Rock Angel (Rock Angel Series Book 1) (46 page)

Mrs. Marshall let out an agonized scream and what followed was three and a half hours of the most excruciating ordeal he’d ever witnessed another human being experience. More than once his gorge rose and once, when he saw a gush of red between her legs, he felt the blood draining from his own head.

The cheerful orderly was right there. “Do you need to sit down, Mr. Marshall?”

“No.” Quinn shook his hand off. “I don’t faint at the sight of blood, for Chrissake.” But it was Shan’s blood and emanating from a place he was intimately familiar with. The thought of that soft aperture, which he’d caressed so tenderly and so often, being stretched wide enough to permit the passage of a baby was causing his own body to contract with sympathy pains.

He tried to imagine something similar happening to himself and the only comparison he could come up with was passing a turd the size of a butternut squash. A big one, maybe some kind of hybrid. He gasped and redoubled his admonitions to breathe.

During a brief respite she fell back gasping and he disengaged one cramped hand from her grip to wipe the sweat from her forehead. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “You must hate me.”

She stared at him. “Why?”

“For talking you into this,” he said. “It’s all my fault.”

“Shut up, Q. Just
shut up!
” Her groan turned into a gasp, then to a scream that was a higher decibel level than any she’d attained thus far. And, in its wake, another, smaller cry.

He raised his head. Was she screaming out the other end? How was that possible? “What—” he began, but broke off when Shan shrieked again.

Dr. Taylor was smiling. “It’s a girl,” he announced. “Would you like to cut the cord?”

Quinn gaped at him. He’d been so wrapped up in his wife that he’d nearly lost sight of the reason they were there. He’d even forgotten to pull the Sony out of his pocket, where he’d craftily concealed it.

He released Shan’s hand for the first time in almost four hours and took the scissors. He severed the cord, craning his head to get a look at his daughter. She didn’t look like much, just a bloody little mass, but he could glimpse a tiny foot waving in the air.

“Is she all right?” Shan cried, tensing again as she prepared to deliver the placenta. “Goddamn it, Q,
is she all right?”

“I think so.” He squinted over Dr. Taylor’s shoulder. They were hosing off the baby and he could hear a nurse calling out the points of the Apgar scores as they foot printed her.

It took less than a minute, then they were placing the baby in Shan’s arms. She was covered with goop, despite the hosing, and chunks of…of…
whatever
.

He wrinkled his nose. It sure wasn’t like the movies, where the glowing new mother was handed a clean white bundle. They always talked about the sweet smell, too, but this baby didn’t smell sweet. She smelled kind of rank, in fact. Shan wasn’t glowing, either. She looked like hell.

“Oh, look at her,” Shan gasped. “She’s perfect. Look at her, Q!”

He looked.

And his heart turned over.

It was a little, tiny person, it really was, with fingers and toes and even infinitesimal toenails. He held out a finger and watched as a miniature fist curled around it. Her hair was dark, dark fuzz that looked like it was going to be curly and, even through the goop, he could see the light clear pink of her rosebud mouth.

“Look what we made,” Shan said and her voice was full of wonder.

When Shan woke a few hours later, Quinn was examining their daughter with his science project eye. “She looks just like you, angel,” he said, when he saw she was awake.

“Gimme!” She held her arms out for her daughter. “Happy birthday, Abby.”

Quinn shook his head as he handed the baby over. “She doesn’t look like an Abby.”

“We agreed,” she reminded him. “I want to name her after my mother.”

“But she looks like
you
.” When he looked up, he saw that she was frowning at him and he shrugged. “Look, I get it. You want to name her after the most important woman in your life. I guess I want to name her after the most important woman in mine.”

As he watched, she melted. “That’s sweet, Q. But we can’t call her Shan Junior.”

“No, but maybe she shouldn’t be Abby Junior, either. She deserves her own name.”

They were both quiet for a moment, regarding their perfect child. “She’s so little,” Shan said, touching the baby’s hair. She had a lot of it and it was fuzzy and soft.

“A little angel,” Quinn agreed. “Maybe that’s what we ought to call her.”

“Another Angel?”

“Well, we’ve already got two of those hanging around. How about Angelica?”

“Angelica Abby O’Hara Marshall?” she said and considered for a moment. “Angel Abby. Yes, that’s it. Good call, Q.”

“I love you,” he said suddenly and, when she looked up he saw she did glow, after all. “Mrs. Marshall,” he finished, and kissed her.

Shan had been fanatically cautious during her pregnancy, eating nutritious food, getting plenty of rest and exercise, which wasn’t always easy while they were touring, and committing to natural childbirth. She tried to do everything right, be an absolutely perfect expectant mother, even prayed to a god she didn’t believe in to atone for the methadone she was ingesting every morning.

At first she thought it worked, because the baby wasn’t born withdrawing. She was small, just over five pounds, but possessed a rosy skin tone once the ravages of birth faded. They were relieved beyond measure, but Dr. Taylor still advised keeping her under observation.

And, when Angelica was three days old, she began to scream. It was different from her usual crying, a jagged, pitiful, high-pitched squall. Then the tremors started, the sweating and diarrhea and vomiting. They moved her to the neonatal intensive care unit, where it was confirmed that she was suffering from methadone withdrawal.

She remained in the hospital for weeks after her birth, sequestered in the special section of the unit devoted to drug-addicted infants. It was a dark, somber place, quiet as a tomb except when one of the babies was crying, which was often, the shrill, piercing wail of the addicted.

“These newborns are hard to console,” one of the special care nurses told them. “They’re physically sick, like having a bad flu.
You
know,” she said pointedly to Shan. Quinn bristled, but Shan nodded meekly, her lower lip trembling. “They’re jittery and they generally don’t sleep well, either. They need quiet, a dark and calm environment, and they need to be held and comforted a lot. That’s what you can do for your daughter,” she added, to both of them.

So they did. They held her and soothed her and sang to her. Shan learned infant massage, stroking and rubbing the tiny body tenderly. She bathed her when she perspired, then swaddled her in soft blankets and rocked her, for hours sometimes.

Still the baby screamed. She screamed and screamed and screamed. It made Quinn feel like crawling out of his own skin, sometimes, but Shan seemed immune to it. She was tireless in her ministering and never once complained, like she deserved to pay penance for her baby’s misery.

It was an attitude clearly held by some of the staff who looked at her like she was scum. He’d expected better treatment, since addicted newborns were what the place specialized in, but he didn’t even want to imagine the things these people had seen.

Then child protective services showed up and it caught both of them off guard. Apparently it was standard procedure when it was established that a newborn had drugs in her system, but Shan was hysterical, even after assurances that their intention was not to take their baby away. They’d be assigned a case worker, though. Strictly routine, the investigator told them, but it would have been nice to have gotten a fucking warning.

Angelica was a fussy eater, which was usual for babies suffering from neonatal abstinence syndrome, and it was another blow to Shan when the same nurse advised against breast feeding. “There would be traces of methadone in your milk,” the nurse informed her, “and she doesn’t need that, not when she’s trying to detox. It’s healthier for her if she goes on the bottle.”

When Quinn consulted Dr. Taylor, he unequivocally disagreed. “That’s absolutely not true. Breast feeding is the healthiest alternative. It will give your daughter the antibodies she needs and it’s fine if there are minute traces of methadone in the milk. It might even help with the withdrawal.”

When Quinn communicated that information to Shan, she shook her head. “I won’t do it, not if there’s even the slightest chance that I’m toxic for her.”

Toxic?
Christ. She was stretched tighter than a snare head and his role, he supposed, was to absorb some of it. He’d felt like he’d had quite a bit of practice with that, since she’d been as irritable toward the end of her pregnancy as the baby was now. At least then they’d been working on the new album—and fighting with her about the songs, yelling at her during the recording sessions was helpful, for him at least. It relieved some of his own tension and he knew Shan understood it. That was part of their relationship; it was what they did, and the normalcy of arguing over the work helped get them through that nerve-wracking time.

But now he had no outlet. She had him to take it out on and he could tolerate that, to a point. Patience wasn’t his strength, though, and before long he could feel the pressure building up to an explosion.

Shan had a room adjacent to the neonatal intensive care unit and she was at the hospital 24/7, one hundred percent focused on Angelica. She hadn’t touched her guitar in weeks and he thought that might have something to do with her anxiety, so the next time he went home he retrieved the Angel.

“Play to her,” he ordered and, when she did, it seemed to help. Whether it was a case of music soothing the savage beast, in this case a detoxing infant, or because it calmed Shan, which in turn settled the baby, he wasn’t sure. All he knew was that the music comforted all three of them. It was his turn to hold his daughter and he did it against his bare chest, skin to skin with a blanket spread over her back, something the charge nurse referred to as a kangaroo hold. Sometimes Shan was the one to hold her that way, nestling her between her breasts and singing with him while he played, but it really seemed that the music her mother made soothed Angelica best.

After nearly four weeks, Dr. Taylor pronounced the baby drug free and they were finally allowed to take her home. When they arrived there, Quinn had a surprise for them.

There was a bassinet for her in their bedroom, a pretty wicker and toile confection that was a gift from Quinn’s brother. She would sleep there at night, but Angelica had her own nursery, too, a corner room with north- and east-facing windows. Shan had put an enormous amount of care into its furnishings. No blithe pastels for her child, she decided, instead creating a warm space of earthy, restful colors, greens and tans and blues. An enormous coast live oak grew right outside, its gnarly limbs and dark green leaves swathing the broad windows protectively. Together with the muted green walls, it gave the room the feel of a haven in the trees, a peaceful, calming place for a baby whose road into the world had been a rocky one.

While she’d been at the hospital Quinn had added a few touches of his own: a high border comprised of musical notes, a beautiful layette that reflected the same, even a sweet mobile of musical instruments that played “Rock and Roll Lullaby
.
” Shan gasped when she saw it. “I hope you’re not mad,” he said hastily. “I know you put a lot of thought into this room, but she loves music, angel. It nourishes her, just like it does us, and she should be surrounded with it.”

When Shan turned, her eyes were shining. “It’s wonderful,” she said. “It’s perfect. I love it. I just love it, Q…and I love you, too.”

He grinned, relieved. He was never quite sure how she’d react to things these days. Those damned hormones again, he noted as he lifted the baby from Shan’s arms and checked her.

“Dry,” he said, then tucked her into her crib. Once he had her situated, he bent to examine her. He did this often. He was enchanted with his child, so tiny and fragile, beautiful as her mother except for the blue eyes that were just like his own.

Those eyes were now closing and he felt Shan pressing against him. “Let’s make love,” she whispered. “Please?”

“Really?” He regarded her skeptically. “It’s a little soon for sex, isn’t it?”

“We can do other stuff,” she said archly.

She didn’t have to ask twice. They only made it as far as the hallway outside the nursery before he pulled her down on the floor.

Angie continued to be a fussy baby, so they both spent a lot of time rocking and holding and singing, but Shan’s relief at having her daughter at home had done much to alleviate her distress. Their life returned to a semblance of normalcy.

Even normal felt strange to her, though. The beautiful house, her new family, her own status as a rising rock star and the seemingly endless stream of money—it felt like she’d somehow landed in someone else’s life. She was suspicious of her good fortune and reluctant to embrace it, but when she allowed herself to feel it she was happier than she’d ever been in her life.

Except for the days when the case worker visited, when Shan’s anxiety indicator shot up to critical levels. The visits angered Quinn, who didn’t understand why they were necessary. Their child was safe, loved, well cared for, and Shan didn’t fit the profile of a drug-addict mother. Except for the prescriptive methadone she never touched drugs of any kind. She wouldn’t let anyone smoke a cigarette within fifty feet of the baby, for Crissake. She was financially well off, gainfully employed, involved in a stable relationship—what was the fucking problem?

Quinn detested the case worker, an officious bitch named Carolyn Prout who seemed to hold a personal grudge against Shan. The investigator at the hospital had assured them that the visits were a precautionary measure and they’d likely close the case soon, but Ms. Prout kept scheduling visits. He spoke with their pediatrician, who told him that cases like theirs were common. Addicted mothers were considered child abusers, even in cases like Shan’s where the drug in question was doctor prescribed.