Elizabeth Scott - Heartbeat

“Mom,” I whisper, and kiss her hand, pressing my cheek to it, eyes closed as I imagine.

I feel movement, a slight shift in her but I know it’s not her.

It’s the baby.

“Why did you do it, Mom?” I ask. “Why did you try so hard for this when it was so hard on you? When the risks were so many? When you cried so much? When you ended up—when now you’re here?”

I hear Dan’s voice as he comes back into the ward. He always says hello to everyone, like he’s so friendly. Like he’s actually thinking about anything other than himself.

I open my eyes and see a magazine cart in front of the door.

And I see Caleb Harrison staring at me again.

“Hey there,” Dan says to him as he comes to the room. “I saw you earlier, right?”

Caleb nods, looking at him and then my mother. I see him stare at her stomach.

Dan walks into the room. “Lisa, Emma and I are both here now, and I thought we’d all talk for a little while before we have to go.” He pats Mom’s stomach. “I was thinking today we could talk about names.”

“No,” I say, and Dan looks at me.

Caleb, still standing in the doorway, looks at me too, and Dan glances at me, then at him, and says, “We don’t need anything to read now, thanks.”

Caleb shrugs and moves off, the cart squeaking as he goes.

“You know him?” Dan says.

“No, but it’s not every day you see a girl sitting with her dead mother, is it? People would stare at that, don’t you think?”

“Emma, honey, your voice—”

“She can’t hear me.”

“The baby can, though, and I don’t want—”

I stand up so fast that I’m dizzy for a second. I don’t want to hear more. I can’t hear more.

“I don’t feel good,” I say. “Can we go?”

“I really was hoping we could talk about names. I’d like for you and I to...” He sighs. “Your little brother is in there, Emma. He’s in there and he’s fighting to stay alive.”

I walk out of the room then. I stop at the nurses’ station and ask to use the phone. I hear Dan come out when he realizes I’m not coming back. I hang up the phone.

“Emma,” he says, but I pretend I can’t hear him and walk out. He follows me, of course.

“You’re hurting your mother,” he says when we’re waiting for the elevator. “She wanted this baby. She’d want you to be part of this. She’d be so sad to see how you’re acting.”

I stay silent. I stay silent all the way to the car, all the way to the house. I don’t think of it as home anymore.

“You say what she wants. What she thinks, what she feels,” I say when we get there. “She can’t do anything now, and it’s all because of you and what you want. So don’t tell me how she feels, because she can’t feel. She’s dead. She died trying to have your baby, and if you want to think about feelings and Mom, how do you think she feels about that? How do you think being dead makes her feel?”

“Emma,” Dan says, and then “Emma!” but I’m out of the car and heading down the driveway, heading toward the car I know is waiting there.

The lights turn on as I reach it, and I open the passenger door and get in.

“Thank you,” I say, and Olivia nods, squeezing my hand before we drive off.

9

The phone at Olivia’s house is blinking when we get in but she ignores it, sits me down in her parents’ gleaming steel kitchen and puts a peanut butter sandwich in front of me.

“Just don’t let me see you destroy it,” she says, putting a bag of corn chips next to me, and then goes over to the phone.

I hear her talking while I’m opening the sandwich and putting corn chips on top of the peanut butter.

“No, she called me from the hospital, and I said I’d come get her. I—look, Dan, I think she just needs some decompression time. You know?”

I love Olivia. Not just for talking to Dan for me, but for a million little things. Like, she was okay that my mom loved peanut butter and corn chip sandwiches even before I was. I thought the idea was disgusting until I found myself wandering around the house three nights after she reached for toast and then broke. I was thinking about her, the things she did, like how she always had to put her wallet in her purse before she’d put anything else in or how much she hated peas.

I was wandering, remembering, and I was alone. Dan was sleeping peacefully, no doubt dreaming of his baby.

I thought about those sandwiches.

I made one the way she always did, first pressing the slices of bread and peanut butter together, and then taking them apart to put the chips on before smooshing it back together, and it was good. As I ate it, for a moment I swear I could almost see her. Picture her smiling at me.

“Sure, she’ll call later,” Olivia says. “Okay. Bye.”

She comes back to the table, one arm extended. I hand her the chips and smile as she heads toward the pantry, eyes averted from my sandwich.

“It’s not that bad. I’ve seen those gel things your parents eat.”

“True,” she says, coming back to the table and sitting down.

“You can see the sandwich now since you’re sitting here, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. What happened?”

I tell her.

“Oh,” she says when I’m done. “Names, huh? He must really think the baby’s going to make it.”

“I guess. All it has to do is lie there and suck everything out of Mom that’s pumped in until it can survive long enough to live in an incubator.”

“Emma,” Olivia says, picking up my plate and walking over to the shiny steel sink. “You know the baby’s not a bug or anything. It’s your brother.”

“Half. And it’s—Mom is dead and it’s not and I try not to see it but sometimes it moves and Mom’s—she’s just lying there, you know? Her body is only there for the baby and Dan chose that. He said he loved her, that he’d do anything for her. What kind of love is that, Olivia? Would you want someone to keep your dead body breathing with tubes and machines because they wanted something from you?”

I’m yelling by the end and Olivia has come back to the table and puts her arms around me.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t—my parents—our family’s not like it was for you and your mom. And the baby, it’ll never even know her. That’s so strange and awful.”

“When Dan finally gets around to thinking about that, he’ll probably just say it’s proof that science can work miracles and it’s how Mom would have wanted it.” By the time I’m done talking, I’m shaking so hard my teeth are chattering.

“I want to fix it for you, you know?” Olivia says. “You’re so angry, Emma. And I don’t know if it’s with Dan or your mom.”

“Dan. Definitely Dan.”

“And the baby.”

“I—look, I do get that it didn’t choose for Mom to die. But she did, you know? And the doctors say the embolism didn’t happen because she was pregnant but it’s just...” I swallow. “There was that clot and everything else—she was so scared, you know, so scared, and now I see her every day and try not to wonder if she’ll wake up even though I know she can’t. That she won’t.”

“Maybe you should talk to someone.”

“Dan said that too,” I say. “What’s a shrink going to tell me that I don’t already know? My mother’s dead and I miss her. I’m angry at Dan for keeping her body alive so the baby he wants so badly can maybe survive. Mom would hate being trapped like she is and I can’t—won’t—forgive him for it. I can’t forgive the baby either, and maybe that makes me awful, but I don’t care.”

“You really are angry. Like, I’m worried about you angry.”

I shrug and stare at the table again. Olivia knows me and she’s right. I am angry. I am so angry I feel like it’s all I am.