How to Save a Life (38 page)

It hurts.

A lot.

I know that Robin is in the room with me, that she’s next to me, with me, but I can’t hear her or see her or feel her anymore. It’s like I pictured it, only now I’m sure that she’ll still be here after my daughter finally comes out. Soon, I hope.

At first the pain only came in waves, and we even laughed a little bit on the way to the hospital. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you have that pizza,” Robin said.

Mostly I was scared. “Is it bad to be this early? We didn’t take our birthing class yet.”

“It’s not ideal, but you’re within the safe zone. It will be fine.”

“Is Dr. Yee going to be there?” As much as I don’t like Dr. Yee, I wanted to know what was going to happen and what I could expect, and I wouldn’t mind a familiar face.

“I had her paged, so I hope so. But since it’s early, there’s no guarantee.”

My seat was tilted back at a slight angle. I could see the streetlights and phone wires and tops of buildings. “How does it feel?” I asked Robin. “How did it feel when you had Jill?”

“It feels… well, it hurts, Mandy. I won’t lie. It’s going to hurt,” she said, flying through a yellow light. “But it’s something completely indescribable, too. And it’s yours, it’s totally yours. It’s strange that way—an experience women have all over the world every minute, but at the same time something so
yours
. Not anything that anyone else can ever understand or take away from you. And it’s so worth it.”

If this had happened two days ago and Robin had said that, I would have thought,
That’s what women always say, but the women who say that are mothers, and they’re talking to women who are also going to be mothers. What about for people like me? Is it still worthwhile?
But now everything is different. We decided what to do. The idea of it being worthwhile for me is more real than ever. Still, after I waited for another wave of pain to pass, I asked her, “Are you sure?”

“Yes. I’m very sure.”

We got there fast; getting admitted took longer. Robin yelled at the nurses a lot. I had to tune her out, go away in my mind, because she was causing me stress. Finally we got into a room and as Robin helped me get out of my clothes she said, “You’re going to be a good mother, Mandy. I promise you.”

Jill

The hospital feels so empty at this time of night. And it’s sad. Mandy’s family should be here. I mean, not her biological family, because they suck, but there should be people to join in the waiting and excitement. The person I want to invite is Ravi. I want to see him, have his company. But he’s not really anyone that important to Mandy, and I think about how she asked if she could still be Dylan’s friend. It meant a lot to her—that was clear.

I call him, even though it’s past eleven now. It’s Friday; he’ll be up.

“You’re already done being mad at me?” he asks.

“Mandy’s in labor. Can you come?”

“Oh shit. Yeah, wow.”

I tell him how to find us, and then ask, “Can you stop on the way and get her some trashy magazines?”

“Done.”

Absolutely crushed with fatigue and a headache, I wind up dozing off in the waiting room. When I wake up, Mom is there with me, her feet up on the coffee table. Her eyes are closed, but I know she’s not asleep.

“Anything happen yet?” I ask her.

“Not really,” she says without opening her eyes. “She’s been having a hard time. She’s trying to take a little rest, but it’s rough going.”

I move to the chair next to her and rest my head on her shoulder. “Is it anything to be worried about?”

She puts her arm around me. “No. Birth is never easy. That’s all there is to it. The body is sending you all these signals that it’s time for new life to happen, but it also resists. It wants to quit. Fighting it hurts. Not fighting it hurts. Helping it hurts. There’s no way around it.”

I slip my hand into hers. I’ve always loved her hands. Strong, capable. “I can imagine.”

Mandy

I don’t know how long I’ve been here, but I’ve had time to think about everything. Every moment at the fair with Christopher, all the meals Robin has cooked me in the last month, and the ones I liked best. The crepes were good. The little clothes that Dylan bought for the baby. The music at the restaurant last night and how happy I was to see Jill walk into the train station.

I try to think of being on a long, slow-rocking train ride. The land flicking past. That I’m moving, moving, moving forward into my new life and new family, away from the old one. My hand goes to my neck, and I feel the blue-beaded necklace Christopher gave me. I put it on after Robin and I finally left the bathroom this morning, before we went downstairs to work on—

“Push!”

I don’t know who’s yelling it. Maybe Dr. Yee, maybe Robin, maybe someone else, I don’t know. All I know is that whenever something is yelled at me, I do it, even though I think I might die.

Don’t die, Mandy. You finally have life.

But it’s hard. It hurts, like Robin said it would, and it goes on a long time and hardly any rest in between now.

Someone puts ice in my mouth. Someone squeezes my hand. Someone gives me a shot of something. And I can’t help it: along with everything else, I think about my mother.

Nineteen years ago this was her, in a hospital in Fort Dodge, Iowa. She was young. Not as young as I am, but still young, and my father, the married man—well, I guess he wasn’t there. And I know her mother wasn’t there, because she told me. So it’s the same for us, and for a few seconds I’m able to understand how hard it was for her, and for those few seconds I wish good things for her. For her to find what she’s looking for. For her to know love like I have. And I don’t mean with Christopher.

Also I know that what Robin said is true: This is an experience all yours, and whatever kind of relationship you have later with your baby, it ties you to them forever. My mother is tied to me, and me to her, even if we never see each other again. And I can feel sad and let some of these tears be for her.

About the hundredth time someone yells at me to push, I think,
No.
I would say it out loud if I thought I had the strength. I’d look at Robin and say it, but I know what she’d say back. That I have to start saying yes.

I have to start saying yes.

I give my whole body to yes.

Yes to trust, yes to a new family. Yes to hope. Yes to staying.

Yes to my daughter.

Yes to me.

Yes.

Jill

When Dylan gets here, we sit with one seat between us and keep our eyes on the nurse’s station. I tell him everything I know. We look at the magazines he got for Mandy. He did a good job; they’re super trashy, full of gossip and pictures of celebrity cellulite. We say nothing about anything until Dylan says, “I should have answered my phone that night.”

“Why didn’t you?”

He laughs. “Hello, because (A) I’m scared of you. You’re brutally frightening sometimes, Jill. And (B)—and this is the big one—I really thought I was doing the right thing. Something about Mandy, like, moves me. That day she told me about her mom. I mean, me and you…” He shifts in his chair, touches my arm, and I worry he’s going to say something about us and our couplehood and how we’ll work through this and go on. “Me and you have no freaking way to
begin to begin
to imagine growing up with a parent who treats us like that. My parents are cool, and yours—”

He freezes. He’s scared to mention my dad, because of the way I react when he does, the way I’ve reacted every time. Tears are already working their way up when I tell him, “Go ahead.”

“Your dad. Loved you. Like crazy.
Crazy
.”

I dissolve. I melt. And let Dylan scoot one chair closer and hold me and comfort me exactly the way he’s wanted to for eleven months, without me resisting or getting mad or pretending I’m okay. “I know.”

“You guys were like twins,” he says into my hair.

“It hurts so much.” And it hurts to say it hurts. The words themselves plus saying them brings on another wave of pain. “I’ve just felt… lost.”

“I know. I’m really sorry, Jill.”

After a few minutes, when I’m sure I can say it coherently, I reply. “I’m sorry, too.”

“I know.”

I sit back in my chair and make use of the box of tissues on one of the side tables. “Why have you put up with me?” I ask.

Dylan leans on his elbows. “Because I love you. I mean, I know this is kind of it for us. It’s time.”

I nod.

“But I’m still going to love you, always. And in the rock-paper-scissors of life, love is rock. Fear, anger, everything else… no contest.”

Love is rock.

“That’s deep,” I say. “You should write a song about that for the Potato Rebellion.”

“Maybe I will.”

After a little while I get up and buy a bag of pretzels from the machine in the waiting area. When I turn around, Dylan’s head is in his hands. I go to him and rest my hand on his back. “I’ll always love you, too.”

“I know.”

Mandy

They do like Robin promised. They lay her on my chest right away, and they say, “Here she is, Mandy. Here’s your daughter.”

She’s covered with goo, and I can’t see her face very well, or what her skin is like other than red and slimy, but now I understand why Robin says it doesn’t matter how this baby was made.

She is miraculous and innocent.

All possibility.

Love.

Later, when she’s washed and dried, Dr. Yee holds her up in front of me, and even Dr. Yee is smiling and maybe even a little bit emotional.

“A good head of hair on this one,” she says, beaming, stroking my daughter’s black, black hair.

I nod and touch the beads around my neck. “Just like her father.”

Jill