Friends: A Love Story

by Angela Bassett

  We stayed on the line and the doctor talked us through it. We’re all talking on the phone and hearing what’s going on. After the procedure Courtney asked, “Can we say a prayer?”

  Yes! Being a man of faith—he’s Jewish—our doctor offered a prayer in Hebrew.

  Two weeks later we would find out whether Stephanie was actually pregnant. We could have gotten the information on a Friday, but Monday is the day off in the theater. We didn’t have to be there but we wanted to be as much a part of the process as we could. Some people can’t—they live in Japan or another foreign country or have other reasons. But we could. I wanted to be there to support Stephanie. How could I not support someone who is giving me such an amazing gift and I am believing that they will treasure themselves to take care of my baby. You’ve gotta show that you care. In my mind, not to would have been negligent. I also wanted to be there because for years I had tried arduously so I could have the experience. Okay, so my body wasn’t physically going through it, but I wasn’t gonna miss it. I didn’t want to miss it.

  “If we can wait until Monday, we can fly there. We want to be there for the ultrasound instead of just hearing it over the phone.”

  So Courtney and I flew home and went to her ultrasound appointment. We got the most amazing news—she was carrying twins. I was stunned! Several years earlier Courtney had had a dream that we’d have twins, and the minister had prophesied that I’d have two children.

  Now another woman was carrying my baby—not just one but two! There are no words to explain how appreciative I felt—feel! You can’t tell them enough. Thank you doesn’t get it. And they told us, “I’m just glad I was able to help you, I did it for you. Here. Have the wonderful life that you want.”

  “Oh. Okaay…” It’s strange; we can never give enough thanks. We don’t visit each other back and forth. But we can make sure you’re well attended to. How are you feeling? What do you need? We’d see each other at Stephanie’s monthly doctor’s appointments as we all looked at the ultrasounds together.

  We weren’t sure exactly how we were supposed to interact. We had agreed to be open but weren’t certain how to do it or where the boundaries lay. As the holidays neared, Courtney said, “We could knock on their door for Christmas or something like that.” We decided to get them a Christmas present. How could we not? They were such sweet people, although we knew there was no way to thank them. But we wanted them to know we were concerned, we cared.

  Then at our December appointment Stephanie whispered in my ear, “I don’t know if we’re supposed to do this or not, but…” and handed me a present.

  “Oh, you beat us to the punch!” Courtney told them. Over the nine months we grew closer and closer to each other.

  Before the babies were born, Courtney and I went to see our business manager to get our wills together. Years earlier we had written wills as if we had children even though we didn’t. Now that children were actually on the way, we needed to answer some hard questions we hadn’t answered before: what’s going to happen if somebody dies—that kind of stuff. We drove separately. Afterward I think he went home. But the meeting went on so long, I had to get something to eat. And I had some errands I wanted to run, some stuff I wanted to get to help pull the babies’ room together. Then I decided to make a couple of stops—I was just out in the street lollygagging. I didn’t have my cell phone with me.

  By the time I got home it was about three-fifteen. I came in through the back door into the kitchen. It was quietish. Nobody was here. Courtney wasn’t here, his mom wasn’t here, our assistant, Tracy, wasn’t here—only Dmitri, who doesn’t speak English, who was tiling our newly remodeled bathroom. There was just nothin’ goin’ on—no phones ringing. Nothing. For some reason my overnight bag was sitting in the middle of the floor with a yellow Post-it note on top of it. I wondered why it was sitting there but figured I’d grab something out of the fridge and check my messages first. So I got some tapioca pudding, which Courtney was into at the time, then started listening to my messages. The second message was from our surrogate.

  “Hi. I hope you’re having a good day. I was just here at the hospital for an appointment and I want you to know that my water broke—”

  “OOOOOOH, MY GOD!”

  Any fool knows that means the baby’s comin’—the babies are comin’! But what does that mean? Is everything okay? We had just had a doctor’s appointment two days earlier. Everything was fine then. The hospital is across town, which might as well be another country since we were in Los Angeles on a Friday afternoon and rush hour had started at eleven. You don’t want to be on the freeway leaving Los Angeles on a Friday afternoon. I tried to listen to the rest of the message, but it was hard to listen. I heard something about delivery at four, but my brain was just jumpin’ around and tryin’ to figure out what to do next. I was tryin’ to listen. Delivery at four! It’s three-thirty now. In traffic I was about three hours away. What should I do? What should I do?

  Then it dawned on me that maybe that my luggage sittin’ in the middle of the floor had somethin’ to do with it. I read the note: “Go down to Mattie’s house. She’s going to drive with you.” Mattie is our neighbor down the street. Mattie? My mind was like “WHAT? WHAT? WHAT?” I was trying to make sense of this note and figure out what to do next. I had packed my bag weeks earlier, so I knew I had all my stuff. I knew that babies would be early—they were scheduled to be delivered at thirty-eight weeks—and I wanted to be ready to go. But I didn’t think they’d be five weeks early!

  The phone rang. I snatched it up.

  Courtney.

  “Hey, how are you?” Mr. Cool, Calm and Collected.

  “COURTNEY, TELL ME WHAT’S GOING ON! TELL ME WHAT’S GOING ON!”

  “Okay, let me tell you exactly what’s happening. Everything’s okay. Everybody’s fine. We have time. The delivery’s at four. We’re going to wait for you.”

  There was no way I could get to the hospital by four. All of a sudden I felt like one of the parents I’d heard stories about at our initial surrogacy consultation. People who lived in Japan or someplace and who tried their very best to guesstimate when they needed to be in the United States for the birth of their baby, but the baby came early and they were trying to get here from Japan as quickly as possible but just couldn’t get here in time. When I first heard these stories, I thought, “I’m glad I’m right here in Los Angeles.” Right now, as far as I was concerned, I might as well have been in Japan.

  “ARGH!” My heart! My heart was breaking. I just felt so disgusted with myself. A part of me wanted to burst into tears, but another part of me knew I’d be good for nothin’. You could already sell me for half a cent; I knew if I started cryin’ you could give me away for free.

  “Don’t even go there,” I told myself. “If you cry you won’t be able to turn it off and that’s gonna make it worse. You gotta hold it together, hold it together in case it works out.”

  Why hadn’t I carried my cell phone? How could this happen to me? How could I be so close yet so far? I had tried to be there to support Stephanie and experience it all—every doctor’s appointment, even from Minneapolis. Me and this not carrying my cell phone! I knew I hadn’t been one of those people with their cell phone tied to their hip. I would easily run out and forget it. “I’m not gonna carry that cell phone.” But when you need it, it comes in so handy. And now Courtney was at the hospital and it was his mama who was there with him. I wanted to be with him. I wanted have that experience with him. I wanted it to be me and Courtney—not Courtney and his mom! Not that I have anything against his mom, but I’m his wife. Oh, it was disturbing! It was distressing! All these thoughts were going through my mind.

  So Courtney had told me to go down to Mattie’s, so I went down to Mattie’s. I’m waitin’ in the car, waitin’ for her to come out of the house, but nobody’s comin’ out. Finally, after about five minutes, I’m wondering, “Golly, what’s goin’ on?” I call Courtney. He tells me Mattie’s picking her son up
from school and must not be back yet. But her son goes to the school across the hill and it’s Friday at rush hour. Oh, Lord! I don’t know where they are in her travels. Where are they? I call her husband, Michael.

  “Where are they? Where are they?”

  He’s all calm. “It’s gonna be okay. She’s almost there.”

  “Oh, Michael, I can’t believe I wasn’t ready.”

  “Angela, nobody’s ever ready. Nobody in the history of birth has ever been ready.” Then he laughed. That was calming and reassuring—for about two minutes.

  Okay, I’ve got a few minutes, I thought, so I drove back to my house. Let me make sure I have everything I need to be comfortable: some sneakers, whatever. I didn’t need anything. I’m just trying to keep myself busy until she comes back. Then I drove back down the street to her house. Then I called Courtney.

  “Courtney, I’m leavin’,” I told him. “I can’t wait. I can’t wait. I’M CRAZY! I’m gonna drive myself.”

  “No, baby,” Mr. Calm, Cool and Collected instructed me. “Wait for Mattie so you two can get in the carpool lane and get here faster. Everything is okay. We’re going to wait for you. We’re all just sitting here tellin’ jokes.” I guess it wasn’t going down like on the Discovery Channel where the water breaks and the vaginal hard labor happens. “Everything’s calm and nothing’s gonna happen ’til you get here.”

  That calmed me down a bit—but could I believe it? Yeah, I kind of believed it—for a minute. Then I called Michael again.

  “Where is she? I’m leaving.” I think I drove around the corner when the phone rang again. Courtney.

  “Wait!”

  “Okay…”

  I park again. Oh, I’m just sittin’ there in the car and I’m twitchin’ and nervous and I wanna cry. I’m so frustrated. I’m so excited. I’m so where I don’t wanna be. I just wanna SCREAM! Meanwhile I remember that the baby shower is tomorrow and I have friends coming to town and stayin’ at my house. I’m reachin’ into my purse to get out my spare key when Mattie and her son drive up!

  “Look, Jonathan,” I say as soon as her son hops out of the car. “Go put this key under the door because we’ve got company comin’ and they have to get into the house.”

  Then Mattie says, “What are you doing in your car? I’m driving.”

  So I park my car, get in her car and we head toward the freeway. Well, Mattie is a conscientious driver. She drives the speed limit and obeys the traffic laws, and I’m thinking, “You gotta get out of this lane! Get over into that lane!” Then I’m tryin’ to have a conversation, tryin’ to talk about it a little bit, tryin’ to talk about anything to get my mind off it. Tryin’ to make the time go by. But you can’t really have a conversation when you’re in the middle of a situation like that!

  Finally, we get onto the freeway and into the carpool lane. But as soon as we get into the carpool lane the regular traffic starts flowin’ faster. Mattie loosens up a bit. Now we’re crossin’ double yellow lines back into the regular lanes. When that tightens up, we jump back over into the carpool lane. We know we’re not supposed to be crossin’ double lines but here we go and do it anyway. We finally get to the hospital and Mattie drops me off. A one-hour ride had taken two hours, but that was better than three if I had tried to do it alone.

  When I go in, everyone’s waiting for me. Courtney had been there the longest. His mom and Tracy had arrived about twenty minutes before me. So I went in and said hello to Stephanie and Kevin and their families, who were there with them, and saw that everything was, indeed, fine. The doctors and nurses told me how it was going to go in about twenty minutes. We washed up and stood in the hall—Kevin, Courtney and myself. Courtney—Mr. Shutterbug—was taking a couple of pictures. Then we went in and stood up there by Stephanie’s head. There were two teams of doctors—one for each baby. So there were about a dozen people in the delivery room. A drape had been set up over her abdomen and the doctors were doing the prep work. At one point they told us we could go around the drape and look. “Oh, gosh! I’m not sure if I’m ready to look yet.” Then I got it together and came around and watched the whole procedure.

  To see the human body opened like that! To watch them do their first incision and see all the various layers of muscle and tissue and sinew in the human body—it’s just amazing! We are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalms 139:14). And then the doctor reaches in and out comes this perfectly formed human baby—our son! He came out very calm. His body language was all curled up. I jumped and I think I said, “OOH! OOOOOH!” I just started crying and hyperventilating.

  Everyone was asking, “Are you okay? You all right?”

  “Yes, it’s a baby!” Like it’s a wonder—it’s a wonder! “Wonderful, wonderful yet again,” as Shakespeare said. Wondrous. They had to work to get the second one out. By the time she came out, I had calmed down. I had seen it, so I wasn’t crazy. “Wow, look at that!”

  Courtney and I were just standing there holding each other. He had given the nurse his camera. Since she knew what would be coming next, she was taking all the pictures. We stood there in awe, watching this incredible woman having our babies and the doctors and nurses do their thing. The nurses and technicians were weighin’ them and wipin’ them and cleanin’ them. Then they let us hold them up close for a second. I felt like I was dreamin’—like I was in a dreamlike state and maybe I would wake up. You just don’t believe you’re holding them. You don’t believe they’re yours. It’s kind of like: Really? Truly? Finally? Honestly? After all that? They’re ours?

  We would name our son Slater Josiah after my great-grandfather, Slater Samuel Stokes, and the most powerful king in the Bible. Our daughter is Bronwyn Golden, named after Ahren’s sister who, coincidentally and unbeknownst to Courtney and me, we both had hired as our assistant at one point and loved, and my Auntie Golden, who had cared for and nurtured me when I was a little girl. Aunt Golden had been ill. But she stayed on this earth long enough to see her namesake arrive. She would pass away five days later, but stuck around long enough to make sure they got here safely.

  But right now one of the doctors is lookin’ at Bronwyn’s nostrils flarin’. They’re saying she’s experiencing a little respiratory distress. They tell us not to worry about it. They’re telling you it’s not optimal, but it’s not an emergency. As an actor I’m listening to the subtext, I’m listening intently, trying to ascertain just how serious this is. I’m trying to listen to the type of words they’re using, I’m trying to listen between the words. I could almost take it in and get emotional, get distraught. But they’re capable and they’re giving us a lot of information—they’re disclosing, they’re not keeping us in the dark.

  “They’re twins,” they say. “This happens a lot to the second one coming out because they’re in there longer. It’s nothing out of the ordinary. It’s just going to be a couple of days.”

  “Oh, okay…”

  “It’s nothing that she won’t be able to get over.”

  But they have to get them to the neonatal unit, so they whisk them out of our hands. All of a sudden it’s like, “What do we do?” They’re taking the babies away. They’re amazing. I want to go with them, yet Stephanie’s body is still open—and she’s bleeding. To go with the babies is like abandoning her. I want to go with them but I’m torn. We’re torn. I almost wished someone would just tell us what to do. It’s just so intimate all the way around and such an interesting human-relational dynamic. But Courtney and I are thoughtful people so we think about it for a minute. We decide the babies are in the best possible hands. The doctors are doing their thing with them. We don’t know if we can go down to the nursery with them anyhow. So we stay with Stephanie.

  “Thank you!” we tell her. “We can’t tell you how much we love you. We are just so grateful!”

  Finally someone tells us what to do. They tell us to go with the babies because the doctors have to do some work on Stephanie. It isn’t an emergency but they have to get on it.

  “
Thank you for helping us know what to do.” We head to the nursery.

  When we get there the nurses are getting the babies hooked up to all these monitors—all tubed up. They’re taking blood at the heels of their feet. They’re getting poked and pricked. I am about to cry—I know how much I hate needles. But Slater isn’t crying at all. He’s a strong baby boy.

  We learn we can’t hold our babies yet so we just reach into the oxygen tent and touch their lips or something. Slater looks so small. He’s very yellowish; he has my undertones. Bronwyn is getting some oxygen through a little tube into her nostrils. She’s a little bit bigger than him. Her color is a little bit ruddier, like Courtney’s. They are both very fair—a lot lighter than we are. We check their ears, around their fingernails for signs of color. We don’t find any yet. Maybe it’s too early. We watch and watch and watch them. We wait and wait for them to open their eyes. After a while Slater opens one of them for just a millisecond.

  “HE OPENED ’EM! OH, MY GOSH!”

  Just for that second I could see one black pupil, a glimpse of the eyes I’ll soon stare into lovingly. Our amazing journey was about to begin!

  Chapter 22

  When God Takes Over

  In 2004, I was invited to film the pilot episode of a new drama called Law and Order: Criminal Intent. I’d never done a TV series before so I was tentative about it, and taking the job was a big deal because the series was being shot in New York. But Angela and I sat down and talked about it. We felt that, after all our struggles, our marriage was now on solid ground. The distance would be a big deal but we felt we could work with it. I had grown up seeing the model of my grandparents’ long-distance relationship, and Angela wanted to give it a go. We knew it was doable as long as we both were committed. So we agreed that we would talk every night on the phone and not go more than three weeks without seeing each other. In the beginning, I traveled back and forth every two weeks between L.A. and New York. Eventually we rented an apartment. Between missing Angela, the apartment not feeling like home, traveling back and forth and trying to learn my lines, I found doing the series very difficult at first. In time she and I got into a rhythm and it just became our routine.