by Anne Pfeffer
“Ryan?”
A warning shiver streaks up my spine. My head snaps around.
“Ryan, are you there?”
I’m on my feet in an instant and heading for the bathroom. When I touch the door, it swings open, and Chrissie is standing there, ghostly pale, one hand gripping the sink for balance. She has changed into a dress that hangs down past her knees, and her legs and feet are bare.
She has a leaky faucet; I hear the steady drip, drip of water. But I can see the faucet, and it’s not leaking. The drip, drip continues.
“Ryan, help me.” Chrissie stands as if she doesn’t dare to move.
Then I see it. It’s not water. A drop of red hits the vinyl floor between Chrissie’s feet and splashes up onto her ankle. A second drop and a third. The drops keep coming, joining the pool of blood on the floor at Chrissie’s feet.
Somehow, I wrap her up in a big towel, find her purse, lock her front door, and half-carry her down the two flights of stairs on the outside of her building. Don’t let her fall, get to the car.
“Your beautiful car seats!” she wails, as I set her down on the soft, buttery leather.
“Forget it,” I say. I gun my car toward the hospital, pulling in at the Emergency Room and stopping with a jerk that snaps both of us forward.
An orderly takes her off in a wheelchair, while I park, then sprint back to the ER. It’s a different hospital, but the same smells, the same plastic tubing, the same needles in bruised arms. It’s the same exhaustion, the same fear, the same indifferent faces at the admitting desk.
I shake my head a little, thinking Dude! Pull it together! I find Chrissie lying on a gurney while a man in blue hospital scrubs puts a needle in her arm. They’re giving her blood. They’re not wasting any time, wheeling her up to a machine and laying a sheet over her waist and legs. From what they’re saying, I gather she’s getting an ultrasound.
Working fast, they pull up her shirt, exposing her belly, and put some kind of gel on it. They move a detector device around on the belly, while gray and white shadows swirl across a screen. Everything in their faces and movement says urgency, fear, danger.
Chrissie stares straight up at the ceiling, holding my hand for strength, like a little girl. I’m focused on the screen, looking for something, anything that will tell me the baby’s okay. From within the gray mass, a small foot emerges and disappears, and then a nose. I send an urgent mental message to the little guy. Help’s on the way! Hang in there!
Two blue-dressed hospital people are leaning into the picture before them. At the same moment, they both point at a wrinkle of dark grayness in the swirling light gray picture. Wobbly tracings are coming from yet another machine they’ve attached to Chrissie, and some change there suddenly pushes both doctors into action.
I hear the words “hemorrhage” and “fetal distress,” as one runs from the room calling out orders. Blue-dressed people swarm in, grabbing Chrissie’s gurney and pushing it out of the room and down the hall.
“What’s wrong?” Chrissie asks the doctor, a thin guy with cold eyes and long pale hands. “Is it serious?”
The placenta has broken away from the uterus a second time. She is bleeding internally. The baby’s heartbeat is abnormally slow. They are practically running down the hall while I keep pace alongside. Chrissie needs an emergency C-section to save her life and the baby’s.
“You have to stay out here.” They disappear through a set of swinging doors, leaving me alone in the hallway.
I feel like I’ve been kicked in the stomach. I thought we had solved this problem. The doctor said it was cured.
I somehow get out to the waiting room and try to ask a nurse how long Chrissie will be in there. “No way to tell,” she says to me. “Sit down and make yourself comfortable.”
Comfortable? My brain keeps saying not again. I pull out my cell and call home. Nat and Yancy are still there. I deliver the news. The grandchild they learned about less than two hours ago is in danger and may die.
“We’re coming,” the four of them tell me.
I sit there alone for what feels like a long time. After a while, I realize I have my arms wrapped around myself, and I’m rocking back and forth. I am dry-eyed, more frightened than I’ve ever been in my life.
The exterior door to the ER flies open, and my parents burst through. They have Nat and Yancy between them. Nat looks the way I feel, terrified. Yancy’s mouth is set in a grim line.
Sinking heavily into a chair, Nat says what I’ve been feeling. “I don’t think I can do this again.”
Chapter 51
Mom has her arm around Yancy. They sit down with Nat, across from me, while Dad sits next to me, facing them.
“I don’t even know why we’re here,” Yancy says to Nat in a low voice.
“I do,” he says. They sit side-by-side, staring straight ahead, not touching.
We wait. Several hours pass. I doze in my chair, but dream of things self-destructing, exploding, coming apart. Cars crushed against road dividers, mountain tops erupting in smoke and flame, bodies eaten by disease, and worst of all, blood dripping, dripping, dripping as little Michael curls himself into a tiny ball and slowly disappears.
A couple of times I jerk awake and sit there staring at the stained ceiling tiles. What am I doing here? I suddenly want Emily so badly that every part of me hurts. As I doze off again, I feel my body slump sideways in the hard waiting room chair.
Finally, around three in the morning, a doctor comes out. It’s that same cold-eyed guy we talked to earlier. I try not to look at the blood on his blue surgical scrubs.
“The patients are out of surgery. They’re alive, but in critical condition,” he says.
“But will they be all right?” I ask.
“Too soon to say. The mother has lost a lot of blood. The infant was deprived of oxygen for a short time. We will have to wait and see how they do.” His eyes go past us, as if he’s looking for someone else, ready to move on to the next case.
“Can we visit them?”
“Not yet.” For the first time, he seems to see us, how tired and scared we are. “It’ll be hours. This would be a good time to go home and get some sleep.”
The others decide to take his advice.
“I’m staying here,” I announce. My voice cracks from exhaustion.
“You don’t even know if this is Michael’s baby,” Yancy says in a flat voice.
I turn away from her. “Yes, I do.”
“Ryan.” Mom puts her arm around me. I almost draw back, but then stand there and let her do it. “Don’t you want to go home, too? Get some sleep?” Her make-up’s all smeared, and she looks a little shy about standing so close to me, but her eyes are saying I love you. I want you to be okay.
I put my hand on hers and squeeze it. “I want to stay. But thanks, Mom.”
She squeezes back. “Alright then. We’ll call you.”
They leave, and I sit there alone, thinking I can’t freaking believe what’s happening. After everything we’ve gone through, Chrissie might still die, or the baby might. With Michael, I could see why it happened, but what did Chrissie or the baby ever do to deserve this? I want to sink my fists into something or someone, knock down a building, be like one of those gunslingers on the old cowboy shows who throws a bad guy over the bar in the saloon, smashing the mirror and about a million glasses.
As morning comes with no news, I call my folks and the Westons. Nat’s already on his way back here. He wants to be at the hospital in case we’re allowed in to visit. My cell rings, and it’s Emily.
“Hi,” I say, getting up and walking out of the ER and into the driveway outside. I don’t want her to hear the sounds of the hospital speaker system.
“I’m so excited! Are you all ready?” she asks.
“For what?”
“For the trip, silly!”
A vague memory surfaces. The junior class trip. To New York and Boston. The trip is this coming Saturday—we leave in the evening on a red-e
ye flight.
“What day is it?” I ask Emily.
“Saturday. You know we’re leaving tonight, don’t you?”
“Tonight?” I can’t go pack for a trip right now. I can’t fly to the East Coast tonight, not with Chrissie and the baby the way they are.
I always let Emily down. I try not to, but I can’t seem to help it.
Nat approaches me from the parking lot, walking slowly, like an old person.
“I’ll call you back in a minute.” I hang up, then say, “Nat, I have to leave for a while. Will you stay here and call me if anything changes?” I want to tell Emily in person.
“No problem,” Nat says.
“Where’s Yancy?”
“She’s staying away for now. She doesn’t want to get involved until we confirm it’s Michael’s baby.”
“But you’re sure it is?”
“I’m sure I want it to be.”
I call Emily back. “I have to talk to you.” An ambulance rolls around the corner and pulls into the driveway, its siren making a series of chirps as it turns off.
Her voice falters. “Where are you?”
“I’ll tell you when I see you.” I look at my watch. “I’ll pick you up in an hour.”
• • •
When I pull up at her house, Emily walks out to my car. I take a quick look around the front seat. Everything looks normal—no blood stains despite Chrissie’s fears. Too late, I remember that I haven’t adjusted the passenger seat for Emily, the way I usually do after Chrissie’s been in my car. Emily practically falls backward as she gets in.
“Wow! Who’s been sitting here?” she asks. Then she looks at me. “What’s wrong? You look so tired.”
I drive around the corner and park under a tree. I feel like I’m standing on top of a hundred-story building with a parachute that might or might not open, staring down at the cars moving far below, not knowing whether I’m going to walk away from this or splatter.
I look at her, memorizing her eyes, the dark hair that falls past her shoulders, her lips, which are a shiny cherry color today. “Emily, I can’t go to Boston tonight.” Since I can’t handle the look of shock on her face, I start to babble.
“Chrissie started bleeding in her bathroom around eleven o’clock last night, and I rushed her to the hospital. I’m really sorry. I wanna go on the trip, but she and the baby are both in critical condition.” I watch a leaf drift down onto the hood of my car.
She sits there stiff and unmoving. “You were at Chrissie’s place at eleven o’clock last night?”
“Oh. Yeah. But that’s just because I had to take her home from the audition.” I lick my lips. The parachute has failed to open.
“What audition?”
I free-fall.
“Mitzi wanted to audition her for a role in Mystery Moon.”
“How did Mitzi meet her?”
“At Dad’s party. When you couldn’t come, I invited Chrissie. To help her get an acting job.” I’m falling faster and faster.
Her face holds hurt and disbelief. “You took Chrissie? And didn’t tell me?”
I nod, feeling sick. “It was just to help her get work.”
She leans away from me as much as she can in the small front seat of my sports car. I want to take her hand, but I don’t dare.
Her eyes are starting to tear up, and her hands are starting to shake. “Well, I guess I’ll need another ride to the airport then.” Rosario had offered to drop us both off at LAX.
“Wait a minute! We need to talk about all this!”
“No! I just want to be alone. And I need to arrange a ride to the airport.”
Her flat, stunned expression is scaring me. “I’ll take you!” I say.
“No! Can I use your cell to call my mom? I left mine in the house.”
Wordless, I hand it to her. Everything was fine. We had survived a crisis. And now this happens.
Her face crumples. Too late, I realize why. There, on the screen of my cell phone is the photo of Chrissie, smiling for the camera in my Pacific Prep athletic shirt. It comes down to her knees, with her bare legs sticking out below it.
“She wears your t-shirts?”
I splatter. “No, I just gave her that one, because she didn’t have any pajamas!”
Emily opens the car door. Her lips trembling, she hands me my cell and puts one foot out. “I need to go now.”
“But Emily!”
“Don’t say anything! Just don’t!”
Fear swamps me. I’m going to lose Emily, the only girl I’ve ever loved. I picture her—her eyes when she looks at me, her soft hair, her beautiful body. Is it over? My eyes fill with tears.
“Don’t go without letting me explain!”
“Now you want to explain? It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?”
“Please, Emily?”
She shakes her head. “I can’t be near you right now.” She takes off, leaving me alone, the door still open on the passenger side.
My cell rings in my hand. Automatically, I answer it. It’s Nat.
“The baby’s off the critical list.”
“That’s great.” I hear my voice as if it’s coming from the bottom of a well. “What about Chrissie?”
“They tell me she’s awake and talking.”
“Okay. I’ll be there soon.”
Nat’s voice is gravely. He clears his throat. “We can’t see them right now, Ryan. I’m going home for a while, and you should, too. Get some rest.”
“Okay.” I sign off. I start to drive off, then realize the passenger door is still open. I get out and close it. I sit back down in my car, staring straight ahead. I should be glad they’re okay, but I just feel dead. Until the anger rolls in, that is, filling me with red heat.
All along, I’ve just tried to do the right thing. It seems like that should count for something. I need to catch a break here.
I don’t want to go home, so I pick up my cell and text Jonathan. can I come over? I need to talk to u
sure
Chapter 52
Entering Jonathan’s house, I follow his family’s custom of taking shoes off, Japanese-style. In our socks, we pad down a hallway to his bedroom. It has a narrow bed, a couple of big bean bag chairs, and an entire wall full of surfing posters. A microscope sits on a small TV table.
“You mind if I do my sets?” he asks. “I’m on a schedule here.” He’s going on the East Coast trip, too. He has a duffel bag lying open on the bed, but it’s still empty except for a phone charger and a can of shaving cream.
“No worries.” I sink down onto a bean bag chair, while he drops to the floor and begins his push-ups.
“I’m not going, Jonathan.” I tell him what happened last night and this morning, ending with, “So it’s all screwed up with me and Emily now.”
He stops to rest for a couple of seconds, sweat beading his upper lip. “Be honest. This isn’t your baby, is it?”
“No! Jeez, Jonathan!” I can’t even believe he said that.
“It’s just that you feel so responsible for it.” He begins another round of push-ups, his arm muscles bulging.
“How many of those do you do?”
“Fifty, but I’m working my way up to a hundred.”
“Anyway, I’m only helping with the baby because of all my bad karma. I had to do something to work it off.”
“What are you talking about?”
Anguish sweeps over me, and my eyes burn. Chrissie and the baby almost died and maybe still could. Emily may never speak to me again.
I don’t say anything for a long moment, until Jonathan finally stops his push-ups and lies there staring at me.
Then, I tell him. How selfish I was that night at the Breakers Club. How I persuaded Michael to drive his own car. How I wouldn’t listen to him and left him alone in the stairwell.
“After that, my karma was shot, you know? So I had to make it up. To myself and to Michael.” My chest’s being crushed in a vise, and I blink furiously, lookin
g down so Jonathan can’t see my face.
He gets up and sits on the bed. “Dude, your karma’s fine.”
“No way! How could it be?”
Jonathan’s shaking his head. “You were trying to help him! But no one could have. He was freaking crazy that night!”
“I didn’t help him. I left him. I did something bad and screwed up my karma.”
“Intentions, man. Karma’s all about intentions.” He moves over to a bar mounted inside his bathroom door frame and begins doing pull-ups. “You meant well. That’s like ninety per cent of the battle.”
“It is?”
“Yeah. You’re allowed to make mistakes.” He is pulling himself up and down in smooth controlled movements. “You just … have to have”—he puffs—” the right motivation and … do your best.”
A wisp of something calm and mellow drifts through me. “So I’m not gonna get reincarnated as an invertebrate?”
“Dubious,” he says. He drops from the bar and walks around, shaking out his arms and hands.
I struggle to sit up in the bean bag. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”
“When?”
“When I asked you about bad karma that time?”
Jonathan lies down for ab crunches. “I didn’t know you were asking about yourself! Besides, would you have done anything differently?” He cocks his head at me from his position on the floor.
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s say you hadn’t felt guilty.” He stops talking for a minute, breathing hard. “Would you have blown off Michael’s kid? Would you have just said whatever and let him disappear?”
I think about it, surprising myself with my answer. “No.” I would have done the same thing.
“See, a lotta guys … wouldn’t a done what you did.” He continues to crunch steadily up and down, although he’s really puffing now. “But that’s just … who you are, Ryan.”
“What do you mean – just who I am?”
“I don’t know the exact word for you in Japanese,” he says, in between breaths, “but the English word for you … is mensch.”
“That’s Yiddish, Jonathan.” Yiddish, meaning “a person of integrity and honor.”
