by S. L. Naeole
And then it was my own short scream that I heard as the phone rang, shrill and impatient.
I grabbed the cordless receiver and pushed the talk button. “Hello?”
“Grace?”
“Yes?”
“Grace, this is Dr. Ambrose at Licking. I wanted to let you know that your step-mother is in labor.”
The phone dropped from my fingers and I scrambled to catch it, failing and then cringing as it clattered to the ground, the battery door flying off and sailing beneath the sofa opposite the one I was sitting on.
“Hold on, Dr. Ambrose,” I called out as I crawled on the ground for the phone. I picked it up and gripped it tightly, pressing the receiver to my ear and hoping that my embarrassment couldn’t be heard in my voice. “Are you still there?”
“Yes, I’m still here. I’m calling you to tell you that your stepmother’s scheduled for a c-section in an hour. The baby turned unexpectedly overnight, making a natural delivery impossible. Your father’s tried to reach you at your house, but no one is there. Hurry.”
The line clicked off and I pushed talk once more, turning the phone off. If no one was answering the phone that meant that Graham wasn’t there, which meant that I couldn’t get in touch with him to give me a ride to the hospital. That left one option.
“Robert?”
I didn’t expect a response. Since the incident in the cafeteria, his demeanor had been cool and he’d remained only as close as necessary. The house was a quiet, empty place whenever Graham wasn’t around, and even though I knew that I wasn’t alone, it always felt that way.
“Robert, are you here?”
“Yes,” his voice answered, though he did not appear.
“I have to get to the hospital,” I said to the empty room. “Janice is in labor—Matthew is coming and I need to be there.”
“Be outside in two minutes.”
I looked at the clock and counted the ticks as the second hand scrolled by, once, twice.
As soon as that second rotation was completed, I ran outside. Robert stood in the semi-darkness but I could see his wings were out, his posture tense.
“What’s wrong?” I asked quickly.
“Nothing.”
I nodded with apprehension and approached him slowly. “Okay.”
He grabbed my arms and placed them around his neck. I sucked in my breath when my fingers brushed against the black silk of his hair, tiny bursts of shock shooting through my skin and directly into my chest. He bent down, one arm scooping behind my knees, the other supporting my back and with an unnatural swiftness, we were in the air, soaring above the treetops of the large homes that surrounded his own. It was quiet and I feared that the silence in the sky, the silence between us would force me to say something that I wasn’t prepared to.
It took less than two minutes to arrive near the hospital, Robert choosing to settle me down behind the parking structure. As soon as my feet touched the ground, he was removing my arms from him and placing them at my sides, like I was a small child.
“Go on,” he said softly.
“Aren’t you coming with me?” I asked, strangely hopeful.
He shook his head and avoided looking at me. “I’ll be here when you’re ready to leave.”
I wanted to ask him to come with me, but I couldn’t find the courage. He continued to stare away from me, his gaze locked onto something unseen. Not wanting to start an argument, I left, running as he had instructed, nearly stumbling and falling flat as I missed a slight step leading from the parking structure to the main walkway of the hospital.
The maternity ward was on the third floor, according to the sign in the lobby, and I searched for an elevator that would take me there. When the double doors opened and I walked into the little box, I sighed with relief. I pushed the circular button and waited as the slow pull of the cables began.
When the doors opened again, I rushed out, nearly heading the wrong way. The receptionist behind the registration counter smiled at me as I approached. “Here to visit someone?”
“Yes, Janice Shelly? She’s supposed to be having a c-section,” I answered, my voice sounding out of breath for some reason.
“Oh yes, hold on.” She picked up the receiver of a phone that sat beside her and began to speak into it, her movements very animated.
I took that moment to look around the pale pink maternity ward. There were soft, pastel paintings hanging on the walls with images of women holding onto babies in various poses mixed with floral portraits of lilies and orchids.
“Okay, they’ve already taken her into the procedure room, but it looks like her husband hasn’t been allowed in yet. He’ll be out in just a minute,” the receptionist said in a sing-song voice.
“Thanks,” I told her quickly, my hands impatiently grabbing at the drawstring of my pants while I waited.
A door opened to my right and I turned to see the excited face of my dad staring at me; he was dressed from head to toe in deep blue scrubs, a shower cap covering his brown hair.
“Grace!” he cried when he saw me, and I ran into his arms, inhaling the familiar scent of coffee and aftershave that was my dad. “I’m so glad you made it. Janice is being prepped right now—I can’t go in until she’s ready, but she’s doing okay. The baby’s doing okay.”
“That’s great, Dad,” I said cheerfully, my eyes watering at the sight of him, the sound of his voice.
“Come on. You can’t come into the operating room with me, but you can wait outside.” He pulled me through the same door and I walked with him down a long corridor, passing by two nurseries and several rooms where the muffled moans of women in labor sent chills down my spine.
“Oh, before I forget, Janice wanted me to give you this.” Dad pulled something off of is baby finger and placed it into my palm. “She said you had loaned it to her for the wedding, but since you left early during the reception, she didn’t have a chance to get it back to you.”
I stared at the small object in my hand and felt a rush of something that almost felt like a piece of me had fallen back into place. “It’s the ring that Robert gave me,” I whispered. “She needed something blue…I forgot that she had it.”
“Well, she kept that ring on until the end of the honeymoon, only taking it off the day before we left because she was worried her fingers would get too swollen to remove it,” he explained, closing my hand around the silver band with the round, blue stone. “She didn’t want to lose it, and was hoping she could have given it to you sooner, but she understands that you’ve got a lot of things to worry about right now.
“So, how’s school? You’ve been spending a lot of time studying with Stacy so I’m hoping it’s going well. Is it?”
“Yeah, yeah. Sure, Dad,” I said encouragingly.
“And the work program forms for Berkley, you got those out on time, too?”
“Yep.”
He put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me to his side, squeezing me the way he’d done so often throughout my childhood. “Well, that’s good. Any response?”
I stared at him, unable to answer. I hadn’t checked the mail in weeks.
“Ah, I see. Well, you know you got in, Grace. If I have to sell the house to pay for the tuition, I will.”
“Dad, I-”
Dad’s head jerked up as someone approached. “Well, it looks like it’s time,” he said, smiling, grabbing me and hugging me in a way that made me feel like he needed my strength more than I needed his.
“Okay,” I squeaked, squeezing him tightly before letting him go to follow a nurse clad in the same type of scrubs and shower cap.
“When I come out, you’ll be a big sister!” he called out before disappearing around a corner.
The minute he was gone, my hand opened to reveal the ring inside. “I can’t believe I forgot that I’d given you to Janice,” I whispered to it. I grasped the band and examined the large, sapphire cabochon. When Robert had given it to me for my birthday the previous Christmas, there had been a
brilliant white star shining from the center of the stone. For whatever reason, the star had faded away, leaving just the intense blue stone in a plain silver setting.
I placed the ring back on my finger and blinked rapidly to ward off the traitorous moisture that threatened to escape as the weight of the ring brought back the memory of it being given to me, a close moment in my room away from everyone else, where hints of the future were laid out before me. It was the first time that Robert had asked me to turn, and the first time I had refused him, telling him that I valued being normal too much to even consider it.
The look on his face had hurt to witness, cutting into me like it had been my own rejection I was feeling, but I had remained steadfast in my refusal. And yet despite this, Robert had vowed to be Matthew’s guardian angel; he’d watched over me, over my friends—
“Are you Grace?”
I turned to see the same nurse who had retrieved my father standing behind me, her face pale, her expression a mixture of annoyance and amusement. “Yes, I’m Grace,” I told her. “Is the baby here already?”
She shook her head and then handed me something that I hadn’t noticed in her hands. “Put these on, please. Your step-mother needs you.”
I looked down at what she had given me and then back at her, perplexed. “What do you mean, she needs me? What about my dad?”
“He didn’t listen and locked his knees, causing him to faint; fastest collapse ever. Your step-mother is all alone in there and she’s asking for you.”
I nodded and then stared at the dark blue clothes in my arms. “How…”
“Just put them on over your clothes. You can do that walking, can’t you?” She yanked on my arm and I followed her, clumsily pulling the shirt and pants on as I did so.
“Wash your hands here,” she ordered as we entered a room where several large sinks were lined up in an orderly row. “Use this-” she handed me a bright yellow sponge with an orange brush affixed to one side “-wet it and scrub your hands and arms. Quickly.”
I did as she instructed, flinching at the brown foam the sponge created before rinsing and throwing the sponge into the trash can she pointed towards. Without a word she pulled me through a set of double doors that opened when she stepped on a metal plate on the ground. Another set of doors followed and then we were in a round room filled with several people. They were all dressed in the same blue scrubs, white masks over their faces, only their eyes visible.
Janice was splayed out on the table, tubes running up and down her arm and crossing over her face. She turned to look at me and smiled, her features so serene I felt the tears begin to well up again.
“I’m so glad you came. Your father’s just no good in hospitals, is he?”
I shook my head and grinned. “No, he’s not.”
One of her hands opened and motioned me to come closer. I looked at the nurse who had brought me there and she nodded. “Go on, you can sit beside her if you want. There’s a stool right there.” She pointed to a round seat by Janice’s head, and I rushed over to it, sitting down and grabbing her hand as soon as I was able.
“Okay, Mrs. Shelley, we’re going to begin now,” one of the masked individuals said over the blue curtain that was draped over Janice’s chest.
“Alright,” she said answered, her voice hoarse with emotion.
The sounds of an operating room weren’t many; the voices of the doctors and nurses filled up the silence better than any beeping could have, but they weren’t enough to mask the groans of pain that soon came from Janice.
“Hold on, just a little pressure,” a voice replied to the sound from behind the blue sheeting.
“That feels like more than just a little pressure,” Janice moaned, her fingers squeezing my own painfully.
“All right, here he comes.”
Something unexplainable caused me to stand up at that moment, my height allowing me a clear view of the carnage that the curtain had hidden from sight. But I didn’t pay attention to that. Instead I was staring raptly at the slimy little person that had just been pulled out of Janice.
He was very pale, covered with blood and some gooey substance or other, with a patch of dark hair at the top of his head. He didn’t cry, he didn’t do anything; he hung in the doctor’s hands like a doll, and it was the silence that had replaced all of the chatter and instructions that hinted at something not being right. I felt the stirrings in my chest, a constriction of emotion that burned in a foreign yet similarly familiar way. I turned to look at Janice who stared at the ceiling, waiting.
“Why isn’t he crying?” The panic in Janice’s voice was thick and I felt it in my own body, it matching the one I had adopted as soon as I had realized that something was wrong.
“Hold on, Mrs. Shelley,” the doctor told her. The limp body of my baby brother was whisked to a corner of the room where he was placed in a clear looking tray, a lamp shining above him revealing the blue tinge in his lips that had begun to spread across his face.
“What’s going on? Grace, what’s wrong with the baby? What’s wrong with Matthew? Why isn’t he crying? Please tell me what’s wrong with my baby!”
Janice’s pleas and my own biting fear moved me towards the crowd of people that now surrounded Matthew, muffled dialogue flitting in and out of my comprehension. Tubes were pulled from its packaging and the sound of sucking became the only thing I recognized.
“He’s not breathing,” someone uttered flatly.
“I’ve got no pulse.”
“Start CPR-”
“Already started.”
Everyone spoke coldly, with little feeling that it felt like I was watching robots, controlled by some unseen figure hidden behind a curtain somewhere. They moved in a sort of chaotic yet organized dance, dashing around each other, passing each other packages and tubes and pads, and all the while the tiniest player in all of it remained still and quiet.
“Don’t die,” I whispered, my head buzzing with too many emotions to label. “Don’t die, Matthew, don’t die. I won’t let it happen. I won’t let him take you.”
Someone was pressing their fingers against his chest, doing compressions on him while someone else squeezed a bag attached to a mask over his tiny face. His body barely moved, lifeless beneath the activity, and each painful second brought another whisper from my lips.
It felt like an eternity—filled with strange words, intense stares, and hushed fear—before finally, a tiny cough, followed by a squeaky, pitiful wail broke down the last barrier that had contained and prevented my tears from falling down and marking my face with my own relief. Through a fog of salt and water, I saw the small slowly-pinking form squirm, tiny fists balled up and flailing angrily at the abuse he had endured at the hands of those who had just saved his life.
“Atta boy,” a nurse said with a sniffle—proof that she was not a robot after all—and began to dress him, placing a blue knit cap on his head, and wrapping him up in a thick, white blanket. “Come and meet your mama, now.”
She lifted him and turned to face me, a smile on her face that seemed relaxed, betraying the stress and seriousness that had overwhelmed nearly everyone in the room just moments before. “Would you like to hold him, big sister?”
I didn’t get a chance to answer as she shoved the warm bundle into my arms, the embrace awkward as I struggled to hold the wriggling form, his warm body filling me with a strange warmth of my own.
“What’s his name?” she asked me, doing her best to distract me from the insecurity I felt at holding him.
“Matthew,” I breathed, as I gingerly took the few steps back to Janice’s side. “Matthew James Shelley.”
Upon seeing her son, Janice began to weep, fat, heavy tears falling from her face and onto the floor. “Is he okay?” she asked in a fit of hiccups. “Is he alright?”
I looked at the nurse who nodded. “Yeah, Janice, he’s fine.” I bent my knees so that Matthew’s head was level with his mother’s.
“Oh, he’s beautiful,” she cooed
between sniffs. “I always knew he’d be beautiful. Oh thank God that he’s okay.”
With his eyes open, I could see a silvery hue over what would end up being eyes the same dark brown shade as mine. His dark hair peeked out from beneath the hat, and it curled slightly around the edges. “He’s got Dad’s hair,” I said smiling.
“He’s got a lot of your father’s features,” Janice agreed. “But I can see you in him, too. He’s got your lips, and the same stubborn chin; no, not stubborn—his chin is strong, just like his big sister’s.”
I blushed at the compliment, guessing that Janice had become so enamored of her newborn son she would go on throwing out compliments until either her son looked like a beauty queen or I ended up sounding like a leading man.
The nurse that had led me to the room came up beside me and held out her arms. “I’ve got to take him to the nursery now.”
A feeling of protectiveness came over me and I hesitated, looking at Janice’s face, gauging her reaction before finally handing Matthew over. He had fallen asleep in my arms and the movement disturbed him, causing a perturbed and annoyed cry to come from his little mouth.
“We’ll bring him to your room when he’s checked out by the pediatrician,” the nurse said reassuringly to Janice and me. “You’ll be taken to the ICU for a few hours to monitor you and when we’re sure that you’ve handled the c-section well, we’ll take you to your recovery room.”
I was ushered out of the room next, instructed to remove the blue clothing that had allowed me to blend in with everyone in the operating room, and given the room number where Janice would be moved to, and where Dad was currently sleeping.
When I opened the door, I could hear the odd snore that told me I had the right room. I walked in and smiled; Dad was curled up in a ball on the bed, the blue of the scrubs screaming against the white of the sheets.
