The Promise of Stardust (49 page)

Jake lowered his eyes and nodded. “In case something happens to you, you should make a new will, name an executor, a guardian for the baby, and set up a trust. And I'll serve you in any capacity you think is appropriate. But, Matt, I gotta tell you:
don't die
.”

“My father died from a heart attack.” My father, dead and cold in his open casket. I could be as dead and cold, leaving behind not four grown sons, but a newborn one. I couldn't leave my kid alone.

“That doesn't mean you will,” Jake said.

It might. I had to make certain someone would take care of the baby, would fight for him or her. “My brother Mike and his wife would take care of the baby—if I die. I have a will already. And we made Hank the executor because he's good with money. He can have my power of attorney, or whatever it takes. I know Hank will fight for the baby.”

“I'll write it all up.” Jake glanced away from me. And unless the drugs were distorting my vision, he was tearing up. I had to be hallucinating.

A nurse entered my room. “You're having more runs of trigeminy, Matt, so your cardiologist wants you to rest.”

“What's trigeminy?” Jake asked.

“An arrhythmia,” I said. “Irregular heartbeats.” And it wasn't good. Damn, I was in trouble.

Before I could protest, the nurse injected my IV port with a syringe. “I'm giving you a sedative,” she said.

In less than the time it took to wrap my mouth around the words “I need to finish,” the flush of the drug was running through my system and I was spooning around my Elle. I was dreaming with her head nesting in the crook of my arm and her soft hair brushing against my face. I hungered for her and pulled her closer. We were in a hospital bed together, a Salvador Dalí–like bed, warped and wide. In my drug-induced confusion, it made sense that they'd put us together. It made sense that we would heal better this way.

I tried to root myself. Was this the ICU or the CICU? It was neither. We were in our own house, in the attic with the doors to the widow's walk opened wide as the fall air circled us, ripe with the tidal river flow.

“Don't try to make sense of it,” Elle whispered. “This is our time. For all time.”

“I died?” Strangely, I didn't feel afraid. If I was with her—

“No,” she said. “You're sedated. Your mom probably put them up to it. To keep you from having Jake—never mind any of that. You're here, with me, and I miss you.”

I pushed back her hair from her face, memorizing her like this again. She was alive, and for weeks I'd only seen her becoming more and more still. “Are you a ghost?”

“You don't believe in wraiths, or ghosts, or anything you can't see.”

“I believe in you,” I said.

“You're dreaming, sweet little dreams. I'm here. You're here. But—” She sat up abruptly and the sheet slipped down to her waist. She was nude, noticeably pregnant. “Did you hear that?”

I listened. Hospital sounds.

Someone said, “Clear.”

“They're defibrillating someone,” she said.

“Me?” I was afraid, but less afraid because she was holding me. I could stay with her.

Her eyes shifted back and forth. “No. You're all right. You're looped on whatever they gave you, but that's probably for the best. Your sense of self-preservation has taken a nosedive. It's funny. You always said I was the reckless one.”

“Not really reckless. You didn't value your safety as much as I valued you.”

“Hmm … I never took all that big of a risk.”

“You shouldn't have gone up on that ladder. You knew you were pregnant.”

“You've got a point there, but there's a certain poetic irony. I walked in space just fine. On Earth, I fell off a ladder. I'm not so glamorous.” She kissed my forehead, the tip of my nose, my mouth.

I ran my hands over her body, the swell of her breasts, her abdomen. Her belly so much rounder with our child than it had been just moments before. “I want this baby to make it,” I said.

“She has a name.”

“She? Do you know something I don't?”

“I know everything you don't.” Elle smirked. “It's a girl.”

“A girl? Celina?”

“Not Celina. This one is our hope, a miracle, a reason for you to keep believing. Put your hand here. She's kicking. They can't feel her yet, but you can. You saw the ultrasound. She's alive. Doing somersaults. And no one will fight for her if you don't live.”

“Peep—you let me feel the baby kick.”

“Of course I did. This is our baby.”

“Our baby. Yes. Why didn't you tell me about the advanced directive? Why didn't you name me?”

Elle shrugged. “You're off topic.” She pressed my palm to her belly, which suddenly looked full term. I felt the kick again. It was so real, so certain.

“She's the only part of me that's alive, Matt. She's
all
that matters.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. Elle mattered. To me. Elle mattered to me, and I couldn't let her out of my sight. Not ever again. Not even to blink. When I opened my eyes wide, Elle was holding a newborn baby, all swaddled in pink. “Don't you want to know her name?”

The baby had white-blond hair and Elle's pointy chin.

“Her name's Hope,” I said.

“Do you want to hold your daughter?” Elle beamed at me.

“Yes. God, yes.” I reached for the baby, our baby.

“Then you have to live.” And just like that, they both melted away.

   48   

I couldn't bear witness to what occurred over the next five days although I've read my chart. In simple terms, I did my damnedest to die. I arrested again before they got me to the OR. I hemorrhaged. They even had trouble restarting my heart when I came off bypass.

Did I see a loving, white light? No. I saw Elle, a dream, a hallucination, or endorphins flooding my brain. Whatever it was didn't matter. I'd never believed in bullshit like that before, but now I wasn't so certain.

Sometimes it's a matter of what a man chooses to believe. Father Meehan called it faith and my faith was always in Elle. I didn't see any reason to change course. I wanted to believe in her and that we'd had a way to say good-bye.

Father Meehan came to visit me, and when I told him about seeing Elle, he asked why I assumed it wasn't real.

Because—these things didn't happen.

He reminded me my Confirmation name was Thomas, the Doubter, and said I'd chosen aptly. “But remember, Matt, in the end Thomas believed. He was the one who first proclaimed Jesus as ‘my Lord and my God.' ”

Sure, I thought with a heavy dose of skepticism, but maybe, just maybe, there was something to the smoke and mirrors.

Dr. Zane told me to call him Randall as he removed the dressing from the zipperlike scar over my sternum. “You're good for another forty years or hundred thousand miles, whichever comes first.”

“Only a hundred thousand? I put that on my car in three or four years,” I said.

He snickered. “Then this go-round, you'd better watch the kind of oil you put in your engine, unsaturated and no trans fats.”

“Great, a comedian with a scalpel.”

“Yes. I kept everyone in stitches while massaging your heart. Stitches, get it?”

“Okay.” I laughed, holding my incision. “Now that is painful.”

“The entire surgical team earned our fee, keeping you alive, Beaulieu.”

“And I appreciate it,” I said.

My heart attack and subsequent near death made headlines, something I should have become accustomed to but wasn't. As if I'd deliberately added to the drama, some people condemned me and others drew me as a tragic hero. Although neither of us tried to kill ourselves, I was suddenly Romeo to Elle's Juliet. But all I knew was that when I regained consciousness, Elle had woken up.

She hadn't really awoken, but that's what the papers said. That's what the Pro-Lifers contended. And that was what Hank believed at first. “I told you my little girl would come out of this.”

Not exactly. She started to breathe on her own again, but her gag reflex was still gone. She still had no corneal reflex, and she didn't respond to painful stimuli. She was in a different kind of persistent vegetative state, more like the one that made it to the press with Terri Schiavo seemingly smiling.

Elle, however, did not smile, not even once. I couldn't say she grimaced or that she appeared to be in pain, yet it was harder to look at her in this condition when she appeared to be conscious. I wanted her to respond to me; the nonneurosurgeon part of me still expected her to respond to me.

“But,” Hank said.

I shook my head from my own hospital bed. “Elle is still gone. She isn't suffering. And the baby has a better shot now. This is good.”

Hank turned to my mother. “Linney, don't you think it's possible Elle might continue to improve? You changed your mind.”

Mom averted her gaze and shook her head, too. “I know Elle's your baby, Hank, but no. We have to accept that she's gone, but we're going to try to save your grandbaby.”

“Your grandchild, too, Mom,” I said.

“That's right. This baby is all of ours.”

For two days the nurses let me see Elle on a webcam, an idea Jake came up with. Thank God for Jake. He had soldiered through the hospital days, signing consents on my behalf, making health care decisions about things that went well beyond any lawyerly duties he anticipated when he signed on.

Once I was well enough to leave intensive care for a telemetry unit where they could monitor my heart rhythm constantly, they moved Elle into the same room with me. She was doing well enough that she no longer required ICU either.

Always bossy, my mother insisted it would be stressful for me to be in the same room with Elle, but it wasn't. I could look across and see her, then be assured that she and the baby were safe and secure because they were close. I could finally sleep.

Keisha snapped the green-and-brown quilt in the air, and it settled over me like a loon landing on a northern lake. “There,” she said.

I didn't know quite how to respond to the gesture. When Keisha brought the other quilt in for Elle, I knew it was a way for her to do something when there was nothing to be done. “Thank you,” I said.

She nodded, barely looking my way. I sensed something was bothering her, but I was three and a half hours into my pain medication, I'd just finished walking the length of the corridor twice, and the ache was escalating. In thirty minutes I could ask for more. I closed my eyes for a minute, longing for the reprieve of sleep and figuring Keisha was here to visit Elle, not me. Besides, the burden of small talk fell on the visitor.

“Will the baby be all right now?” she asked suddenly.

Or her question felt sudden because I had dozed off. “I don't know,” I mumbled, rubbing my eyes.

“I need a happy ending,” she said. “I'm sorry. It's just …”

“What's wrong?” I asked, raising the head of my hospital bed.