An Imperfect Heart

by Amie Knight

  Hope was still a lot of work but soon that wouldn’t be the case. The past three years seemed to have flown by in a flurry of doctors’ appointments and hospital stays and surgeries. Kelly was a rock star stay-at-home mom and me and Lucille we still spent our days saving the babies. In between surgeries and work when Hope was feeling well enough, we did manage to squeeze in a small wedding ceremony at the court house. We put Hope in a white dress and Kelly tucked tiny little flowers into her hair. They’d stood in our small three-bedroom house near the hospital in white dresses and I’d never felt so damn lucky in my life. She’d told her momma she thought she looked like a princess. I’d thought both of them did.

  “You want some water? A snack?” I got up and started walking to the vending machines across the room.

  “Anthony,” she hissed out and I turned around. I should have known something was wrong the minute she’d said my name. She never called me by Anthony unless she was pissed or upset. I was her Doc.

  “What’s up, shortstop?” I walked back over to her. I got down on my haunches and put my hands on her knees. A sweat had broken out along her forehead and her face was flushed. I started to worry. “What’s wrong?”

  She leaned close to my ear and whispered, “I think I’m in labor.”

  I rocked back and almost fell onto my ass. “What?”

  “I think I’m having a baby,” she whisper yelled at me.

  “Why are we whispering?” I said softy.

  She gave me big eyes. “Because I can’t have a baby today. I have to be here when Hope gets out. This can’t happen.”

  I grinned at her and grabbed her face in my hands. It calmed her and I knew she needed to chill out. “You know as well as I do that you don’t get to pick the times these things happen.” I looked around the room. “Hey, at least this time we are actually at a hospital.”

  Oh, that look. My girl could give me go to hell eyes like no other.

  “Now is not the time to be cute,” she deadpanned, before leaning over clutching her stomach.

  “How long have they been coming and how often?”

  “Every four minutes now, lasting about a minute,” she groaned.

  Fuck, my girl really was in labor. And we all knew how fast Hope had come. They said the second one was even quicker.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Everything okay?” Mom asked.

  I looked over my shoulder and smiled up at her. “I think we might have a little bit of a situation.”

  Kelly sat up. “Nope, no situation.” She tried to smile, but it came off more a grimace.

  “She’s in labor.”

  Kelly shook her head. “Nope, I can’t be in labor. I have to be here for Hope.”

  Lucille looked at us both like we were crazy before coasting out of the waiting room and saying, “I’ll go get a nurse.”

  “Doc, we can’t have a baby today.”

  Wrapping my arms around her, I hugged her to me. “We can. We can do anything, baby. You know that better than anybody.”

  “What’s the problem?” Miranda piped in behind me.

  I let Kelly go and stood up. “She’s in labor.”

  “Shit!” Ainsley said. “You people have the worst timing for these things.”

  My girl laughed and I was relieved. And it was true. We didn’t do anything the conventional way. Our lives were always crazy, but we loved it.

  “Move aside.” Abby pushed through and knelt down in front of Kelly like I had. “It’s okay, baby. Lucy went to get a nurse, and you and Anthony will go have the baby, and me and Lucy can stay here. We’ll be here when Hope gets out.”

  She shook her head. “No, Momma, it has to be me.” Her eyes went to mine. “Or Anthony. One of us has to be there when she comes out.”

  “Then I’ll stay. I’ll be here when she wakes up, baby, I promise.” I offered up.

  Kelly swallowed and looked at her mom and Ainsley and Miranda. “Then I guess it’s just us ladies in the delivery room.” She looked scared, but firm in her resolve that I stay with Hope. She was the best mom I’d ever known.

  Miranda lay her hand on Kelly’s shoulder. “We got this, girl. My vagina has been a freaking revolving door for years. I’m a professional.”

  “Miranda!” Abby scolded and we all laughed.

  Lucille entered the room followed by a nurse with a wheelchair.

  “Let’s get you in this chair, Mrs. Jackson, and you over to the birthing wing.” The nurse smiled.

  We knew everyone around here. I felt like our entire family was here at this hospital more than we were at home.

  We got a contracting Kelly into the chair and they started to wheel her out and into the hallway.

  “Doc!” she called out.

  I met her in the hallway and kneeled down in front of her. “What’s up, little bit?”

  She took my face in her hands. “I love you.”

  “I love you too, baby,” I said, kissing her lips one last time. “Now bring it in.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Not this. Not now.”

  “Come onnnn. Indulge me and bring it the hell in.” I brought both of my bunched fist up and waited on her to bring hers up to mine. I tapped our fists together lightly. I laid my forehead to hers. “Team Jackson,” I muttered against her lips.

  “Team Jackson,” she breathed back.

  A different version of Team Hope but much the same. Our team had evolved and grown over the years and now we were about to add a new member. I was sad to miss it, but I knew where I was needed and I’d never leave Hope without her daddy when she needed him.

  She already had one dud of a father. At least Cash had eventually done right by her by signing away his parental rights and letting me adopt her. He didn’t have a desire to see her and hadn’t tried the first year of her life. Drugs did that to a person—made them miss out on the best things that life had to offer. His loss was my gain, though, because when Hope was eighteen months old she became officially mine. It was just a technicality, though. She’d always been mine, even before she was born.

  They wheeled Kelly down the hall and I went back to the small family room and waited. I thought of my sweet brown-haired, blue-eyed Hope with her small, imperfect heart. I loved that heart. It had given me everything. Without her broken heart, I wouldn’t be husband—a father. I owed everything to her and that heart.

  It wasn’t long before I was called into a small conference and a doctor friend told me that my daughter was fine and the surgery was successful. Only a few minutes after that, I sat at her side in the recovery room until she woke up. It was four hours later when Hope and I finally got to meet our newest team member. A nurse wheeled my exhausted looking wife with our baby in her lap into the NICU room Hope would be staying in the next few days. Hope had already deemed our new bundle Faith months ago. “They just go together,” she’d said. Who were we to argue, besides she wasn’t wrong and she pretty much ran the show around here anyway.

  “She looks just like you,” Kelly said, tears rolling down her face as I held Faith for the first time and she did. She had green eyes and blond baby fuzz covering her head. Her nose my nose. Her mouth mine too. She looked like Charles. I smiled down at her while Kelly held Hope’s hand as she slept.

  We’d had a hell of a day. A hell of a couple of years, really, but I was learning that everything would be okay as long as we had a little Hope and Faith.

  Things weren’t perfect by any means. We knew the greatest gifts life had to offer often weren’t the big and easy things. The amazing things were sometimes as hard as steel. But if you looked closely, you could see through all the bad straight to the good where imperfect things become impossibly perfect. Where grief is a road that sometimes leads you astray, but the memories and lost love bring you back home. Where a huge loss doesn’t always mean the end but maybe a new beginning. And where broken hearts go to get second chances and become healthy and whole again.

  The End

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  I screamed. I screamed and I screamed and I screamed.

  I cried until my eyes burned like fire and my throat was raw. I kept hearing the doctor’s words over and over again on playback in my head.

  “She’s not waking up. She’s gone.”

  I couldn’t breathe.

  “There is too much brain damage.”

  “Her body is just on autopilot now.”

  “It’s time to take her off life support and let her go.”

  “It is the right thing to do.”

  I’d failed. I hadn’t kept her safe.

  I stared at the sidewalk through the sting of my tears. I liked the pain in my eyes. The ache in my throat. I deserved it. I swung my gaze to the ominous hospital looming above me. I’d been there nonstop day after day. Seven days. Sitting by her side. Seven days. Praying and hoping that, by some miracle, I would see her dazzling smile and her big, brown eyes. But all I got was the silence amongst the beeping and whooshing of the machines.

  “She’s brain-dead.”

  “There is no quality of life.”

  “It is time to make a decision.”

  Oh, God. I was going to throw up. I couldn’t stand to look at the hospital for one more second. It represented everything I’d lost. It represented countless nights of hope that would never come to fruition. It was over. One of the best things in my life was gone. I hunched over and put my hands to my knees. And then I yelled again. Because, I was just plain angry. Seething.

  I stood up and screamed into the sky. I hated myself. I hated her. But, most of all, I hated him.

  Age 8

  I remember the first day I laid eyes on Adrian Davis. I was out back, playing in the creek that runs along my momma’s property. It was a typical day in the South, the blistering sun beating down on us and the air so humid that I could barely breathe. I usually hung around in the fenced-in backyard with Lori, hanging upside down or swinging high on the plastic swings, pretending to be acrobats like the ones we saw at the circus last year. When we weren’t walking tightropes, we would pick fresh tomatoes and mint from the plants off the back porch of our one-story brick home in Gilbert, South Carolina. We tore the tomatoes open and covered them with salt from the salt shaker we’d stolen from Momma’s old, cracked Formica dining table.

  But not that day. Lori wanted to play alone. She did that from time to time, and I had learned not to push her. She enjoyed her solitude. She could sit forever playing Barbies and pretending all by herself. Me? I wasn’t built that way. I needed the interaction and company that friendship brought. I had to have someone to keep me entertained. So I met Miranda at the creek behind our fence so we could cool off and catch tadpoles. She had lived behind us for as long as I could remember. She had also been my best friend for that long. When I wasn’t with Lori, you could almost always find me with Miranda. She and I had an easy friendship that mostly consisted of her making me laugh hysterically.

  With my tiny hands, I picked up the bucket of tadpoles and creek water and chucked it down so it was closer to Miranda. It sloshed, sending a ton of muddy tadpoles right into her straight, red hair.

  “Oops,” I said quietly. It hadn’t been intentional, but it made me want to laugh. I loved getting her riled up.

  She let out an irritated huff. “Damn, girl. Be careful. My momma will be mad as hell if she has to wash my hair again tonight.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Please. Your momma is always mad as hell, and stop cussin’. It ain’t cute or ladylike.”

  Miranda snorted her laughter and gave me a look I knew all too well. I needed to run and fast. I tried to get away, but she had already grabbed a handful of mud from the bottom of the creek. I felt the mud splatter down the front of my favorite pink, gingham jumper. She knew how I hated being dirty, but I couldn’t back down. My pride wouldn’t allow it, so I reached for my own mud missile and launched it, hitting her square in the back. It wasn’t long before we were a filthy and sweaty mess rolling around in the murky creek water.

  I was mad about my jumper, so I held Miranda’s head down in the mud and cackled loudly for effect. “Your momma is gonna be so pissed,” I teased her. It wasn’t until I felt a cold, wet mudpie hit me right in the back of my head that I stopped trying to drown my best friend.

  In shock, I stood up and turned around, fully expecting Lori to be standing on the bank of the creek, ready to join the fight, but instead, I found a beautiful, raven-haired boy wearing what appeared to be church clothes. His blue slacks were held up by black suspenders that covered his crisp, white shirt. His black shoes were a little muddy from the creek but not nearly as much as his hands. Evidence.

  Miranda stood up and leaned around me, her usual fiery temper on full display. “You did not just throw mud at Ainsley. She hates gettin’ dirty. Hates it. You done messed up bad.”

  I stifled my giggle and ducked my head to hide my smile, but it was no use. I couldn’t not look at him. This alluring boy demanded my attention. Just as I looked up, he spoke.

  “Doesn’t look like she minds it that much. She was just rolling around in the mud with you,” he said to Miranda. “Besides, I was just trying to help you out. She was about to drown you.”

  Miranda huffed loudly, but I just stared at the blue-eyed boy. I had never seen him before, but he looked way too nice to be hanging around there. My murky, green eyes appraised him. He looked expensive and clean and my age. His face was handsome, his nose straight and turned up at the end. His eyes were like the ocean and feathered with dark lashes. His lips were plump and pink. The smattering of freckles across his nose only added to his pretty.

  I couldn’t look away from him, and I could only imagine what he thought of me right then, my thick, unruly, curly, blond hair caked in mud. My hand-me-down pink jumper dirty and worn. My feet bare because I liked shoes about as much as I liked green peas. Which was not at all. I tried to brush some of the mud from my clothes but gave up when I’d only made matters worse.

  “My name’s Adrian Davis. My daddy and me moved in next door. You know, the house with the pool,” he said.

  We remained silent and continued to stare because we were ornery little Southern girls like that. But he just kept right on yapping like it didn’t bother him one lick.

  “Y’all should come over and go swimming with me sometime. I don’t have any friends here yet. We only moved in yesterday and school don’t start back for a month.”

  I knew what house he was talking about. It was the white brick one to the right of my own home. There was a chain link fence that ran around the backyard and an above-ground pool with a big, red deck around it right in the middle of the yard. The house had been empty for a couple of months since our neighbors, the Wilsons, moved in with their daughter. I had been dying to go swimming in that pool for years, and now was my chance. I decided Adrian might not be so bad after all.

  “Hi. I’m Ains—” I started.

  Miranda jumped in front of me and cut me off. “Why are you dressed like that anyways?” she asked.

  “Like what?” he snapped.

  I could tell she was embarrassing him, and part of me didn’t like it, but another part of me thought it was pretty funny.

  “Like you’re going to church or something, pretty boy,” she said with a laugh.

  I giggled behind my hand. I enjoyed Miranda’s antics. She was mostly ridiculous, but sometimes, life called for crazy, and Miranda was happy to give it.

  Adrian smirked at me and placed his thumbs behind his suspenders. “I like to look nice,” he said with a shrug.

  He did look nice. Too nice for the likes of us, but that didn’t stop me. I needed his pool in my life.

  I plastered my biggest smile on and made sure to lay my Southern charm on thick. “I’m Ainsley. I live in the brick house right there.” I pointed to the house so Adrian would know where to find me. “I live there with my momma and my cousin Loralie. We’d love to hang out with you.”

&nbs
p; Miranda rolled her eyes. She knew exactly how much I wanted to get in that pool. Anyone who had ever lived in the South in the summer knew how bad too.

  Adrian gave me a huge, toothy grin and placed his hands in his pockets as he stood up straighter. I could see then that this boy wasn’t just pretty. He was beautiful. The kind of beautiful I had only seen in movies. I loved his smile. It made my heart feel too big for my chest and my fingers tingle. I wanted him to smile like that at me every day, always.

  Lori usually woke up before me most mornings, and that morning was no exception. I heard her climb down the bunk bed steps. I could feel her breathing beside me. She did this every morning, like she was debating on climbing in. But, just like always, she eventually pulled my covers back and snuggled up beside me. I rolled closer to her and wrapped my arm around her middle, getting comfortable.

  Laying my head close to her, I mumbled, “Good morning.” I could smell the sweet scent of her shampoo as her hair tickled my nose. I loved waking up to her.

  Loralie had come to live with us when she was two and I was four. My momma had said that her mom just couldn’t take care of her anymore. More than once, I’d overheard my mom and my gram talking about how Lori’s mom loved drugs more than she loved her. I didn’t get it. I couldn’t, for the life of me, understand how anyone could love anything more than Lori. She was my most favorite person in the world. It didn’t really matter, though, because my momma and I loved her to the moon and back. My life had felt pretty small before Lori. My father had taken off before I’d even been born. My mom had worked hard and put herself through nursing school because she really hadn’t had a choice. She had done it so she could support us on her own. But she ended up supporting both me and Lori. My momma was kind of amazing like that.

  Lori turned to face me and put her forehead right up against mine. “Ains, is that boy you met yesterday gonna let us swim in his pool today? You said he might, and I really want to go swimming right now.”