Chapter Twenty-Three
Natalie made it though the surgery fine, the way Dr. Rastovar said she would, and the way Suella knew she would. She was glad for the chance to reunite with her daughter in the recovery room. Natalie sat up on a gurney bed, covered by sheets and a blanket, gazing at her parents with glassy eyes and black pupils. Suella rushed up to her and held her hand. “Hi sweetie,” she said, looking down at the bandages and cast swathing Natalie’s other arm. “The doctor and nurses said you did very well and you’ll be able to leave tomorrow morning.”
Natalie smiled.
“How do you feel, hon?” Nathan asked.
“Sleepy,” Natalie said, closing her eyes, as if the mere act of answering her father’s question took all of her energy.
“We’ve got to go back to the hotel and let these brilliant nurses and doctors take care of you tonight,” Nathan said. “But we’ll be back to get you first thing tomorrow morning.”
Her eyes still closed, Natalie smiled. When they both returned to the waiting room, they had to wait only a few minutes before one of the cars from the fantasy camp arrived for them. Nathan still had barely spoken to Suella, but her phone rang. She winced with pain when she saw the number flashing, recognizing Dr. Allende’s private line. She could not let the phone go to valet, so as her heart pounded she answered it.
The doctor came on the line. “Hello. I guess you’ve had quite a day over there. Dr. Rastovar told me the details of Natalie’s surgery.”
Suella felt as if she was walking up the steps to a gallows. “Yes, he told us the same thing.”
“Suella, there’s no delicate way to put this,” the doctor said. “When you return to town we’re going to have to have a meeting.”
“I understand,” Suella said.
“Okay, We’ll see you soon. Drive carefully, now.”
Nathan was staring straight ahead over the front seat as he spoke. “So what did she say?” he asked, without expression.
“That we’re going to have to have a meeting.”
Nathan nodded. “You realize were in big trouble, right?”
“Yes.”
For the next several minutes, as the driver maneuvered through the streets to get them back to the hotel, Suella thought about what the next several days might bring. The event was supposed to last a couple of more days, ending on a Saturday. She wondered if they would allow her and Natalie to watch from the stadium seats while Nathan played a couple of more day’s worth of baseball with the men. A crowd met them as the car cruised through the circular drive at the front of the hotel.
Kaitlyn and Jeff rushed to the car when it came to a stop and they opened the doors. When Suella had stepped out onto the pavement, Kaitlyn hugged her. “It’s so terrible,” she said. “I’m so sorry.” Jeff also hugged her. It was nearly eleven o’clock, and the dining hall had closed long ago. It didn’t matter to Suella. She wasn’t hungry anyway. There would be a long night where her disappointed husband would merely occupy the space in the bed beside her, silently.
She was wrong about that, however. As soon as they reached their room and he closed the door behind them, Nathan sat down across from Suella and looked at her.
“I want you to tell me exactly why you thought it was necessary to drug our daughter.”
Suella shrugged, fidgeting with her hands as a way to buy time. “I thought it would help her with school,” she said, appalled with the weak way it sounded.
Nathan shook his head. “Bullshit. Now, why did you do it?”
“Nathan, it’s difficult.” She looked away from him.
“I want to know.”
She told him the whole story, starting with the soccer game where she first melded with Natalie. As she spoke, she expected him to get angrier and angrier as she poured the words out to him, he looked back at her with compassion, even taking her hand at one point.
When she finished, he stopped to ponder the whole situation, shaking his head. “You do realize they could take her way from us now, don’t you?”
Suella shook her head from side to side, to make sure she heard him correctly. “What? What are you saying?”
Nathan sighed. “Hon, have you ever looked at all those reams of paperwork we signed when Natalie was born?”
“Yes, but we had the lawyers look at it, too. They can’t take Natalie away! She’s our child.”
“In cases of child abuse, they have the state backing them up and they can take her away.”
Tears sprung from Suella’s eyes. “Abuse? What abuse? I love her!”
“We’re under contract not to medicate her. Not even aspirin. It all has to go through the center. It all has to go through her doctors.”
Suella whimpered. “But I just wanted to bond with her!”
Nathan gathered her into his arms and held her while she cried and cried. At a few points she also felt him shuddering. When all the emotion had been wrung from her, she fell asleep in his arms. She woke up hours later, the room still dark. Nathan must have gently eased her onto a pillow and then onto the bed, covering her with a blanket. She still wore her clothes. Maybe, she told herself, the last twenty-four hours had just been one long nightmare, and when Nathan woke up, they would just go to the ballpark to play another game with the middle-aged crazies.
But it was not to be. Nathan woke up, saw her and smiled, and gave her a quick kiss. He showered, dried himself and started to dress in his slacks and silk polo shirt.
“What are you doing?” Suella asked, still slightly groggy. “Aren’t you going to play today?”
He had been walking across the floor to retrieve his earpiece, but stopped. He looked at Suella as if she’d just told him she was going to enter a convent. “We have a daughter in the hospital,” he said. “I think that takes precedence, don’t you?”
Before leaving, they ate breakfast in a quiet dining hall. Some of the other old time baseball players and their wives came by their table to offer their well wishes. Greg Matarocci, looking disconcertingly like a minister on the morning of a funeral, patted Suella’s shoulder. “It’s a shameful tragedy that this happened,” he said. “Hopefully your daughter will be fine.
Then Suella received a shock. Kaitlyn pulled up a chair beside her while she ate her Belgian waffle and fruit. She whispered “She’s going to be okay, isn’t she?”
Suella nodded. “The doctors say she came through the surgery just fine.”
“It wasn’t more complicated?”
The pained, concerned look on her friend’s face and her earnest tone caused Suella to put down her fork. “No it wasn’t complicated. Why would it be?” Yet, Suella knew, before she finished speaking the words.
Kaitlyn shifted uncomfortably in her seat, backing away from Suella. “Well, you know…”
A wave of light-headedness and nausea overtook Suella. She had to rest her head on her palm and drink cold water to try to cope.
“Are you okay?”
No, Suella thought. She was anything but okay. Her stomach started churning like a washing machine spindle. “Carolyn Concannon told you, didn’t she?”
Kaitlyn nodded.
Suella winced, feeling as if a layer of skin had been torn off. “How many others?”
Kaitlyn touched Suella’s shoulder, to comfort and steady her. “That’s not important. We’re all sworn to secrecy.”
Suella could not eat another bite of the waffle or the fruit. Nathan drummed his hands on the table and said “Are you ready? I told them to bring the car around right about now.”
Nathan had to help Suella out of her chair, while Kaitlyn lagged behind, helping to prop her up as the two of them helped her out of the dining room and into another bright, warm Arizona morning. A parking lot attendant circled Suella’s own car around the front drive for them. She claimed the passenger seat, allowing Kaitlyn to open the door and help her inside. U
nexpectedly, a bellman hovered by with their luggage.
Another hotel employee walked over from the front desk and helped him retrieve the pieces from the floating skid and put them in the trunk. Greg Matarocci also showed up by the curb, shaking Nathan’s hand, giving him a quick embrace. “What’s going on?” Suella asked, wishing she could summon the energy to open the car door and stand up.
“We’re going home,” Nathan said, as he lowered down and swung himself into the driver’s seat.
At least she would get to see Natalie again, she thought. Last night, she’d been coming out from under anesthesia, and she’d barely been lucid when they tucked her in for the night. Had they told her anything? She left it up to Nathan to validate the discharge files, jumping out of her skin while she anxiously awaited the reunion with her daughter. When they finally walked down the hall to the room where they could find her, Suella’s limbs felt heavier and more leaden with each passing step. What would they find when they walked through the doorway?
She almost fainted with relief when she saw Natalie talking with a nurse while she hungrily stabbed at a plateful of scrambled eggs and sausage. She sat up in the bed, propped up by pillows, awake and alert, wearing her ball girl uniform. When she saw them, she smiled and said “Hi mom! Hi dad!” Her eyes looked bright and her hair had been brushed. She looked strangely out of place on the clinical hospital bed, until Suella saw her cast and a spidery grouping of wires poking out from under it. Suella rushed up and hugged her daughter, knocking the bed tray aside and spilling food.
Nathan sat in a chair beside Natalie’s bed, and with his forehead wrinkled by concern, said “We’re going to be going home, sweetie.”
Natalie sat still for a moment, expressionless, allowing her father’s words to sink in. “Oh,” she said. “Well, did you bring my clothes? We’re going to have to give these back.”
Once Natalie was dressed, they stopped by the hotel so that she could return her uniform, the cap, and the stirrup socks. Gayle at first looked dumbfounded until she saw Natalie’s cast. “Oh you poor thing,” she said, patting the top of her head in a matronly way.
The short exchange between the two of them gave Suella and Nathan a few moments to plan their drive home. “Let’s make it a happy drive,” Suella pleaded. “There’s no reason for her to know, is there?”
Nathan averted his eyes from her, frowning for a moment. “No,” he said. “There’s no reason. We want to help her heal.”
“Can we both sit in the back?”
Nathan’s mouth formed an “o” and his eyes widened, as if he wanted to ask her why, but he stopped himself. “Sure.”
For the long ride home, mother and daughter sat together in the back seat. Suella said “I’m so glad you’re okay,” and hugged Natalie yet again, taking care to avoid her healing arm. Nathan acted like a chauffeur for the first segment of their trip. Natalie happily reminisced about all the people she’d met during the fantasy camp, and how much fun she’d had helping with the games. She laughed while talking about how the players looked and acted. Before long, Nathan laughed along with her, loosened up, and offered a few of his own impressions about the people they’d met.
The pleasant atmosphere inside the car helped Suella to relax and breathe.
She watched the desert mesas and buttes pass by, embraced by the warmth of another day. Still, the nagging thought always returned to her. Could they really take her daughter away? Next month would be her fourteenth birthday. Four more years and the courts, and Lifewind would have no say regarding Natalie’s well-being. She did manage to read at least that part of the contract before signing it. Maybe she could hide her. Maybe Jillian could take them both in! What would Nathan do, though? There was no way all three of them could go into hiding, she decided.
When they arrived home, though, she and Jillian could resume their tea time. Her friend would know what to do. The newfound sense of hope and the knowledge that she would get to reconnect with her good friend carried her spirit during the rest of the drive home. They only stopped once, to eat dinner at a steakhouse that had been duded up to look like the old west, with waitresses in cowgirl uniforms and rustic swinging shutters between the front lobby and the main dining room. Nathan spent the meal in an animated conversation about the next stops of his book tour. “I never signed so many autographs, not even when I was playing,” he said.
At seven o’clock, with the golden dusk encroaching, her car finally reached the circular front drive in front of their house. Time to get on with their lives. Nathan and Natalie unpacked. Suella closed herself into her den and selected Jillian’s number from the cam menu. Moments later she appeared on the screen, appearing slightly surprised and apprehensive. While they’d been gone she’d gotten a haircut and style and it still gleamed with shine and bristled gracefully against her cheekbones and chin while she spoke. “How was the fantasy baseball camp?” she asked.
“It was fine,” Suella, replied. “Listen, I’m sorry to bother you this late.”
Jillian shook her head and blinked. “That’s not a problem. It’s only ten. Is everything okay?”
Suella knew that it must show in her face, and her eyes. The last time she checked, they were still red-brimmed and puffy from all her crying. There was no use in lying or even sugarcoating things, either. “Well, no,” she began. “Natalie was injured during one of the games.” She explained to her how a foul line drive had split Natalie’s wrist.
“That’s terrible,” Jillian said. “So that’s why you’re home early.” She took a moment to look down and process the information. When she looked back up, one eyebrow cocked higher than the other, the way it always did when she was expressing serious concern. “Is she going to be okay? She must heal differently, right?”
“Yes, the doctors say that she did fine. There’s something else, though…”
While her voice trailed off, Jillian moved closer to the camera at her end, which caused her face to take up the entire screen. “What is it?”
Suella took in a deep breath. “What I’ve got to say is horrific. It might change the way you think of me forever.”
Jillian’s eyes widened, and Suella could tell by the screen edges that she had lifted one hand above the cam. She was probably touching the top of her ancient LCD display, the way she did sometimes, as if she thought she could fax herself through the airwaves and deliver healing comfort. “I won’t judge you,” she assured. “No matter what. Please. Tell me.”
“Okay, here goes,” Suella began, and she reminded Jillian about the extraordinary melding experiences she and Natalie had shared. “I was so desperate for more of them.
I would do anything.”
“Oh god,” Jillian interrupted. “What did you do?”
“I medicated her.” Suella explained how she’d learned that a certain type of anti-depressant made its users more receptive to out-of-body experiences. She told her the name of the medication and how she’d acquired it by traveling to Mexico. By the time she had finished telling her the whole story, including the details about stopping the medication just before Natalie’s annual, appointment, Jillian’s full face in the screen shook her head, as she frowned.
“How could you do that?” Jillian asked. All that time, all those conversations we had, you always said you would never medicate your kid and that kids today are over-medicated.“
Suella had to shake her head to make sure she was hearing her friend correctly. “Jillian, I expected more support from you!” she whined.
“You sneak down to Mexico, get some medication that they say is Apelbaumentine, and then you shoot your daughter up with it every day? And you expect me to be supportive? You were injuring your daughter! When you dope up your daughter like that, she’s not your daughter any more. Isn’t that what I always heard from you about drugs? And now you drug your kid!”
Jillian had shouted out her last
few sentences and Suella had turned up the sound rather high. Nathan knocked on her door. “Is everything okay in there?”
Suella was crying again by then. “But I’m sorry!” she wailed.
Jillian looked closely at her through the cam and her eyes softened, her mouth taking on a sad, downward curve. “I know you are. What’s done is done.
The main thing is that she’s off the medication now, right?”
Suella wiped a tear on her sleeve. “Yes. Of course.” After a few moments of thought, she added “They’re going to take my little girl away.”
Jillian’s mouth dropped open. “They’re going to do what?”
“I voided the contract by medicating her. When that happens the center can take her from me or they can sue me for wrongful birth!”
“Wrongful birth?” Jillian repeated. “How can they say it was wrongful? They’re the ones with the technology that cloned you.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know,” Suella murmured.
On the big screen, Jillian shook her head, gazing downward, running her hand through her hair. “Oh, god. Oh, god.”
Suella gazed into the cam, directly at Jillian. “Help me! Don’t let them take my little girl!”
Jillian’s lip quivered, as she gazed back from her screen. She nodded. “I’ll help you.”