Linebacker's Second Chance (Bad Boy Ballers) (22 page)

Because Mack’s hand is in mine.

“It’s okay, Renata. It’s going to be okay.” I just repeat that over and over again as I hold her hand in the ambulance, trying to look away from the blood. It’s bright red, but it doesn’t mean that this is the end. There’s an IV in her arm, and she’s hooked up to all the monitors they’ve got in here. On the screen, there are two heartbeats. Hers, and the baby’s.
 

Beep, beep, beep. Steady, steady. Not fast like it’s been on the ultrasound, but steady enough. In distress, I heard one of the EMTs say. In distress. Well, that makes three of us, doesn’t it?
 

“Hang on, baby,” I mutter, though I’m not exactly sure who I’m talking to. Maybe Renata. Maybe both of them. “Keep hanging on. We’re getting there.”

Renata’s eyes flutter open for an instant, and I squeeze her hand hard. “Come on baby, stay right with me. Don’t go to sleep.” I don’t know if it’s good for her to go to sleep or not, but something in me just wants to keep staring into her deep brown eyes, to reassure me that it’ll be okay, even if it isn’t. I need to know that she’s with me, that she’s with me like I’ve always wanted her to be, always needed her to be. Not distant, not far removed, not all the way across the country.

“I’m with you,” she croaks, bringing a hand down to her belly. “I’m with both of you. Do you hear me?”
 

“That’s right, baby girl,” I say. “You’re going to be strong like me and smart like your mom. You better behave yourself until we get to the hospital.”
 

Weakly, Renata laughs and squeezes my hand as hard as she can. “Don’t you go telling her what to do. I think she already had her mind made up that she was coming early. She’s just a complicated woman, that’s all. Complex thoughts and lots of energy. She’ll get her safe. She’ll get her safe--don’t you worry.”
 

We repeat these words like prayers, like mantras. I don’t know if they’ll work, but if anything does, I’ll do it. My heart pounds hard. I can’t take losing her. I can’t take losing either of them. Not when we’ve come so far.

Renata closes her eyes again, but I don’t think she’s sleeping. I wouldn’t be able to, even if I was in the worst shape of my life, not if I had all this going on around me. After what seems like an hour but is probably only around fifteen minutes, we pull into the hospital emergency entrance, and just like that, the EMTs wheel Renata away and up to labor and delivery, where there’s an operating room waiting. I run as fast as my legs will carry me and make it into the elevator just in time to hold her hand. We’re not real sure what’s happening, but in the ambulance, we heard something about an abruption, and another something about a prolapse. Either way, we know we’re not getting the birth we planned for, the one we studied for together. There aren’t birthing yoga balls or stretches she can do to ease the pain, and it suddenly doesn’t matter whether or not she’ll be able to breastfeed or any of those things from the books.
 

For a second, I feel silly for thinking that any of that mattered. I gulp hard, and the elevator rises far too slowly.

I walk down the hall at a brisk pace, holding her hand. At some point, my helmet and jersey and uniform came off, though I don’t really remember it happening. There’s still black paint under my eyes, and I’m wearing my undershirt and a pair of basketball shorts Wingate threw to me on the way out. I don’t know when any of it happened, or how. Squeezing Renata’s hand one last time, I watch as they wheel her into the operating room and hook her up to IVs and monitors. The next move, however, is out of a horror movie. Because of what she’s wearing, they cut her out of her shirt and skirt so they don’t have to move her. There are curtains going up and disinfectants going on, and an anesthesiologist talking about whether they need to do a spinal block or general anesthesia. A cool hand rests on my shoulder, and I turn to see a short nurse offering to help me into a sterile hospital gown and a mask. Numbly, I let it all happen, and then I’m standing behind the doctors as they start the c-section.

There’s only a spinal block, so I can watch Renata’s eyes—not fearful, not angry, but hopeful—as they start. I walk up to her gingerly and take her hand with my gloved one. I want to say something, but it feels like there’s nothing in the world left to say.

The room is filled with deafening silence, and I’m too scared to look to see what’s happening. Our eyes rest only on each other’s as we wait for the sound that will make everything okay, the sound that will signify that this is a beginning and not an end.
 

“We’ve come this far,” she says. “We beat all the odds. It’s going to be okay.” The words seem like they pain her when they come out, and I can tell her grip on my hand is weaker than it was. There are only the sounds of the operating room, nurses and doctors working together and talking in hushed voices.
 

“It was definitely a placental abruption,” one of them mutters. “And a cord prolapse, both at the same time.” He says it with a hint of astonishment, like this isn’t a thing people see every day.

“We ready?”

The first doctor nods, and there’s more silence, followed by a deep ringing in my ears. Renata looks at me, trying to keep the panic out of her eyes. “I feel something,” she mutters. I watch the anesthesiologist adjust her spinal block, and then the look on Renata’s face eases.
 

“This isn’t the birth we hoped for, sweetheart. But she’s going to make it here safe,” I say. My words feel almost superfluous. She nods her head, though, like what I’ve said is wise.

I don’t pray much, not since I left Renata that day six and a half years ago, but I pray now. I know babies crying aren’t what many parents pray to hear—it’s just a given that they cry. But I pray to hear a cry.
 

“Suction,” one of the doctors says. “We need to clear this little girl’s airways.” My heart beats hard in my ears, and after that we hear a faint gurgle that sounds like it’s trying to be a cry. Something that’s not quite what it ought to be, but it’s close enough to make us both smile. One doctor nods to the other and holds our little girl up for us to see for one moment before whisking her off to another table. She’s not as active as she ought to be, but we both see one small foot wiggle slightly. Renata grips my hand so hard I think it might fall off, and I lean in and whisper to her.

“You did it sweetheart. It’s going to be okay.” After that, things move in a rushed blur. There are doctors stitching her up, doctors tending to the baby, and nurses that seem to be running in every direction. For one moment, however, the world goes still again, and we hear her first cry. It breaks the deafening silence that has been with us since we got into the ambulance, and heat pricks at my eyes. Renata is already crying, tears streaming down her cheeks. A doctor brings our daughter over and puts her on Renata’s chest as the doctors work to sew her up.

“She’s fine. Totally fine. You were very brave today. And so was she.” When our little girl’s skin touches her mother’s chest, she goes contentedly silent, breathing beautifully like she should. After a short time, the orderlies wheel Renata over to the mother and baby floor, and I follow behind them in a total daze, unable to keep my eyes off of my wife and daughter. Just a year ago, I was on the verge of drinking myself out of a job, on the verge of falling into a depression that would have been the end of me. And here we are, right at this moment, with everything we ever wanted.
 

I’m not alone anymore, I repeat to myself as we walk down the hall. There’s still the haunted feeling that I thought I might lose everything again, even more than I lost before. But somehow, we all pulled through together, and we’re far greater than we were before. Now, there’s a little girl with us. We’re not just a couple anymore—we’re more than that. We’re a family, better and more resilient than either of the families we came from. As we approach the room where we’ll be staying for the next few days, I realize there are tears streaming down my face too. It’s a strange feeling—I rarely let myself cry, but now the tears won’t stop coming. The emotion wells up from inside, taking me over, and I lean against the door, too incredibly overwhelmed to stand straight.
 

I take a deep breath and walk into the room, wiping tears away with the edge of my hospital gown. When I see Renata, bright eyed and smiling, holding our daughter, I breathe a deep sigh of relief. I step over to her and sit in the chair next to the hospital bed. After all the medications and monitors are set in place, we’re left with a different kind of quiet. This silence is beautiful and much deserved. It’s the very thing we’ve been waiting for for the all the years we were together and all the years we were apart. We spend time just staring at our little girl, whispering to each other in hushed tones as she closes her eyes and takes her first nap on her mother’s chest.
 

When she wakes again, Renata nods to me. “You should hold her.”
 

Hands shaking, I take the small weight of a tiny baby from my wife’s hands. Her expression is bright and alert, wisps of brown hair in little whorls on her head, small round face contemplating me with her timeless, beautiful eyes. I rock her gently, sitting back in the chair as she drifts off to sleep again. “What should we call her?” I whisper to Renata. “We never did settle on a name.”

Renata smiles at me, tears forming at the edges of her eyes again. “Maybe… Joy. It’s not one we discussed before, I know. But it’s what I’m feeling right now. I know that’s kind of corny.”
 

My throat tightens, and I hold our baby tight. “No, I like it. I really like it. Seems like it suits her pretty good. It’s a good, solid name for a little girl. A pretty name.”
 

Renata smiles and reaches out to put a hand on my knee. “We don’t have to search for each other anymore. We have each other for real. And now we have her too.”
 

“That we do. And she’s beautiful.” We pause like that for a long time, letting the idea sink in. We’re not waiting for anything, not running, not getting out of a bad situation that we both caused, and no one is leaving anyone for a very long time to come. If I have anything to do with it, we’ll live forever, just like this. The three of us, united against all the odds that we have faced. There might be bumps in the road ahead, flaws and shortcomings that we’ll all have to face, problems we’ll have to work out. It doesn’t matter, though. We have each other, our unit of three, and maybe more when the time is right.
 

I expect Renata might not want to go through this again for a while, and I reckon I’ll leave that up to her.
 

Right now, this is all I need.
 

And I don’t think that’s ever going to change.

CHAPTER ONE

“I’m afraid it’s not viable, Cadence. The transfer didn’t work.”
 

The worlds swirl around in my mind as I walk up to the art studio where my friend Anna is waiting to hear the news. I should have accepted her offer to come with me to the fertility clinic, but I was stupid, and I thought everything would be just fine. There were two beautiful pink lines, lines I hadn’t seen in over a year. And stupidly, I thought it would
stick
this time. Like it didn’t before.

Three cycles of in-vitro and all my savings are gone.
 

“Maybe it’s better that it didn’t work,” I say out loud into the screaming New York wind. “Eli is gone. Who ever heard of a single woman spending her last dime on a worthless man’s frozen embryos?” I wrap my scarf tight around my neck and wipe the cold tears away with my gloves. It would have been nice to go home to New Jersey at Christmas and tell my mom and dad that I’d finally be giving them a grandbaby. But here it is the day after Thanksgiving, and my last hope for a successful pregnancy is gone. Along with all of my damn money, and all of the creative energy I have for painting.

Just a tiny collection of cells from me and Eli. Supposed to be a life, but instead it was just destruction.
 

Eli had waved his hands like he didn’t care if I tried to transfer the last embryo or not. As long as he was free of parental responsibility, he said, I could do any damn depressing thing I wanted. The tears are streaming down my face now, and the New York City wind is whipping around me, making its way through my peacoat and freezing me to the bone. There’s something about this wind. It starts in November and doesn’t let go until we’re in April. Maybe it’s the chill coming off of the Hudson River, or the channels created through the tall buildings.
 

The key won’t turn in the door. It’s stuck like usual. I bang on it halfheartedly even though I know Anna’s probably working in the back with her earphones in. I rattle the door, kick it helplessly with my steel-toed boots until my nearly-frozen toes start to hurt.