The Promise of Stardust (55 page)

The anesthesiologist stripped off Elle's hospital gown and put lead wires on her naked chest, just before they buried her under a mass of sterile drapes. Then he shoved a tube down her throat to suction out the contents of her stomach, but instead of pulling up her tan-colored feeding formula, what looked like old blood was coming up through the suction catheter. The anesthesiologist's eyes widened as the color changed to bright red. Elle was hemorrhaging.

Her heart monitor alarmed. “She's throwing a lot of PVCs and odd-looking cardiac complexes, and she's having a GI bleed. You better get that baby out fast, Blythe,” the anesthesiologist said.

“Hang lidocaine for the arrhythmias,” Blythe said.

My mother came in behind me.

“You sure you want to be in here, Linney?” someone asked.

Mom took my hand in hers, leaned into me, and summoned her voice. “Yes.”

The NICU team shoved in, three of them—a neonatologist, a nurse, and a respiratory tech. They checked the resuscitation equipment for the baby. “How's the baby's heart rate?” one asked.

“We lost it about a minute ago.”

My head started to reel, and a stool was pushed behind me. “I should take you out of here,” Mom said.

“No,” I said, putting my head down between my knees. “No.”

The OB resident dumped Betadine, an orange-brown antiseptic, on Elle's belly, and without leaving time for the disinfectant to kill a single bacterium, Blythe cut into Elle's abdomen with a deliberate swipe of her scalpel. “Suction. I need more suction,” she said. The blood was pouring out as if Blythe hit an artery. She hadn't. This was a combination of the blood thinner and possibly the preeclampsia doing its damage.

One of the neonatal people, not recognizing that I was there, said, “Call for backup. This is
not
going to be good. Start drawing meds. I want a bolus of saline ready and …” He continued on.

One nudged the other. “Shush, that's the father.”

“What's he doing in here?”

Blythe was cutting fast. Another doctor was tugging on a retractor so hard that he nearly pulled Elle off the OR table. More blood gushed out and onto the floor.

Then, with strength and tenderness, Blythe reached into Elle, practically elbow-deep, and pulled out my blue, limp daughter. It was like seeing Dylan again.

The NICU team put her on the radiant warmer and closed in around her.

Please, God, save Hope
.

I stood and crossed to where the anesthesiologist was at Elle's head. I knew him. He knew me. He looked away. Certainly I shouldn't have been there at that moment, but it was as if they had all turned blind eyes.

Blythe was operating frantically, cauterizing bleeders. As if it mattered now, as if it was still possible to save my wife.

I dropped to my knees beside the operating table and matched my fingertips with Elle's.
Please, Elle, know how much I love you
.

“She's in V-fib,” the anesthesiologist said to Blythe.

“Matt, what do you want me to do? Do you want me to resuscitate?” Blythe asked.

I hesitated for a moment. I had promised to respect Elle. “Do not resuscitate,” I said. “Let her be at peace.”

This was anything but peace.

Everyone had said it was impossible, but I told them to save the baby anyway. I told them to try. I wanted the baby no matter what it cost, but I hadn't thought it would be like this, with them violently ripping Elle open. And the baby dead, too. The NICU team was there, trying to resuscitate Hope, but she looked like Dylan did when he was stillborn, pale and limp.

“Do you have Apgar scores?” Blythe asked.

“Six at one minute. Not quite at five minutes for the second one.”

Apgar of six?

“Heart rate one-sixty,” a female voice said.

“Come on, breathe,” the neonatologist said. “That's it. That's better. She's coming around.”

I jumped to my feet.

“She's pinking up,” the neonatologist said, turning to me slightly.

And suddenly my tiny daughter cried, a big whelping scream.

“There you go,” the nurse said.

Mom had pushed her way in by the NICU team. “Matt, she's beautiful.”

I took my own breath, maybe the first real breath I'd taken in months. “I need to see her.”

The respiratory therapist stepped aside, and my little girl, smeared in blood but decidedly pink, was bawling.

I turned back as the anesthesiologist turned off Elle's heart monitor.

Blythe spoke softly, “Time of death, one-thirteen.”

Come back to me in dreams; that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago
.

~Christina Rossetti~

   Epilogue   

During the past year I've come to think of grief as a tidal wave. It unexpectedly rises from the depths of my being, carrying with it the debris it's picked up along the way. Sometimes I wake angry that Elle wasn't more careful. Some mornings I reach out for her, still denying she's gone forever. Then I lie there pleading with God, begging Him that I would do anything if He would just make the damned nightmare go away. I have wept. I have accepted the love and support of family and friends.

And I have experienced joy because my daughter is thriving. I peek inside Hope's room.

Our Lab, Hubble, appointed himself her guardian angel the day I brought my little girl home, and now he lifts his head off the carpet as if to acknowledge he has his post covered.

Inside the crib, she sleeps, her arms stretched out wide, her chubby baby fingers splayed. How much she has already grown astounds me. She weighed less than three pounds at birth; she has already more than tripled her weight. She has her mother's white-blond hair and pointy chin. I see myself in her other features. Her eyes grow darker with each day, brown like mine. She is both of us. She is her own little person.

Hope shows no indication she plans to wake up soon to help me procrastinate. She's probably storing up on sleep. Her Baptism is tomorrow.

Everyone will come, Mom and Hank, my brothers and their families, Chris, his wife and daughter, Phil and Melanie, Blythe—and even Judge Wheeler. And because of Jake's role in saving Hope, Father Meehan is allowing my non-Catholic best friend to be her godfather. Officially only one godparent must be Catholic, and Keisha is.

Keisha is very excited these days—and not just about godmothering Hope. Keisha and Guy decided to try foster-parenting an older child, one who is likely to become available for adoption soon. Last night she called and said they'd passed their home study, so it shouldn't be too long of a wait. I'm happy for them.

“Sleep a little longer, baby girl,” I whisper to Hope as I turn to go. “Big day tomorrow.”

On the way to the stairs, I pass Hank's room. He moved in with us—“for the time being,” he says. He takes care of Hope while I work and nights when I get called into the hospital.

Mom helps—in her own way, too. She made a big fuss about painting Hope's room pink. I said it was too “girlie.” And Mom said, “What other color should it be?” She tells me I know nothing about raising girls, so I have conceded certain points, but not the hot-pink room. Still, Mom has stuffed Hope's closet full of ruffled dresses—which I'm pretty sure Elle would hate, and my mother, Grandma to Hope, babysits two days a week—which I'm pretty sure Elle would love. Everyone is pitching in. Evidently it takes a single dad and
a village
to raise one nine-pound baby girl.

But before the celebration, before the sacrament, I have something I have to do.

The decision to bury Elle here on the farm was not a difficult one, but it turned into something quite complex. An ordinance passed that only allowed burials in professionally run cemeteries, and the town refused to give us a variance for interring the casket up in the family plot. The only concession they made was that if Elle were cremated, then I could bury her ashes anywhere on the property, not a real concession at all.

Our family didn't like the idea of cremation, but Elle convinced me it was best when Celina died. And when Dylan did. “They were stardust,” she said. And no falling star ever shone more brightly than Elle.

Now that the ground is no longer frozen, I will fulfill the promise I made so long ago. Celina's ashes will rest with Elle—and of course Dylan's. Certainly she would want him with her, too. But there's something else. After the two other miscarriages, the ones which came too early for shape and gender, Elle needed a way to commemorate our “babies.” So she purchased two small meteorite fragments, and we buried them in the garden inside a small box made of elm. “Stardust,” Elle said. This morning I dug up the two urns, Celina's and Dylan's, and the meteorite fragments.

And there, buried in the garden, I found the baby diaries in a sealed glass canister. These Elle did not address to me but to them. Celina was “Dear Angel.” The second was “My Little Darling,” the third was “My Tiny Star,” and Dylan … he was “My Little Love.” I will read the journals then bury them again. I suppose she placed them in the garden as the babies' epitaphs.

I lay newspaper on the kitchen floor and then bring the three urns inside and set them down. I have not felt this hesitant about anything since I made my first surgical incision. I kneel, open Elle's urn, and shudder. I console myself by saying, “Stardust. You have no idea how much I miss you, Peep.” I open Dylan's and transfer his ashes, combining them with Elle's. “I love you, kiddo. Rest with your mother.” I drop the two meteorite fragments in, then stare at Celina's urn for a few seconds longer. “Celina, you'd be all grown up. We loved you, too.” I glance inside and see something.

My first thought is that after all this time her ashes have clumped together, but on closer inspection I realize it's a plastic zip bag with an envelope rolled up inside. I swallow and retrieve it, carefully brushing Celina's ashes into Elle's urn.

In Elle's handwriting, the envelope is addressed to me.

Dr. Matthew Beaulieu

I tear it open:

Dear Matt
,

This is what NASA calls the contingency letter. Usually during the quarantine, astronauts write good-byes to the most beloved people in their lives. As I write this letter I'm still at the farmhouse, but my heart is full of you. We spent today riding a roller coaster and walking on the beach. I want you to know I treasured every moment. Those hours were our real good-bye, but I need to leave the words behind. In case. I know what you said on the beach. You don't want to hear that I could die. But I might. And if you're reading this, I did
.

I don't want to put you in an awkward position with your fiancée. I know you love her, and I don't want to leave you a letter that might raise questions and complicate your life, so I'm tucking this missive away where I know you'll find it discreetly. You made me a promise, and I know you'll keep it. I know you have kept it because that's how you found this letter. At the same time, if you want to tell her, it's fine. You have my blessing
.