Summer Beach Reads

by Thayer, Nancy

  Carley stroked Vanessa’s hair. Vanessa didn’t seem worried … she seemed drowsy. Fading. Carley noticed, with horror, how much blood had spilled out of Vanessa, how much was still flowing.

  Dr. Fegley was between Vanessa’s legs. “Placenta accreta.”

  “What does that mean?” Carley asked.

  Kiki’s smile was false. Her voice shook. “It means the placenta is abnormally deeply attached to the uterus. Perhaps through the uterus. We can’t get it all out. It’s torn.”

  Dr. Fegley barked, “Get her on blood. Bag her.”

  Roma raced out of the room. Another nurse flew in behind Roma and gently snatched the baby from Vanessa. “Just going to clean him up a bit.”

  In the second Carley looked at the nurse, Vanessa’s eyes had closed and her face had gone slack. The doctor’s hand was fully inside Vanessa’s vagina. Vanessa’s head fell back against the pillow. Dr. Fegley ordered, “Call a code.”

  Roma said to Carley, “You have to leave.”

  “But I’m her—”

  Roma gave Carley a commanding look.

  Kiki said, “Carley. Go.”

  Carley left the room as nurses ran in. More people were rushing down the hall, into Vanessa’s room.

  “Please,” Carley begged at the door, “tell me what’s happening. Will she be okay?”

  “I hope so.” Kiki was white.

  “She’s bleeding too much.”

  “Dr. Fegley knows what’s she’s doing. Look, I’ve got to get back. Wait in the visitors’ lounge. We’ll tell you when we can.”

  Carley stood helplessly in the hall, burning with a need to be in the room, helping Vanessa. She couldn’t go to the visitors’ lounge and read a damned magazine!

  She should call someone, she could call Maud, she should call Maud and Toby! She rushed out of the hospital where cell phones were not allowed and stood in the bright, cold sunshine, punching in Maud’s number. Then she stopped. Was she calling Maud for her own selfish purposes, because she was frightened, because she couldn’t face this alone? Was she being selfish, cowardly? Okay, fine, what if she was? She was frightened! She punched in the number.

  “Maud, something’s wrong with Vanessa. She had the baby, the baby’s fine, but the placenta won’t come out and she’s bleeding too much. They’ve called a code.”

  “Oh, fuck. I’ll call Toby. We’ll be right there.”

  Carley wanted to sink to her knees in the snow. Instead, she looked up at the sky, a clear, cold, heartless blue. “Oh, God, don’t let her die. Please, I’m begging you. Let her live.”

  She hurried back inside, shivering with cold and fear. Perhaps the crisis had passed. Instead of taking the elevator, she flew up the stairs and down the hall. She pulled open the door to Vanessa’s room. All she could see were doctors and nurses and machines and blood.

  “Out!” a nurse yelled, striding toward Carley, and she looked angry as hell.

  The visitors’ lounge was empty. Magazines and a bowl of plastic flowers lay on a table between two vinyl sofas. Carley went to the windows and looked out at the snow-covered landscape. The familiar world was as cold and white as the moon.

  She saw Toby’s Mercedes SUV streak into the parking lot. He jumped out and raced to the door. As a doctor, he could enter Vanessa’s room.

  Maud got out more slowly. Carley left the lounge and went down to meet her in the foyer.

  Maud asked, “Where is she?”

  “Upstairs.”

  They walked up slowly.

  “Which room?”

  “The first one, but it doesn’t matter. They won’t let us in.”

  “How’s the baby?”

  “Perfect. All digits accounted for.”

  “Were you with her when she gave birth?”

  “Yes. I picked her up this morning around eight and brought her to the hospital.”

  Maud studied Carley. “You need something to drink. Coffee or a Coke. A hit of caffeine. Come on, I’ll buy you something.”

  “I’m not thirsty.”

  “You are, you’re just not tuned in to yourself.” Maud put a comforting arm around Carley. “Vanessa’s going to be all right. Stop catastrophizing.”

  “You didn’t see how she looks. All the blood.”

  “Cut it out, you’re being morbid. Vanessa will be just fine. There’s always a lot of blood with childbirth.” Maud fed two dollar bills into the soda machine and pushed a button. The machine clunked and whirred and dropped down a Coke. “Here. Drink this. You look like shit.” She put more bills in and got herself a ginger ale.

  Carley sipped the cold liquid. The sugar and caffeine hit her in a rush. She took a deep breath.

  “Better?”

  “Better.”

  “Don’t you remember,” Maud recalled with a smile, “when I was in labor with Percy, I squeezed John’s arm and said, ‘If you don’t make this pain stop, I’ll bite you as hard as I can.’ ”

  Carley laughed. “But that was labor, Maud. This is different. Her placenta was torn or something, it wouldn’t come out, it wouldn’t detach from the uterus.”

  “Someone will fix it. Stop shaking, you’re giving me the creeps.”

  “God forbid,” Carley snipped. She looked at her watch. “It’s been over thirty minutes.”

  “Finish your drink and we’ll go back.”

  Carley swigged it all down like medicine, and it did give her a burst of energy. “Let’s go.”

  They headed back up the stairs and down the hall into the maternity ward. No one was at the nurses’ station. Everything seemed unearthly quiet.

  Toby came out of Vanessa’s room. He looked at Maud, and then he looked at Carley.

  Carley began to whimper.

  Toby was beside her quickly, reaching out to hold her. Maud was trying to hug her.

  “Ssssh,” Maud soothed, “ssssh, Carley, it will be all right.”

  “No!” Clutching Toby’s jacket in her fist, Carley pleaded, “Toby, please, no.”

  “I’m sorry.” Toby’s face was gray. “We lost her.”

  Maud stumbled backward. “Oh, Toby!”

  “We tried. They did everything they could. They tried to resuscitate her, they did everything right.” He fell against the wall, covering his face with his hands, and gave over to a full-hearted sobbing.

  Carley crumpled to the floor.

  44

  • • • • •

  She woke to find herself lying on a hospital bed. Toby and Maud, their faces tear-streaked, sat in chairs next to her, one on each side.

  “You fainted,” Maud told her.

  “Is Vanessa really dead?”

  Toby’s face made words unnecessary.

  “This is unbelievable.” Slowly Carley sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She felt dizzy.

  “I’m going to call Walker.” Toby put his handkerchief in his pocket and rose.

  “Wait.” Maud put a restraining hand on her husband’s arm. “Who’s Walker?”

  “Vanessa’s lawyer.” Grimacing, he murmured, “She used him for the divorce and rewriting her will.”

  “Her will? How can you think of such a thing right now?” Maud demanded.

  “There’s a child to consider,” Toby reminded her stoically, and left the room.

  Carley stumbled off the bed and over to the sink. She splashed her face with cold water. Oh, Vanessa, how could she be gone?

  When she dried her face, Maud took her arm. “Let’s go back to the visitors’ lounge.”

  Carley allowed herself to be towed down the hall. “Maud, my brain’s stopped.”

  “Mine, too. It’s normal, honey. And I can only imagine how Toby must feel.”

  “Maud—the baby!”

  “Poor little thing.” Maud’s eyes misted over. “Oh, dear God. He has no relatives at all! What’s going to happen to him?”

  Toby approached them as they stood in the corridor. “I phoned Lauren. She’s going to pick up the girls and take them to her house.
Lauren’s offered to keep the girls for dinner, overnight if you want.”

  Carley nodded. “Thank you.”

  Toby continued, “As for the child—”

  Kiki came down the hall, her face reddened from grief. Twisting her hands together, she approached Carley. “I need to tell you something.”

  “All right.”

  Kiki closed her eyes, then quickly blurted, “Vanessa told me that if anything happened to her, she wanted you to take the baby. She left instructions with her lawyer.”

  Maud burst out, “No! I should take him! I have boys! Carley, you have girls!”

  Carley stared at Maud. “Are you kidding? You took Vanessa’s husband! She wouldn’t give you her baby, too!”

  “Vanessa did say Carley,” Kiki insisted, her voice quiet. “You can ask the lawyer.”

  “He’ll be here soon,” Toby said. He put his arm around Maud. “Honey. It’s what Vanessa wanted.”

  “Oh, Vanessa,” Maud cried, and buried her face in her hands and sobbed.

  “We’ll have to check the legalities,” Toby said to Carley. “But I don’t think you have to take the child …”

  “But of course I have to!” Carley cried. “If that’s what Vanessa wanted. And who else could tell him about his mother as well as I can? Poor little boy, little baby, I can give him a good home, he’ll have sisters, he’ll have a community, of course I’ll take him!”

  Maud sputtered, “You sold all your baby furniture at the tag sale.”

  “I’ll use the stuff Vanessa bought,” Carley said. “I’ll have Frame help me move it over. I’ll have to buy bottles and formula, though. Van was going to nurse.”

  “I want to see the baby,” Maud said.

  “You’d both better dry your faces and wash your hands first,” Toby told them.

  Obediently they did as he suggested, then gathered together at the nursery. Only one baby was there, lying in the arms of a nurse who sat in a rocking chair. When she saw them, she came toward them, holding the baby out.

  Carley took him. It was automatic, how her arms formed a safe cradle for the infant, how she snuggled him against her breast and gazed down into his little face.

  “Let me see,” Maud begged.

  Carley pulled back the blanket. The infant was red and wrinkled, with thin creased legs and clenched fists that he waved as he made peeping sounds. He had lots of black hair sticking up in all directions.

  “Vanessa’s hair,” Carley whispered.

  She touched his cheek and the little boy turned his head toward her hand. His blurred gaze seemed to search out her face. She unwrapped more of the baby, and they saw his feet and all his tiny toes.

  “I have to hold him,” Maud pleaded.

  Reluctantly, Carley relinquished the infant into Maud’s arms. “This will be our baby,” Maud told Carley. “Oh, no,” Carley said firmly. “This little boy needs one home, one mother, one family. He belongs to me.” She held out her arms. After a moment, Maud gave him over.

  The infant had gotten cool with the blanket unwrapped. He waved his scrawny arms and legs and wailed in a thin high cry. Carley hurried to wrap the blanket around him. She held him against her chest, warming his little body all up and down, his tiny head pressed sideways against her shoulder. She kept one hand beneath his bum, and one hand roamed between his back and his soft, sweet-smelling, hot little head. This was the secret women knew, the ecstasy, the moment both out of time and connected to all women throughout all eternity. This was the center of the universe, a woman nurturing a mysterious, miraculous new life. Vanessa’s child.

  Tears of joy and grief welled in Carley’s eyes. “I will be such a good mommy to you,” she whispered to the little boy, kissing his head.

  Footsteps sounded down the hall. Harold Walker, Vanessa’s lawyer, approached at an even, almost ceremonial pace. Walker was a portly older man with a bow tie and a Vandyke beard. He wore a Brooks Brothers navy blue pinstriped suit exactly like one Gus had owned, and his thinning hair was combed into neat rows. He carried a slender leather briefcase.

  He stopped and looked at them all. “I offer my condolences,” he announced. “This is a terrible event. Terrible. I was very fond of Vanessa.” For a moment, he choked up and could not continue. “I would rather not continue while standing in the hallway.”

  “We’ll go to the visitors’ lounge,” Toby said. He placed his hand on Maud’s back, ushering her toward the room. Carley followed with the baby in her arms. Harold Walker slowly proceeded behind her, and Kiki, unsure of her status, lingered in the background.

  They stood in the visitors’ lounge in an unofficial circle, not sure whether to stand or sit. Walker decided for them by taking a seat and indicating they should do the same.

  As soon as everyone was seated, Walker cleared his throat. Reaching down, he unsnapped his briefcase and pulled out a heavy file. “I have here the last will and testament of Vanessa Hutchinson. As you know, she had no living relatives. She insisted on making provisions for her child, should she become deceased at any time after his birth. I will read it to you in all its legal language, but I’m sure you need to know the gist of it as soon as possible and so I will tell you. Vanessa Hutchinson, being of sound mind, asked that Carley Winsted become the legal guardian of her child.”

  Maud made a little moan. Carley held the baby tighter against her breast.

  “Furthermore,” Harold Walker intoned in his slow, stately speech, “Vanessa Hutchinson’s assets, including the house and all her monies, are to go to Carley Winsted, to use as she wishes.” His head wobbled slightly as he came to the final announcement. “That should amount to, once the house is sold, a sum of somewhere around two million dollars.”

  It was Kiki who reacted first. “Holy Mother of Angels!” She stood at the door to the visitors’ lounge, half in, half out.

  Harold Walker shot the midwife a stern reproaching glance.

  “Sorry,” Kiki muttered. “But that’s a lot of money.”

  “The baby will be financially taken care of,” Carley murmured, trying to think it through.

  “Please understand,” Harold Walker said, “this money is not left in trust for the child. It is left directly to you. Vanessa had complete faith in your ability to raise her child.”

  “She never talked this over with me,” Carley said. Gently, rhythmically, she rocked the baby, patting his back, aware the motions were comforting her own body, too. “Why didn’t she ever discuss this with me?”

  “She didn’t expect to die,” the lawyer told her with brief practicality. “No one really does. She was wise to make this will. She came into my office only a few weeks ago, saying that she had recently learned how unexpected things happen in life, and she just wanted to be prepared.” Harold Walker’s face sagged as he continued, “She laughed about it. She was so full of life—well, extremely pregnant, but also, vivacious. She didn’t expect to die. No one expected this to happen.”

  From the doorway, Kiki said, “Placenta accreta cannot be diagnosed in advance. It happens to one in every twenty-five hundred births, with a four percent fatality rate.”

  Carley stared at the midwife. The numbers wouldn’t compute for her, and then Maud put her vague thoughts into words.

  “In Vanessa’s case, it was a one hundred percent fatality rate, and that’s what matters to us.” Her voice cracked as she spoke.

  “At some time in the near future,” Harold Walker said to Carley, “you will have to come in for a formal reading of the will, and to sign some paperwork. At present, I will take it upon myself to find the head of social services here at the hospital so that you can legally take the baby home with you. When you’re ready, of course.”

  “He’ll be fine in the hospital,” Kiki rushed to assure them.

  Carley brought the baby back against her body. He was awake, nuzzling. “I need to speak with the nurses about feeding him.”

  “Carley,” Toby suggested, “why don’t you let the nurses have the baby just for a w
hile.” Toby put a gentle hand on her arm. “Carley, I think you and I will have to be in charge of the funeral.”

  “The funeral.” The word slashed her heart in half. “But it’s so soon!” Carley protested. “Maybe—don’t we—Vanessa—”

  The lawyer said, “She left no instructions about her funeral.”

  “But aren’t we rushing things?” A confusion of fears collapsed in Carley’s chest, sending splinters of pain into her heart.

  “Honey,” Kiki said softly, “Vanessa’s gone. We can’t bring her back.”

  Toby said, “Carley, let’s give the baby to the nurses, and I’ll take you in to see Vanessa one last time.”

  It was not Vanessa who lay so still in the hospital room, a sheet covering her face. Vanessa, Carley’s Vanessa, could never lie so still. The lustrous dark eyes were closed, the creamy skin was already slack, the body unresponsive as Carley bent over to embrace her friend one last time.

  But surely all that had been Vanessa was not only flesh and could not be destroyed so easily. Perhaps Vanessa was somewhere nearby, invisible, spiritual, ethereal. Carley whispered to this Vanessa, promising to take care of her baby, to teach him who his mother was, to surround him with his mother’s love. She bent over the bed, pressing her warm body against her friend.

  “Carley.” Toby touched her back. “We have to leave her.”

  Carley kissed Vanessa good-bye.

  Maud, Kiki, and Harold Walker sat in silence in the visitors’ lounge. Carley saw the exhaustion and strain on their faces and knew it reflected her own. The thought of the sweet new baby pulled on Carley’s instincts like a drug, but she knew she had to attend to the past before she could go into the future. Yet, she was so extremely tired.

  Maud’s face drooped bleakly, as if she’d lost weight in the past few hours, and Carley knew that even though Maud had taken Vanessa’s husband, still, Maud had loved Vanessa. Not as much as she loved Toby, true, but still, she had loved Vanessa.

  Carley dropped down onto one of the ugly green vinyl chairs. She didn’t think she had the energy to stand. “Maud,” she said, “would you help us, please? With the funeral?”