problem coming out of anesthesia.”
He drank it down. “Is the doc not even going to stop by? Tell us how it went?”
I wondered that too. Having procedures done at these facilities was very different from a hospital. But this urologist was supposedly the best at reversing vasectomies. He had not given any guarantees, but given Gavin’s age, said we could be hopeful.
The girl nudged the curtain aside with a wheelchair. “Time to fly!” she said. She turned to me. “You want to bring your car around while we discharge him?”
“The doctor isn’t going to let us know how it went?” I asked.
She picked up a folder and tugged out several pages. “I have your discharge papers here. Says you will make a follow-up appointment with him and they’ll do an analysis.” She handed the stack to me.
I glanced at Gavin. I guessed there was no way of really knowing until he had healed.
“Thank you,” I told her.
“Pull around through the circle drive,” she said merrily. “We’ll be there.”
I headed back down the hall and out to the front. My old car waited for us. We could have used the money for that. But we hadn’t. We had rolled the dice.
I unlocked the door, not that anyone would steal this old heap. Thankfully Gavin was a mechanic and could keep it running.
I couldn’t think about how we would feel if it turned out that we spent Albert’s legacy for nothing. If the vasectomy was not reversible.
But then, what if it worked? What if I got pregnant?
And another baby was premature. Another NICU stay.
Another baby in the ground.
I clutched at the steering wheel. How would I manage that? Where would I bury this one? Where would I put his grave? Here in California? Or back in New Mexico with Finn?
He was so far away.
I remembered talking to Tina about how there was no good way to let go of a baby. How she had held on to that necklace with Albert’s ashes as if it were her only lifeline.
Then I knew.
I knew where Tina had gone.
The cemetery back home.
She had gone to get her baby.
Chapter 16: Tina
The wind whipped my hair as I walked frantically along the path, desperately trying to remember which way to go.
I hadn’t been here often. Three times, maybe four.
Guilt stabbed me. I crossed my arms over my belly, wishing I had something warmer to wear. But the bitter cold would keep me alert. It had been a long, hard three-day drive alone with my raging emotions, vacillating between bitterness and despair.
The trees shivered, dropping the few fragile leaves still clinging to their branches. I was back in Texas, where winter was really a perpetual fall. Houston, my home, my nemesis. I had never hated a place more.
And this cemetery was about the worst of all.
Surrounded by huge walls to keep out road noise.
Attached to some seedy pathetic little funeral home that overcharged for their shoddy services.
Poorly kept up. Depressing and dead.