24. Will #2
Blair was sitting up in a hospital bed, pale and tired, a bruise darkening on her temple.
Another bruise was visible on her shoulder where her gown had slipped.
She was hooked to monitors that beeped steady and slow, an IV line running into her arm.
A fetal monitor was strapped around her belly, its screen showing a rhythm I didn’t understand but that the staff seemed satisfied with.
She looked small in the bed. Fragile in a way she never looked. And the sight of her, alive and awake and looking at me with those eyes, broke a dam loose inside me that I’d been holding together through sheer force of will.
“Blair.”
“Will.”
I crossed the room in two steps and crushed her to my chest.
I was sobbing. I could feel it happening, could feel my whole body shaking with the force of it, my face pressed into her hair, my arms wrapped around her so tight I was probably hurting her.
This composed old-money man, raised to never show weakness, trained since childhood to keep his emotions under control, was falling apart in a paper-curtained bay in front of God and everyone.
I couldn’t stop.
“I thought-” I couldn’t finish the sentence. “When they called, I thought-”
“I know.” Her hands were in my hair, holding me, anchoring me. “I know. I’m okay. We’re okay.”
“The baby.”
“Heartbeat strong. She’s fine. She’s probably wondering what all the fuss is about.”
I laughed, or sobbed, or made a sound in between. A sound that came from somewhere deep and broken and finally healing.
“I can’t lose you,” I said into her shoulder. “I can’t. Blair, I can’t. Not now, not after everything, not when we’ve finally-”
“You’re not going to lose me.” Her voice was steady, certain. “I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”
I pulled back to look at her face. She was crying too, tears tracking down her cheeks, but she was smiling. Smiling at me, at my obvious distress, at the whole impossible situation.
“Henry,” I said suddenly. “Where’s Henry? Does he know? Is he scared?”
“Nan has him. I called her from the ambulance, she’s got him for as long as we need.” Blair reached up to touch my face, wiping away tears I hadn’t realized were still falling. “I told him I was fine. That the baby just wanted to make sure I was paying attention. He thought that was hilarious.”
“Of course he did. He’s seven. Everything is hilarious when you’re seven.”
I pulled a chair close to her bed and sat down heavily, taking her hand in mine, unwilling to break contact even for a moment. The monitors beeped their steady rhythm. The curtain rustled as staff walked past. The ordinary sounds of a hospital, of crisis averted, of life continuing.
“What did the doctor say?” I asked. “About the rest of it. About what happens now.”
“Bed rest.” Blair made a face, her nose wrinkling the way it did when she was annoyed. “For the rest of the pregnancy. About eleven weeks.”
“Eleven weeks?”
“To term. They want to monitor me closely, make sure there are no complications from the fall, give the baby the best possible chance.” She sighed.
“Eleven weeks of lying down. I’m going to lose my mind, Will.
I’m going to go absolutely insane. I can’t just lie in bed for eleven weeks.
I have a gallery. I have work. I have things I need to do. ”
“You have a baby to protect.” I squeezed her hand. “And a husband who will bring you anything you need. Books. Movies. Art supplies, if you want to paint from bed. Whatever you want, whenever you want it.”
“It’s not the same.”
“I know it’s not. But it’s eleven weeks. We can survive eleven weeks.” I lifted her hand to my lips, kissed her knuckles. “We can survive anything, as long as we do it together.”
She looked at me, and her face changed. The frustration faded, replaced by a tenderness that made my chest ache in the best possible way.
“We,” she said.
“What?”
“You said we. We can survive eleven weeks.”
“Of course I said we. Did you think I was going to leave you alone? Did you think I was going to drop you off at home and go back to my life?”
“I’ve been at Nan’s for so long. I thought maybe you’d want to…”
“Blair.” I leaned closer, holding her gaze.
“I’m not leaving your side. Not for eleven weeks, not for eleven months, not for eleven years.
I’m going to be there for every meal, every checkup, every 2:00 a.m. craving.
I’m going to read to you and talk to you and drive you crazy with my constant hovering until you beg me to go away. ”
“I’m not going to beg you to go away.”
“You might. I can be very annoying when I’m worried.”
“I know. It’s one of your finest qualities.”
I laughed, and she laughed, and for a moment everything felt possible. More than possible. Certain.
“I have something,” I said. “Something I’ve been wanting to show you. I was waiting for the right moment, but I think.” I looked around the hospital bay, at the monitors and the IV and the fluorescent lights. “I think this might be it.”
“What kind of something?”
I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out the folded papers I’d been carrying for weeks. The letters. The ones I’d written to the baby during the long nights at Seacliff, trying to articulate things I couldn’t say to Blair’s face.
“I wrote these,” I said. “To the baby. To Lili, that’s what I’ve been calling her in my head. I started after the vineyard weekend, after we-” I stopped, started again. “I couldn’t say what I was feeling. So I wrote it down instead. And I thought maybe you’d want to hear them.”
Blair’s eyes went bright with tears.
“Read them to me.”
So I did.
I read her the first letter, about her courage and her talent and the way she’d walked out of our house with her head high.
I read her the second one, about my father and my fear and the patterns I was trying so hard to break.
I read her the third, about the night I’d built her shelves and stood across the street watching her paint.
By the fifth letter, we were both crying openly. By the eighth, she was holding my hand so tight her knuckles were white. By the twelfth, I could barely get the words out, my voice rough with emotion and exhaustion and an ache that felt like hope.
“I want to be the man your mother married,” I read. “The man she believed in when she said yes to me all those years ago. I don’t know if I can get back to him, or if that man even existed, or if she just saw something in me that I hadn’t become yet. But I’m going to try.”
I lowered the letter. Blair was watching me with an expression I’d never seen before. A look beyond love, beyond forgiveness. One that looked like home.
“Come home,” she said.
“What?”
“Come home.” She reached for me, pulling me closer by the collar of my shirt. “I’m done waiting. I’m done being careful. I want my husband. I want our family.”
She paused, and her face changed. A decision being made, a line being crossed.
“No,” she said. “We come home. All of us. Together.”
I climbed onto the hospital bed beside her, careful of the monitors, careful of her belly, careful of everything that mattered. She tucked herself against my side, her head on my shoulder, her hand resting on my chest.
“There’s more letters,” I said.
“Read them all. We have weeks and weeks.”
“Is that an order?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” I pressed my lips to her hair, breathing in the smell of her. “Welcome home, Mrs. Beaumont.”
“It’s not home yet. We’re in a hospital.”
“Anywhere with you is home.”
“That’s disgustingly romantic.”
“I know. I’m disgusted with myself.”
She laughed, and the sound filled the small space, and everything was going to be okay.