Birth
The conclusion to Expecting
Charlotte opened her eyes in an unfamiliar room bathed in white light. She slowly blinked a few times since her eyelids felt like they had been dipped in glue. It took a few moments for her to get her bearings as the rest of the anesthesia wore off. By instinct and reflex, she touched her belly. Only something didn’t feel quite right. She tried to remain calm, taking short shallow breaths, eyes opening wider with the dawning realization that the baby was no longer inside her. In its place was a void.
Oh God, please no. Charlotte tried to sit up but failed. She tried again, this time settling for propping herself up onto her elbows. I need to tell Tristan.
Swallowing suddenly felt like the most difficult thing in the world. A lump the size of a meteor was lodged in her throat. Charlotte licked her lips. The door to the room was closed and the blinds were drawn. A gentle sunlight seeped through the window, forming dozens of tiny haloed crosses on the bed sheets that covered her up to her breasts. Her left breast was tender and gently secreting milk against her will. Dozens of white chrysanthemums were in vases placed all over the room. Charlotte inhaled deeply. Then, she screamed.
The scream was raw and felt like swallowing shards of glass that slid, scraping slow down the sides of her throat. She kept screaming, long after her voice had left her, gripping the bed sheets in a primal squeeze of rage and ineffable, boundless grief. The cracked screen of her phone on the bedside table told her everything she needed to know.
Tristan had died in the operating room. Died, it dawned on her in increasing horror, lying on a table, surrounded by bright lights and strangers wearing mouthwash green paper robes, sharp instruments in their hands, his skull cut open and the tumor that killed him sitting there in a sterile metal bowl, innocuous, small, just a little larger than an Everlasting Gobstopper. Died there, apart from her, their home, and the life they had decided to build together.
A fruit basket sat at the foot of the bed, piled high with pomegranates, bananas, grapes, and more. The bananas, she noticed, had already started to turn, mottled with dozens of brown dots. She lunged with her foot to kick it. The door opened and a nurse entered the room as the basket clattered to the floor.
“Is everything okay, Missus O’Doyle?” The nurse glanced down at the tumble of fruit, then lifted her head back up with an effervescent smile.
“No.” Charlotte’s chest heaved. Sweat trickled from her temple down to her jawline. “What happened to my baby?”
The nurse’s cheeks went slack. She clasped her hands behind her and came to Charlotte’s side. Her name tag said Gabby. “Your darling boy is fine, child.”
A hose broke behind Charlotte’s eyes and they began to well with tears. “He’s a boy?”
“Why, of course he is.” Gabby placed the back of her hand against Charlotte’s brow, then poured her some water. “He’s in the nursery with your momma.”
“My mom?” She couldn’t hide the confusion settling on her face. “I don’t understand. When did she get here? What happened?”
“Rest, child,” Gabby said, patting Charlotte’s hand. “I’ll go page Doctor Shaw.”
Dr. Ophelia Shaw arrived some minutes later with a stethoscope around her neck and a venti Starbucks cup in her hand. She ignored the scattered fruit and set the cup down in exchange for Charlotte’s chart. “Tell me, Mrs. O’Doyle,” she said, flipping between pages. “What do you remember?”
Charlotte’s memory seared like steak hitting a cast iron skillet. She remembered the sweltering heat and the sweat and then the sudden sharp xylophone of pain. Words that had been said that could never be erased. Then she fell, cracking into a thousand tiny pieces.
“I remember you called me to say Tristan didn’t make it.”
Dr. Shaw wrote and nodded. “And then?”
“It all went dark.”
“Uh-huh.”
There was silence for a few moments. The lasso around Charlotte’s heart yanked hard. She placed her hand on it and began to sob.
“How long has he been gone?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Time of death was at 6:18 p.m. yesterday,” Dr. Shaw said, checking her watch. “It’s been a little more than 18 hours now.” She looked Charlotte in the eyes. “You were awake for delivery, Charlotte. We didn’t even use an epidural. You screamed and screamed.”
Tristan’s words returned to her from a timeless past, before vision problems and dizzy spells, before hours spent lying in MRI machines, before consults, radiation, chemotherapy, before conception, that sunshine split of cells that would in nine months result in birth. The irony never escaped him.
“If I die, at least I know our baby will have you.” He had said it while she was sitting on the floor in the bathroom drying her hair. He leaned against the door frame holding a stuffed rabbit.
“What?” Her quizzical eyes spoke volumes more than her voice. Though she had pretended not to hear, she still remembered every word, every inflection of his voice. He rolled his eyes in that amused way, tossing the rabbit into her lap, and going back to sit on the couch. Now she understood what he had meant by living on even after being gone.
Every night when he kissed her goodnight, he cradled her belly and said, “Hold on tight, even when letting go.”
“Charlotte?” Dr. Shaw stood there with her usual placid bedside manner, coffee back in hand.
Charlotte looked up.
“The postnatal amnesia will pass. You just went through a traumatic life-altering experience. It takes time.”
There was a knock at the door. Charlotte’s mother, Carol, peeked her head in and said, in her singsong way, “Yoohooo.”
Something in Charlotte’s shoulders released when she saw her mother enter the room with a swaddled baby in her arms.
“I brought a special someone,” she cooed.
Dr. Shaw gave a tender smile at all three of them, then made her exit.
“The nurse told me you don’t remember anything.”
Charlotte’s bruised voice warbled, “It’s all coming back to me now.”
Something in Carol’s eye twinkled. Chuckling, she said, “Aw, my favorite song.” She lowered the child into her baby’s arms and kissed her on the head.
Charlotte breathed in that new baby smell and baptized him with her own kiss. “Jordan,” she said, softly.
Jordan clasped her thumb with his tiny fingers and gazed up with almond-colored eyes. In a natural motion, she gave him her breast, which he latched to contentedly.
The sunlight in the room dimmed. Charlotte said a silent prayer and thought of heaven. Carol looked out the window. “It’s started raining.”
Charlotte’s expression sailed through the turbulent seas to find a momentary lull of tranquil water.
“I know,” she said. “Finally.”
This story is dedicated to all mothers out there, with a special shoutout to my own. Mom, I love you. Happy Mother’s Day.
