Rachael's Return

by Janet Rebhan

  When she entered the intensive care unit, she approached the nurse at the woman’s bedside. He stood reading her chart beside the window. The curtains were open, and the sun shone through on the pregnant woman’s face. Her chest rose and fell in small shallow breaths. Her lips were parted, and her eyes were closed.

  “Is she conscious?” Nancy asked the nurse.

  “Yes, just sleeping now,” he answered.

  Nancy looked over at the baby monitor, then at the woman’s belly, and finally up at her bruised and swollen face. “She’s just a child,” she said. “Does anybody know who did this to her?”

  “The police were here after you left last night. They’re looking for her boyfriend,” the nurse said.

  “What a shame,” Nancy said. “This poor baby, if it survives, will be born into a living nightmare.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Caroline opened her eyes and looked around the room. It took a couple of seconds before she remembered where she was. Then she recalled waking up first in the recovery room. She had been shivering violently and crying for no reason. The nurses had covered her with more blankets and increased her pain medication, and she had fallen asleep again. Now she lay in her room. She had the bed by the window. She could hear her neighbor snoring lightly on the other side of the curtain. She turned to see a vase of fresh spring flowers on her bedside table. Jake. Where was her husband, anyway? As if her thinking made it so, she looked up to see him enter the room.

  Smiling broadly, he said, “Well, look who’s finally awake.” In his hands, he carried a bag of Chinese food. He shrugged. “I got hungry.” He bent down and kissed her on the forehead. “How’re you feeling?”

  “I’ve felt better,” Caroline answered, smiling wanly.

  “You don’t mind if I eat in front of you?” Jake asked.

  “Of course not,” she said. “Do me a favor, though?”

  “For you? Anything.”

  “Get the nurse to give me another blanket? It’s really, really cold in here.”

  “It is a little chilly,” he said.

  She was hovering too low again; the urge to connect overwhelmed her. The Earth realm was pulling with a force beyond her control, and the stronger the feelings of attraction grew, the harder it was to think clearly. She began to feel desperate. She simply must connect.

  Jake left the room and returned with a nurse, who took a blanket out of a cabinet and covered Caroline. She then checked Caroline’s IV and took her pulse.

  “It’s almost time for you to be catheterized,” she said. “I’ll give you two a few minutes.” She smiled and left the room.

  “Are you in pain?” Jake looked at Caroline and stroked her head.

  “A little,” she said. “I’m sure they’ll give me another pill soon. Mostly, I just feel really sad.”

  Jake’s face changed, and he looked into his wife’s eyes. “Why, sweetie? Why are you sad?”

  “I don’t know,” Caroline said. “It’s just so final now. We will never have that baby girl we always said we were going to try for.”

  “Oh, honey.” Jake smiled and paused thoughtfully. “You’ve got me,” he said encouragingly. “I’m your biggest baby of all. I need lots of attention.”

  Caroline smiled at him and rolled her eyes but couldn’t stop them from welling up with tears just the same. Soon the drops were streaming down her cheeks, and she turned her face toward the window.

  “I’m serious, Jake,” she said. “I really feel I missed something here. I made a mistake, and I can’t take it back.”

  “Oh, baby,” Jake said, “you’re just emotional right now. You’ve just had major surgery, and your hormones are all haywire. All the drugs in your system aren’t helping things either.” He reached out and gently turned his wife’s face back toward his. “I love you,” he said. “We’ll get through this together; I promise.”

  She hovered near the ceiling, overpowered with feelings of helplessness. She wanted to comfort Caroline. She watched as Caroline’s husband crawled up onto the hospital bed and lay on top of the blankets beside his wife. He kissed her again on her forehead and then placed his chin over the top of her head, cradling her face in his neck. She felt a strong attraction for the husband, too—she knew he was part of the whole equation, but at this point she had forgotten his name. She was confused; she couldn’t remember what her choices were anymore. At one point, she thought she saw an attractive blue light coming from the window—just a quick flash—but it disappeared almost as soon as it appeared. She could only focus on Caroline; she would stay with her no matter what. A part of her knew she was allowing herself to sink somewhere beyond boundaries, beyond assistance, but she no longer cared about her fate. She only wanted to be with her mother.

  “She’s not seeing, she’s not hearing, she’s beyond my reach,” Aurora said. “I’ve signaled to her with the blue light, but she doesn’t respond. She has allowed herself to become overwhelmed with emotion. Our only hope now is to try to influence the people and events around her to present the next best opportunity.”

  “But she won’t budge. She won’t leave Caroline’s side,” Thor said.

  “Exactly. We have to influence Caroline and everyone else so the proper birth mother will meet Caroline. And when she does, our dear one will be unable to resist rebirth.”

  “But we have to hurry. What if some other birth mother comes into Caroline’s aura first?” Thor said. “Our dear one will be unable to resist, especially if the embryo hasn’t been claimed yet. And you know the only ones unclaimed are the undesirable ones.”

  “I know,” Aurora said. “We will have to look into the future. Any children coming up for Caroline’s sons?”

  “Not likely. One’s only eighteen, and the other is still in college.”

  “Does he have a girlfriend?”

  “I don’t think he’s ready for a serious relationship yet. He’s not even dating.”

  “Then let’s look at extended family. Come on, we have work to do.”

  “I can’t feel my baby moving! Nurse!” Mary Anne called out.

  Nancy Kelley entered the room ahead of the nurse who hoofed it behind her, a look of tension on his face. “I’ve got it, Alan,” she said, waving him away.

  “I was only away for a minute,” he said. “Not even a minute.”

  “It’s okay, Alan,” Nancy said. “I want to.” She smiled at him and walked toward Mary Anne’s bed.

  Mary Anne made a face.

  “Do you have pain?” Nancy asked.

  “No,” Mary Anne said. “I’m okay, but my baby’s not moving.” Her face grew pallid, making the dark-gray half-moons that had formed under her eyes more noticeable to Nancy. “How did I get here?”

  Nancy did a cursory look around and pointed to the baby monitor. “Your baby is just fine. Heartbeat is steady. See?”

  Mary Anne attempted to move upright and winced in pain.

  “Don’t try to sit up,” Nancy said.

  “Oh my God, how long have I been here?”

  “About two days,” Nancy said. “You were shot.”

  “I remember now,” she said. Her eyes darted from right to left, then back to Nancy. “Did they arrest my boyfriend?”

  Nancy paused. “The police were here again yesterday, but they haven’t found him yet as far as I know.”

  “Oh great,” said Mary Anne. “That’s just great. I will never be free of him unless someone puts him behind bars.”

  Nancy looked at Mary Anne and focused on her attractive features. She looked past the cuts, bruises, and swollen parts and noticed Mary Anne had clear, creamy skin and light gray-blue eyes. What made her handsome was her strong bone structure: high cheekbones and a defined jaw line. Not the type of girl one would usually find hooked up with a loser. She drew her own assumptions: probably poor, uneducated, most likely not a native Californian.

  “Do you have any family?” Nancy asked.

  “I’ve only got my mother and a younger sister. They’re in De
troit,” she said.

  “Do they know about your situation?” she asked, thinking she would continue as long as Mary Anne seemed willing to answer. She was very curious about this young woman.

  “I haven’t spoken to them in two years. My mom’s got a jones for H.”

  “H . . . that’s heroin?” Nancy asked.

  “Right. Hey, you’re good,” she said. “Her name’s Sherrie. My sister, Leila, is only twelve.” Mary Anne’s face went slack, and her eyes trailed sideways and downward. “I was going to send for her just as soon as I had some money.”

  Nancy frowned—totally predictable. She had probably come out to Los Angeles to become an actress, just like all the other pretty girls from around the country, but then she found out LA consumes pretty young things like low-carb snack food and doesn’t even bother to burp its appreciation afterward. It seemed to Nancy, the ones who made it were the ones who were the most perseverant, and perseverance was usually cultivated in homes where the parenting was above average.

  “I’m going to take your blood pressure,” Nancy said, forcing a smile. “I think you’re almost well enough now to move out of ICU.”

  Dr. Goodwin took the back entry to his suite at 10:50 a.m., bypassing the waiting room filled with patients. He walked down the hallway and into his office, pausing along the way to tell his nurse, Fiona, he had returned.

  “Your first appointment is here already,” Fiona said. “Mrs. Whitaker. She’s here for her three-month check.” Fiona hesitated and took a deep breath. “Do you have the Martin file? Caroline Martin?”

  Dr. Goodwin looked up, scratched his head, and pointed to a stack of files on a chair opposite his desk. “It’s right there,” he said. “I reviewed it last night.” He looked at Fiona’s tight expression. “Is something wrong?” he asked.

  “I’ll let you know,” she said. “I just need to check something first.”

  Fiona took the file and returned to her desk. When she opened the manila folder, secured to the left-hand side was a report. She glanced at the top for the name: Caroline Martinez. “Shit,” she said under her breath. She checked to see if the address and patient number on the report corresponded with the ones in the computer database for Mrs. Martinez. They did. She stood up and walked toward the doctor’s office, but he was gone. She turned to walk back to her desk when she saw him coming out of the bathroom. She opened her mouth to speak, but she froze.

  “Dr. Goodwin,” the receptionist called out behind Fiona. “Your wife’s on line three.”

  “I’ll take it in my office,” he said and looked at Fiona as he strode past her. “You can put Mrs. Whitaker in Room Two. I’ll only be a minute.”

  Fiona hesitated, still not moving, then spoke only after the doctor had closed the door to his office. “Yes, sir,” she said. She knew then exactly what she had to do.

  She walked back to her office and closed the door. Picking up Caroline Martin’s file first, she removed the lab report of Caroline Martinez from the left side. She then took Caroline Martinez’s file and removed Caroline Martin’s lab report from the left side. She reasoned it was too late to just refile the reports correctly. What if someone noticed Caroline Martin was pregnant and no one had informed her before her hysterectomy? What if someone noticed Carline Martinez was not pregnant, yet they had proceeded as if she were? No, someone was bound to put it together that Fiona had misfiled the lab reports or, worse, proceeded incorrectly despite the results. If she tried to alter the reports, it would be too obvious because the name, address, and patient identification numbers would all need to be modified. Better just to have no evidence whatsoever. She took both reports and fed them into the shredder underneath her desk. She would refile each woman’s folder in the metal filing cabinet behind the reception area after the receptionist left for her lunch break. No one would be able to pinpoint just who had made the error—the lab technician or the doctor’s office. As it was, no one would probably ever know, anyway, except for Fiona. Mrs. Martinez would just assume she miscarried when she had her next period. And Caroline Martin—well, she couldn’t possibly ever know that when she went in for her hysterectomy, the doctor had accidentally taken something she hadn’t given him permission to take, something that she hadn’t even known was hers to give in the first place. Something Caroline Martin no doubt would have considered priceless. Fiona could hear her mother’s voice scolding her: It’s all your fault! You caused this! Why can’t you ever get anything right? She cupped her ears with her hands and shook her head from side to side. Then she reached inside her purse and pulled out a pill box. There were only four Xanax left inside. She swallowed two with some water she had on her desk. Then she got on the computer and sent in for a refill. It was one advantage of working for a doctor: she didn’t have to wait for his approval.

  Caroline had spent two full days in the hospital. Now in her second night, she planned to go home in the morning. As expected, the nurses had made her amble slowly down the hallways, pushing her IV pole along beside her. They told her she could go home as soon as she could void on her own. She had managed that feat only a few moments ago and now lay in her bed, waiting for a visit from her husband. She had fallen asleep for a little while and dreamed about playing in the park with a blond-haired toddler with saucer-shaped brown eyes and olive skin. She woke when she heard the door bang against the wheels of the metal gurney holding her new roommate.

  She felt an immediate lifting of her spirits and thought it must have to do with one of two things: she knew she was going home in the morning, or she had been lonely for conversation and hadn’t realized it. By the time the nurse pulled back the curtain that separated her bed from Mary Anne’s, Caroline had pushed herself up into a sitting position, ready to talk.

  She was unaware of most everything now except that she was fixed in a realm over which she had precious little control. The feeling was bittersweet. She knew she was near the one she loved most, but she also knew on some level she was stuck; she could not go forward with her plan yet could not return either. Complacency had settled over her. She inhabited a zone that felt both comfortable and unsettling at the same time. Yet the longer she stayed, the less she thought about it. Her feelings had overtaken her almost completely. Before long, she would be incapable of weighing her options. She became engulfed in a thick, heavy fog of raw emotion. The one she felt most was attachment—extreme, magnetic attachment. Otherwise, she felt sadness, stupor, the hollow opposite of elation. Soon, she knew, she would not even be aware of how she felt. She would become one with her emotion and disappear altogether, a ghost, having shut herself off from all signals for help from the other side. It had been her choice. She would take full responsibility, would in fact pay for it somewhere down the line, but she just didn’t care anymore.

  Caroline smiled at the young pregnant woman as the nurses wheeled her into the room and lifted her onto the hospital bed. Immediately, she noticed the cuts and bruises on her face and presumed at first she had been in an automobile accident or had fallen. She remembered how clumsy she had been in both of her pregnancies with her boys. When she had been six months pregnant with Sammy, she had resorted to wearing only flat-heeled shoes because, while she hadn’t been too large, she had still teetered backward on her two-inch heels and fallen on her rear down a small set of stairs outside their condominium. She often thought about how, if she had fallen forward instead, it would have been much worse.

  She never got to talk to her new roommate though. Almost as soon as she had settled into her hospital bed, the woman’s water broke. By the looks on everyone’s faces, it was not a good sign, and the nurses immediately transported her back out of the room. Caroline was left sitting alone.

  “Good luck,” she said to the empty space when they had gone. She looked around the hospital room, suddenly feeling as if a burden had been lifted from her shoulders. The dark clouds hovering overhead had parted, and the sun began to peek through. She felt her appetite again for the first time in days, and when
she noticed her husband at the door with a bucket of Colonel Sander’s fried chicken and a bottle of Merlot hidden under his arm, she smiled at him and patted the side of her bed.

  “We’ve got problems,” Thor said.

  “No we don’t,” Aurora said. “I’ve already looked into the future.”

  “So have I, and this is a very undesirable parentage.”

  “Then you didn’t look far enough.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The woman’s marked.”

  “Well, that makes it even more undesirable.”

  “Not if we intervene,” Aurora said. “I’ve got an idea. And as long as those who are sensitive are receptive to us, it may just work.”

  Before the pregnant woman even entered the room, she felt the pull, stronger and more intense than the magnetic tug she felt toward Caroline. This was a powerful rip current. She noticed the colors enter the room first, the ones every pregnant woman has in her aura—purple, blue, pink, and green—only they weren’t as bright and clear as Caroline’s had been. These were muted and outlined in dark gray, almost black. She noted immediately another, smaller aura merging with the larger one and knew a soul had already claimed the birth mother. And then she saw him. It’s not that souls had a gender, but they usually gave off masculine or feminine energies based on what they identified with most. This aura had a heavy and dark feeling about him and sent forth negative and fearful vibrations possibly indicating a painful or violent death. She sensed he hadn’t been there long; he had probably just left his other incarnation somewhere else in the hospital and claimed the first route to rebirth he could find. If the birth mother only knew, she could easily ward him off—send him along with thoughts of love and light. But she was young and unaware, and the law of like-attracts-like had already been set into motion. At this point, her own fear had allowed forces to place her on almost the same level as the other disembodied soul looking for a quick route to rebirth. It was now a matter of whose attraction was the strongest. She knew fear to be more intoxicating, but love was more patient. If she could muster enough love, he would be unable to stay in her presence for long, his fear being so intense it would lead him to look elsewhere in only a matter of moments. After all, undesirable entries to rebirth proliferated on the blue planet. And she knew the maternity ward, where he could search for an unclaimed newborn, would be his next stop.