The Best Gift

by Markham, Wendy

  His momentary elation that she was alive gave way to immediate panic. “Why couldn’t she call me herself?”

  “She was taken right into surgery.”

  The nurse, sounding harried, had then given him directions on where to find his wife, refusing to elaborate on her injuries.

  She’d been in the car. Did she lose control and go off the road? Did she have an accident? Did something hit her?

  All sorts of possibilities—some more grim than others—have whirled through his brain since he found out.

  Then he steps out of the elevator on the third floor and sees the directory sign on the wall: Obstetrics and Neonatology.

  Consulting the number on the pass in his hand, he double-checks the directory. There must have been a mistake.

  “Can I help you?” a woman in pink scrubs stops to ask on her way to the elevator bank.

  He wordlessly shows her the pass.

  “It’s right down that way.” She points to a corridor and hurries on.

  Thoughts flying faster than his feet, Drew rushes down the hall to a reception desk and blurts, “I’m Clara Becker’s husband, Drew. She was hurt in the quake—I was told she’s here?”

  The middle-aged man behind the desk turns slowly to his computer screen and reaches for the mouse with maddening care. “Becker . . . Becker . . . ah, Becker. You can go right down that way to 344. It’s on the right.”

  Drew is sprinting in that direction before the man stops speaking, desperate to get to her, every prayer he ever learned jumbling in his head.

  He stops short in the doorway of the room, seeing a brunette in a white lab coat standing over a patient.

  Clara.

  Relief courses through him and he stands frozen, taking in the doctor’s somber demeanor, the IV, the tears streaming down his wife’s cheeks, her face is etched in pain. Physical? Emotional?

  The doctor catches sight of him, and Clara follows her gaze.

  “Drew!” she cries out, and as he rushes to her side.

  Before he can take her into his arms but the other woman stops him with a firm hand on his arm. Her gray eyes are kind, but stern. “Please be careful, Mr. Becker. I know you’re happy to see her—”

  Happy to see her?

  Happy?

  You have no idea, lady, so step aside.

  “—but she’s very fragile right now.”

  His animosity toward the doctor disintegrates in a heartbeat; dread creeps back in. “What . . . what happened?”

  “Prudence Connor.”

  Drew sees that the doctor has moved her hand from his arm and is holding it out toward him. What is she doing? What is she talking about?

  “Prudence Connor,” she repeats. “I’m an obstetrician here.”

  Oh. Realizing that she’s introducing herself, he shakes her hand quickly, then looks again at his wife’s distraught face.

  “Were you in an accident, Clara?”

  “No,” she tells him, her voice frighteningly weak. “Nothing like that. I was driving, and . . . the quake happened, and I turned around and started to drive back home, but I was having this terrible pain . . .”

  “What kind of pain?”

  Clara’s eyes flood, and he knows. He knows before he hears the words.

  “The baby.”

  “You lost it?” he manages to choke out.

  “It’s more serious than that, Mr. Becker,” Dr. Prudence Connor tells him. “Your wife has suffered an ectopic pregnancy—meaning the embryo developed in her fallopian tube rather than the uterus. The tube ruptured and she hemorrhaged. It was extremely dangerous, but fortunately your wife had the presence of mind to flag down a passing police officer who got her to the hospital.”

  “Bobby,” Clara murmurs, and he looks at her, confused.

  “She’s heavily medicated,” the doctor explains, and he nods.

  “No,” Clara protests. “It was Bobby. The officer who helped me. But I didn’t flag him down. Dickens ran out, and he slammed on the brakes, and Dickens led him over to the car, and he saw the blood . . .”

  Sickened at the thought of his wife, alone and bleeding on the side of the road—after an earthquake, for God’s sake—Drew struggles to find his voice.

  Clara touches his arm. “Drew—we might not be able to have any more babies.”

  “There was significant damage to her right fallopian tube and we had to remove it,” the doctor tells him. “In the future, it might be very difficult to conceive and carry a child to term.”

  Drew’s eyes are locked on Clara’s. For once, he can’t find the words to reassure her.

  But this time, he doesn’t have to.

  It’s Clara who lifts her chin stubbornly; Clara who says, “It’s going to be okay. We believe in magic, don’t we, Drew?”

  He nods, squeezing her hand in his. “Yes. We do. We absolutely believe in magic.”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Standing on the doorstep, staring at the stranger climbing out of the black sedan on her driveway, Clara feels as though her heart has made a screeching crash into a stone wall.

  He’s wearing a dark suit, sunglasses. Who is he?

  Does it really matter?

  He isn’t Drew.

  I told you not to get your hopes up.

  Yes, but she listened to her instincts, anyway, and her instincts had told her that it was going to be him.

  Her instincts, intuition, sixth sense . . .

  Maybe there’s no such thing. Maybe she’s been caught up in an illusion of hope all along, believing in something—someone—because she so desperately needs to.

  Because someone once said to her, a long, long time ago, “Look for me, Clara. . . . because I’m going to find you. I promise.”

  Someone she loved—and lost. But not really.

  What if . . .

  What if she imagined that, too? What if Jed was simply Jed, and Drew is simply Drew? What if there’s no such thing as magic after all?

  She can’t bear to look at the stranger on her driveway, so she looks down—and there it is, right in her hand.

  Hope.

  Proof.

  Magic.

  The snow globe.

  He’s going to come home to you. Maybe not now, but he will. You have to believe that.

  You have to believe in magic.

  “Clara!”

  Out of nowhere, the sound of his voice jolts her to the core and she’s certain she must have imagined it—until she hears it again.

  “Clara!”

  Slowly, she looks up to see Drew climbing out of the sedan’s backseat as the other man, the driver, stands with his hand still on the back door handle.

  “Drew!”

  Arms outstretched, heart soaring, she runs toward him, laughing—or perhaps crying—with relief.

  “Hey, careful!” Grinning, he meets her halfway, sweeping her into his arms. He hugs her, then reaches for her wrist. “What’s this? The snow globe?”

  Too overwhelmed to speak, she nods.

  He takes it from her and carefully tucks it into the deep pocket of his jacket. “This has been through a lot. We don’t want to break it now.”

  She buries her face in his shoulder, breathing him in as he holds her tight again.

  “Drew, where have you been?” she manages to say when she finds her voice at last.

  “The flight was late.”

  Flight? She glances over to see the driver unloading luggage from the open trunk, carrying it back and forth to the house.

  “I would’ve called when we landed,” Drew goes on, “but she had a hard time on the plane—the flight was endless—and she fell asleep as soon as we got into the car. I was afraid to wake her up with my voice.”

  “Her?” Clara echoes. “She?” Utterly confused, she looks from the mounting pile of luggage in the foyer back to Drew.

  Then she follows his gaze to the backseat—and sees, for the first time, that it isn’t empty.

  Chapter Thirty-three

 
Struggling against yet another wave of drowsiness, Clara clings to Drew’s hand as he sits beside her hospital bed.

  “I need to tell you something,” she says. “Alone.”

  Standing next to Drew, Dr. Connor laughs good-naturedly. “Oh, hey, I can take a hint.”

  “Sorry,” Clara tells her, wishing it didn’t hurt to smile.

  “Don’t be. I get it. I have a husband, too. And believe me, if I didn’t know for sure that right this very minute Harry is safe and sound, I wouldn’t be hanging around here in the first place. But I’ll leave you two alone for a bit.”

  “Thanks, Doctor,” Drew murmurs, his eyes fixated on Clara.

  “I have to warn you, Mr. Becker—the medication will probably knock her out pretty quickly. Actually, I’m surprised it hasn’t already.”

  “No, it can’t. I need to talk to Drew,” Clara tells her—tells both of them. “It’s important.”

  “Obviously.” The doctor smiles again, then turns back to Drew. “Just know that the drugs she’s on can cause various side effects. Do you understand what I’m saying, Mr. Becker?’

  “I understand.”

  So does Clara. The doctor is telling him that Clara might talk nonsense, or hallucinate.

  “No,” Clara protests, but either the word isn’t loud enough for them to hear her, or it doesn’t make it past her lips at all.

  They’re looking at each other, not at her. And the look that’s passing between them fills Clara with despair, as does the doctor’s final warning to Drew.

  “One last thing—between the medication and the trauma, your wife might not remember any of this later. She’s been through hell.”

  “I know she has,” Drew says grimly.

  “She seems to have blocked out certain details entirely. And that might be a blessing.”

  With that, the doctor discreetly disappears.

  Drew is closer now, looking down at her, his eyes suspiciously shiny. “Hey,” he whispers.

  Clara closes her eyes briefly, gathering her strength, unwilling to waste what little she has on telling him that the doctor was wrong about the medication. She can do that later.

  “Drew. Listen.”

  “You sound so weak,” Drew tells her softly, squeezing her fingers. “It can wait. Whatever it is.”

  “No, it can’t. Please. I need you to help me.”

  “I’m here. We’ll get through this together.”

  “No, Drew . . . I’ve been visiting the future. Our future. And you’re not there. You’re somewhere—you’re alive—but you’re not with me. You call me and tell me that you’re with Doris, but Doris is dead, and I’m so scared . . .”

  “Shh, it’s the medication,” Drew tells her. “Strong stuff. Just—”

  “No! This is real!”

  “Okay . . .”

  “I’ve been going back and forth to the future, and it’s Christmas, and I’m pregnant again.”

  A shadow crosses his face. He opens his mouth, and she knows he’s going to tell her that there’s a good chance she’ll never be pregnant again.

  “She’s wrong, Drew.”

  “Who is?”

  “The doctor . . . Prudence. She’s going to be a friend of mine, actually, in the future, and she’s going to have a baby and name it Prudence because I told her to.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Just listen to what I’m telling you,” she says, and she can tell that he’s trying; he really is. And she doesn’t blame him for being confused.

  But there’s no time to explain every detail; she’s fading fast, and she has to get it all out.

  “I’m going to be pregnant again. Three years from now. Christmas 2012.”

  A tear escapes to slip down his cheek, and he shakes his head sorrowfully. “I don’t want you to get your hopes—”

  “I know, but it’s going to happen. It’s not impossible, Drew. I’ve been to the future. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  “I do,” he says, but he doesn’t. She can see by the look in his eyes that he’s chalking it all up to medication or trauma or hallucination.

  He doesn’t believe her.

  “Please, Drew. Please . . .”

  “It’s going to be okay. You just need to worry about yourself right now. Just get better, so you can come home.”

  “I will. I’ve been there. I’ve seen it all.”

  “What—?”

  “The future,” she reminds him, frustrated. Exhausted. Why won’t he just listen?

  “Clara—”

  “Stop. You don’t have to say anything else. You don’t have to even believe me right now. I don’t care. I just need you to do something for me. “

  “Anything. But we’ll talk about it later,” he says maddeningly. “You can barely stay awake, and you need your strength to get better.”

  “Drew . . . three years from now, if you’re not going to be with me for Christmas, for whatever reason. I’ll be in our house—our house is going to have to be rebuilt, Drew. I’ll be there, but you won’t. Please . . . don’t let me be alone there, waiting and worrying and wondering where you are. Please find me and let me know. Even if you don’t want to. Even if you don’t love me anymore.”

  “Oh, Clara, that’s insane. I love you. I always have and I always will. Nothing is going to change that. Do you believe me?”

  “I do,” she tells him, “if you believe me.”

  For a long time, he just looks at her. Then he nods. “I do. Now close your eyes. Sleep.”

  And she does.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  “Poor thing, she was fussy the whole trip,” Drew is saying as Clara’s head spins.

  What is he talking about?

  Who is he talking about?

  Someone is in the backseat of the car. Her heart pounds.

  “I’m glad she got some rest on the way back from the airport, at least,” he goes on, “because I didn’t want her to be cranky when she met her mom for the first time.”

  “Mom?” Clara echoes faintly, certain she’s never been more confused in her life.

  Or maybe she has.

  Hell, yes. Lately, it seems she’s been nothing but confused.

  But Drew is with her now, and everything is going to be okay.

  Dazed, she feels Drew take her hand and finds herself being led over to the car.

  There’s a car seat buckled in the back.

  Fast asleep in the seat is the most precious baby Clara has ever seen.

  “Are you ready to meet your daughter?” Drew is asking.

  Dressed all in pink, with a pile of soft black hair and skin the same warm color of Drew’s eyes, the baby can’t be more than six months old, if that.

  Speechless, Clara looks up at her husband.

  “I know. She’s amazing, isn’t she?”

  Amazing doesn’t begin to cover it.

  “She’s . . . my . . . daughter?”

  “Our daughter,” he amends with a grin, and glances down at Clara’s swollen middle. “I told her she’s going to be a big sister in a few weeks, and she seemed pretty happy about it. She seems pretty happy about everything, actually—except flying.”

  Still trying to comprehend, Clara watches him reach into the backseat and gently unstrap the baby from the car seat. She stirs slightly as he lifts her, but doesn’t wake up.

  “Here you go, Mom.”

  As Drew hands over the baby, her lashes flutter and she stares solemnly up at Clara with a pair of piercing blue eyes.

  Shocked, Clara looks over at Drew. “Her eyes—”

  “I know. Unusual coloring, isn’t it, for where she came from? Most newborns lose the blue eyes eventually, but I think hers are here to stay, aren’t they, Doris?”

  “Doris,” she echoes softly, staring at her daughter.

  “You know, I wasn’t sure that was the greatest name for a child, no matter who she’s named after.” Drew tells her. “But you were right. It’s perfect. It’s unique, just
like our baby girl.”

  Our baby girl.

  Our daughter.

  “All set, Mr. Becker?” the driver asks, closing the trunk.

  “Yes, thanks for getting us home, Jerry.”

  “My pleasure. Congratulations, Mrs. Becker.”

  “Oh . . . thank you.” She glances up only briefly before turning her attention back to the baby cradled in her arms.

  “Home at last.” Standing behind her, Drew encircles her with his arms and rests his chin on her shoulder. She realizes the car has driven away.

  “If I never go back to Ethiopia, it’ll be too soon.”

  Ethiopia?

  Another piece of the puzzle falls into place. Ethiopia. No wonder.

  “It was brutal being away from you for Christmas,” he tells Clara, pulling back to look at her, “but it’s a good thing the doctor forbade you to travel, because it would have been too hard on you. Things are rough over there.”

  “I’m sure it was hard on you, too.”

  “I survived.”

  “So did I.”

  He pulls back, and seems to be searching her face for . . . something.

  “Clara—”

  At that moment, the baby opens her mouth and makes a sound. Not her first word, exactly . . . but a sweet, soft coo.

  “Drew, did you hear that?”

  “I did.”

  “What do you think she said?”

  “Probably ‘thanks, Mom and Dad.’” He strokes the baby’s cheek with his fingertip. “Thank God she’s too little to remember the orphanage. This will be the only home she’ll ever know—until she grows up and goes away to college, anyway.”

  Clara sees that he’s gazing up at the house.

  But . . . what about the move?

  Before she can ask, he goes on, “You know, I felt completely overwhelmed when everything happened all at once last summer—the adoption coming through two days before you found out you could get pregnant again after all—I mean, that you were pregnant. And then the contractor told us the rebuild wasn’t going as smoothly as he’d been hoping and we wouldn’t be able to get back into the house by fall after all . . .”

  Clara’s eyes widen as she comprehends at last.

  They aren’t moving out of their dream house.