Everything was going as planned. She said that she had talked herself into it and it was only a matter of time before it was all going to be through. James was sitting there, reading from some law journal and waiting for the appointment. In just a few minutes the Russian doctor was going to get rid of the baby.
“But,” she tells me, “there was a little boy and his mother. He was barely four.” She tells me about the woman, with her belly the size of a basketball. The boy played with his Matchbox cars up and down the legs of the stiff waiting room chairs. Vroom, vroom, vroom... He dropped one at James’s feet and the bastard had the nerve to push it away with his Italian loafers, his nose never rising from the book. “And then I heard his mother,” Mia says, “dressed in these cute denim overalls and looking as uncomfortable as could possibly be, say to the boy, ‘Come here, Owen,’ and he ran for her and zoomed a car over her protruding belly and climbed into her lap, saying, ‘Hi, baby,’ to the unborn child.”
She stops to catch her breath, and then admits to me, “Owen. I didn’t know what it meant, but it meant something. I couldn’t take my eyes off the little boy. ‘Owen,’ I heard myself say aloud and both the boy and his mother looked at me.”
James asked Mia what she was doing and she related the feeling to déjà vu. It was as if she’d been there before. But what did it mean?
Mia says that she leaned forward in her seat and told the little boy that she liked his cars. He offered to show Mia one, but his mother laughed and said, Oh, Owen, I don’t think she wants to see them, but Mia did. James scolded her and told her to give the kid his toys back. But she wanted to do anything to be close to the boy. She says that the sound of his name made it hard to breathe. Owen.
“I took one of the cars in my hand, a purple van, and told him how much I liked it, and then drove it over the top of his head and he laughed. He said that he was going to have a baby brother soon. Oliver.”
And then the nurse was there in the doorway calling her name. James rose to his feet and when she didn’t he told her that it was her turn.
The nurse called her name again. She looked right at Mia; she knew who she was. James said her name more than once. He tried pulling on her arm and got in her face to discipline her as only James would do. He reminded her again that it was their turn.
Mia tells me, “Owen’s mother called to him and I saw myself reach out and stroke that curly hair and I don’t know who was the most aghast, the boy’s mother or Dad, but the boy liked it and smiled and I smiled back. I placed the two Matchbox cars back in the boy’s hands and stood from my seat.” She tells me that James sighed: Thank God—it’s about time. But it wasn’t time. She reached for her coat and whispered to him, “I can’t do this.”
She slipped out into the hall. He ran after her, of course, full of condemnation and criticism and threats. He urged her to reconsider, but she couldn’t. She didn’t know what any of it meant. Owen. She didn’t know why that name meant so much to her. All she knew was that it wasn’t time for her baby to die.
Colin
Before
It’s 2:00 a.m. when I’m woken up by her scream. I stand from the chair and see her pointing across the pitch-black room at something that isn’t there.
“Mia,” I say. But I can’t get her eyes off it. “Mia,” I snap again. My voice is firm. I must look at the spot five times because she’s scaring the shit out of me. Her eyes, filled with tears, are locked in place on something. I reach for the light and turn it on, only to reassure myself that we’re alone. Then I drop to my knees before the couch. I take her head into my hands, and force her to look at me. “Mia,” I say and she snaps out of it.
She tells me that there was a man at the door with a machete and a red bandana tied around his head. She’s hysterical. Delirious. She can describe everything about him down to a hole in the right thigh of his jeans. A black man with a cigarette pinched between his lips. But what concerns me the most is the heat coming off her face when I press my hands to it. The glazed-over look of her eyes when she finally looks at me and her head drops to my shoulder and she begins to cry.
I run the water in the bathtub and let it fill to the top. I have no medicine. I have nothing to bring the temperature down. It’s the first time I’m grateful that the water refuses to warm beyond lukewarm. Warm enough to keep her from becoming hypothermic. Cool enough that she doesn’t begin to seize.
I help her rise to her feet. She leans on me and I carry the weight of her into the bathroom. She sits on the toilet seat as I peel the socks off her feet. She flinches when her bare feet touch the bitter tile. “No,” she begs.
“It will be okay,” I coax. It’s a lie.