The Other Life (31 page)

“I’m so dizzy,” Quinn said.

“Your blood pressure is low,” the woman said. She turned to the man. “Let’s get her on the gurney and start two liters of oxygen.” She turned back to Quinn and repeated the question about the bathroom.

“I didn’t use the toilet,” Quinn said. “I just took off my bloody clothes.”

“Where are they?” the man asked.

“In the sink.”

“Where’s that?”

“Off the master bedroom,” Quinn said.

Georgette offered to show him where it was, and he grabbed a red plastic bag from his kit and followed her upstairs. When they came down the bag was filled, and Quinn was able to make out the lettering on it: BIOHAZARD.

As they took Quinn away in the ambulance, Georgette said she would get dressed and meet her at the hospital.

Slow down, Quinn thought as the ambulance rushed through the streets. Please. She didn’t want to get to the hospital before Lewis or Dr. Bernard. She couldn’t go through this without them. Sally should be the one to tell her the baby was gone. Lewis should be there to hear it, to take her hand, to hold her.

Quinn imagined some strange doctor snapping off his gloves after examining her.

That, she knew, was what everyone would say. It’s for the best. It wasn’t meant to be. Nature’s way. God’s will.

The ambulance pulled to a stop at the hospital. Quinn wanted to tell them to turn around and take her home, that she had changed her mind. She didn’t want to go through with any of this. But it was too late. She was a cog in a giant machine that wouldn’t stop turning, and it was all beyond her control. She was pulled out of the ambulance on the gurney and pushed through double doors that had opened automatically. It reminded Quinn of the haunted house ride at the amusement park, in which the wall parted in the middle just when it seemed that crashing into it was inevitable.

A woman doctor took her chart and conferred with the paramedics. Quinn was then wheeled to a curtained area in the emergency room and moved to a bed.

A nurse with olive skin and a blunt haircut pulled the curtain closed and put another blood pressure cuff on her arm. The doctor stayed on the other side of the curtain, finishing her conversation with the paramedics.

“My name is Milena,” the nurse said.

Quinn paused, momentarily short-circuiting. How was she supposed to respond to that? “Nice to meet you” seemed entirely inappropriate.

“I’m Quinn,” she finally said.

“Dr. Kanterman is very nice.”

“Good,” Quinn said, but couldn’t manage to change her expression.

“We’re going to need you to undress from the waist down. Can you manage that?”

Quinn lifted her bottom and pulled off her pants and panties, but left the sanitary napkins pressed against her crotch in order not to soil the bed. She handed her clothes to the nurse.

The curtain opened and the doctor entered. She was sixtyish and pale, with stiff hair and dark circles under her eyes. And she was tall—very, very tall. Doctors, Quinn thought, should be required to pass some sort of anti-intimidation test.

“I’m Dr. Kanterman,” she said. “We’re going to take good care of you.”

“Where’s Dr. Bernard?” Quinn asked. She wanted her small, gentle doctor. Her friend.

“She’s on her way.”

“And my husband? He should be getting here about now.”

“What’s his name?” Milena asked.

“Lewis. Lewis Braverman.”

Milena said she would check, and left.

“I need to do an internal exam,” the doctor said, putting on gloves. “Try to relax.”

Quinn pulled the sticky sanitary napkins from her crotch and looked at them. The blood was still dark, but there wasn’t much of it.

“I think it’s stopping,” Quinn said. “I was bleeding so much more before.”

“Well, you’re lying down now.”

Gravity. Of course. Quinn felt her heart contract. The doctor took the pads from her and stared at them for a moment before setting them aside. Quinn put her legs in the stirrups.

“Try to relax,” the doctor repeated, her gloved hand inside Quinn.

Relax. Sure.
She grimaced as the doctor felt around.

“You’re not dilated,” the doctor said. “Not effaced, either.”

“That sounds . . . positive,” Quinn said. She didn’t want to get her hopes up, and knew this doctor wasn’t about to give her false hope.

“Let’s find out,” Dr. Kanterman said, snapping off her gloves. “I’ll be right back.”

Quinn waited alone, trembling, with nothing to look at but the cold tile of the ceiling and the garishly colorful clown-striped curtains. She kept both hands on her belly, trying to get a sense of whether her baby was still alive. She was the mother. She was supposed to know. Why was this so hard?

Nurse Milena came back, pushing a cart piled with electronic equipment.

“Your husband is filling out the insurance paperwork,” she said.

“What is that?” Quinn said, pointing to the cart.

“We’re going to check for a heartbeat, and at the same time monitor any contractions you might be having.”

“Heartbeat?” Quinn said. “No! Please don’t.”

“Don’t?”

“I . . . I want my husband here.”

Lewis had been there at Isaac’s birth, and she needed him here for this. She simply couldn’t get this news alone.

Quinn remembered that confusing moment after Isaac was born and the doctor announced, “It’s a boy!” Instead of feeling elated, Quinn was bewildered. Everyone had predicted she would have a girl, and Quinn hadn’t imagined it any other way. In her heart, she was already in love with her daughter. In fact, all that back-and-forth with names had felt like a game. Making two lists was just a matter of going through the motions. She was having a girl. There was just no doubt.

Then they presented her with this stranger—a boy. How could she possibly love this child? She wasn’t prepared.

A panic was starting to take hold when she looked up at Lewis’s face. Joy lit his features. There was no equivocation—he was consumed with love. This softened Quinn’s heart, and by the time they laid the tiny squirming newborn on her chest, she had been split open.

Yes, she thought, as she watched his tiny face turn, rooting for her nipple, I’m your mother. She put him on her breast, and just like that, it all made sense. He was the baby she was meant to love.

She turned to Lewis then, weeping. “We have a son,” she said, and what she meant was,
I will never be the same.

“Those insurance forms can take a long time,” Milena said, “and it’s not a good idea to delay this.”

“Please,” Quinn said. She was desperate. If the device couldn’t pick up a heartbeat and Lewis wasn’t at her side, there would be nothing to hold on to. She thought about the glass of vodka she drank last night, and about running into the street without looking. Quinn realized that if the baby was dead, it was probably her own fault.

“I’m sorry,” the nurse said, “but I have to follow protocol.”

“I’m sure he’ll be here in a minute,” Quinn said, crying.

The nurse looked at Quinn’s face and softened. “I shouldn’t do this,” she said, putting the equipment down.

The tightness in Quinn’s chest began to loosen. “Bless you,” she whispered.

Milena waved the comment away. “We never had this conversation,” she said, and slipped out.

Alone again, Quinn’s hands went right back to her belly. But she was too tense to get in touch with any sensation beyond her own fear. She tried counting the ceiling tiles to calm her nerves, but it was useless. On the other side of the curtain another patient was being examined. They tried to speak in hushed tones, but Quinn was able to hear that it was an old woman complaining of chest pains.

At last, the curtain by Quinn’s bed opened and four people entered together—Dr. Kanterman, nurse Milena, Dr. Sally Bernard, and Lewis—turning the tiny space into a sad parody of a crowded cocktail party.

“Are you okay?” Lewis asked, and that’s when Quinn realized that the dam holding back her fear was made of wishes. It gave way instantly and she wept in great torrents. Lewis embraced her.

“I’m here,” he whispered. “We’ll be okay.”

Quinn didn’t want to let go. But she was acutely aware of the audience waiting for them to finish, so she patted her husband on the back to let him know she was ready. But she wasn’t. She was terrified.

Lewis stood and backed away. Sally Bernard squeezed Quinn’s hand and released it. The nurse asked her to sit up so that she could wrap a band around her middle, then adjusted it so that the monitor attached to it was near the center of her belly.

Dr. Kanterman turned on the machine and the sound of static filled the room. Beneath it, Quinn could detect a faint steady noise.

“That’s
your
heartbeat,” the doctor said.

Milena repositioned the monitor and then there it was: the fast familiar
woosh-woosh-woosh-woosh
of the fetal heartbeat.

Could it be?
Quinn swallowed hard. “That’s the baby, right?”

“Right,” Dr. Kanterman said.

Naomi was still alive. Tears of relief traveled down Quinn’s face toward her temples. Lewis took her hand and smiled, but it looked more as if he were trying to cheer her than experiencing real happiness.

“Thank God,” Quinn said.

“Does this mean we’re out of the woods?” Lewis asked the doctors.

“It might,” Dr. Kanterman said. “We still need to do an ultrasound to figure out what caused the bleeding.”

“I’ll see what’s holding up that equipment,” Milena said, and left. When she came back, she was pushing a cart with a sonogram monitor on top.

Dr. Kanterman repositioned the band on Quinn’s belly to get it out of the way, and then squirted ice-cold gel onto her flesh. Quinn winced.

“Sorry,” the doctor said. “In the ER, we don’t get warmers for the gel like they do up in radiology.” She switched on the screen, and then picked up the transducer, which she ran over Quinn’s middle. She held her face close to the monitor as she moved the wand back and forth. Dr. Bernard stepped in for a closer look.

The room was quiet as the doctors concentrated, trying to find something as mysterious to Quinn as wormholes in space. What were they looking for?

At one point, both doctors moved their heads forward simultaneously. Dr. Kanterman froze the picture with a click of her mouse.

“You see that?” she said to Dr. Bernard.

“I do.”

“What is it?” Lewis asked.

“Just another minute,” Dr. Kanterman said. She continued moving the tool around Quinn’s middle. After several minutes she asked Dr. Bernard if she wanted to have a closer look, and the two switched places.

The images on the screen meant nothing to Quinn, so she focused on Dr. Bernard’s face, which was somber. At last, she put the instrument down. The nurse wiped Quinn’s belly and put the fetal monitor back in place. Naomi’s heartbeat once again filled the room.

Dr. Sally Bernard cleared her throat and spoke. “We believe you have a partial abruption, which means that a portion of the placenta has torn away from the uterine wall. That’s what caused all the bleeding. It seems to be clotting. And as far as we can see, the baby is getting enough blood and enough oxygen right now.”

“How did this happen?” Quinn asked.

“It’s usually the result of trauma or a fall.”

“So it’s from the car accident?”

“Most likely.”

Quinn went cold. This was all her fault after all. “Am I going to lose her?”

“Honestly, Quinn, we don’t know. We’d like to monitor you for a few hours, then assess the situation again.”

“What’s the best-case scenario?” Lewis asked.

“Well,” Dr. Bernard said, “if the baby’s heartbeat stays strong and the bleeding stops, we can assume the placenta successfully clotted. In that case, if you choose to continue with the pregnancy, we’ll recommend bed rest to minimize the chance of another tear.”

If you choose to continue with the pregnancy
. The words shook Quinn from the safe place she had retreated to after hearing the heartbeat.

“Is it dangerous for Quinn?” Lewis asked.

“It’s not life threatening, but . . .”

“But?” Lewis said.

“The further along the pregnancy progresses, the harder it is to terminate. And if the fetus dies in utero after twenty-four weeks, the safest course of action is to induce contractions or wait for Quinn to go into labor naturally.”

“What are the odds?” Lewis asked. “What are the odds of that happening?”

The two doctors exchanged glances.

“Fairly high,” Dr. Bernard said.

Quinn’s scalp prickled. She couldn’t imagine anything more horrific than giving birth to a dead baby. She put a hand over her mouth to suppress a wail, but it was too late.

QUINN KEPT HER ARM OVER HER EYES, SHIELDING HERSELF from the light. She and Lewis were alone in the cubicle, listening to the steady sound of baby Naomi’s heartbeat.

“I can’t do this,” Quinn said. “I can’t give birth to a dead baby.”

He sat on the edge of her bed. “Do you want to terminate?” he said softly.

She should have known he was going to ask that, she should have been prepared. But she wasn’t.

“I can’t do that, either,” she said, and moved over, making room for him to lie down. He did, and she rolled toward him, holding the monitor in place so it wouldn’t slip. She put her head on his chest, and they lay there silently, listening to the sparrow-fast beat of Naomi’s heart.

“Honey, I know this is hard,” he finally said. “But I think today is decision day.”

Quinn rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling tiles again. She remembered the delivery room scene on the day of Isaac’s birth, her adrenaline getting her through the pain of contractions. “Push!” Dr. Bernard had said when she reached ten centimeters. I can’t, she thought. I’m just too tired. But she somehow found the strength. When the doctor said, “Harder!” Quinn was furious and frustrated. Didn’t they realize how exhausted she was? It had already taken everything she had and then some. But she thought about the new life winding its way down her birth canal and summoned energy from someplace she didn’t even know existed. “Again!” the doctor said.
Impossible,
she wanted to cry.
I’m depleted.
But she did it anyway. And then she did it again. And again. Until finally the baby emerged, a slippery new life. Her son.