Perfect Timing

by Catherine Anderson

  Because Ceara was still far too weak to come see their baby, Quincy started to take pictures of their daughter with his cell phone, but before he flashed the device, his arm fell limply to his side. He sighed and stuck the phone back in its case. Snapshots of this would scare Ceara half to death. Tubes and wires seemed to cover their baby girl’s body. Quincy knew all the probes and needles and machines that blinked were necessary to save her life, but they would be foreign to Ceara. Hell, they were foreign to him, too.

  He stood two feet from the incubator, staring at his daughter until his eyes grew dry and sticky. No bullshitting himself: He was afraid to reach through that hole and touch her. He’d feel the warmth of her bluish skin, the beat of her heart, the softness of her wispy black hair, and then she’d be real. Safer here, two feet away. If he didn’t touch her—if he just left without letting her seem real—he’d be able to handle it better when she died. Walk away. Go to Ceara. Make her your main focus. She’s going to need you to be strong for her before this is over.

  Quincy almost got his feet unstuck from the floor to leave the room, but just then the baby—his baby—grunted to discharge a breath, grunted again, and tensed, pushing frantically with her incredibly thin arms and legs. Quincy knew instantly that she was in trouble, and before he could formulate another thought, he’d jerked open the door and thrust his hand through the incubator hole. Lightly, he curled his fingers over her narrow chest, felt the furious chug of her little heart and the spasm of her underdeveloped lungs. Love. It didn’t always come softly and sneak into a man’s heart. Sometimes it went off inside of him with no warning, like a sunburst.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” he whispered, carefully massaging her chest with his fingertips. “It’s okay, little one. Daddy’s here. I’m here. You remember me?”

  Her body jerked, and then her lungs turned loose of the captured breath. Her chest retracted and then expanded again. Quincy could no more have withdrawn his hand than he could have made his own heart stop beating. He sank onto the recliner, keeping his fingers on her chest. After a moment, he gathered the courage to let his palm lower. Skin against skin. His daughter relaxed under his touch, expelling this time without any visible difficulty. She seemed comforted by his touch, reassured. Quincy thought of all the times he’d held his hand over her mama’s tummy, feeling the baby’s feet kick and elbows thump. The nurse had it right: This tiny little person knew the sound of her daddy’s voice and his touch.

  “Seeing you fills my heart with joy,” he told her. “I feel it all the way into my bones. You’re so gorgeous, Daddy’s precious little girl.”

  In that moment, Quincy completely and irrevocably lost his heart to this child. He hadn’t believed himself capable of loving anyone more than he had come to love Ceara, but this was a totally different kind of love. No getting-to-know-you period required. It had hit him between one breath and the next, and in a blink of time, Quincy knew he would lay down his life for this child.

  Beautiful, so beautiful. Her hair was sparse, and it was every bit as dark as his, but even in the dim light it gleamed with red as well. She was a miraculous blend of Quincy and Ceara.

  Then it struck Quincy that it might not matter. His baby girl struggled to breathe. Beneath his palm he could feel her fighting for life, and he knew it was a battle she might not win.

  His shoulders jerked with sobs. He yearned to grab his daughter from the incubator and hold her close against him to infuse her with his strength. Only he couldn’t share this struggle with her. She had to fight this battle alone.

  How can this happen, God? Please let me die in her place. As he prayed, Quincy remembered a country song, the recurring refrain being “Please don’t take the girl.” Before Ceara’s appearance in his world, Quincy had never really felt the meaning of that song. He did now, and he knew, finally, how his father must have felt when Quincy’s mother died giving birth to Sam: devastated by one loss yet feeling blessed by the arrival of a daughter. Quincy didn’t know how his father had lived through it and kept putting one boot in front of the other to care for five kids.

  When the nurse returned, Quincy didn’t worry about his face being red and swollen from crying. If ever he’d had a good reason to blubber, this was it, and he wasn’t ashamed of the emotions that threatened to take him to his knees. This was his baby girl, a miraculous creation that he and Ceara had made together. And now, before she ever got to experience life, she was going to die. Quincy couldn’t remember all the things wrong with his baby. He just knew the name of each condition was a lot bigger than she was, and her chances of survival were almost nonexistent.

  “I think my being here soothes her,” he told the nurse.

  She nodded. “She knows who you are. From her first moment of consciousness, she has heard your voice.” The nurse sent Quincy a kindly smile. “I need a few minutes with her. You can come back in ten and spend more time with her. It may make all the difference.”

  Quincy stepped away, but then he couldn’t make his feet move. He stared long and hard at his girl. Then he lowered his gaze to his healed wrist. Oh, how he wished Ceara had resisted the urge to reach out and grab his arm. If only she’d just let him bleed out, then their daughter wouldn’t have been born too soon. She would have remained snug and safe in her mother’s womb. Quincy would have gladly traded his life for this child’s. No hesitation, no thinking about it: He would step in front of a bullet for her.

  * * *

  Quincy expected to find Ceara sleeping when he returned to her room. Instead, she was wide awake, her eyes dark with panic. When he came up beside her bed, she grabbed hold of his hand, her gaze fixed on his.

  “I heard them talking in the hall. About our baby. ’Tis dying she is, and they say there is no hope.”

  Quincy wanted to race back out into the hall and ask those stupid nurses where their brains were at, because they definitely weren’t between their ears. No mother should hear that kind of news from the whispers of strangers. He met Ceara’s gaze and knew he couldn’t paint this pretty for her. She deserved honesty from him, and though it half killed him to give her that, he had to man up.

  “It’s not good, sweetheart. She came way too early, and she didn’t have enough time to grow big enough. Her lungs aren’t developed. She’s having a hard time breathing. That puts a lot of stress on her little heart. Her chances aren’t good.”

  “Ye must help me, Quincy. I must go to her.”

  Quincy shook his head. “There’ll be time enough for that tomorrow. Right now, you need to rest and regain your strength.”

  “I canna lie here!” she cried. “Do ye na ken that I can heal her?”

  Quincy’s heart jerked. “No way. Ceara, think of what healing me did to you. No way, not when you’re already so weak. Sweetheart, think. It could kill you.”

  She sat up in bed, and before Quincy could react to stop her, she jerked the IV from just below the bend of her elbow. After tossing it aside, she pulled off the O2 finger stall, ripped off the blood pressure cuff, and then shoved an arm inside her gown to pull away the disks that electronically monitored her heart.

  “Jesus,” he whispered, “what the hell are you doing?”

  The heart monitor went off, clamoring urgently. Quincy heard the squeak of rubber-soled shoes in the hallway, the chirps growing louder as staff raced toward the room.

  “’Tis going to me baby I am.” Ceara swung her legs over the edge of the bed and sat completely straight. Never had she looked more beautiful to Quincy than she did in that instant. It was one of those cameo moments—Quincy had heard his dad speak of them about his mother—a snapshot of time that engraved itself on a man’s heart, something he’d never forget and would never want to forget. “Me life be damned!” she cried. “If ’tis the price God asks me to pay, I will pay it. Do ye understand?”

  Only moments ago, Quincy had touched his daughter and thought how much he wished he could trade places with her, giving his life to save hers. He knew—deep down where reason hel
d no sway—that Ceara did have enough power still left within her to heal their baby girl. Only problem was, in the doing, Ceara could very well kill herself. He remembered Stevenson saying she didn’t know how to help Ceara, that there were no medical indicators to tell her what was needed. If Ceara healed their baby, she’d drain herself dry, like a power cell bled to death by too many current taps.

  Everything within Quincy rebelled at the thought. He couldn’t let his wife offer her life in exchange for their daughter’s. He just couldn’t. His instincts compelled him to protect Ceara and his baby, but he was powerless to help either of them.

  Hold on. Back up. In the NICU, he’d been feeling just as Ceara was now, ready to happily die to save their child. Throw himself under a bus. Put a gun to his head and pull the trigger. But, damn, God didn’t do bargains. If Quincy did put a gun to his head, his precious baby girl, who’d recognized his voice and had relaxed and been able to breathe when he touched her, would still die. Quincy had nothing within him to save her.

  But Ceara did.

  Acutely aware of the footsteps coming toward them, which became louder with his every breath, Quincy looked Ceara dead in the eye and said again, “If you heal our daughter, it may kill you.”

  Ceara, her eyes bright with defiant tears, said, “Then let me be in heaven three minutes before the devil knows I am dead.”

  Quincy wanted to tell the nurses who flooded into the room to give his wife a shot and knock her out. He could say she was still in shock, hysterical, out of control. In short, if he lied through his teeth, he could save Ceara’s life. But he saw in her eyes how love for their baby burned within her. He’d felt it—still felt it: that inexplicable kind of love that exploded inside of you. And in that NICU room, he’d wished and prayed he could die in his daughter’s place.

  Was he a male chauvinist who would do it himself, but never allow his wife to do the same? Visions flashed through his head of himself standing over Ceara’s open coffin. A wave of imagined grief nearly knocked him off his feet. But then the pictures changed, and he saw Ceara standing by his coffin, Ceara left behind to live with the pain of losing him.

  Who was the bravest: the one who sacrificed his life, or the one who stayed behind to do the mourning? And taking it a step further, who was the strongest? For the first time in his life, Quincy questioned things he’d never questioned. Behind him, he sensed recruits moving in to overpower his crazed wife. All he had to do was turn and ask them to help. Coward that he was, he almost did exactly that.

  Ceara grabbed his forearm, her nails digging into his skin. “They are here.” Her voice twanged like a loose guitar string. “Will ye fight fer me, Quincy, or will ye fight against me? ’Tis our baby girl’s life at stake. I have it within me to save her. Will ye deny me that? Will ye?”

  And when she asked Quincy that question, he took his stand. Never replying to her question, he scooped his wife up into his arms and turned to face a half dozen hospital attendants, good people, trained and hired to do a job, and he was about to ruin their whole day—maybe their whole year. They instantly screeched to a halt and formed a front line. Four were men—tall, but not muscular—and three were women, two of them plump, one toothpick thin. Quincy measured his opponents. He could almost hear his dad’s voice: Shee-ut, son, this’ll be like stompin’ grapes. It hit Quincy then that despite the late hour—well into the wee hours of morning—he should have called his dad. If he had, instead of thinking he should wait until dawn to wake everyone, the whole Harrigan clan would be with him now. He wouldn’t be standing alone; that was for sure.

  “My wife needs to see our baby,” he said, trying to inject calmness into his voice. “Please don’t get in my way. You can bring all this equipment to her in the NICU, get her back on the IV and monitors. But you have to understand that she needs to see our baby, and she needs to see her now.”

  Choice made. At the back of his mind, Quincy knew he’d just signed the death warrant of his precious Irish rose. He didn’t remember when he’d come to think of her as that. Maybe it was because her hair was such a deep, dark red. Maybe it was because of the rose water she so often wore—or because she was so delicate and beautiful, like the fragile blossoms of that flower, reminding him of the song My Wild Irish Rose. Quincy only knew that he loved her as he’d never loved anybody. Well, correction. There was another little Irish rose just down the hall, so tiny and delicate she didn’t seem real, but Quincy loved her enough to give her a place in his heart as big as a mountain.

  He loved her enough, in fact, to let the woman in his arms try to heal her and in the process possibly die. Quincy was brand-new to this dad stuff, but it didn’t take much thinking to figure out that once a kid popped into your life, both parents went all or nothing. Quincy would have liked to be the one making the sacrifice, but he wasn’t being given that choice. He and Ceara were a team, the game was about to end, and one of them had to throw a Hail Mary pass. Quincy didn’t have a prayer of doing that, but Ceara did.

  The biggest guy, tall, gangly, and rawboned, spread his feet. “We can’t let this happen, Mr. Harrigan. Your wife needs to be put back in the bed. When she’s stronger, she can go see the baby.”

  Quincy took the man’s measure. He was no long-stemmed tulip to be taken out with one hard bump, and Quincy held precious cargo. “Look, I just need to take my wife down the hall to see our daughter. Then I’ll bring her back and you can hook her back up to everything.”

  “Not happening,” the tall nontulip replied. “Against all procedure. You can’t just rip everything off a woman in her condition and go waltzing down the hall. She’s had heart irregularities, man. Think.”

  Quincy hadn’t been told that Ceara’s heart had been acting up. For just a second, he questioned his own sanity, but then he felt her press her face to the side of his neck, trusting in him. And suddenly it all came clear to Quincy. It wasn’t only men who were allowed to be heroes. He wouldn’t deny Ceara the same privilege that he would have taken for granted himself. He’d move through that front line, holding her in his arms, and he’d take those four men out. Quincy wasn’t a tall man and was of lean build, but hard work had turned his muscles to steel, he was quick and agile enough to turn on a dime, and not one of the gents standing against him was as challenging as a thirteen-hundred-pound stallion in a rampage.

  Quincy guessed the nontulip fellow to be in his middle twenties. “Son,” he said, “you’d best step aside. If you get in my way and make me drop my wife, I’ll kick your ass nine ways to Sunday.”

  “What is going on in here?”

  Quincy cut his gaze past the front line to the doorway of the room. Dr. Stevenson stood in the opening, her usually tidy braid mussed with tendrils of hair frizzing out around her head, her eyes droopy, the whites red, but the pointedness of her gaze signaled full cognizance. Quincy locked on, and the physician didn’t look away.

  “My wife needs to see our baby. She believes that she can heal her. These folks are trying to stop me from taking her to NICU.”

  The physician pushed forward, waving her hands. “Get back to your stations, now!”

  “But she’s all unhooked!” the tallest guy protested. “Without doctor’s orders. This is unprecedented.”

  Stevenson turned. For some reason, Quincy had always believed her to be taller than she actually was, possibly because she had an imposing presence. But in reality, she wasn’t all that big a woman. Didn’t matter. She faced down the nontulip with a searing look. “Who the hell do you think is the doctor in charge? Did I or did I not tell you to return to your stations?”

  The seven fled, the women going first, the men trailing behind, the nontulip last. He stopped at the door. “I don’t get it.”

  Stevenson said, “Well, when you become a doctor, maybe you will. Right now, you’re working under me, and if you question my orders, kiss your job good-bye.”

  Quincy, still cradling Ceara in his arms, decided that Dr. Stevenson was one hell of a lady.

&nbs
p; She folded her arms at her waist, scrunching her scrub smock into pleats under her breasts. Meeting Quincy’s gaze, she said, “I have two patients. I’d really like both of them to survive. Good for the résumé. In the ordinary course of my days, I don’t have to make a choice between one or another. Do you get that?”

  Quincy nodded. Ceara lifted her head from his shoulder and cried, “Me babe is dying. I need to hold her in me arms. Do ye get that?”

  “I do.” Stevenson directed her gaze to Quincy. She had blue eyes that could cut straight through a man. “I just need to know that you understand, Mr. Harrigan. If you take her in there, I have no magical medicines to offset the result. Are we clear on that? This is beyond what I learned in med school. It’s beyond everything in this world, as we know it.”

  Quincy tightened his hold on his wife. “So you do believe what I told you?”

  Stevenson nodded. “Life never ceases to amaze me. I do believe what you told me. Now believe me.” She shifted her gaze to Ceara. “Your vital signs have been irregular for the last hour and a half, Ceara. Low blood pressure, irregular heartbeat, and a couple of times we nearly had to put you on supplemental oxygen. I know about your gift and that you used it to heal your husband’s wrist. That somehow drained you in a way that my medicine can’t treat. If you go to the NICU and try to heal your baby, same goes. I will have nothing in my arsenal to help you, and if you grow worse, with your blood pressure diving as it has been and your heart patterns bouncing all over the place, there will be no way for me to fix you.”

  “I ken what ye’re saying,” Ceara replied. “Do ye have any wee ones of yer own, Dr. Stevenson?”

  “It’s Marie, and no, I don’t. Not yet.”

  “Well, when ye hold yer firstborn in yer arms, ye’ll understand how I feel right now. ’Tis na a choice fer me. ’Tis what I must do, ye ken?”

  Marie Stevenson nodded. “I ken.” She looked at Quincy. “Don’t just stand there. Take your wife to the NICU. I’ll have staff standing by to help me afterward. We’ll be on the ready right outside.” Tears filled her eyes. “So now it’s your turn to say a prayer for me, Mr. Harrigan. Ask God to slip a couple of miracles up my sleeve.”