Someone Else's Life

by Lacey Ann Carrigan

  Chapter Eight

  When Suella returned home, she found Nathan on the back patio, reading the paper. He often said that he loved winter. There was still nearly a month before he would have to go to Arizona for spring training. That would be new for her: all the other teams he’d played for had trained in Florida. Suella had always disliked all the rude people there. Maybe Arizona would be nicer.

  After he put aside the paper, Nathan said “Maybe we should look into getting a place on Mission Beach or Oceanside.”

  Both would be close to his new pitching home in San Diego. Suella shook her head. “Is this why you wanted to get rid of the place in Cincinnati? So you could turn around and get another by the beach? “

  Nathan’s lower jaw tightened, and his eyes paled. “Well you don’t expect me to take the 405 home every day, do you? Besides, when the baby comes, it’ll be nice to have a beach place. And we can get one a hell of a lot easier down there than around here.”

  In the end, when the condo in Cincinnati sold, Nathan bought a rooftop, space needle place in Mission beach. If it was smaller than the one they had in Cincinnati, at least it was completely solar and homey, if a bit sterile. On a lazy Sunday afternoon in February, Suella took a stroll to the beach, watching seagulls and pelicans soar overhead. She sat on a picnic bench under a pavilion and looked out at the gently rolling surf and the pier in the distance. She imagined bringing her daughter here on just such a lazy afternoon, letting her play in the sand with a pail and shovel.

  Toni soon hit her seventh month. At this point, Suella expected her to be flopped out on a couch channel and web surfing, fanning herself. Instead, she found Toni cleaning her apartment briskly, rubber gloves on her hands and her hair in a handkerchief. Her figure had always been round, though now, just a short way away from delivering, she hardly looked any different from what she had the previous summer, “Are you keeping up with a good weight for the baby?” Suella asked. “What did they say at the OB last time?” Toni had gone to her last appointment on her own.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine,” Toni said, as she sprayed some oven cleaner into the oven.

  Startled, Suella reached for the can of spray cleaner and scrutinized the ingredients. “My god, what are you doing?”

  Toni had lowered herself down to remove the wire racks from the oven. “Suella! Don’t start.”

  “I don’t want you breathing those fumes. It says on here you’re supposed to spray it on and wait before you clean it, about an hour. Why don’t you relax and let me do it for you.”

  Toni sighed with exasperation. “I want to do it myself! I’m becoming a beached whale! What do you expect me to do? Sit and watch soap operas all day?”

  “No, I don’t expect you to sit all day, but I don’t expect you to run marathons and be a cleaning superwoman either.”

  Toni slumped down and stared out the window at her balcony. “Easter can’t come soon enough,” she murmured.

  Suella decided that Toni’s black moods might be more harmful to her baby than any noxious chemicals or second-hand smoke. For the final two months, she only went with Toni to her OB appointments and the last few Lamaze classes. Conversation sputtered between them: “How are you feeling?” Suella would ask.

  “Fine,” was Toni’s unvarying reply.

  Suella’s clients suffered during those last few weeks, while she made so many preparations for her child. Fortunately, she knew a whole network of friends in the business who could step in to cover her. Still, she pushed herself, attending videocons in her lounge pajamas (while at least getting herself made up). Some of the older guys had started to call her “Zaa, Zaa.” If anyone noticed that the quality of her work was slipping no one said anything. No news was good news.

  In March she took a trip to Arizona to watch Nathan in spring training with his new team. While they had signed him to a good deal, nothing was ever guaranteed, as Nathan always liked to say. He had to fight for his job against a bunch of young, hard throwing kids. The press secretary, a bespectacled, gray haired guy, spoke to her.

  He had probably been chosen last for all the teams in gym class while he had been growing up. “Your man’s in great shape,” he said. “You’ve been taking good care of him. The way we plan to use him, he could go on another four, five years. You must be pleased.”

  Suella also found Arizona to be a friendlier place than Florida. There were only older folks around and rattlesnakes, as far as she could see. For all the weeks he was in Arizona, Nathan would work out with the team early in the morning. They would all stretch together and jog around the baseball field’s warning track. In the afternoon during games, he would practice toss in the bullpen or help with the rookies. Sometimes he pitched in a game, but most times he sat. It was a racket, Suella thought, to accept millions of dollars for this. At the end of spring training, when they all headed west, Nathan had a rock-solid job in the bullpen.

  “Come on down for opening day,” Nathan said, when he finished packing the car to leave.

  “I don’t know,” Suella said. “It’s getting really close.”

  He shrugged. “Two weeks, isn’t it?”

  “Something like that.”

  He smiled at her and trailed a fingertip along her chin. “Please come.”

  She gave in, knowing that it would be a long summer if she didn’t. Still,

  another kind of Opening Day would be happening one hundred miles north, in less than two weeks! When she woke every morning, the first thing she did was call Toni. “No, I don’t see any water splashing underneath me yet,” she would always say. “I guess we’re good.” At least she wasn’t complaining. Yet.

  San Diego’s stadium was much brighter than the one in Cincinnati, and Nathan’s new team played their first game on an idyllic early April day under a robin’s egg blue sky. Suella stayed in the luxury box with the other wives, as was the custom on every other team he’d played with. She listened to the same conversations about kids, schools, real estate, and investments while waiters kept their cocktail glasses filled and chefs brought by lots of scrumptious treats.

  The day before, Toni had visited the OB, but was forbidden from getting another ultrasound. Suella started to get wary of all the radiation exposure her baby might be getting. “But it won’t be easy for them to tell how close I am,” Toni had protested.

  “I’m sure everything will be fine,” Suella said. She wanted to attend opening day festivities, the same way she had for the previous seven opening days. Something stirred inside her as they drove down the 405, getting further and further away from Toni and her about to be born child. She told herself that as soon as the game was over, she would drive back and bring Toni to the center to stay until labor started.

  Halfway through the game, though, her telephone rang. She winced when she saw the number, gathering her purse together before she even answered. “Hello?”

  Toni said “I know this sucks, but I think it’s time.”

  Suella almost dropped the phone. “Has your water broken?”

  “No.”

  Suella kneaded the skin at the top of her nose to buy herself time to decide what to do next. “Get a cab to the desert, now. Use our card. Call them now. I’m on my way.”

  “I’ve got to go,” she explained to the other ladies in the box as she rose and briskly walked toward the exit. Along the way to her car she checked her screen for the quickest route from the stadium to the desert. To her relief, she could catch one of the lesser-traveled freeways, which ran from downtown sideways toward Riverside. When she reached her car, she decided she would lead foot it all the way up there. For once in her life, she would speed.

  It helped that this occurred in the middle of the day. She felt as if a whole army of angels had cleared the way for her, making all the traffic lights green and the freeways clear. She pushed her little Mazda as fast as it would go as she bore down on the center i
n the middle of the desert. When she arrived there, the guards all waved her through so she could park the car quickly. She leaped from her car and ran to the birthing suite, finding Dr. Allende already in scrubs. “Let’s go,” she said, catching her by the arm and leading her toward the scrub-in room, where the workers there had already laid out everything Suella would need. She scrambled into the clothes and the washing up, anxious to get to the birthing suite and Toni. She could have already delivered while they were messing around!

  Suella found Toni sitting calmly on a gurney, a couple of doctors beside her.

  An IV pole stood near her bedside. She leaned down and kissed her quickly, hugging her. “How do you feel?” she asked, the same as always.

  “We’re going to do an epideural,” Toni said. “I’m good.”

  Suella’s phone rang. When she answered it, she was surprised to hear Nathan’s voice. “So the witching hour has arrived,” he said. Suella could feel his warmth and his smile from seventy miles away.

  “Yes. How did you find out?”

  “All those gals in the suite? You may as well have gotten on the PA system.” He laughed. “I wish I could be there.”

  Suella noticed a doctor motioning for her to cut her call short. “I know you do, hon. Listen, it’s showtime. I’ve got to go.”

  “I love you,” Nathan said.

  “Love you too,” Suella responded, as she snapped her phone shut and joined the birthing team for the miraculous event.

  What is there to say about a woman giving birth? Toni screamed, and breathed,

  Suella held her hand. For the past nine months, she’d envisioned a bright room, with light so bright as to hearken the birth of her daughter. Yet the birthing suite looked like a place where they did plastic surgery, with bright artificial light, baby pink walls, and slick, gleaming instruments.

  As they’d done so much in all the Lamaze classes, Suella coached Toni through all the breathing exercises. She reared back her head and screamed, then shouted “I can’t believe I actually went through with this for you, you fucking bitch!”

  The doctors told her “Keep pushing! You’re doing fine!”

  Suella had been standing behind Toni’s shoulder, but Dr. Allende said “Would you like to switch places?” since she had been on the other side, helping the birthing team. She took a deep breath and took up the position with the doctors trying to bring a new life into the world.

  She worried about being squeamish. Toni’s water had broken long ago, yet pink and orange ooze still kept coming out of her. This caused a vague wave of nausea in her. One of the other doctors said “I think we’re going to have crowning soon.” He was reaching beneath Toni’s bottom, feeling around for the fetus to drop. This was a perfect clone of her, a virtual carbon copy. Suella realized that this was like watching her own birth.

  Her baby’s head soon appeared behind the folds of Toni’s labia. The doctors still urged Toni to push, and she still reared back and screamed. Dr. Allende called out “Are you feeling anything? Are you in pain?”

  Toni shook her head vigorously. A nurse aide patted her head with a cool towel. “I’m going to break in half!”

  Dr. Allende patted her on her wrist. “No, you’re not going to break in half.”

  The baby was covered in slime as Suella watched the head and face emerge. At that moment she was aware of the door to the birthing suite opening, but she kept her eyes forward, gazing at the spectacle in front of her. “Surprise!” Nathan rejoiced loudly while he put both arms around her shoulders and hugged her tightly. She whirled around and saw his smiling face, his twinkling eyes.

  Suella started to jump up and down and Nathan started to jump up and down with her. “How did you get here?”

  He chuckled. “Do you think I’d want to miss this? They sprung me from the game and I lead-footed it all the way up here!”

  Suella yanked him down into place so that they could watch the rest of the birth together. People had always told you that you’ll always remember the birth of your first child, whether you carried it or a surrogate did. In watching herself be born, Suella knew she would remember this forever. The doctors around her began to rejoice and cheer as more and more of her baby emerged: the shoulders, the back, her hips. Then, with a whoosh, she had catapulted out into the world. A nurse keyed in the Apgars and counted fingers and toes. The man doctor took her baby by the leg and dangled her upside down and smacked her behind. Suddenly the sound of the infant crying filled the whole room. Toni also cried, as rivers of relief washed her face. Nathan settled in behind her and hugged her tenderly, rocking her back and forth.

  Moments later came the afterbirth. Someone asked Suella if she wanted to cut the cord, but she stood there staring at the baby instead. When the question had finally registered, it was too late. A doctor stepped in and cut the cord. Two nurses washed the baby down, then dried her. For a split second, the nurse looked over at Suella, as if she was confused about whether to turn the baby over to her, or to Toni, who had carried her for nine months. Suella motioned silently toward Toni.

  Toni cuddled the tiny infant close to her, looking every inch the proud mother, with her hair plastered down by sweat and water from the nurse’s cool towels. Suella cuddled in next to her, and Nathan hovered over the both of them, arms around their shoulders. The doctors barked out facts about the birth and the mother’s vital signs. Suella somehow felt as if she, Toni, Nathan, and her newborn child were the only ones in the whole room.

  Toni offered the tiny infant to Suella. She said “Do you want to hold her?”

  Suella’s breathing grew ragged, and shallow. Time stopped as she lowered herself down to receive her new daughter. Her lower half had been swathed in a receiving blanket. Suella steadied herself as she reached beneath her child to accept her fully into her arms, the passing seconds expanded dreamily in time like minutes, with all the sound of the outside world muffled out in a pleasant murmur like running water.

  She tried to say “Hello, little one,” but the words stuck in her throat as tears welled in her eyes. Her child was so small, so delicate, so pink. She lightly traced her fingertip over the baby’s forehead as her cupid bow lips opened and closed and her arms and hands poked and shifted. Suella could have been frozen that way forever, her little daughter cuddled against her. Eventually she handed her baby over to the nurses. Toni had closed her eyes.

  They could both only stay in the birthing suite for a moment longer. Suella remembered in the paperwork session, way back at the beginning of the cloning process, that the doctors would have to perform extensive tests. Two nurses started to wheel Toni’s gurney back into her semi—private room. Suella followed, holding Toni’s hand as she walked beside her. As far as Suella was aware, Nathan had stayed behind to talk with one of the doctors. It occurred to her that she should think of something to say to Toni as they walked along. “How do you feel?”

  Toni gave a weary smile. “Exhausted.”

  When they reached the room and the nurses left, Suella reached across to give Toni a big hug. “Thank you so much,” she said. “Thank you so much.” Over and over.

  Though she wanted to comfort Toni after she had brought her daughter into the world, Suella was anxious to see the baby, also. She walked down the hall toward the delivery room and suites. Shockingly, two doctors hovered over the baby while tubes and tape ran out of her. Someone had run sensors with contacts from her temples and heart. Suella remembered someone barking out “seven pounds, three ounces.” She was a normal infant, wasn’t she? What could they have possibly been checking?

  Dr. Allende rounded a corner and seemed to have read Suella’s mind. “Your baby’s fine. The doctors always like to run certain tests. It’s all for the best, you’ll see.”

  Oh well, she thought, she had spent a million dollars, didn’t she? Nathan suddenly appeared from around a corner. He ha
d already changed out of his scrubs gear and back into his baseball uniform. It seemed crazy that the team would allow him to run from the bullpen, jump into a car and thunder his way here, but she decided against saying anything. “They’re putting her away for the night,” Suella told him.

  “I know. I got a room down the hall for us. As long as everything checks out, they’re going to let us go home tomorrow around noon.”

  Suella stood blankly for a moment, unsure of her reticence. It soon occurred to her. “Hon, I was hoping to stay with Toni tonight. To make sure she’s okay.”

  He broke into a mischievous grin. “She’ll be fine. That woman could fall asleep on top of a pile of bricks with a marching band going by.”

  The bad timing of the disclosure of an intimate detail irked Suella. “I just don’t think she should be alone tonight. Did you know that none of her family knows that she was even pregnant?”

  Nathan shrugged. “Yeah. We all agreed that was best. Remember?”

  It turned out that the other full-sized bed in Toni’s room could fit Nathan and Suella. By the time they creaked the door open, they found Toni lying back on her bed, sleeping deeply. Nathan and Suella soon joined her.