Christopher Beha - Arts & Entertainments - A Novel

Hal waited on the sixth floor with a camera on his shoulder. He waved Eddie through the door and into the waiting area, where another camera captured his arrival.

“Where is Susan?” he called out. “Is she all right?”

Annie and Tomaka and Rex sat together, none of them talking. They looked up at him but didn’t answer. Eddie crossed the room to them.

“Where is she?” he asked again. “Is everything all right?”

“The doctor just left,” Annie said. “You barely missed him.”

“I was downstairs,” Eddie said dumbly, still trying to catch his breath. “I was waiting there.”

“We know,” Annie said.

“What’s happened?”

“There’s been some kind of complication.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t really know. The doctor didn’t say much. Only that things weren’t going smoothly. He wanted to talk with family, and I told him you were on your way. But he couldn’t wait any longer.”

“Is she in danger?”

“It’s tough to tell. You know how doctors are. He said he’d be back soon.”

Eddie looked into her face, trying to determine how much of this was real. If Tomaka or Rex had been talking, he might not have taken it seriously, but he didn’t think Annie would lie to him. He was still out of breath, and his leg was burning.

“I’ll be right back,” he said. “If the doctor comes, don’t let him leave. Tell him I’ll just be one minute.”

He limped to the bathroom, found an empty stall, and vomited. First he emptied his stomach of his burger and his drinks. After that he kept gagging, bringing up only bile. When he’d finished he stayed crouched over the toilet, looking at the mess in the bowl and crying. He turned to find the stall door open and Hal pointing a camera at him. He stumbled past Hal to the sink, where he washed his mouth and wiped his face before walking outside. Annie had moved to open a space between her and Rex. Eddie sat down. It seemed strange to introduce himself to the man who was supposed to be sleeping with his wife, so he only nodded in greeting. Rex nodded back. Up close he was astonishingly handsome, not quite real, and Eddie felt the strange urge to reach over and touch his face.

The doctor arrived a few minutes later with a manila folder and a look of tired concern.

“Mr. Hartley?” he asked.

“That’s me,” Eddie said. “Can I get in to see my wife?”

“I’m Dr. Rupert.” The man looked at Eddie, and then at one of the cameras. “Perhaps you could walk with me for a moment.”

Eddie wondered whether he was just trying to make things more dramatic or actually expected some privacy. They walked down the hall while Hal followed a few steps behind.

“They told me there’s been some complication.”

“I’m afraid your wife has ruptured her uterus. There’s been some hemorrhaging.”

“Is this for real?”

“Very much so. The truth is that it may be quite serious.”

“The babies?”

“The babies should be all right in any case. That’s the good news. Obviously they’re a bit premature, but we expected that with multiples. Our real worry at this point is the mother.”

“What does that mean, our worry?”

“She’s lost quite a bit of blood, and she’s still bleeding. The first thing they’re trying to do now is get that bleeding stopped. But it’s a serious situation.”

“Could she die from this?”

The doctor answered the question with a moment of silence.

“The first step is to get the bleeding stopped,” he said finally. “Then we’ve got to get her a transfusion. We’re trying to find some matching blood on the premises. I’m not sure how much we’re going to need.”

“I’m a match,” Eddie said. “I can give blood.”

“We’ll need to get you straight to the tenth floor. I’ll call up. They’ll be expecting you.”

Eddie started to walk away, but the doctor grabbed his arm.

“We’re going to do our best here,” he said, seeming to look both at Eddie and beyond him. “No matter what happens, you’re going to have three healthy daughters.”

As the elevator doors closed, Eddie took a deep breath. Susan would want him to pray for her, he thought. There had to be some special prayer for difficult childbirths, but he didn’t know that prayer, so he said the Hail Mary. He said it to himself, without closing his eyes or bowing his head or moving his lips, so that anyone watching would think he was just standing there, doing nothing. He finished just as the doors opened on the tenth floor, where a nurse was waiting.

“Mr. Hartley,” she said. “We’ve got a room set up for you. I just need to ask a few questions first.”

“All right.”

She went through a series of impressive and frightening diseases — HIV, hepatitis, blood cancers — asking whether Eddie suffered from any of them.

“No,” he said.

“Have you ever been an intravenous drug user?”

“No.”

“Have you had multiple sexual partners within the past year?”

Eddie looked over at the camera before answering, “I have not.”

“Have you eaten something in the last few hours?”

He told her he’d eaten a full dinner, and he didn’t mention that he’d just thrown it up.

“Follow me.”

Eddie had never donated blood. It seemed at first like giving a sample at the doctor’s office, but they filled two bags instead of a syringe. It frightened him to think that Susan might need that much blood. He couldn’t believe he’d had so much to give up. Watching it leave his body, Eddie felt sick. His throat was still itchy with vomit, which he struggled to swallow down. Hal stood in the corner, moving his camera between Eddie’s face and the blood leaving his arm. When the second bag was full, the nurse brought Eddie a cookie and a Dixie cup full of orange juice, like something from lower school snack time at St. Albert’s.

“This will get your glucose back up a bit,” she said. “Take your time, sit until you feel comfortable.”

But Eddie couldn’t eat, and he didn’t want to sit. He had to get back to the sixth floor, to find out how Susan was doing. As soon as the nurse left, he tossed the cookie in the trash and stood up. He rushed out of the room, still dragging his bad leg. He was halfway down the hall when he collapsed.

WHEN HE WOKE IN the dark room he first felt the warm pinch of an IV in the crook of his right arm. Next came the burning throughout his face. One of his eyes had swollen shut. Dried blood clogged his nostrils, straining his breath. He reached to clear it out and found a splint taped over his nose. When he pushed at it, a shock of pain jumped to the back of his eyeballs and reverberated through his head. He let out what he thought would be a yell but sounded only as a low moan. A shadow in the corner seemed to move in response.

“What happened?” Eddie asked in its direction.

“You fainted.” He recognized the voice but thought he must still be dreaming. “You fell facedown and broke your nose. Chipped a tooth as well. The whole thing looked a lot worse than it actually is, I’m told. Blood everywhere.”

“How long have I been asleep?”

“You were in and out through the night,” Moody said.

“It’s morning?”

“Past noon.”

“How is Susan?”

“She’s great. So are the girls. Everyone is just fine.”

Relief deadened all the pain for a moment. This was followed by the bitterness of the possibility that he would be kept from them.

“Shouldn’t you be up there overseeing things?” he asked Moody.

“I’ve been waiting for you to wake up. I wanted to have a few quick words.”

“You mean you wanted to stop me from seeing them?”