Lying there with my eyes shut, waiting for my turn to go upstairs, I listened to her explain her version of the story.
She told what she’d heard through the door, explaining she’d been in the other room listening until the first couple of gun shots. Then when she came out and found Mack, she called 911. She stayed with him, holding pressure on his wound until help arrived.
She didn’t go into what she was doing on the other side of the door, which I knew would come out eventually. Just as details would like, What was a large bore needle and syringe doing hanging out of the chest of the dead guy down the hall? The syringe with my finger prints all over it.
At least Carl had had the decency to leave his generous paw prints on my throat. It would make the inevitable explanation a bit smoother.
But that would have to wait. It was my turn to go, and several nice fellows gracefully lifted me onto a stretcher and took me to the ER.
Man, I hoped while I was up there the scary head nurse didn’t find out what’d I’d done with the syringe of potassium Vincent was waiting for.
Chapter 47
The bullet that hit Mack went through his abdomen, tearing up his bowel but missing his other organs. He was in surgery about five hours for repair, and got an appendectomy as a free bonus.
Lots of antibiotics, rest, and VIP treatment, and after a week, he got to go home.
I was in only half that time. Cuts on my hands from climbing the gate were getting better and my ribs were starting to hurt less. I was going to need some physical therapy and a brace for my knee. I’d see an orthopedist to make sure I didn’t need knee arthroscopy, but that could wait until after the baby.
Yes, the baby. He weathered the ordeal well enough. No bleeding, no contractions. An ultrasound showed everything looked normal, and if I took it easy, my OB told me she could think of no reason why I couldn’t continue with a healthy, normal pregnancy.
Maybe she couldn’t think of a reason, but I certainly could.
Even though Carl was gone, his legacy lived on. Both in the way of his offspring inside of me, and the consequences of his insanity. Not only I had this to live with, but Sheila, too, had her nightmare to live through.
Somehow, she’d conceived from that reckless night and was expecting twins. God only knew how it could have happened. By ultrasound, she appeared to be carrying a girl and a boy. Another Zoe and another Jack. And she was determined to have Carl’s children. Go figure. She really must have cared about him.
We tried to keep the information from Jackie about Sheila’s conception. Mack wanted to protect her from the pain. I didn’t want to deal with her at all. But within a few months, as the investigation took shape and indictments were in the works, things began to leak into the news.
Lieutenant Fosdick had found the scary, hairy guy. The scary, hairy guy, who was no longer scary or hairy, but instead a not-so-terrible looking Jerry fellow, worked part-time in Medical Records. I’d even seen him and talked to him on a few occasions. Creepy.
Fosdick found him by tracking some carpet fiber found on Charlotte’s clothing to an apartment complex which had had some renovations in the last year. When he found out one of the tenants of the complex worked at the hospital where the kidnapped babies were returned, he dug deeper.
The guy had also known Carl. Three years before, he’d done some handyman work for Carl at his house. Carl had hired him to repair his garage door, build some shelves, and work in his yard. Stuff like that.
Little did anyone know that he’d hired him for his more dirty work too. He must have acted as Carl’s henchman, killing Howard and Charlotte, and then almost Anna, while trying to get Charlotte. The only thing that made no sense was why Carl had him kill Charlotte. The best Fosdick could figure was that is was unintentional. The autopsy showed that the head injury which killed her could have been an accident, a one-time fall. Maybe when Anna was shot, something happened. Or in the quick get-away. We may never know. And the scary-hairy-guy turned clean-cut-evil-guy wasn’t talking. And even though police found the missing coffee mug in his apartment and phone records showed he’d called my place on the days I was threatened, he pled not guilty and his attorney wouldn’t let him say a word.
While all that was going on, Sheila and I were growing in our pregnancies. Mack finally decided to put me on some steroids, but wouldn’t let me take anything else. Sheila convinced her OB to put her on some of the drugs Nikki had taken, but he wouldn’t do all of it. The OB didn’t believe most of her story anyway.
I was further along than Sheila in gestation, but she grew so fast, she caught up with me in size within a few months. I figured it was the twin thing. But that couldn’t explain her gargantuan girth after a while.
She grew so huge, in fact, that her doctor became concerned and ordered another ultrasound.
It was spooky what they found. The two babies were behemoths for their age. And they found multiple congenital anomalies in both of them. This experiment was going terribly wrong. Too bad Carl was gone and couldn’t see what he’d accomplished. Everything that could happen to clones—except for the merciful miscarriage—was happening to Sheila’s babies.
Before she had a chance to let the news sink in, she went into preterm labor. I was working when she came into the unit. Even though Carl’s termination of my position was reversed, I was only picking up a shift here and there, trying to keep my seniority in the unit. But after the night Sheila delivered, I didn’t think I could ever go back again.
When her babies were born, they were only twenty-two weeks, but they were over eight pounds each. They were huge, like babes of diabetic moms, all fat and swollen, where you could barely see their faces.
Which wasn’t all bad, because their features were so grossly malformed, it was frightening. Nothing was where it was supposed to be. The girl had a cleft palate, but it went well beyond her mouth. The boy, well, was even worse.
They were such tragic little people, we all cried in that delivery room as we worked with those poor babies.
Neither one lived long. Even had they been perfectly formed, their chances were slim to none at that early gestation. But with their anomalies, they didn’t have a chance.
I had the girl. Another nurse, Shaquana, took the boy. We swaddled them in blankets and offered them to Sheila to hold.
She couldn’t take it for long. Sobbing, she kissed them, each one on a hand, and begged me to take them away. We went to an empty room nearby and held them, keeping them warm and as comfortable as possible with O2 blowing past their faces to help ease their distress. I stroked the cheek of the girl, hoping to give her comfort and security, while Shaquana hummed a beautiful lullaby from the Mississippi Bayou she said her grandma used to sing to her.
They died in less than thirty minutes. Their undeveloped lungs couldn’t sustain them. More sadness than I ever wanted to see.
And I couldn’t help thinking of my own baby. I’d at least gotten used to the idea of being pregnant, but it was still an effort to accept what kind of baby grew inside me. I tried my best to bear up under my circumstances, to keep a good attitude. The fact that Mack was a blood relative of the baby went a long way to help me cope.
By then I was into my third trimester. I’d had two more ultrasounds since that first one. Everything looked fine. Still I couldn’t help but wonder what might be lurking in there that couldn’t be seen.
Sheila had stayed on the meds even more religiously than I had. It made no sense that her pregnancy would go so awry and mine would continue on, unremarkable.
Mack wanted me to have additional ultrasounds, but I couldn’t. I refused. I didn’t want to know any more, not after what befell Sheila. I’d deal with what happened when it happened. Nikki had been blissfully unaware of the possible problems she could have had with Charlotte. Oh, how I wished I could have been the same.
Anna was home by then. She’d been in a rehab center for five months, then finally got discharged home with visiting therapists coming out to
see her four times a week.
Her speech was coming back and she was walking with a walker. The day we had to tell her about Charlotte was a sad day, but Anna had long since sensed the truth. She said she’d known from the first time she gained consciousness and awareness. Her most intense grief, she said, burned in her heart as she lay in her hospital bed, unable to communicate.
Joe was still at her side, dedicated as ever to his beloved wife. He repeatedly described to her the beautiful memorial service he’d had for their daughter, and it seemed to bring them both comfort to talk about it.
Jackie never did move out of Mack’s place. It was easy for her to stay during his recovery. Mack certainly wasn’t thinking about how Jackie was invading our space. And I didn’t have the strength to oppose her influence over her brother. I couldn’t muster the courage myself to suggest she move out, so I just continued to live in my little apartment with my kitty at my side, my television and DVD player to entertain us, and my overhead power lines thrumming along to the low-key rhythm of our lives. I didn’t want any more conflict.
Now I understood Ollie better. I needed consistency too.
When we did finally tie the knot, it was March and I was thirty-six weeks pregnant. Mack moved in with me, surrendering his condo to Jackie. We had a small ceremony at Uncle Howard’s church on an overcast Saturday afternoon. Charge Sarge and two of her church friends decorated the front of the sanctuary with gardenias, making a beautiful arch of flowers for us to stand beneath, and a bouquet for me to hold. They even made us a cake. Howard’s pastor married us, and a string trio hired from DePaul University played the music. It was just lovely, and all twenty-three guests said so.
Except Jackie, that is. She didn’t seem too happy. But that’s Jackie.
We decided to wait until after the baby was born to go on a honeymoon. I was so uncomfortable by the wedding that it depressed me to think I’d have to use up our special time together while I felt dumpy and hormonal. It was hard enough getting married looking like a giant ivory eggplant. I wanted to delay the honeymoon for a time when I could feel confident and pretty, not hide my big bloated eggplant body in some flannel nightgown the size of Texas.
Just two weeks after we were married, we were lying in bed, Mack curled around me. That is, curled as much as anyone can curl around another whose greatest feat is masquerading as an enormous member of the vegetable family. The baby began jumping and thumping beneath Mack’s arms wrapped around my belly. At least trying to wrap around. He’d have to have King Kong arms to encircle that mountain.
“I think he must be protesting our lovemaking,” Mack said with a chuckle. “Already trying to monopolize his mommy.”
“I guess you’ll just have to get used to it.”
“Heartless. You’ve no regard for me.”
“And he’ll just have to get used to sharing me with you.”
“That’s better.”
“There’s plenty of me to go around. And around and around.” I looked down at my huge belly. I couldn’t even see my kneecaps. About a mile down the bed, I might have seen distant little puffy apparitions called toes. Then I looked at my belly again.
“Hey, look at that.”
“What?” Mack said.
“This,” and I put his palm against my belly.
“So?” He didn’t get it.
“Feel how hard it is?”
“Abs of steel. You know it.”
“It’s a contraction, silly. My uterus is as hard as a rock.”
“Did I cause that? I mean, you know?”
“Maybe. Probably, you love machine.”
“You won’t tell Dr. Chen what we did, will you?”
“Everyone will know. Anyone in OB can tell when you did it last. How. Where. Everything.”
He moaned.
“I’m joking.”
He didn’t think it was a funny joke.
“That’s a little personal,” he said. “I’d rather the whole world didn’t know I’m so lecherous I can’t keep my hands off my eight-and-a-half-month pregnant wife.”
“Don’t worry. When I tell my girlfriends about it, they’ll just think you’re insatiable.”
He sat up for that one.
“I’m joking again. I won’t kiss and tell.”
“Your hormones have destroyed your humor. You haven’t been funny for weeks.”
Then I sat up. Fast.
“I’m kidding,” he said trying to ease me back down.
“Oh, gosh!”
“Really, I didn’t mean it. You’re still funny.” He was looking at the terrible face I was making at him. “What’s wrong?”
“Either I just lost bladder control for the first time in over thirty years, or my water broke.”
“Ah, geez,” he said with disgust and a screwed up face.
“I can’t help it,” I whined. “It’s normal.”
“Ha. Gotcha.” He gave me a peck. “Why don’t you get ready, and I’ll take you to the hospital.”
“Good idea. I’ll be able to tell all my friends how you made such violent love to me, you ruptured my bag of water.”
“Pleeease,” he beseeched me, “don’t tell a soul. They’ll think I’m a louse.”
“Don’t worry. We’re newlyweds. They’ll understand.”
The look on his face was priceless. I left him there to wonder if I meant it while he changed the sheets and I got ready to go to the hospital.
Chapter 48
I don’t know what ever got in my head to think I could have a baby. Yes, I’d seen it done a bazillion times, but that was different. Those were strangers. This was me. I was now the one lying in a bed trying to squeeze a watermelon through the baby bootie.
There I lay, a typical Failure to Progress, and the lucky winner of the infamous Pitocin Induction.
I sure as hell was never doing this again. Nor would I ever subject one of my future patients to Pit. If they couldn’t get their babies out on their own, I’d send them home and tell them to get used to being pregnant. That had to be far better than being induced.
The Pitocin took a while to become effective for my uncooperative uterus, but when it finally did, ohmigod. And I thought broken ribs and a messed-up knee were wicked. Who knew? Every nerve in my body was on fire. If anyone touched me, I wanted to belt them. I needed to be left alone. I needed to be taken care of. I needed this baby to be out of me. I needed Chapstick. I needed a drink. I need the window opened. No, closed. I needed to die. I need a better epidural!
Poor Mack. He needed to know how to read my mind. He couldn’t predict how I’d react to anything.
“Do you want another ice chip?” he asked meekly. His shoulders were a little slumped. Since being shot, when he got tired, it showed in his posture.
“No,” I said.
“Can I do anything for you?”
“No,” I snapped.
“Would you like the pillow up high—”
“No!”
“Okay. Let me know if—”
“For crying out loud, Mack. No. Leave me alone a minute!”
He backed off and sat down, rubbing his face.
Then a contraction came on so hard, I thought I’d split in two.
“Maaaaaaack!”
He jumped out of his chair and shot to my side. “I’m here, Bright Eyes.”
I grabbed a handful of his thick blue T-shirt and pulled him into me as if I were Arnold Schwarzenegger. Then I crushed his hand in mine.
“Don’t you leave me like that,” I screeched.
Good thing he was in research and not a surgeon, because I’m certain pulverizing his hand in my vise grip gave him permanent nerve damage.
And a good thing he was smart. It didn’t take him long to peel my rigid fingers, one at a time like a banana peel, from his hand and move them onto the handlebars on the bed. Then he straightened out his wadded shirt and pulled it back down over the belt in his Levi’s.
During the contraction, my nurse—some new chick I’d n
ever seen before—did an exam and told me I was fully dilated and I could start pushing now.
And to think that at one time I’d had the audacity to believe I had the right to tell a woman when and if she could push yet.
You’re darn tootin’ I’m going to push now, nursie girl!
How something could at the same time be so necessary, compulsory, unavoidable, yet so excruciating and insufferable, was beyond me.
I pushed. And pushed. And pushed some more.
I pushed so hard, I nearly popped my eyes right out of my skull.
The dang thing didn’t want to come out. My gown was sweat-soaked and plastered to my drenched skin. My hair was slicked against my head. I stood for a time clinging onto the squatting bar. Then when my legs were too rubbery to hold me up anymore, I wilted back down and worked from there again. I even tried it on all fours for a while.
By the time I’d been pushing for nearly two hours, I was crying, exhausted, discouraged, and ready to quit and go home.
“Mack, he won’t come out. I can’t do it. I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. You can do it. I know you can.”
“Don’t you tell me I can when I just told you I can’t! I can’t!”
In spite of those occasional little outbursts, he was so patient. But I knew he had to be wondering by then if I really could or not. When I pushed, his face would tense up and he’d push right along with me. The annoying girl pretending to be my nurse was doing it too. Everyone who came into my room seemed to stop and watch and push along with me, cheer me on, tell me I could do it, great job, keep it up, almost there.
Right. You try it, I wanted to scream at them. Sometimes, I think I did.
I have to admit, there were some moments I actually thought I could do it, and that I might live through it and even get a baby out of it. Then I’d go into morbid-mode and know there was no way on God’s green earth I was going to birth this kid or survive. Then I’d bounce back and say Yes I can!
And then I just plain got stuck in morbid-mode.
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