Every Second With You (26 page)

I love her. “I love you, little girl,” I say, the first words she hears from her dad. “And your mom does, too.”

When I glance up, with a tear streaking down my cheek, the nurse is still here, a grave look etched on her sturdy features.

And I know too—in the blink of an eye—that something’s wrong with Harley.

“How is my wife?” The question tastes like stones in my mouth.

“It was a very rough delivery. Her liver nearly ruptured, and she’s lost a lot of blood, and she’ll likely need a transfusion.”

“Do you . . . do you need some?” I hold out an arm, as if she’s going to stick a needle in me and take whatever she needs for Harley.

She flashes a brief, but kind smile. “We have some.” Then she sighs. “But I want to let you know she had a seizure during the delivery.”

I stumble against the wall, clutching the baby tight as my back hits the bricks, and I sink to the floor.

“A seizure?”

The nurse bends down. “It happens with HELLP,” she says trying to reassure me, but there is nothing reassuring about a seizure. “The doctors are working on her now. They’ve dealt with this before. She’s in good hands.”

“Is she going to be okay? Is she going to live?” I choke out.

“We’re doing everything we can.”

* * *

But they don’t know if everything is enough. How can anyone know? Nobody can. One minute you are here, the next minute, gone.

One moment you are unborn; the next you are loved.

Life is strong, and life is fragile. It is beauty, and it is pain. I have both, so unbearably close to each other right now that it feels like a cruel game that some wicked master puppeteer is orchestrating.

Not once, not even in the overactive far corners of my mind, did it occur to me that I could lose Harley. I only ever believed I could lose a baby. That’s all I ever worried about. That was the fear I had to face every day, the fear I had to learn to live with every second. But never, in all those moments of staring that fear in the face, of walking past it and through it and by it and over it, did it ever dawn on me that I could have my child safely in this world, healthy and whole, and with a strong beating heart, all while Harley lies bleeding out, unconscious on a hospital table somewhere nearby, and I am helpless to do anything.

But click.

The nurse takes the baby back to the nursery for monitoring, and I pace the halls, hunting out more info. I can’t stop looking at site after site, and I don’t know why I’m doing this, sticking my finger in the fire and letting it burn. I can’t turn away, even when I start watching a video on my phone of a young father who lost his wife to HELLP. When his voice starts to break, and he lowers his head to his baby, I hit stop.

I can’t take it anymore. I can’t watch another second. I turn off my phone, and jam it into my pocket. Now my head is cluttered with facts that have done nothing to change my reality, or Harley’s. I return to the nursery to hold my child.

I cling to my daughter, clutching her in my arms so tightly. She is my anchor. She is rooting me to this earth. Without her, I’m sure I’d fall off the planet, tumble into the void of space. I reach for her hand, small and precious, and she grasps my finger instinctively, and we hold onto each other.

One half of me is singing; the other is caving in. I am empty without Harley, and I am flooded with happiness for the six pounds of joy in my arms.

Soon, Debbie and Robert find us, and sit with the baby and me. Tears flow down their cheeks too, for the new life, for their granddaughter, for everything that is lost and found at the same terrible time.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Trey

The minutes tick by, knitting themselves into an hour, and the nurse threads her way over to me in the far corner of the nursery. She tells me two things.

One, Harley’s having a blood transfusion now.

Two, she also thinks I ought to feed the baby.

Life hangs in the balance, and yet daily needs must be met.

The nurse gives me a bottle, and I feed my hungry child for the first time, and the four of us wait and wait and wait. Only the baby is immune. She sucks down the formula as if it’s all that matters in the world, her tiny lips curved around the bottle tip.

I watch her the whole time, the way she’s so focused on one thing only—eating. She’s determined to fill her belly. When she finishes, she pushes the bottle away with her lips, closing her mouth, content with the meal inside her. And still, there is no Harley. No news. No reports. Only other doctors, other nurses, other parents roaming the nursery.

Then, someone clears her throat. The doctor is in the house, but not the baby-faced guy. This doctor is older, with lines on her face, and dark blue eyes that have seen more than I want to know. I stand up, and give the baby to the nurse. My hands are shaky, and my legs are jelly. I follow the doctor into the hall, Debbie and Robert close behind.

“What’s going on?”

“I’m Doctor Strickland, the surgeon who took care of your wife.”

Took care.

That’s good, right?

I try to form words, to ask how she is, to ask
if
she is. But the doctor is faster than me. “She’s out of surgery, and in recovery.”

Recovery.

With that one beautiful word, relief flows fast in my veins. Doctor Strickland keeps talking, saying
transfusion
, and
lost a lot of blood
, and
still not awake
, but all I can think is
she’s alive
.

I want to grab the doctor and kiss her. I want to fall to the ground and hug her knees, and cry thank you over and over. But most of all, I want to see Harley.

“When can I see her?” I say, the words practically blasting out of my mouth.

“Not yet. She’s in the recovery room. She’s not awake. Probably not for another hour.”

The next hour is the longest of my life, and I wish I had asked for an extra dose of patience for Christmas because it would have really come in handy as I watch the minute hand move so slowly. But the nursery is a safe haven, and my daughter falls asleep on my chest, warming me with her tiny little body. Somehow, that patch of heat against my heart makes me feel as if everything is going to be okay.

Okay.

I have officially decided that’s the only word I ever want to hear anymore.

Okay.

“She’s going to be fine,” Debbie says, squeezing my shoulder. “And you two are going to get to work soon on naming this sweet little girl.”

“Yeah,” Robert says, chiming in from our little huddle in the corner. “Why don’t you have a name yet? We want to start cooing at
Sally, Jane, Mandy,
or something, instead of saying
Hi Baby
all the time.”

“Not Sally, Jane or Mandy. She’s definitely not a Sally, Jane or Mandy,” I say as I stroke her cheek softly. She releases a small, contented sigh as she sleeps so peacefully in my arms.

“Well, she needs to be something soon,” Robert says, and it feels so good to be having this conversation about names instead of about blood.

* * *

Two oxygen tubes snake out of her nostrils, coiling around the bed, and slinking up into a machine that sends breath to her nose. Her arms are covered with bandages, the crook of her elbow has been target practice for needles, and an IV drip pumps into her body. Her gown has slipped down her shoulder, her collarbone exposed, the arrow from her heart tattoo peeking out. A yellow blanket covers her, up to her chest that’s rising and falling slowly.

Her eyes are closed, though, and I would give anything for them to flutter open. They haven’t yet, and no one knows why. It’s been like this for the last two hours. I’m sitting next to her, holding her hand, hoping.

I’m doing so much hoping that there’s no room in me for anything else but this desperate, frayed desire for her to wake up. Every nerve in me is a piece in a mechanical clock, and a malevolent clock winder is turning the cranks, over and over, maniacally cackling as they start to break.

All as I wait for a sign that still hasn’t come. Harley is deep in some sort of post-surgery cocoon that no one expected to last this long.

“Any minute now, I’m sure,” an ICU nurse tells me as she checks on Harley’s vitals. This nurse has a long black braid down her back, and pink scrubs with dog bones on them. “She’s just taking her sweet time to wake up. But all her tests look normal. Her vitals are fine.”

“She was supposed to wake up two hours ago.”

“She’s taking a little longer than we thought,” the nurse says sweetly.

“But I don’t understand,” I say, and my voice sounds whiny, and I hate it, but I hate the lack of knowing more. I hate it so damn much. Because they keep telling me she should wake up, but she keeps lying here, breathing in and out, and that’s it. She’s been out of surgery for four hours, out of recovery for two hours, and she’s still not awake. She’s still not responding, not to light, not to voices, not to touch, not to the life going on around her.

Not a bat of the eyelids, not a wiggle of the fingers, not a cough.

The nurse says nothing, just shoots me a sympathetic smile.

I drop my head onto the mattress, and squeeze Harley’s hand. “C’mon Harley. I know you’re there. Just give me a sign. Squeeze my hand, or something,” I mutter.

She doesn’t squeeze my hand.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Trey

My daughter is six hours old and nameless.

The nurses in labor and delivery would probably tease me if we were simply that couple who hadn’t picked a name yet. But the nurses don’t tease me. They call her Baby Westin, and Baby Westin has had her second feeding already, and her diaper changed, and she’s sleeping again.

She’s doing everything she’s supposed to be doing: opening her eyes, squeezing my hand, crying, sighing, eating, living.

She’s
living
.

And Harley is only breathing.

It’s midnight now, and the watch continues, and nothing changes except the ICU doctor. Doctor Strickland is gone, and now Doctor Whitney enters the room, introduces himself, and says he’s on rotation now.

I launch into questions. “Why doesn’t she open her eyes? Why doesn’t she move? Why is she only breathing?”

“Let me examine her,” he says calmly, and then asks me to leave for a moment, so I do, waiting in the hallway.

Pacing again.

So much pacing.

Robert and Debbie are parked in chairs outside the room. He yawns, and Debbie does the same, but no one goes, no one leaves, no one sleeps. Debbie takes another sip of her coffee, and Robert offers to get me one.

I shake my head.

“Diet Coke then?”

“No thanks.”

Doctor Whitney pokes his head out, and invites us back in.

“We thought she’d be awake by now,” he says. “And her tests are fine, her vitals are fine, everything suggests she should have woken up, but she has slipped into a comatose state.”

And I break.

I fucking break.

I shatter into a million angry pieces.

“What?”

The doctor nods, and shifts his hand back and forth like a seesaw. “She’s been teetering between unconsciousness and coma, and she remains unresponsive to stimuli, like light.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” I shout, pushing my hands through my hair, fire exploding in my brain, torching my fucking heart.

He holds up his hands, maybe in admission, maybe for protection from me. I don’t know. I don’t care. I want to kill him for telling me this.

“It means that we’re baffled as to what’s going on.”

“Baffled?” I repeat, fuming. “How can you be baffled? You’re a fucking doctor. You’re not supposed to be baffled.”

“We will continue to monitor her. We will continue to look for answers.”

“Yeah, because a coma’s not a fucking answer,” I shout. I push my fingers hard against my temple, pushing, hurting, something,
anything
to make this stop. I take a step closer. “Make her wake up.” Another step and he steps back, and I beg harder, grabbing for his white lab coat. “Make her wake up. Make her wake up. Make her wake up.”

“I would appreciate it if you could leave right now,” Doctor Whitney says in a wobbly voice, as he struggles to step away from me.

“Make her fucking wake up,” I say, trying to reach for him again, pleading.

Then I feel strong arms hold me back, drag me away from the doctor I want to throttle. I’m pulled out of the room, into the hall, inside the elevator, down to the lobby.

Outside. Where it’s dark and starless, and Robert has wrapped his arms around me, and my face is buried in his shirt, and the splinter in my heart hurts so much, jagged as it expands, hollowing out my insides, until all I am is this empty ache.

“I don’t know what to do,” I sob in a voice I don’t recognize anymore, a voice I never wanted to hear coming from me. “I don’t know what to do without her.”

He’s crying too. I can hear the hitch in his throat as he speaks. “All we can do is hope. That’s all we can do. Hope.”

* * *

I imagine her words. Her laughter. Her singing
Bonfire Heart
. I feel her hands, her hips, and her body.

But it’s all in my mind, because I wake up quickly, snapping out of a restless few minutes of sleep here on the edge of her mattress.

I wake up because there’s noise in the room. The same nurse with the long braid is back, doing her thing, checking on my wife.

“How’s she doing?”

“She’s the same, honey. Harley’s the same.”

At least she calls her by her name.

When my first brother died at birth, too young to live, my parents hadn’t named him. I was only thirteen years old, and I insisted we name him. I named him Jake.

Then came Drew. Then came Will.

They came and they went, touching down on this earth for seconds in some cases, for a few days in others. But they were named. I made sure they were named.

By all accounts, my daughter is staying. Her heart is strong, and she’s healthy, and there’s not a thing about her that baffles any doctor. But no one knows what is happening to my wife, and so no one can help her, no one can save her. She exists in the in-between. I long for her voice with every cell of my body; I’d give anything to hear a snippet of a word from her lips.