Chapter Thirty-Two
She takes her daughter out of the hospital doors and down the long corridor, toward the elevators that lead to the parking structure.
She remembers then the wild ride to the hospital, thirty-seven years ago, the way Dave kept white-knuckling the steering wheel, screaming at the top of his lungs: Hold on!
She laughed between contractions, told him to calm down.
But he couldn’t calm down—this was it; their baby was coming.
She would be born five short hours later, after only fifteen minutes of pushing, rocketing into the world ahead of schedule.
Marcella had been warned that first children normally come late, but Lauren had been a whole three days early. She was ready to be here.
Marcella remembers the wild screech into the valet area—complete with sound effects—and the way Dave hollered at the parking attendant that his wife was in labor.
“Parking Structure A,” the woman said, unfazed. Hadn’t been her first overly excited husband.
Marcella clutched her stomach as they made their way to labor and delivery. The contractions were coming hard and fast, and she knew what that meant—she knew her daughter was nearly there.
Marcella was never close with Sylvia. In some ways, she thought, it was impossible to be.
Her mother was gone often, preferring her own world over the one she could occupy at home.
She wasn’t cold, but she wasn’t exactly warm, either.
She was loud and opinionated and excited, but not warm.
Marcella had almost no memories of being held before Dave.
And she wants to change all that with her daughter.
With the birth of this baby, Marcella believes she has the ability to do it over, to have the kind of mother-daughter relationship she had always longed for.
She promised herself, as the fire ran across her belly, that she would be there, that she would do it differently.
That every milestone, every memory, would be together.
“Push!!”
Marcella held the plastic edge of the hospital bed, sweating and screaming. Dave pressed a cool compress to her head. There hadn’t been time for an epidural, and she felt pulled in two, like her actual insides were about to rip, were ripping, and still they were screaming for more.
“I can’t,” she said.
Dave leaned down close. Usually his presence was a comfort to her, a balm. Just a hug could calm her nervous system. But now she felt like he was sucking what little oxygen she had left.
Still they told her to push. Did they not see her trying? If she’d had a lick of energy she would have told them to care more about her, about the woman right in front of them, but she couldn’t speak.
She screamed out something guttural, a sound she knew for certain she had never made before, knew for certain she had likely never heard before.
And then, there she was. All seven pounds nine ounces of her. She was wet and slippery and red and bruised and there.
Marcella and Lauren reach the ramp that leads up to Parking Structure A.
“What are we doing?” Lauren says. She checks her watch. She appears agitated.
Marcella wants to put her arms around her daughter, to shake her, to look into her eyes and make her see. Don’t you understand?
That was the day she was born. Marcella remembers it all clearly, exactly. Just like it were yesterday.
But Marcella did not bring her daughter here today to tell her about the day she was born.
She brought her here to tell her about the day she died.