How to Save a Life

by Sara Zarr

  Now this appointment feels like a test, too, and I’m sure I’m going to fail.

  “Stand up, please.” Dr. Yee takes a tape measure from around her neck and measures my belly. “Thirty-seven weeks?”

  “Yes.”

  “If you’re sure about the approximate date of conception, I’m concerned about IUGR.” The last part she says to Robin.

  “Oh.” Robin sounds worried. “It means the baby isn’t growing at the rate he should,” she says to me. “Are you absolutely sure about the timing?”

  “I could be off a little.” I picture my room at Robin’s house. Taking my unpacked bags downstairs. Getting on a train to go back. Never getting a “Mandy, Dear” e-mail from Robin again.

  Dr. Yee puts the tape measure around her neck again. “Since Mandy doesn’t have any records, I’d like us to start with a clean, or at least informed, slate and run all tests. Including an ultrasound. Okay?”

  Robin nods, her lips mashed together. Not angry. Scared. I didn’t mean for her to be worried. “I probably figured wrong,” I say. “I’m never good at math.” She tries to smile, but still I can see there are thoughts running through her head like maybe I lied on purpose and the baby isn’t healthy like I said it was, or I slept with more possible fathers than I said I did. Or that I lied about all my doctor’s appointments. Which I did.

  “Cola, orange, or lime?” Dr. Yee asks. “You get your pick for the glucose tolerance test.”

  “Orange.”

  She goes out and a nurse comes back, and over the next ten minutes I pee in a cup, have my blood pressure taken, and drink the sweet drink, and then the nurse takes Robin and me down the hall to the ultrasound room, where I get undressed enough to give them access to my belly. Robin gets up to leave with the nurse. “No,” I say. “You can stay.” She looks at a chart on the wall while I strip off my dress, leaving on my underwear but taking off the long camisole I’ve been wearing because my bras are too small now. I stand in front of her and hug myself. “It’s cold.”

  She stares at me, not moving. “Your body is so…” She laughs, embarrassed. “Your skin. You don’t even have any stretch marks. It makes me feel old.” She gets up and takes a folded-up sheet off the table, and drapes it around my shoulders.

  She is old. A little bit old. Older than I pictured, even though she told me her age and I don’t mind it. Standing as close to her as I am now, I can see every line on her face. “I have good genes is all. So will the baby.”

  There are three short knocks on the door, and then Dr. Yee comes in with a man following behind. “This is Nils. Our ultrasound pro.”

  Nils, short and blond and wearing a pink top and bottom, winks at me. “I’m sure you’re a pro by now, too, Mandy. Presuming you’ve done this at least once?”

  I don’t say anything, letting them think that’s a yes. I get on the table and Nils arranges the sheet so I’m mostly covered except for my belly. He slathers it with cold goo. To stay relaxed, I think about train rides and the Missouri River and fields of corn, turning myself into a person who knows nothing other than what she’s been told, not a liar. The sensor glides over my belly while I stare at the speckled ceiling tiles until Robin sucks in a breath and says, “There he is.” She holds my hand.

  On the monitor, a form in black and white and gray undulates and throbs.

  I think of summer. The warm night, the stars.

  “He?” Nils asks. “Are we sure about that?” He moves the sensor around.

  Dr. Yee studies the monitor. “Nope.” She turns to me. “When did they tell you it was a boy?”

  “I don’t remember. Last time.”

  “Well, they got it wrong. It happens.”

  “It’s a girl?” Robin asks quietly. I can’t tell from her voice if she’s happy or disappointed. When I look, there are tears in her eyes, and I think, I hope, they’re the happy kind of tears. The shape on the screen—the baby—makes something in my heart move, too. The truth is that it’s the first time I’ve seen it. Her. A part of me but not. Connected but also an alien. Alive. Real. Evidence of something… of one thing or of another.

  “A girl,” Robin says.

  “There’s her face,” Dr. Yee says, pointing. “See the nose?”

  We all watch quietly for a few seconds, maybe longer. I try to see who she looks like.

  Then Nils says, “Was the person who told you it was a boy the same one who said you’d be thirty-seven weeks now?” A look passes between him and Dr. Yee.

  “It might have been the beginning of July,” I say. “The conception. Now that I think of it.”

  Dr. Yee nods. “That would make more sense. You’re measuring at around thirty-three.”

  I keep my eyes on the monitor to avoid Robin’s. Nils presses some buttons to print off pictures. Then he takes the sensor away and the baby disappears.

  We have to wait awhile longer so that a full hour has passed between when I had the orange drink and when they draw blood. Robin types on her phone, papers spread out on the chair beside her. “Sorry,” she says. “I’ve got a lot of client messages to deal with. There’s always a backup after a holiday.”

  “It’s okay.” I like seeing her work. Mostly what I’ve seen of my mother’s work, at least since she got the casino job, is her coming home in her smoky uniform and taking off her makeup with cold cream, the same kind my grandma used. Then she’d take a bath and refix her hair and put on fresh makeup so that when Kent got home he didn’t have to think about the fact that she’d been walking the floor all day serving drinks to other men.

  “But that’s how he met you,” I said. “He knows.”

  “I know he knows, Mandy, but I don’t have to throw it in his face.”

  Robin’s job is a whole different kind of a thing, even though it seems a little bit right now like she’s doing it to avoid talking to me. I wish I could think what to say that would make her know she’s right to trust me, even if I might have been wrong about a few details. She’s not making a mistake, I want to tell her. This baby, boy or girl, belongs with her and will make her happy, and just because the dates are a little bit off and the sex is different doesn’t mean there’s anything to worry about. Maybe I should tell her that I have doubts, too, that there are small moments when I remember July and feel sure what this baby is evidence of and want to keep it. That it’s the only evidence I have. And that’s why, in the end, even though there are those small moments, I want to protect it by keeping it far from me and where I’ve come from.

  We’re in the same boat, Robin and me, with fears and doubts, even if they’re different for each of us. We’re both going into an unknown future. But I know if I try to say all that, I’ll mess up the words somehow and only worry her more. Lots of times in life, the best thing to do is stay silent. “Don’t open your mouth if only nonsense is going to come out, Amanda,” my mother says.

  When time’s up, the nurse takes my blood. Dr. Yee talks to Robin about me. “She can keep, or start, exercising moderately. Watch her nutrition. Jenny will have some pamphlets for you at the front desk and will call you with the results of the blood draw in a couple of days. On your way out, make an appointment for two weeks from now.” Dr. Yee pats me on the shoulder. “Okay, Mandy. Take care of yourself and that baby.”

  “I will.”

  In the car Robin reminds me to buckle up. “We’ll get you home and fix you something to eat, then I’ve got to run out to a meeting.”

  “Okay.”

  There’s a lot of traffic coming out of the hospital, which is in Aurora, about a twenty-minute drive from the house. Robin told me about it on the way there—how it’s the best, how it’s a straight shot on Colfax and easy to get to, how the birth center there has the newest of everything and big tubs in every delivery room, if you want to do it that way. On the way home, she’s quiet. It isn’t until we pull into her driveway and she turns off the car that she asks me, “Did you really not know your real due date?”

  Honesty doesn’t alway
s work. Times I tried to be honest with my mother about important things, she didn’t believe me, and it only made situations worse. I think Robin is different. I know she is. That’s why I’m here. Still, I’m too scared to say anything but yes. I’d rather she think I’m stupid than that I lied. She’d see it as taking advantage, but that’s not it. It was survival, that’s all. I couldn’t wait anymore.

  She nods. “I’ll have to rearrange my schedule.”

  “I’m sorry.” I run my hand along the shoulder strap of the seat belt. “Do you want me to move somewhere else until the date is closer?” Not that I could. Unless I sold Kent’s watch, which I’m not ready to do, not yet.

  Robin looks at me, surprise on her face. “No. No no. You’ll stay right here. It’s fine.” Her phone chimes from somewhere in her purse; she ignores it. “But, Mandy, you’ve got to understand how much trust this takes for me, doing this the way that you want to do it. What I’m risking.”

  “I know.”

  “I can’t lose someone else.” Her voice is steady.

  “I know.”

  She takes off her seat belt and gathers up her purse, her coat, her sunglasses, and looks at me and I can see she’s still happy, she doesn’t hate me. “So,” she says, “I guess we’d better start thinking about some girl names.”

  Jill

  It’s fairly easy to stalk someone when you’ve dated him for almost two years. And Dylan, being a creature of rigorous habit, makes it child’s play. Tuesdays in cold weather are pho days, and as I am the only one of his friends who shares his great passion for pho, he’ll be going alone. Alone is a recurring theme for me, too, when it comes to lunchtime. On Friday, I made an attempt at offering myself up as available to eat with Laurel and Cinders, but they didn’t take the bait. Namely, me standing in our old meeting place near the girls’ room by Laurel’s locker, trying to look bait-y and available. They saw me. Oh, they saw me. Upon seeing me, they exchanged a glance and kept walking.

  I guess I could have come right out and said, “Hey, I miss you guys. I’m sorry. Totally, totally sorry. I was wrong. Being left alone was a bad idea. Can I eat with you? Or near you? Pretty, pretty, pretty please?”

  However, that’s not so much the kind of thing I’m good at saying.

  Hoping to do better with Dylan, I wait by his car in the student lot, freezing my ass off and betting on his addiction to Vietnamese soup. Enough time passes that doubt sets in, as does the cold. I break into his car—a simple task, owing to a back-door lock that’s never worked right—and grab his UC–Boulder fleece blanket from the back dash, pulling it over my head and curling up on the backseat.

  I’ve told myself all morning that I only need his friendship right now, his advice about Mandy, his insight. That I’m not here to try to get back together. That even if he wanted to, I wouldn’t, because too much has happened now and sometimes things come to a natural end and that’s how it is.

  But as soon as I smell the blanket…

  Okay, the blanket itself is a little musty, but beneath that there he is.

  Ohhhhhhhhgod.

  The molding paste he uses on his hair. The environmentally correct eucalyptus dryer sheets his mom likes. Coffee. Cinnamon gum.

  We’ve broken up and gotten back together twice since… Dad. You could say we’re on our third breakup now, though technically I think this is more like an “I can’t take you right now” break than a breakup. All I know is that whatever I said before, and whatever may happen in the future, I need him today.

  Just as I’m working myself up to a purifying, private cry, I hear the driver’s door open, and sense someone drop into the seat. I knew it. Rigorous habit. He starts the car and turns on the heat and pulls forward while I consider making my presence known, and then it’s kind of too late. Though I am tempted to bitch at him for pulling forward out of the parking space, which drives me crazy because it drove my dad crazy. “You’re supposed to back out,” Dad would say. “That’s what the rules are, and that’s what all the cars around you expect, and you should always try to behave predictably when driving.” He was a great driver. Mr. Highway Safety. And it’s not fair that he died in a car accident. I wonder if he’s out there and knows how it happened. Maybe he’s lecturing the old lady—also dead—who got disoriented by a bright beam of morning sun, crossed the median, and hit him at freeway speed.

  Don’t think about that, Jill. Think about:

  How out of it Dylan is. If he weren’t, he’d check the backseat to see what’s up with the oddly shaped blanket hump. Can’t he, like, sense that he’s not alone? Now I’m afraid if I say something, he’ll be startled and veer into oncoming traffic. I mentally follow the stops and turns—yes, definitely pho. It’s almost funny how oblivious he is. I imagine all the ways I could reveal myself, from throwing back the blanket and yelling “Surprise!” to snaking out a hand to rest on his neck. It strikes me as hilarious. Or awful. I’m on the edge, teetering between laughing like a maniac and bursting into scary, heaving sobs. A laugh or a sob rises in my throat when I imagine Dylan’s reaction to finding me; I clamp my lips shut, hard, trying not to shake. Tears squeeze out of my eyes. I think I’m crying. I don’t know.

  The car comes to a stop. Dylan jerks the parking brake up, and the door opens and closes. I feel the blast of cold air. Finally, I let out a sob-laugh and sit up, relieved to be breathing without the filter of the blanket. Two more sobs. Definitely sobs. Shake it off, Jill. I don’t need to be acting a fool in front of Dylan right now. I need to show him I’m sane and stable and ready to be human.

  After a few minutes of deep inhaling, exhaling, I get out of the car and walk to one end of the street and then back, oh so casually entering the restaurant. Dylan is in a small booth, already sipping hot tea while he looks at his phone.

  “Oh, hey,” I say, acting surprised. Badly.

  It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve seen him straight on like this, outside of the classrooms and hallways of school. He’s so beautiful. He’s got on a smudge of black eyeliner and has a new bleached streak in his dark hair, but he’s not wearing his lip ring, the one I like to tug lightly with my teeth when we kiss.

  “What are you doing here, Jill?”

  It’s not quite the hello I’d hoped for.

  “Just one?” the waiter asks, handing me a menu.

  “Um…” Dylan is going to make me ask what I couldn’t ask Cinders and Laurel. “Can I sit with you?”

  “If you want.” He puts away his phone. A good sign, like he’s willing to pay attention to me.

  I sit, order a bowl of my favorite pho and a hot tea.

  “Did you follow me here?” he asks, staring at me over his teacup.

  “No.” As if. “I really wanted some soup. You think you’re the only one that can come here? You own this place now?”

  He laughs. It’s a beautiful sound. “Jill, you are so full of shit. You think I didn’t see you sitting in my backseat before I even got into the car?”

  I smile. “I wondered what the hell was wrong with you that you didn’t notice.”

  “It’s a little creepy.”

  “I almost thought you weren’t going to come. But I know you and winter and Tuesdays and pho.”

  He shrugs. “What can I say? Pho is rock.”

  Dylan has this whole rating system for everything—food, bands, clothes, teachers, movies, cars, songs, life events—based on the game rock-paper-scissors. Whatever is the utmost in awesomeness, whatever is profoundly good, whatever is right and true, is rock. Because rock, though it can be beat (or “hidden,” as Dylan prefers to say) by paper, can never be destroyed.

  I wonder what would happen if I bumped my knee against his under the table, or touched his arm. I wonder whose job it is to make the first move. I wonder if I even want that.

  “I didn’t mean to be creepy,” I say, keeping my limbs to myself. “I was waiting for you and it was freezing and I knew the blanket was in there. Then I was going to say something but didn’t thi
nk it was safe to scare you while you were driving.” Remembering something Dylan once said about how I never say I’m sorry, that I make excuses instead—true—I add, “Sorry.”

  The waiter sets two steaming bowls of beef broth on the table, along with plates of noodles and limes and bean sprouts and thinly sliced meat. We quietly go through the ritual of unwrapping and breaking apart our wooden chopsticks, rubbing them together to smooth out any splinters. We move items from the plates into our bowls. I lean my head over mine, inhaling the fragrant steam and closing my eyes for a second. I make a wish. A pho wish. I wish for Dylan to speak to me as if I’m a person he might still like a little bit. I don’t need for him to love and adore me. Only to tolerate, be my friend.

  Maybe the best way to encourage that to happen is to talk about something somewhat neutral, at least as it pertains to our relationship.

  “Remember how my mom is adopting that baby?”

  “Pretty sure I’m not going to forget that.”

  “The mother, the pregnant girl, got here yesterday.”

  That gets his attention. He sets his chopsticks down. “Oh, man. I didn’t realize that was happening now. Wasn’t it only, like, six weeks ago or something your mom told you?”

  “Yeah. It’s happening.”

  “It must be crazy. To realize it’s for real and everything.”

  “Totally crazy.”

  “I want to meet her.”

  “You do?”

  He picks up his chopsticks, slurps noodles. “Yeah, I mean, it’s a big deal. And even with, you know, the way everything is, I still kind of feel like part of the family? If that’s okay.”

  Yes, I know the way everything is. “It’s okay. It’s good.”

  This is going so well. So unbelievably perfect. I barrel ahead. “My mom took her to the doctor this morning. To check everything out. This girl, she’s from another planet, I’m telling you.”

  “Yeah?” He takes a bite of bean sprouts.