It Starts

by Avery Kirk

  When we set her down, she shrieked. Again, trying to muffle her sound. She leaned toward Isa and Isa stroked her hair sweetly, shushing her. Kevin stayed on her other side and his eyes locked on me. One arm supported her back, and the other he rested on her thigh, his thumb making small circles in an attempt to help comfort her.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Chloe,” she said, the word almost bursting out.

  “I’m Amelia,” I told her while I looked down at her pelvis. Thank goodness I could now see. It wasn’t exactly operating room quality light, but it was so much better than before. I had to bend a certain way so that I didn’t cast a shadow.

  I saw what I was sure was the baby’s head coming out. Chloe screamed in agony.

  “Chloe, I need you to push when you feel like you have to. Tell me when you feel it coming.”

  “ ‘ts…com-ing right-now,” she choked out as she slammed her hands on the bottom of the trailer and turned her head.

  Kevin and Isa each held on to each of Chloe’s legs as best they could, although it was a challenge since they were writing in pain. I moved her feet down and held them there.

  “PUSH!” I directed her.

  Chloe pushed for about 25 minutes, I’d say. She rested as best she could between contractions, and on her last push, out came a baby girl—bald as can be and screaming like crazy.

  I pulled the towel from the back of my pants and wrapped the baby in it as best I could. It was a bar towel so it barely covered her. I handed the baby to Isa and pulled out the rest of the parts left in Chloe. Kevin handed Isa his coat to further wrap the baby.

  “Chloe. I know you’re tired. Please look at me.” I waited until her eyes moved to mine. “I need to know your intentions. Do you want to see the child?”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a girl. Do you want to see her?” I asked.

  “No. I’m not ready,” she whispered, exhaustion in her words.

  “Do you mean you’re not ready to see her, or do you mean you’re not ready to be a mother?” I asked as I tugged her sweatpants back up as best I could.

  “I’m not ready for anything. I don’t know what to do. I have nothing to give.”

  “The child’s father?” I questioned.

  “He died a few months back. He was shot.” She started to sob. Kevin held her tightly and looked at me wide eyed in disbelief.

  “The baby has to be treated at a hospital. We’ll take care of both of you, but I need to know what your plan was.”

  “I wanted to leave the baby at a fire department or a good church—they’re safe havens. I read about them online. I just can’t keep her. I was on the bus, but the driver realized that I was in labor, so I had to get off. I saw a church from the bus and I got off there. It’s not far from here. I didn’t want them to take me to a hospital, so I just got off the bus. I was trying to get there—to the church….but I didn’t make it. I had to hide when I—when he chased me. He found out where I was, and he has a car so he followed me.” She sobbed.

  “Chloe, is it OK if we bring the baby to the hospital for you? They’ll care for her without questions. We won’t say who you are if you don’t want.”

  “No, don’t tell them my name. That man wasn’t the last to come and find her. I’m sure of it.”

  “Kevin, please take Isa to the cab. Please pay for her fare to get to the hospital,” I told him.

  To Isa, I spoke in Spanish. “Isa, I need to know if you can bring this baby to the hospital. Tell them a young woman intended to drop the baby off at a safe haven. The baby needs to be looked over and cared for. I’m going to wrap the placenta in my jacket. The doctors have to be sure she’s all right and maybe do other things. Can you bring her to the hospital? They need to know that her mother didn’t intend to keep her. If they understand you’re asking them to be a safe haven for the child, they’ll know that you probably don’t have much information for them. OK?”

  “I will take care of her and get her to the hospital, Miss Amelia,” Isa replied in Spanish. “I’m honored you asked for my help. Usted es su angel.”

  “Thank you, Isa. I regret that this may be our last encounter. But I’ll be grateful to you always. And I will wish that you always have what you need.”

  She smiled and very gingerly took the baby wrapped in the towel and then in Kevin’s coat with my coat holding the placenta. She made little sounds with her tongue to quiet the baby.

  Kevin looked at me with disbelief and then walked with her to the cab. Now I focused on Chloe.

  Leaning back and resting, she spoke. “In good hands she’ll probably get a shot at a decent life. My grammy used to be big with her church…” Her voice trailed off, her head bobbing. I felt her head, and it was terribly hot. She was still pouring out blood and I didn’t know if that was normal. Her legs began to shake and she seemed to be losing consciousness.

  I jumped up. Although she was about the same size I was, I picked her up to carry her where she could be cared for. I ran with her in my arms, totally unconscious. I knew the church she’d seen from the bus. I’d noticed it as I ran past earlier.

  The church was across the freeway, and I’d need to cross the freeway on foot to get there, this girl in my arms. The task seemed impossible. Still, I ran. I heard Kevin call after me, but I didn’t stop. He was too far behind to help me. I crossed over the expressway, this lifeless girl in my arms, and finally I saw the church. As I approached, I looked madly for the rectory. I found it and carried her to the door. I could hear Kevin catching up from behind.

  I sat on the steps and cradled her in my arms, her body falling between my legs. I beat on the door urgently with the back of my fist.

  In half a minute, a priest appeared—concern marring his face.

  “Hello?” he said

  “Father. Please help her. She gave birth, and the baby is being cared for. She needs medical assistance. Her child was delivered in an unclean environment. She may have an infection or other things. She needs her name to be kept secret, and I don’t know if she has insurance or family. It all happened so fast. Are you able to help at all?” I pleaded with him.

  “Of course, of course. He reached out to help, unsure of what to do. “Should we…call an ambulance?”

  Another priest appeared behind him to see what was happening. “We can take it from here.” He said.

  Kevin spoke with the second priest. “Do you need anything further from us? I’d like to get my friend home. I’m afraid we don’t have any more information than you already have. I hate to burden you with this, but we aren’t at all involved apart from trying to help.”

  “We will look after her.” The second priest said.

  Kevin helped me up and we walked a bit, heading in the direction of the car. Neither of us spoke. We must have walked for a minute before it happened. I felt as though I weren’t there anymore. As if everything that had happened was a dream. Then absolute dizziness and lightheadedness overtook me. I stopped and felt my knees giving way. I reached an arm out, and Kevin grabbed it. I fell to the ground but not as hard as I should have. He lowered me, holding some of my weight.

  He took my face with his hand, cupping my chin in his hand to look at me. I opened my eyes and found him for a second, but I just couldn’t keep my eyes open. I felt sad for his worry and concern. Even in the brief moment that I returned his gaze, his face was riddled with desperation. He pressed his cheek to mine, his hand cradled around my neck, holding my head.

  He picked me up, carrying me the way a father might carry his child who’d been hurt. My head rested in the inside of his elbow, his cheek still touching mine, while his hand held my left shoulder. His other arm wrapped around the back of my knees so that I was a diagonal to his body, the fronts of our bodies pressed together. I felt intensely protected. It was perfect. My Kevin.

  He called my name in great anxiety, and I moved my mouth to answer him, but nothing came out. It frustrated me. I couldn’t even hold onto him a
nymore. I felt my arms drop and Kevin picked up his pace.

  Chapter 15: After

  I woke up to the feeling of something warm on my side and something cool on my head. And wet. I smashed my eyes shut hard for a few hard blinks before opening them and trusting what I saw. I was on my back, and Kevin was propping his head up with his hand, right alongside me. The hotel clock said 11:53. At night, I guessed.

  “Seven more minutes, and we were heading to the hospital. You wouldn’t believe the story I had to tell the cab driver. It’s a good thing I have an honest face, or so I’ve been told.” He stopped short like someone who had caught himself rambling.

  He stared at me hard. I wanted to get up, but I decided to wait. I ached everywhere. Kevin put his hand on my stomach and made circles to soothe me.

  “How are you…doing?” he asked. He seemed not to know what to say.

  “I’m OK, a little weird. I mean I feel just….weird. I don’t….know.” My words wouldn’t come.

  He seemed to understand that I didn’t feel like talking.

  “Can I…? Well, I mean.” I sighed, rubbing my hands around my face. He waited for me to continue—he didn’t rush me. I dropped my hands, frustrated. “I’m tired. I mean….still. Are you?” I finally said. He must be if he’d been watching me sleep this whole time.

  He nodded, looking at the floor.

  “Will you. Sleep with me? In this bed, I mean?” My sentences were disjointed. I couldn’t bring myself to look at him.

  “Yeah,” he whispered.

  I knew I didn’t have to explain that I actually did mean sleep. I desperately needed a drink of water and sat up slowly, the back of my arm quivering until my shoes touched the floor. As soon as I did, I felt Kevin’s hand slide from where it was touching my wrist up the inside of my arm for support.

  “Do you need something?” he asked, barely above a whisper. He was kneeling on the bed now, behind me. “I can get you something if you need it.”

  “I just wanted some water.”

  “OK, sit tight.” I sat there, unmoving. I purposefully didn’t let myself think about how I felt or what had happened. Still, I couldn’t ignore the pain on my side and lifted up my shirt to find a smattering of butterfly bandages that started on my hip bone and extended about five inches up onto my belly.

  “I think you might need stitches,” he said with a nod to my side as he poured water from a pitcher, his eyebrows coming together. “But I think you’re going to tell me that you’ll get it looked at tomorrow. We could go tonight. Doesn’t have to be the s-same hospital”

  He stuttered and got quiet at the end of his sentence, handing me the glass. A weight seemed to have fallen on us both. With my entire being, I did not want to talk about what had happened. Not yet. Maybe not ever. I drank my water, holding the short glass with both hands finding some small joy in the slightly cool feel of it. Kevin sat at the desk chair, sideways. He divided his gaze between me and the darkness out the window.

  As the lack of conversation lengthened, panic welled up in me while I worried that he’d want to talk about the unanswerables. I knew that he knew me well and would know how I was feeling but I didn’t want to risk it. He was the type of guy to air stuff out and get it off his chest. He might be going in that direction—I just didn’t know.

  I chanced a look in his direction, hoping he’d be intent out the window instead of me. He was. He looked older for a moment. His light pants had dirt ground into them in random places, a few grease stains and spots of blood. His shirt was partially unbuttoned, exposing his T-shirt. He had much more blood on this part of him. He was soaked on his right side. My stomach got squirrely and my muscles tightened until I realized it must have been my blood, not his.

  I wanted to ask him if he was OK, but selfishly, I didn’t want to deal with any conversation at all. I tipped up my glass and let the water rest on my lips without drinking. I lowered the glass again and turned my lips into each other, moving the water around.

  I was about to ask him to turn on the TV for some distraction when he got up and reached into his bag. He pulled out a short stack of clothes and disappeared into the bathroom.

  I used the tip of my shoe and then the toe of my sock to get my shoes off one at a time. Thank goodness I had been sensible enough to not wear dressy shoes. They would’ve never stayed on—I stopped mid- thought and concentrated on the tacky wall art. Oddly, the orange sunset over a green pasture soothed me. The colors blurred into each other. There was a silhouette of a man who was meant to be a farmer and he reminded me of my grampa. I felt the urge to cry, but I was able to shake it off before it was too late and I broke the seal.

  I heard the shower turn on. A moment later, Kevin stepped out of the bathroom. He’d taken off his button-down shirt and was in his undershirt.

  “Hey,” he said, showing worry lines on his face. He walked over to where I sat, still on the edge of the bed, my blue-polished toenails now my point of focus. I looked up again.

  “Do you feel like taking a shower?” he asked. “I’ll wait out here.” It seemed an unnecessary clarification. But after all we’d been through, clarifications were just fine with me.

  “I don’t know what I want to do,” I said, weakly. “I don’t know if I want to take a whole shower.” What a dumb response. I didn’t care. The truth was, I didn’t want to be alone with my thoughts for that long.

  He continued, “OK, well I put a brand new pair of boxers in the bathroom and a clean T-shirt of mine. Can you put those on and lie back down?” He eyeballed me, concern growing in his eyes.

  I just nodded. I got up. This time, he put a hand on my back and guided me to the bathroom. Once I was in, he closed the door behind me. I kept trying to not think. This was a big challenge. I wanted to ask myself what I wanted, but I just didn’t want any random thoughts to zip into my consciousness stream. The sound of the shower was comforting, but the humidity was making breathing hard. I turned away from the mirror and got undressed down to my underwear.

  I didn’t want to look in the mirror. I felt as though I’d lose control of my thoughts and emotions, and I didn’t want to do that. I closed my eyes and washed my hands. I saw his two piles of folded clothes on the vanity. I guessed which one was meant for me. A washcloth sat on the top of the pile, and I snagged it and used it to wash my face and arms.

  When I moved my legs, I felt the tightness where dried blood restricted the movement of my skin. I found the shorts and slid them on over my own undies which had a bloodstain on one side where they rested on my hip. His underwear was crisp white cotton with skinny navy-blue stripes on them. The humidity started to bother me more, but I was happy when I saw that the mirror was fogged up—relief from chancing a look at myself.

  I gathered my hair into a ponytail and wrapped my arms around my bare belly, noticing a vague ache when I did. I stood there, staring at a rogue hair on the white tile floor. I must have stood there for a while like this because the next thing I heard was Kevin’s fingertips bouncing on the door.

  “Mel? You OK?” Kevin asked through the door.

  “Yeah, you can come in.” I had to clear my throat a bit; my voice was soggy and sounded far deeper than my natural voice.

  I realized at the last second that I was only in my bra and his underwear. He realized this at the same time, I think, because I noticed that he immediately tilted his head down when he came in. I still had the washcloth in my hand and I was still staring at the floor.

  He took the washcloth from me gently, almost as though he was silently asking for permission. He put an arm in the shower to re-wet the washcloth with warm water and sat on the toilet lid. He very slowly turned me toward him. I could see him hesitate—mentally struggling with the idea of moving my arms out of the way. So I moved them up, over my chest—still folded. That way my bra was covered anyway.

  He put his left hand on my lower back and pulled me a step closer to where he sat. The empty hand that he set on my back was slightly rough and very dry whi
ch was a relief after standing in this humidity. My skin had already started to bead with sweat from the steam.

  I kept my eyes closed while he cleaned up the blood. I risked a look at him and immediately noticed that his face was pained in some way. This upset me and I took in a deep and uneven breath. He hesitated for a moment and then kept going, even more gently this time. I guessed that he thought he had hurt me.

  Softly, he cleaned up the area around my wound that he’d bandaged while I was asleep. I was grateful for the white noise of the shower. It was loud enough that conversation wasn’t necessary. At one point, I thought he was going to try to talk. He’d stopped moving the rag. But he decided against it and kept smoothing the rough hotel rag over my belly until it was stained with pink. The cut was long but it wasn’t that deep. I’d cut myself enough times to know the difference.

  He pulled up one side of the boxer shorts to see if blood had trickled down. It must have, because he moved the washcloth up and down my thigh, lifting the side of my undies away from my skin to move the rag there too.

  He finished cleaning me up and leaned forward, setting his forearms on his legs after chucking the rag into the corner of the bathroom on top of his crumpled shirt. I didn’t know how to read him, and honestly I didn’t feel like trying. I imagined that he might be frustrated or angry or sad, but I didn’t spend much time thinking about it. I only hoped he wasn’t angry at me.

  I went to take a step back and give him his space—but before I could, he grabbed me around the waist and brought me into him. His hug was almost aggressive at first but then he remembered my injury—so did I—and he turned his head to the other side of my belly and twisted the waistband of his boxers that I wore into his fingers. I unwound my arms from my chest and cradled his head.

  We stayed like that for a long moment. I made myself think of random things so that I wouldn’t cry. I just didn’t want to. I saw a fat guy wearing rainbow suspenders and a shirt that said in big, bold, white letters “The Boss.” A kid going down the slide at a park and laughing. An annoying girl talking on her cell phone at the store. A weird yellow bird I’d seen on a fence while we were here. A tap dancer. Hanging a door. I let each image fill my mind until I was bored with it and moved to the next. That process was enough to distract me for the moment.