Unsung Lullaby

by Josi S. Kilpack

  The blessing had also promised her children. Though she knew now that they wouldn’t be her own, the Lord had made her a promise. She had to find a way to have faith in it—that despite her doubts and her failed expectations, the promise made to her in the blessing would bring her the joy and peace she’d been seeking. She wished she felt better prepared. Everything was different now. They would have to make peace with adoption—somehow. She didn’t know where to start and couldn’t imagine that her feelings could change enough that adoption would ever feel right.

  The ringing phone startled her, shaking her out of her thoughts. Rather than letting it ring, like she wanted to, she picked it up and placed it to her ear.

  “Maddie?” the voice asked after she said hello. “It’s Dr. Lawrence. I wanted to call and see how you’re doing.”

  Maddie pushed herself up on her elbow, wincing only slightly. “I’m okay,” she said, but her tone wasn’t convincing even to herself.

  “Somehow I doubt that,” he said. “And I know I can’t make things better, but I wondered if you had any questions I could answer. If there was anything I could do.”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to say no, but she stopped herself. “There are a few things,” she said, willing the tears to stay back and forcing herself to move forward. “I’d like to know what happened.”

  For the next ten minutes Dr. Lawrence explained everything, filling her in on all the details. She listened intently, asking questions here and there—letting things sink in.

  “I want your honest opinion,” she said when he finished. “If we’d have waited for you, is there even the slightest chance it could have been different? Those doctors weren’t specialists; they weren’t trained like you; they didn’t know me or my history. They pushed everything through so fast. I can’t help but think you could have at least left me the ovary. Then it could have been grafted into the tube on the other side.”

  “If you had waited, you would likely have bled to death, or had blood poisoning from all the internal bleeding—possibly a stroke. The pregnancy likely ruptured before you’d even left for the hospital. The rupture was at the top of the tube, right near the ovary itself, which is why the ovary couldn’t be saved. I spoke to the surgeon, who is a specialist, and he explained the details. I promise I could have done nothing beyond what they did, and I’m certainly glad I didn’t have to explain to Matt why his wife was facing death due to the extra wait.”

  “It was that serious?” Maddie asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “It was. We live in a modern world, but women still die from ectopic pregnancies. Those who don’t die face the same outcome you did. It’s devastating, but at least they live to tell about it.”

  “But most started with two ovaries,” she pointed out. “They don’t hit a dead end like I did.”

  “That’s true,” Dr. Lawrence agreed.

  The simple acknowledgment that he understood softened her, and Maddie started crying—again.

  “Are you ready to discuss options?” Dr. Lawrence asked a few moments later.

  Maddie groaned and wiped at her eyes. “Didn’t you just tell me I didn’t have any?”

  Dr. Lawrence laughed. “I never said that. I’ve got two minutes until my next appointment needs me—I’ll give you a crash course, and we can discuss it at length when I see you for your post-op appointment next week.”

  “Okay,” Maddie said with a sigh, exhausted by the conversation already. “But I don’t think I can take much more than two minutes.”

  ****

  Matt stopped to grab a pizza on the way home. His mom and mother-in-law, as well as some ward members, had provided meals for the last week, but Matt was in charge of dinner tonight. That meant they were having pizza.

  Maddie’s favorite pizza parlor was next door to a floral shop, so he ducked in while the pizza was cooking. When he walked into the apartment with a pizza in one hand and a bouquet of lilies in the other, Maddie was on the living-room couch. As it had all week, his stomach dropped a little upon seeing her, and yet he felt such a yearning to be with her. The secret paternity test was always at the front of his mind, yet he accepted that there was no solution. If the test came back negative, he might be able to put it behind him then.

  She smiled at him, and he wanted to take a picture. It had been so long since he’d seen her smile, even a small, sad one like this.

  “Hi,” he said, “I brought dinner home.”

  “And flowers,” she pointed out.

  Matt smiled. “Yeah, and flowers.”

  “They’re beautiful,” she said, smiling again and stopping his heart with the softness he saw on her face. The hope bubbling in his chest was powerful. He put the flowers in water and then came to sit on the other side of the couch. He turned to face her. “How are you feeling?”

  She shrugged, slowly turning so she was leaning against the arm of the couch. “Dr. Lawrence called,” she said, looking up at him. “He explained everything to me, how the outcome was inevitable.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Matt whispered.

  “I am too,” she said, tears in her eyes again. She sighed in frustration and wiped at them. “He was determined to tell me what our options were,” she continued.

  Matt furrowed his brow. Options? They had options?

  “I still have a uterus, and I can take daily hormones and have a donor egg implanted. I’d have to have those horrible shots every day and get tested three times a week through the pregnancy, if it takes. But he said it might work.”

  “Really?” Matt said, trying to stifle his excitement.

  “Yeah, but it costs over twenty-five thousand dollars, and since the other IVFs didn’t work, there is no way of knowing if this would either—in fact it probably wouldn’t.”

  “Oh,” Matt said, glad he hadn’t given in to the hopefulness. “What do you think about it?”

  “I think I’m done,” Maddie said as she let out a breath. Her chin shook, showing how hard it was for her to say these things aloud. “I thought about it all afternoon, and I’m tired of living on hope, or for hope, or in hope of hope. It’s hard for me to say this, but it’s just a tiny relief not to wonder anymore. No more counting days in my cycles, no more carefully calendared sex, no more wondering and worrying and stressing and hoping for it anymore. I can’t imagine spending another six months saving up for something with so little promise. I feel like everything is telling us to give it up.” Her chin trembled, but she tried her best to hold back the tears.

  Matt bit back the argument. He wanted to say that at least the baby would be his, and it would grow inside her, but shattering the veil of relief on her face was too much risk for him to take right now. He nodded and felt the last tendrils of hope seep away from him. “And the other options you discussed with him?”

  “Surrogacy and adoption.”

  “Surrogacy—when another woman carries the baby?”

  “It would be your sperm, her egg, we pay all the expenses, and I adopt the baby after it’s born. It’s not legal in Utah, though. We’d have to go out of state, and it’s even more expensive than the donor egg situation.”

  “I can’t imagine another woman carrying my baby,” he said, and then almost choked on the words.

  “Yeah, I’m not sure I could handle that,” Maddie said with a nod.

  “Which leaves us with . . . ?”

  “Adoption.”

  The word hung heavy in the air. Too heavy. Matt didn’t respond. He should be ready to discuss this, but he wasn’t.

  “But I think we need to take it slow,” Maddie added. She ran a hand through her hair. “It’s going to take time for us to get used to the idea. Dr. Lawrence suggested we get some books, read up on it for the next few months. He gave me some titles to check into.”

  Matt nodded. He wanted to feel different, but adoption still seemed second-rate—yet he felt guilty for that, too. A child was a child, wasn’t it? Wasn’t any baby a child of God? Shouldn’t he be grateful enough to ha
ve a family to forget his hesitation?

  “Anyway,” Maddie said with a smile, “it was good to talk to him. Kind of like closure, I guess.”

  Matt leaned forward and took her hands, resting his forearms on her knees. “I’m just so sorry, Maddie,” he whispered, unable to keep the quake out of his voice. It was hard to see her give up the fight, to know he had no choice but to give it up too. But he could feel the finality, the necessary abandonment of all those dreams.

  “Me too,” Maddie whispered, and her voice was shaking like his. She put her legs down, and he pulled her into an embrace. Within a few moments he could feel the wetness from her tears through the dress shirt he’d worn to work. It wasn’t the angry, rage-filled crying from the hospital, but a cleansing grief—the kind of tears people shed when they have accepted a loss but still mourn the “what could have been.” He pulled her closer and felt his own tears fall. There was a certain eagerness to enjoy this closeness now, knowing the clock could be ticking on just how long he would have it. A week had passed since he had taken the paternity test. That meant there were only two weeks left before the official result.

  If the test was positive, he’d have to tell her, and it would be horrible. But if the test came back negative, he had all but convinced himself never to tell her. He kissed the top of her head.

  “I love you, Maddie,” he said into her hair.

  “I love you too,” she said with a sniffle. They sat in silence, enjoying what they did have—each other.

  Chapter 16

  I don’t care about all the legal stuff, I just want my money. It’s been weeks!” Sonja yelled into the pay phone in Gallup. She’d just finished her shift at The Hogan café, where she’d been working for two weeks. She had her first paycheck in her pocket, but it wasn’t enough to pay the bills, and the tips were paltry. Though many Navajo managed to survive on very little money, she wasn’t about to try to live off the land, nor did she have—or want, for that matter—family and clan support like some natives did. Her mother had lived away from the Reservation for many years and had four children with four fathers, only two of whom were Navajo. The traditional family unit had become broken while she was away. If not for the free housing, her mother never would have come back to the Rez—that was why Sonja had come back after her divorce as well. She looked forward to a day when she could leave it for good. But that meant money—and she needed more of it.

  “The samples are at the lab, but it will be a couple more weeks. If the putative father disputes it in court, then it could be months. I told you it would take time.”

  “Putative father? What does that mean?” Sonja asked. She hated all these long words. They made her feel stupid.

  “The putative father is the man we prove to be the biological father, but who hasn’t yet been deemed as the legal father. Because Garrett Hudson was married to you and signed the birth certificate, he is still the legal father until we prove someone else to take his place. I do have good news, though,” she continued. “We were able to track down Garrett in Montana, and he agreed to voluntarily relinquish his rights as legal father. That will ensure that the process is much smoother than if we had to prove it without him.”

  Sonja didn’t care about finding Garrett—that was their job. “I really need the money,” Sonja said. Even though she remembered the caseworker telling her these same timelines at the beginning, she’d assumed it was an exaggeration. In this day and age it seemed ridiculous that it could take weeks to determine who the real father was.

  “I’m sorry,” the caseworker said. “I’ll let you know as soon as we find out.”

  “Fine,” Sonja said as she slammed the phone down. She went to the old, beat-up truck and drove to the closest bar. A man—Hispanic, she thought—bought her a drink. She raised her chin and crossed one long leg over the other. He smiled back and moved closer. The day took a turn for the better.

  Chapter 17

  Wednesday afternoon, ten days after the surgery and a week since getting home from the hospital, Maddie sighed in frustration when yet another talk show came on the TV. She hadn’t watched daytime TV in years and found it vastly unsatisfying. She lay back on the couch but knew she wasn’t going to fall asleep. The last few days had her feeling a lot better—she had turned the corner everyone kept talking about, at least physically. Emotionally she still felt like she had tumbled off a cliff and was stuck in perpetual freefall.

  She’d gone online to find some books on adoption last week but couldn’t bring herself to buy anything. If she bought them, she’d have to read them, and that was an overwhelming prospect. Dr. Lawrence had told her to take her time, get comfortable with each step, and she felt it was good advice. Matt hadn’t said another word about it since their initial conversation on Monday, but she was grateful he’d at least accepted the idea. It was their best option. Her eyes moved to the lilies he’d brought home the other night, and she smiled. Matt had been very attentive, and his care was helping a great deal. Being cherished and having continual reminders that he loved her made things a little less painful.

  The sound of a key in the lock startled her until Kim poked her head inside. “Hey,” she said, finding Maddie with her eyes and smiling as she entered with a grocery bag in each hand. “I borrowed your mom’s key so I didn’t have to make you get up if you were sleeping.”

  “I’m supposed to be on my own these days,” Maddie reminded her friend, but she wasn’t the least bit bothered.

  “Yeah, well. I needed an excuse to stop in. Didn’t want you starving to death.”

  Maddie smiled. “Thanks,” she said. “Where’s Lexie?”

  “At my mom’s,” Kim said, then, as if anxious not to talk about children, she changed the subject, though her very pregnant belly was impossible to ignore. “How are you feeling today?”

  “Good,” Maddie said. “I’m getting around better. I even did the dishes last night.”

  “I guess it has been a week and a half.”

  “Yeah,” Maddie said, refusing to dwell on the self-pity filling her heart. A week and a half ago she was planning paint for a nursery. She’d already decided to stop feeling so sorry for herself—still, it was hard.

  Kim stayed for over an hour. She did some laundry and fixed dinner, but they also talked, and even though Maddie cried a little bit, she didn’t get into the anger and bitterness. She was tired of burdening everyone with her feelings, and she did want to heal from this. Dinner was in the Crock-Pot as Kim put her jacket back on and tried to zip it up. Her belly was too big, and she sent an embarrassed look in Maddie’s direction before giving up. She was due in just over a month, but had delivered early with her other babies. Maddie looked away and tried to push the jealousy from her mind.

  “Oh, I forgot the last load of laundry,” Kim said as she started shrugging out of her jacket again.

  “I can get it,” Maddie said, already standing. It had been a welcome gift to have Kim, her mom, and Matt’s mom popping in to help her out, but she wanted to reclaim her independence.

  “It just needs to be folded,” Kim said, fiddling with the zipper again. “You sit. I can get it if you’re sure you’re up to that.”

  “I’m up to it,” Maddie said with a nod as she sat back down. In fact, she was much too excited about having something to do. Kim disappeared down the hall and returned with a basket of warm laundry just removed from the dryer. She placed it on the couch and handed a paper to Maddie.

  “I found this in the pocket of Matt’s jeans. It looked like it might be important—but I threw away the candy wrappers.”

  Maddie took the paper and chuckled. “I wish I had a nickel for every time I told him to throw the wrappers away rather than shoving them in his pockets all the time.”

  “After four years you might want to give up.”

  “Yeah, I’m considering that.” She looked up at Kim and smiled. “Thanks for coming today. I appreciate the help.”

  “You look good—and you sound really good. I’
m glad.”

  Maddie shrugged. “I said I wanted a new story, didn’t I?”

  “I don’t think this is what you meant.” Kim sat down across from Maddie, the movement awkward due to her size. Apparently she wasn’t leaving yet.

  “It wasn’t,” Maddie said, shaking her head. “But the blessing Allen gave me in the hospital has stayed with me. I will have children. I’ve been told that before, but now I realize just how much promise it is. It’s been a lifeline—even if I can’t make myself look into it yet. At least I know it’s there. It’s something to work for. I can do this.”

  “I know you can,” Kim said. “And how is Matt doing?”

  “He seems okay,” Maddie said. “I know he’s sad and disappointed, but it’s hard to fault him. We’re talking about things and enjoying one another’s company. That’s enough for now.”

  Kim smiled and stood up, bending down for a final hug before reminding Maddie to call if she needed anything. Once she left, Maddie turned the TV back on and started folding the laundry.

  When she finished folding, she took the basket, ever so slowly, to the master bedroom and put the clothes away. It took nearly fifteen minutes to complete the chore, but at least she was doing something. Only when she returned to the couch did she see the paper Kim had handed her earlier.

  Whatever it was had been crumpled at some point, and it seemed that Kim had flattened it out and folded it. Maddie opened it up and discovered it was a medical form of some kind. Odd, she thought when she read Matt’s name at the top. She was the one with an inch-thick folder of medical forms.

  She inspected the paper, noticing that it was from a lab company she’d never heard of. The office was downtown and the form was dated last week. She couldn’t recall him mentioning anything. Would he tell her if he was sick? Or would he not want to worry her? Either way, she didn’t like being in the dark. The test type was a PATB4592, whatever that meant.

  She stretched out on the couch and placed the paper on the coffee table as fatigue overcame her. Her belly was beginning to ache, telling her she’d done enough for the day. She would ask Matt about the paper when he got home.