Perri O'Shaughnessy - Keeper of the Keys

Why hadn’t they called her?

She locked the car. Coming through the Westwood Plaza entrance, she made her way into the hospital.

A friendly receptionist told her she might find her sister on level five, so she waited with a motley crew for the double doors of the elevator to open. On her left, a man in a wheelchair, his head twisted to the right in a permanently frozen position, moaned. His wife bent down and caressed his cheek. On her left, a middle-aged woman, maybe fifty, with wiry blonde hair that flew out of her head like Medusa’s snakes, rested on crutches.

“What happened?” Kat asked, hoping this was not an awkward question.

“I fell off a sidewalk at a street fair,” the woman answered, “while checking out the bonsai booth. The silver lining is, I’m building my upper body strength.” She laughed.

The nurses’ station, a large central area surrounded by counter-space and speckled with computers, did not exhibit a neighborly air; no warm cuddly pictures, no flowers.

“Okay,” a male nurse said. “Her name comes up on page one.”

“What room?”

The man studied whatever it was he viewed on the computer screen. Games? Instant messages? Kat wondered.

“Hmm,” he said ominously.

I hate you, Kat replied internally. She realized the last time she had been in a hospital was when she went to find Tom there, and eventually found him in the morgue. “An ambulance brought her,” she said instead, helpfully.

“I’m thinking room five oh eight,” he said. “She’s in recovery. Just got there from the OR. Hmm.”

Stop saying that, Kat thought, or I will hit you.

“Through the double doors and on your right.”

She found 508 without too many wrong turns, opened the door, and greeted her sister inside. Raoul, looking like a man holding on to a lifeline, was clasping his wife’s hand with both of his.

Jacki had the window side. On the door side, Jacki’s roommate was a woman who spoke right up. “Arrgh,” the roommate cried in greeting. “Crap! I hate my life!” Thin and pallid as a tubercular character in a novel, she had thrown her white sheets off and lay splayed like an automobile crash dummy, post-collision.

“Hey,” Kat said to her sister.

“Hey.” Jacki’s droopy blue eyes gazed at her. “I know you.”

Scared, Kat just took her hand. Her sister, for the past few months whale-sized, now appeared diminished, the sheet over her stomach collapsed like a fallen parachute. Where was the baby? Kat didn’t dare ask.

Raoul said, “She’s okay, Kat. Really.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“No time. I’m really sorry. It happened really fast, and then they operated-”

All the pent-up concern Kat had been repressing flooded out and she started crying. “Jacki! Boo hoo hoo.”

“Quit that. Ma always said you sound like a dying animal when you cry and it’s true,” Jacki said groggily. “Ow, Raoul, something hurts bad down by my right foot.”

“She’s doped up, Kat,” Raoul said, apologizing for Jacki’s crankiness. “Just woke up. I’ll get the nurse in here, honey.”

“They doped me up, hoping I won’t notice every freaking thing went wrong that could go wrong.”

Kat said nothing, just squeezed Jacki’s hand.

“Ouch,” Jacki said weakly.

“Sorry,” Kat said. “Tell me what happened.”

“I was crossing Sepulveda. Big street, so many cars. This-oh-so-L.A.-this stretch limo came out of nowhere. What I remember is the part where I rolled along the street like a bowling ball. Speaking of which-” She stared down at her stomach. “Oh, my God! Raoul! Our baby!” She clutched her husband.

Raoul bent down and kissed her forehead. He stayed there, cheek pressed to hers, and whispered, “Honey, you’re a mother.”

“We had-our baby? While I was sleeping?”

He nodded. “You went into labor after the accident, while they were setting your foot. Everything went fine. My brave girl. I love you.”

“The baby came?”

“A boy, sweetheart.”

Kat’s heart filled at the sight of the joy on her sister’s face.

“We have another boy in the family,” Jacki said. Tears glittered in the corners of her eyes. “I want him! Where is he? Bring him here, my darling. Oh, Raoul, a little boy.”

“We can pick a name finally. Anything besides my dad’s, okay?” Raoul said.

“Middle name Thomas.” Jacki tried to sit up, but she groaned immediately and fell back on the bed.

“Congratulations,” Kat said. She smoothed Jacki’s hair and kissed her, then hugged Raoul. “I have a nephew,” she said wonderingly. A new being with an intimate connection to her had sparked into existence when she wasn’t looking.

“But where is he? Why isn’t he here?”

“You need to rest. Are you ready to see him?”

“Please. I am.”

At Raoul’s request, the nurses brought the shriveled and squalling newborn to Jacki, tightly swaddled in a white hospital cotton blanket, a blue band decorating his skinny wrist. Jacki cried at the sight of him. She pulled the tightly wrapped blanket down, which made him cry, too, examining his extremities and genitals.

“They’re perfect,” she said. “Ten toes. Look, Kat. All good.”

“Perfect,” Kat agreed.

Wrinkled and of an alarmingly bright pink hue, he was mostly bald, but Kat was as mesmerized by his velvety pate as Jacki. She reached out a tentative hand and rested it on the downy head. His skin felt moist, warm, and pliant under her touch.

Rather efficiently, the baby found Jacki’s nipple and clamped on. “It might hurt a little at first,” said the nurse. “Of course, you’ll toughen up.”

“Look, Kat. What a beautiful child. Do you believe it?”

“Be glad he’s healthy even though he’s small,” said the nurse. “One lady tonight had a baby with heart problems. He’ll need an operation before he can go home.”

Jacki kissed the baby’s head gently, as if conferring a blessing. “Send her flowers! Send her money for a college education!”

Raoul held her and his son, all together in one big bundle. When Jacki nodded off at last, Kat and Raoul had a wonderful time holding and passing the bundle back and forth and drinking freely from a bottle of chilled champagne Raoul had scored somewhere. The baby slept calmly in his bassinet by the side of the bed, as if perfectly comfortable already with his new surroundings.

“You did it,” Kat said. “You gave me a nephew, Raoul. Thank you.”

He stroked the boy’s cheek, who instantly rooted, searching for a nipple, hoping for more. He sucked his father’s baby finger, temporarily mollified. “What if-imagine me raising him without her. Alone.”

“You would never be alone.”

“I hope that’s true.”

“I might not have the colostrum but I have the will. No harm will come to this one, not when I’m around.” Hearing the fierceness in her own voice made her almost embarrassed.

“I’ll go get us a pizza,” Kat said later. They ate, and Raoul slept, and Kat watched Jacki wake up twice to take pills and feed her little one. The nurses didn’t bother them much. The door was closed and the small, plain room with its medical equipment and sleepers felt as beautiful as the Taj Mahal.

When Jacki woke up again at almost four in the morning and began feeding her baby, Kat left, but not before Jacki had the last word, as usual.

“I wish you could have this feeling,” she said wistfully, “that life goes on, and it’s good.”

She would admit to silver linings, Kat thought, punching the elevator button, new muscles, new life.

Kat had told Ray to pick her up at her work at nine-thirty that evening, but she wasn’t there. Ray missed her. He wanted to talk to her, had been holding on so that he could talk to her.