Diane Chamberlain - Summer's Child

Bonnie rushed to her side.

“Grace? What’s the matter?”

The room was pitch-black. Bonnie’s voice cut through the darkness, but Grace had no idea which direction it had come from.

“I think the baby’s coming.” She managed to get the words out between explosions of pain. She let herself scream, throwing all of her breath and energy behind the sound, understanding now why women in labor felt that compulsion. No other sound would do.

“It can’t be coming,” Bonnie said, and Grace heard the panic in her voice.

Grace could not respond with words, only with gasping breaths and yet another howl of pain.

“I’ll get the lantern,” Bonnie said.

“Wait here.” Then she laughed.

“Like, where else would you go?”

In a moment, she returned to the room with the burning lantern, which she set on the old dresser, and Grace could see how frightened she was. She imagined her own face held that same look of terror.

“I don’t know what to do, Grace,” Bonnie said, waving her hands feebly in the air.

“Tell me what to do.”

Grace felt helpless. What was happening to her had a life of its own, and she was completely unable to stop it. She looked at Bonnie, wordlessly pleading with her to take over.

“The nurse!” Bonnie said suddenly.

“Nancy!” Bonnie ran out of the room, ignoring Grace’s plea not to leave her.

She screamed in Bonnie’s absence, screamed and screamed just to keep her mind off the raging pain in her body and the fact that she was alone. She was still screaming when Nancy and Bonnie rushed back into the room. i Nancy gave Bonnie instructions Grace could not make I out, and Bonnie left the room. Nancy uttered words of comfort as she moved around, as if nothing unusual were occurring, and Grace suddenly felt enveloped by the nurse’s calming presence. She was only vaguely aware of Nancy rearranging the bedclothes and holding the lantern between Grace’s legs as she examined her. Nancy’s movements her entire demeanor, were confident and unhurried.

Placing the lantern back on the dresser. Nancy sat down on the edge of the bed.

“I’m going to tell you how to breathe,” she said to Grace, her voice soft and even.

“It will help with the pain.” Grace was aware that Bonnie was in the room again, and she glanced at her friend’s face only long enough to know that she was crying. Fear always induced tears in Bonnie. Grace had seen it happen before.

She struggled to follow Nancy’s instructions to breathe, calmly and slowly one moment, panting the next.

“Squeeze my hand when you have to,” Nancy said, slipping her hand into Grace’s. Grace clutched at her fingers

“Now listen to me. Grace,” Nancy said, leaning close to her.

“Surely you now realize you can’t keep this baby. You know that, right? You’re simply too young to raise a baby by yourself, especially without the support of the baby’s father or your own mother. You don’t even know where you’re going to live. You’ll have to leave here to morrow morning with a newborn baby in your arms and no diapers, no clothing, no formula and no knowledge of how to take care of it. Be honest with me, can you take this baby home to your mother?”

Grace let out a wail at the thought.

“She can’t,” Bonnie agreed.

“You don’t know her mother.”

“I know you’ve had a fantasy of keeping this baby,” Nancy said.

“But it was a fantasy, just that. I can help you, though. Let me take the baby. Let me take it to the hospital where I work. I’ll get the baby checked out and make sure it’s healthy and then I’ll arrange to have it adopted by a good family. That way, no one, not even your mother, will ever have to know that you were pregnant. You, me, Bonnie and Nathan. We’re the only ones to know. And it can stay that way.”

“She’s right,” Bonnie said.

“I’m scared. Grace. I mean, it was one thing when you were just pregnant. But any minute there is going to be a baby here. Another life! You’ve got to let Nancy take it.”

A boulder of pain pressed down on her stomach, and Grace screamed again. Her mind filled with jagged shards of thought. She could see her mother’s face, yelling at her, forcing her to tell her how this pregnancy had happened. She could see Bonnie and herself tomorrow, struggling to keep a newborn alive. Oh, God, what if her selfishness caused the baby harm? Suddenly, through the veil of pain and terror, her idea to have the baby and keep it seemed unspeakably selfish, almost cruel.

She squeezed Nancy’s hand with both of hers.

“Would you call me? If you take the baby, would you let me know that it’s all right? That it’s been adopted… by somebody wonderful? Promise me you’d only let it go to somebody wonderful who could give it everything.” Her voice broke and she clutched Nancy’s hand even harder.

“Absolutely, Grace,” Nancy said.

“I’d do all of that. You wouldn’t have to worry about anything. Just turn the baby over to me and I’ll take care of it.”

“This is like a miracle, isn’t it. Grace?” Bonnie asked.

“I mean, you happened to go into labor a whole month early, but a nurse just happens to live next door, and she knows exactly what to do and she can find a good home for the baby. You have to do it, Grace. This is obviously the way it’s supposed to be.”

She writhed on the bed with a fresh wave of pain. The storm pummeled the window above her head. Thunder cracked in her ears and lightning lit up the room with an eerie, unearthly pulse of flight. Let me out of this nightmare. She’d wanted this baby so badly, now she just wanted to be free of it. Get it out of her body. Make the pain stop. Let Nancy take it away, safe and unharmed with a future better than any she could hope to give it.

“Yes,” she wailed.

“Please take it. Nancy. Please make this be over!”

The baby girl was born at four-fifteen in the morning, when the ferocity of the storm had dissipated, and Grace had reached the end of her own strength and will to fight. Through a fog, she heard the cries of her baby, and she stretched out her arms into the darkness toward the sound.

“Let me see her. Nancy,” she said weakly.

“No, no,” Nancy said.

“Trust me. Grace. It will be easier for you if you don’t see her.”

“She’s right,” Bonnie’s voice came from somewhere beside her.

“It might be harder for you to give it up… give her up… if you see her.”

She was too tired to fight, and she let herself be lulled into sleep by the release from pain and the peace and quiet that had finally come to settle outside her window.

It was nine-thirty when Grace opened her eyes the following morning, and the night came back to her like a bad dream. She felt the dampness on the bed beneath her bottom, and reached down to touch the towel Nancy, or perhaps Bonnie, had folded beneath her. She’d had her baby.

She’d given it to Nancy. That had been the right thing to do; Nancy could take good care of the baby. But there was no reason why Nancy had to find it a permanent home. The baby could stay in a foster home!

As soon as Grace got up on her feet again, as soon as she had a place to live and a job, she could take the baby back. All her desperate fears of the night before seemed out of proportion to the situation now.

“Bonnie?” she called out.

Bonnie came into the room, deep bags under her blue eyes.

“You’re awake!” she said.

“How are you feeling? Are you terribly sore?”

Grace raised herself to her elbows. “I want to see my baby,” she said.

“You can’t. Grace,” Bonnie said.

“Remember what Nancy said? It’ll just make it harder for you if you see it.”