Only sorrow and heartache or empty devastation.
Within a few minutes, the discomfort that began in her right side, where it so often hurts, begins to radiate into her lower back. She can’t find a comfortable position, can’t get situated in bed, so I sweep her up into my arms and carry her into the living room, to her favorite chair, hoping that will help.
It’s as I’m depositing her onto the thick cushions that I notice the wetness. I look down toward my feet and then behind me, down the hall the way we came, and see that we left a trail of droplets along our path.
I shift my glance to my wife, ready to comment about it, when I see her eyes are already round with a combination of both alarm and excitement. “I think my water broke.”
From that statement on, all hell breaks loose. Everything is a mad dash to move quickly, yet think of everything for all the just-in-cases that might happen.
Lena is only four weeks from term. She’s made it to week thirty-six of a pregnancy she wasn’t sure she’d be able to carry at all.
Now the time is at hand. The baby is finally coming, and I find that I’m struggling to keep a cool head. Fear plagues me, a fear I’ve refused to acknowledge.
Secretly, I’m terrified that I will lose both Lena and Grace during this tricky delivery. Lena’s not exactly the picture of good health and strength, and there are literally dozens of things that could go wrong. I try to focus on the positive and hold my misgivings at bay, but damn, is it hard!
For the millionth time, I shove all those thoughts back, back to a place where they can’t hurt anybody. Just like cramming those damn skis into the hall closet.
Where they wait to crush me one day when I open the door.
********
Lena
I fight through the web of confusion that tangles my mind. I know I’m pregnant and I’m going into labor. I know I’m sick and my disease is likely progressing. But I also have the sense that other things, other times and places and people, are vying for my attention. I feel torn and find that I have to continually struggle to stay here.
Odd moments and images trickle in, spurring thoughts that threaten to whisk me away to another place in time. I’m aware of that when it happens. At least to a degree, but I’m helpless to stop it.
This time, it’s scarier than usual. One minute I’m in the car with Nate on the way to the hospital and the next I’m being prepped for an emergency C-section.
Someone is getting ready to cut me open.
Hysteria rushes in. It scratches at my consciousness like a dog digging up old bones in dry dirt. My breath comes fast and hard.
“What’s going on?” I cry. “What’s happening? Is the baby okay?”
A scrubbed, capped, and masked nurse anesthetist bends to look into my face. All I can see is a smooth brow and wide gray eyes. “The baby has a nuchal cord, Mrs. Grant. That means that the umbilical cord is wrapped around your daughter’s neck. You’re being prepped for a caesarean. Can you take a deep breath for me?”
The woman’s tone is professional yet cool. It brings no more comfort to me than the plain white ceiling above my head.
I need warmth.
I need familiarity.
I need answers.
I need Nate.
“My husband. Where’s my husband? Where’s the doctor? Why can’t I feel my legs?” Questions tumble into my mind like marbles from a felt bag—unchecked and chaotic.
Clanking and rolling.
Roaring.
I pant frantically, my mouth as dry as cold air stinging my eyes. “Somebody tell me what the hell is going on!”
My mind tilts and jerks, searching desperately for solid ground, for words or moments or images to fill in the yawning gaps.
I find none.
Time…time has come and gone. It’s dumped me into a present that I can’t piece together. I have no idea how I got here, to this point. What has happened that I now require a caesarean?
Only moments ago I was at work in the E.R. where I pull shifts periodically to keep up my clinical skills. And before that, I was catching lightning bugs with Daddy. And before that…
Or was I?
Confusion mounts, and my anxiety intensifies.
“Lena, take a deep breath for me,” the anesthetist instructs sternly.
I try to be compliant, try to take a deep breath, but I can’t. My lungs refuse to cooperate. Rather than loosening, they squeeze tighter, shut, shut, shut.
Heart racing and throat constricting, terror surges through me.
“Please,” I plead as the woman stretches a royal blue drape up in front of my face and clips it to the poles on either side of the table. “Please let me see my husband.”
Seconds, minutes, hours later, I hear an achingly familiar voice croon, “I’m here, baby. I’m here.”
Cool, strong fingers brush over my forehead, and I close my eyes.
Nate.
I feel him in every corner of my soul. Even before I pieced together that it was his voice I heard, I felt him. I recognize his touch on a cellular level.