Chapter 36
Ava
They made Tucker leave when the doctor arrived to put another needle in me, this time in my back.
The cool spray and the pricking sensation were nothing compared to everything else. And when they arranged me in the bed again, the feeling of being crushed inside was gone. All the pain was gone.
“Will the pain come back?” I asked the man who had put the needle in.
“Not until we turn it off,” he said.
“Don’t ever turn it off,” I said.
He laughed with a deep, happy sound. I’d never heard anything like it before.
I smiled at him, then touched my face. For the first time since I woke to the dog licking me, I didn’t feel terrified.
Nurse Kenisha told the woman in green that she wasn’t sure about Tucker, and the woman in green said, “I called in the dragon. The board gets snippy because she doesn’t play by the rules, but she’ll suss out if he’s a bad apple.”
I couldn’t follow what she meant. Dragon. Snippy. Suss. Apples. I closed my eyes. Tucker told me he loved me and he was my husband, but those words didn’t make me feel anything.
I wanted to sleep.
But not long after that, the tiny nurse let Tucker back in. Kenisha made him sit in the far corner of the room.
The green outfit nurse left, and the small one spread something thick and cold over my fat belly. “I’m Jennifer,” she said. “This is for the monitor.”
Kenisha came in behind her with a broad strap with a box. “We’re going to put this across your stomach. It will tell us how the baby is doing.”
Right. The baby. In my belly. The two of them attached it and adjusted the straps.
Jennifer rolled a screen onto a metal table close to the bed. It flickered on, and lines bounced along its surface. “This is the baby’s heartbeat,” she said. “Do you have a name picked out?”
Tucker spoke up from the corner. “We’ve named him Tad.”
“That’s an interesting choice,” Jennifer said.
“All right, Dad,” Kenisha said, emphasizing the word like she didn’t want to use it. “Now that we have her settled, can you explain what’s going on here? Why is she in such a state? Why doesn’t she know she’s pregnant?”
Tucker ran his hands through his short sandy hair. It stuck up all over. “Her seizures are a rare kind. They hit her hippocampus, and she loses her memory. I came home, and she was like you see her now. She’s not due for two weeks, but her water broke. Maybe that triggered the seizure.”
I could only follow some of that. Seizures. Losing memory. Tucker found me in his home. My chest felt more and more tight as he talked. How could this story be true?
Kenisha’s voice was still hard. “How often does she have seizures?”
“She hasn’t had one for a year and a half. Before we were married. She won’t remember our wedding anymore.” With that, tears fell from the corners of his eyes. He wiped them away.
I looked back and forth between them. Kenisha watched Tucker, her eyebrows drawn together. “So, Ava doesn’t know who you are, who she is, or what is happening?”
He nodded. “When it happens, she can read and write and walk and talk. She’s been tested a bunch of times. But anything about her past is gone.”
“Good Lord,” Kenisha said, tugging her phone from her pocket. “I’ll page neurology again.”
I didn’t know what she meant by that. A page of paper?
She tapped her phone. “Did your OB have an action plan for this?”
Tucker walked forward and gripped the side rail near my feet. “We were doing a C-section tomorrow to avoid the risk of labor.”
I tried to follow what they were saying. I knew so little. And I was so tired.
I must have fallen asleep. All I knew was that the bed shifted, and when I looked down, Jennifer was taking away the bottom part and bending my knees up high.
A doctor in blue sat between my legs. He told me to push, but I didn’t know what he meant. But there was weird pressure down below. I felt thick where I wasn’t thick before.
The pain returned. “You said it wouldn’t hurt!” I wailed.
Kenisha gripped my hand. “We need you to be able to feel a few things so you can push the baby out.”
Tucker stayed near my head. “Do you want to hold my hand?”
“No,” I cried. “I want to go back to sleep!”
The pain came in waves with almost no breaks. I wanted to run away from this awful sensation, push it back up so it wouldn’t be down there. Kenisha stayed beside me and told me this was all normal. The baby was coming.
I began to understand about pushing. It was happening even when I didn’t try. It wanted the fat feeling to go down and down. I held onto the rails and pushed with it.
Then came a sound like nothing I could have ever imagined. I heard it with my whole body. My belly quivered. My chest tingled. My eyes must have heard it, too, because they started making tears.
“It’s a boy,” the doctor said and lifted something I didn’t recognize. It was wet and red and white. A strange, fat cord came out of it.
Then he turned it, and I saw it was a baby. The sound was his rough, jagged cry.
I couldn’t take it. Everything in me hurt from hearing that sound. “Help him!”
Kenisha lowered the front of my gown, and the baby was placed on my chest. I pressed my hand against his back. He quieted immediately, his face against my skin.
He was upset.
And now, he was not.
Because of me.
He knew something about me that I didn’t. Something that helped him.
“We have some bleeding,” the doctor said. “Nurse?” Jennifer moved near him.
Kenisha pressed her hand on top of mine where it held the baby. “You did great. He’s beautiful.” But then a beeping made her look away. She glanced at the monitor near my head. “Doctor? Her BP?”
He focused on the space between my knees. “Did you talk to neurology?”
“Yes,” Jennifer said. “They’re going to do an EEG once labor is over.”
“We have an abruption.” His voice sounded different, harder edged. “Get that baby. Call OR to prep a room.”
Kenisha covered the baby with a blanket and started to take him away. I wanted to protest, hold on to him, but my arm wouldn’t do what I told it. I tried to speak, but my mouth wouldn’t work.
Zigzags of light took over my vision. The room lost color.
“Doctor, she’s seizing.” Alarm bells sounded in the room.
I saw flowers for a moment, bending in a breeze. They were yellow, bright, and cocked to the side, as if they were turning their ears to me. They wanted to listen, to hear me speak.
I reached out for them but touched nothing.
The baby started to cry.
And then I heard nothing at all.