Giftchild

by Janci Patterson

  I closed my eyes, waiting for my parents to cut in, to make my decision for me, but they didn't.

  I swallowed. I'd already decided that Mom was right—my life came first. If I went ahead with the induction, was I just putting myself in more danger?

  I glanced at Rodney, but he shook his head slightly. He wasn't going to decide this for me. Mom probably would, but I didn't want her to. This was my pregnancy. I could choose.

  "Induce me," I said.

  "Do you understand that you may still not get to hold him?" the doctor asked.

  "I get it," I said. "But you can try."

  Dr. Kauffman nodded. "We can."

  I looked at Rodney again. "Then do it."

  Rodney took a deep breath, and then nodded.

  I waited for my parents to argue, but they didn't.

  No one did.

  The doctor stood up. "Do you want an epidural? The pitocin we use to induce labor produces strong contractions."

  "Yes," I said. "Give me drugs." I didn't want to feel anymore. I didn't want to feel anything at all.

  When Dr. Kauffman stepped away, Dad came over and put a hand on Rodney's shoulder. "Why don't you wait with me," he said.

  It wasn't a question, but Rodney looked down at me for permission. My throat closed up. I clamped my fingers down on his hand. Dad said me, not us. The implication was clear. I wouldn't be alone in delivery—Mom would come. And I couldn't be alone with Mom when I lost my baby. I didn't want to look into the empty eyes of the person I would become.

  "Please," I said to Rodney. "Don't leave."

  "Penny," Dad said, "they're going to take you over to labor and delivery now. Your mother will go with you."

  "No," I said. "I want Rodney to come instead."

  Rodney squeezed my hand and looked up at Dad. And like the amazing person he was, he actually said, "I'm not leaving her if she doesn't want me to."

  And a part of me reasoned that I should just tell him to go and make everything easier on him, and on Dad, and on everyone in the whole world who would be inconvenienced if I didn't just do as they asked. But that part of me was drowned out by a great tide that threatened to tow me under if Rodney let go, even for a moment. And screw it, in this one moment, I was going to have what I needed.

  Rodney had steel in his eyes. "I mean it. I won't leave her."

  "Tony," Mom said. "It's fine."

  I looked up at her in surprise. She was still watching me, but her expression had turned strong and certain and in that moment, I believed her. In this one moment, I really was her baby. She'd give up what she wanted for what I needed. My tear ducts burned, and I hated that it came as a surprise.

  Dad looked back at Mom, and for a moment he hesitated. And then, slowly, he took his hand off Rodney's shoulder. And over the roaring in my ears I heard him say to one of the nurses, "He's the baby's father. He's going to stay with her." And the nurse nodded.

  Dad turned to go, but I saw Rodney mouth, thank you. Mom stood next to the bed, watching Rodney and me. For a moment, a flash of pain crossed her face. And then she stepped aside, and followed Dad out of the room.

  Rodney held onto my hand while the nurses wheeled me to a larger room and sat me forward on the bed so the anesthesiologist could insert a plastic tube into my back. I thought I'd be scared at the idea of the needle, but I just felt numb, inside and out. I wondered if the drug would compound numbness upon numbness until I couldn't feel anything ever again. I could do circus acts—The Girl Who Cannot Feel. I'd be a cautionary tale. Watch out, girls. Don't be like her.

  We watched the monitor as a formerly flat line rose in waves, marking my contractions. They arced endlessly, one after another, marching me forward into the future in which I would be empty and broken, just like Mom. I couldn't feel a thing; my whole lower body felt like it had fallen asleep. I watched as the needle on the clock passed in stop-motion. Midnight. One-fifteen. Three-thirty. Rodney didn't get up. He didn't even shift in a way that would force him to let go of my hand.

  At four in the morning, I looked up into Rodney's face. His eyes were bleary from lack of sleep. He sat with his head supported by his free hand, his thumb wearing a hole in his temple. His other hand held mine like it was permanently attached, like he didn't know how to let go of me any better than I knew how to let go of him.

  He leaned back in his chair, eyes closed. His whole body seemed to droop, like he'd been carrying too much weight for too long. And I wished more than anything I could take it all back—not just the last few months, but the last several years as well. I wished that I could give him back all the times I jerked him around, all the moments I must have stepped on his heart without realizing. I wished I could go back in time and give him somebody better than me—someone who was really capable of giving him her whole self.

  And that's when I knew that I loved him. If he wasn't here, I'd have floated away out of my numb body and down the hall and disappeared. His grip kept me grounded, centered. Rodney always did that for me. I was destined to be just like Mom, losing all my babies, swallowed whole by the agony of it. But I knew this one thing, beyond a doubt—if I was going to lose all my children, I didn't want to lose them with anyone but him.

  It was this last piece that made me sure of what I had to do: I couldn't stand to drag him through it, not even for the comfort of keeping him. I couldn't keep doing this to him, not for years, not for our whole lives. The price for him was just too high. These hours weren't just the end of my pregnancy. They were the end of us, too. They had to be, because if I hurt Rodney one more time, I was going to dissolve.

  I couldn't treat him the way Mom treated us. I had to love him better than that. If he couldn't walk away, then I had to do the right thing.

  I had to be the one to cut him free.

  And at that exact moment, the rapid beep of the monitor stopped. I looked over, and there, where the sensor had previously been picking up the baby's heartbeat, was a still, flat line. I shifted beneath the belt. Maybe I'd just messed it up. But there was my heartbeat, sure and strong, and the waves of contractions, moving before my eyes.

  Only the baby's heartbeat was gone.

  I crushed the sheet beneath my hand, sitting up as well as I could when I was unable to feel the lower half of my body. If a fully born person had died, I was sure the room would have been full of all the medical personnel on the floor, pushing out family and rushing in with paddles and syringes to restart the heart. But this baby was still inside me, and he couldn't survive outside. They couldn't get to him to save him without guaranteeing his demise. He was right here, mere feet away from people and machines that could save him—except that they couldn't. No one could do a thing.

  "He's gone," I said.

  Rodney just watched me, quietly. "Does he have a name?"

  I shook my head. I hadn't dared think of a name for Mom's baby. Not after what Lily did with Anna. But I looked up at Rodney, and I wanted to give him this one thing, even as everything we'd been to each other was slipping away. "You could name him," I said.

  Rodney's eyes widened in surprise. "No," he said. "You should."

  And I wanted to insist that he do it, but really, what I wanted to give to him was a redo of the last few months. I wanted to put him first. A name couldn't do that. Maybe nothing could. "I can't think of one," I said.

  He nodded. "There's still time," he said. "You will."

  A moment later, a nurse rushed in to check the monitors.

  "The baby's heartbeat stopped," I said.

  The nurse nodded, checking me. "You're at a six. It's time to push."

  And just like that, the waiting was over. I focused on her instructions as she told me which muscles to tense—flattening my tendinous inscriptions back toward my lumbar vertebrae. The whole room seemed to ripple with the waves on the monitor, rising and falling in a relentless march into the future, into the end of everything. Rodney held onto both my hands and pressed his forehead into my cheek, clinging to me like the world was spinn
ing out from under us. And I breathed and sobbed and pushed until the doctor came in at the last moment and the baby slid out of my body.

  The nurses wrapped him in a blanket and laid him on a cart to clean him, and I held my breath, willing him to cry, willing him to move, willing him to live despite what I'd already seen.

  But the tiny body on the cart lay still. He was already gone, even before he arrived. No bigger than the palm of my hand, it might have been a plastic replica of a baby, if not for the coating of blood.

  Grief washed over me in a wave, and I held tight to Rodney's hand, which was warm and soft and alive. The nurse wheeled the cart over to Rodney and me. A second nurse was switching around my IV bags. "I'm going to turn off the epidural now," she said. "Some feeling should start to return soon."

  And then the first nurse walked over to us. "You wanted to hold him?" she asked. I nodded, and she rested his tiny body in my hands. The baby lay on a bed of flannel cloth, with his head turned to the side as if he were sleeping. He didn't look much like an infant—he was too lean where he should have been soft, and thin where he should have been round. He looked more like a starving alien child, with jutting ribs and a head over-sized for his meatless body.

  But he was so human in the details. His hands had little wrinkles at all the joints—tiny knuckles with their skin patterns already formed. His little eyelids folded neatly over his eyes—his toes had already grown tiny toenails. His body might not look ready, but the little bits of him were already fully formed. I wondered if he'd been sucking his tiny thumb in the womb, or folding his little hands against each other to form those wrinkles. Surely, someone already so detailed would have formed detailed habits. I wished I could have felt them. I wished I could have seen them.

  As I looked down at him, a tingling returned to my legs and my feet. I could flex them again, like they were waking from a long sleep.

  The baby weighed almost nothing. He fit into my palm, his still limbs lifeless and rubbery. I brushed his tiny fingernails, and pushed the tip of my finger into the palm of his hand, letting the fingers spread against it.

  Little and unfinished though he was, I wished I had some way to carry him with me.

  And then I had a thought.

  "Rodney," I said. "Do you have your camera in your car?"

  "Yeah," he said. "Are you sure you want—"

  "Go get it," I said. "Quick. Before they take him away."

  Rodney got up, letting my hand go at last, and hurried to the door. A nurse came in as soon as he left. "Your parents want to come in," she said. "Should I let them?"

  The baby's fingers still pressed lightly against my skin, like the hand of a ghost. "No," I said. "Give me a few more minutes."

  The nurse nodded, and I held my breath, waiting for Rodney to come back.

  When he did, he didn't even have to ask what I wanted. I cupped the baby in my palms, and nestled my hands into the sheets for a soft, white backdrop. Rodney turned on extra lights and stood above us, snapping shots. These weren't photos I would show to anyone. I couldn't stand the thought of someone cringing at them, or thinking his body was gross. Maybe it was, but it was the only one he'd have, the only way I'd ever see him. These were just for me, and for Rodney. Our baby.

  The very last thing we would ever share.

  I looked at the cart where they'd cleaned him. "Is that tall enough to prop the camera on?" I asked. "Can you get your hands into the picture?"

  Rodney looked at me. "Are you sure?" he asked.

  I nodded. I wanted one more image—one last piece of Rodney to hold on to.

  Rodney propped the camera up and set the timer, and then his warm hands cupped around mine, forming a second circle, supporting our child.

  And just for a minute, I could see the family we could have been. Just for a minute, I let myself taste what I'd lost.

  Pain clogged my throat. I wanted to say something perfect, something that would make everything seem meaningful, seem better.

  But there weren't any such words in the world. Sometimes, language just isn't enough.

  "Did you think of a name?" Rodney asked.

  I looked down at the baby. This was the only time I could see him. I could name him later, sure, but it seemed like the sort of thing I should do in his presence, even if he was mostly already gone.

  "Gabriel," I said. "That sounds like an angel name."

  "It is," Rodney said. "He's in the Bible, in the Christmas story."

  I wrinkled my nose at Rodney. "Is it too religious?"

  He smiled. "No. I like it."

  "I don't like Gabe, though," I said.

  "No," Rodney said. "Gabriel. No nicknames."

  My nose dripped. My mother always called me Penelope, until I went to kindergarten and the teacher shortened it. I loved being Penny, bright and shiny and worth something. Mom tried to resist the name, but there was no fighting it. Dad met me in first grade; he'd never known me as anybody but Penny.

  But Gabriel wouldn't have teachers, or friends. He wouldn't go to school. His name wouldn't be repeated over and over. My eyes began to water, and I said, "It's not like the kids at school are going to shorten it."

  If I'd wanted us to hold it together, I should have kept my mouth shut. Rodney held my hands under Gabriel and we cried.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  After

  I held Gabriel until the nurse came and asked to take him away.

  "My mom might want to see him," I told her.

  She nodded. "Do you want her to come in now?"

  I shivered and shook my head. I didn't want to stare into the darkness we now shared. It couldn't be avoided forever, but I also didn't want to watch her hold Gabriel as if he was hers.

  Just hours ago, I'd still been planning on giving him to her. Now, I couldn't imagine sharing him with anyone but Rodney. Would I have felt that way no matter when he was born? If I did, I had no idea what I would have done, but I'd have picked any of those possible options over this.

  "Could she see him somewhere else?" I asked.

  "Of course," the nurse said. "We'll ask if she wants to."

  I didn't know how I was ever going to talk to my mother again, after the things that I'd said, after the way this had turned out. I was supposed to fix everything. How had I ended up broken as well?

  The nurse wrapped him up in the blanket like he might catch cold, and I took one last look, knowing I'd never see him again.

  I knew I should cry more when he was gone. I wasn't sure if it was the pain meds, or the hormones, or the sheer exhaustion, but I couldn't do anything but stare into empty space. Rodney still held my hand, but his grip was looser. He kept shaking his head, like he was trying to stay awake.

  I wasn't the only one who noticed. The first thing my father did when he walked into the room was make Rodney go home. "It's five in the morning," he told him. "Your mother is up. She wants to come get you."

  Rodney looked like he hadn't slept in a week, so I nodded. "Go on. We'll talk later." Rodney gave my hand one last squeeze, and my heart split right in half. Next time I saw him, I'd have to tell him it was over. We wouldn't talk anymore, for real. It wouldn't be fair for me to drag this out any longer.

  It took a while for Mom to come in, and when she did, her eyes were red and swollen. I looked down at her hands—the ones that had probably held my baby last of all.

  She was his grandmother, I told myself. Even if the baby wasn't her child, he was still her family. The pain in her eyes was legitimate, and a part of me still wanted to fix it.

  But when I reached for the strength to do that, I found nothing but emptiness. I couldn't give her what she needed. I didn't have anything left to give. Since what I'd given so far had only caused more pain, that should have been a good thing. But instead, it made me hurt to my core.

  "We named him Gabriel," I said. And I waited for the flash of pain on Mom's face, the reminder that I'd taken Gabriel from her, the way that Lily took Anna, and renamed her Tina.

 
But Mom just put a hand on my arm. And though her eyes filled with tears, there was something else in them when she looked at me. Not emptiness, or fear, or the deep pain I was used to seeing. She looked at me as if she really saw me.

  And for a split second, I thought maybe she was proud.

  After Rodney left, the world spun in a blur. The doctor examined me, and he and the nurses clucked about how good it was that the hemorrhaging had stopped. Too late, I thought.

  I nodded along. I was definitely still losing blood and the doctor said I might be for weeks. But the tear that had threatened my life was gone. My body was no longer trying to kill me. It left me sore and empty, like a hollowed out melon, and I wondered if I'd ever feel whole again.

  It seemed to take them forever to release me from the hospital. My parents shifted in and out of my room, taking turns crashing on the couch. I wanted to reach out to them, to tell them everything was fine. But Rodney was right. I was the one in the hospital. I was the one whose body ached and bled and lost everything and probably always would.

  Just like my mother.

  And as I watched my mother sleep on the too-short couch, her legs folded to fit, I couldn't help but wonder how she'd survived it this long. She'd been desperate and grasping for years, but now, looking into the face of the gaping emptiness that threatened to swallow me whole, it seemed like a miracle that it hadn't been worse.

  I slept, but I kept waking up in fits, my heart pounding. I'd put my hand to my stomach, and wait to feel movement, and then I'd remember. Finally, I started stretching my eyelids open, counting the monotonous ticks of the clock, anything to keep from falling asleep.

  Athena came back sometime while I was out, and I woke to find her sitting with Mom, silent for what must have been the first time in her life. When Mom left the room, Athena leaned over to me. "Rodney texted me," she said. "He wanted to come back to be with you, but his parents are pissed and are keeping him home."

  Ugh. One more way I was ruining his life. I wondered if they were more angry about him skipping school, or about him being with me.