A Different Blue (31 page)

I was moved to a recovery room, helped into the shower, and unceremoniously tucked back into my bed. Nobody asked me if I would like to see my baby. Wilson had hovered for a time, but when it was evident that I was in good hands, he decided to run home and grab a shower and some clean clothes as well. The rain had finally stopped. The flash flood warning had been lifted, but the lowest level of the hospital had had to be evacuated because of flooding – which had caused chaos throughout the rest of the hospital. My nurses had apologized profusely that I had been neglected during my labor. Staff had already been skeletal due to the difficulties of getting to the hospital in the storm, and the flooding had almost done them in.

Jack and Tiffa were unable to get home. The storm that had caused flooding in Las Vegas caused a blizzard in Reno as the massive storm stretched from one end of the state to the other. The airport in Reno had been shut down by the blizzard, and flights weren't scheduled to resume until morning. I managed to eat and was dozing off when Wilson returned. The lights were off in my room, but it wasn't truly dark. My room had a “lovely view” of the parking lot and the orange-yellow streetlights below cast a burnished glow into my darkened room. Wilson tried to sit unobtrusively in the corner chair, but the chair squeaked loudly, and he cursed quietly.

“You didn't have to come back.” My voice sounded scratchy and wrong to my own ears, hoarse, like I'd been screaming for hours.

Wilson sank down into the noisy rocker, resting his elbows on his knees and propping his chin in his hands. I had seen him do this before, and it brought a sudden rush of tenderness so intense that I gasped.

“Are you hurting?” he asked softly, misinterpreting the sound.

“No,” I whispered. It was a lie, but at the moment the truth was too complicated.

“Did I wake you?”

“No,” I repeated. Silence magnified the sounds in the room and in the corridors beyond. Squeaking wheels chirped down the hallway, the squelching sound of sneakers on the linoleum floor. A nurse entered the room across the hall with a cheerful “How we doin'?” And I found myself listening for sounds I couldn't hear. Straining to hear a baby's cry. My mind traveled down the hall and into the nursery where a child lay unclaimed.

“Did you hold her?” I asked suddenly. Wilson straightened in his chair, and his eyes searched my face for clues in the murky light of the room.

“No,” it was his turn to reply. Again, silence.

“She's all alone, Wilson.”

He didn't argue that Tiffa was on her way or that my baby was being taken care of and was most likely sleeping. Instead, he stood up and approached the bed. I was curled up on my side, facing him, and he squatted down so his eyes were level with mine. We studied each other silently. And then he brought his hand up and laid it gently against my cheek. Such a simple gesture. But it was my undoing. I closed my eyes and cried, blocking out his stormy grey eyes, the understanding there, the compassion. Eventually, I felt him lay down beside me on the narrow bed and wrap his arms around me, pulling me up against him. Occasionally, he would stroke my hair or shush softly, but he made no comment as my heavy grief saturated the pillow beneath my head.

A nurse entered the room once and turned around and went right back out. Wilson made no attempt to move or retreat to the chair in the corner.

“You never told me the ending of the story,” he murmured much later.

“Hmm?”

“The hunter and the star girl? Did they live happily ever after?”

“Oh,” I remembered drowsily. “No . . . not exactly. She stayed with him, and they had a child. They were happy, but the girl started to miss the stars.” I paused, fighting the lethargy that was stealing over me. I continued, my voice fading with every word. “She wanted to see her family. So she wove a large basket and collected gifts for her family, things from the earth that you couldn't find in the sky. She placed the basket in the magical circle, put the gifts and her son inside, and climbed into the basket herself. Then she sang a song that caused the basket to rise into the sky. White Hawk heard the song and ran to the clearing, but he was too late. His wife and child were gone.” I felt myself drifting into sleep, exhaustion muddling my thoughts, making speech difficult. I wasn't sure if I dreamed it, or if Wilson actually spoke.

“That story sucks,” Wilson whispered sleepily in my ear. I smiled but was too far gone to respond.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Tiffa and Jack got to the hospital about five o'clock the next day. Wilson had moved to the chair sometime while I slept and had received the call letting us know they had arrived. He went out to meet them when my nurse came in to chart my condition and take my blood pressure. I was eager to leave the hospital and was dressed and waiting to be discharged when I heard a light knocking. Tiffa stuck her head around the heavy hospital door and called to me.

“Can we come in, Blue?”

I answered yes, and she and Jack walked into the room hand in hand. Tiffa had pulled her hair off her face into a curly up-do, but somehow she still managed to look chic and put together. Jack looked worn out. They had waited at the airport most of the night and all morning, waiting for flights to resume. But they were smiling broadly, and Tiffa was practically vibrating. Without warning, she pulled me into her arms and promptly burst into tears. Jack wrapped his arms around the two of us and commenced sniffling as well. I felt emotion swell in my chest and rise in my throat until swallowing was impossible. I held myself as still as I possibly could, as if movement would dislodge my control. I recited the alphabet backwards in my head, “Z, Y, X, W, V, U, T . . .”  focusing my eyes beyond Tiffa and Jack. Wilson stood by the door. My eyes locked on his and immediately shifted away. “J, H, I, G, F, E . . .”  I recited silently. But my efforts at distraction did not prevent me from hearing Tiffa's heartfelt thanks.

“She's beautiful, Blue. She's absolutely beautiful. I can see you in her . . . and that makes me so happy.” Tiffa whispered between sobs. “Thank you, Blue.”

I had to pull away. For my own survival, I had to pull away. They let me go, but Tiffa clasped my hands in hers. She seemed unconcerned with the fact that tears still streamed down her cheeks. I marveled at her ability to cry without shame or embarrassment.

“We're going to name her Melody. It was Jack's mother's name, and I've always loved it.” Tiffa's eyes shifted to Jack, who urged her on with a tip of his head. “But we would like her middle name to be Blue if that is all right with you.”

Melody Blue. It was a beautiful name. I nodded, just the slightest movement, but I didn't trust myself to speak. Then I nodded again, a little harder and smiled the best I could. I was pulled back into Tiffa's arms and held fiercely as she whispered a promise in my ear.

“You have given me something I would never have asked of you, and I promise I will be the best mum I can be. I won't be perfect. But I will love her with all my heart, and I will be perfect in that. When she's old enough, I will tell her all about you. I will tell her how brave you were and how much you loved her.”

A moan tore from my throat, and I shuddered helplessly, no longer able to hold back the billowing sorrow that flooded my mouth, streamed from my eyes, and robbed me of speech. Jack's arms were back around us, and we stood that way for a very long time, propping each other up, as gratitude and sorrow met and merged and silent bonds were forged. I found myself offering up a prayer for the very first time. A prayer to the Great Spirit that Jimmy had believed in. A prayer to the God that had created life and let it grow in me. A prayer for the child who would never call me Mother, and for the woman whom she would. And I prayed He would take away my pain, and if He couldn't do that, then would He, please, take away my love? Because the pain and the love were so intertwined that I couldn't seem to have one without the other. Maybe if I didn't love, I wouldn't hurt so much. I felt Wilson's arms enclose me and bear my weight as Tiffa and Jack eventually released me and stepped back.

When I was discharged from the hospital, Wilson took me home, helped me into bed, and stayed with me through the night once more. Never once did he complain or offer empty words or platitudes. He was just there when I needed him most. And I leaned on him, probably more than I should have. I didn't let myself think about it or question it. I allowed myself to be taken care of and forbade myself introspection.

In the days that followed, Wilson gave me more and more space, and we fell back into a pattern that resembled the days and weeks leading up to Melody's birth. I went back to work at the cafe almost immediately and started carving again. In other ways, moving on was much more difficult. Immediately after Melody's birth, I bound my breasts the way the nurses showed me, but they ached and leaked, and I would wake up soaked, my sheets wet with milk, my nightgown sticking to me. Washing myself was almost painful, my body felt like a stranger, and I couldn't bear to look in the mirror and see the swollen breasts that were meant to nourish, the stomach that grew flatter every day, and the arms that longed to hold what was no longer mine. Every once in a while I would forget and reach down to caress my belly, only to remember that the swelling that remained was not a child, but an empty womb. I was young and active, though, and my body recovered quickly. Soon the only reminder that she had been part of me would be the faint stretch marks that marred my skin. These marks became beautiful to me. Precious.

Correspondingly, I found myself unwilling to sand away the imperfections on a piece of juniper I had been shaping and molding. The scars on the wood were like the marks on my skin, and I found myself continually tracing them, as if removing them would signify a willingness to forget. I ended up enlarging them, so the lines and divets became mawing canyons and shadowy recesses and the gracefully stretching branches became twisted and tortured, like the clenched fists of empty hands.

Wilson came to visit me in the basement one evening while I worked on the sculpture, sinking down on an overturned pail, observing without comment.

“What are you going to call this?” he asked after a long silence.

I shrugged. I hadn't gotten that far. I looked up at him for the first time. “What do you think I should call it?”

He gazed back at me then, and the sadness in his rain-grey eyes had me turning from him immediately, shrinking from the compassion I saw there.

“Loss,” he whispered. I pretended not to hear. He stayed for another hour, watching me work. I didn't even hear him leave.

Life returned to normal in painful increments, as normal as it ever had been. I worked, carved, ate, and slept. Tiffa called frequently to check on me and offered details about the baby only if I asked her first. She was careful and precise, but mercifully subdued in her descriptions. Each time I was able to hear a little more, although the first time I heard Melody's new-born wail through the receiver I had to end the call immediately. I spent the rest of the night in my room, convinced that my heart was officially broken and no amount of time and no amount of tears would ever ease the ache.