After we’d been in Charleston for a little more than three months, I turned twenty-six. If you’d asked me when I was twenty if I’d live to see twenty-six, I would have laughed at you. Now, not only had I made it, but I was going to be a father. You took me to the movies to celebrate. It was the best birthday I ever had.
One week after my twenty-sixth birthday, I came home from work to find you locked in the bathroom of our motel room. You were just short of twenty weeks pregnant. I banged on the bathroom door but you wouldn’t open it. I yelled through the door, asking you what was wrong. You could barely get out the words. You told me that you were cramping and bleeding. I could hear the panic in your voice. As soon as you told me what was happening, I ran to the book. I grabbed it and looked up your symptoms. It wasn’t normal, not at this stage of a pregnancy. You weren’t supposed to be bleeding now. The book that had given us so much good news over the past four plus months now told me to take you straight to the hospital. I yelled for you to come out so that I could drive you to the emergency room. I didn’t have to say it twice.
Fifteen
The motel that we were staying at wasn’t far from the hospital. You gave me directions as I drove. You had memorized the route. I don’t know when. I wonder if you’d done that for all the motels that we stayed at without telling me. Other than giving me directions, you didn’t speak. You didn’t even answer me when I asked you how you were doing. Instead of saying anything, you just shot me a look. That look was answer enough for me. I didn’t ask again.
The emergency room was already crowded when we got there. The woman behind the counter gave us paperwork to fill out. I handed it to you. There was no way that I could fill it out. I could barely see straight. I stood up and paced, every few minutes walking up to the nurse who had given us the paperwork to ask her when we’d get to see a doctor. “Everyone is waiting” was the only answer she’d give me. I didn’t care about everyone. I only cared about you. Your cramping had slowed down but hadn’t stopped. There was nowhere for you to go to check if you were still bleeding. I was about to go say something when they called your name and told you that there was a doctor ready to examine you. You had given them your real name. I’m sure you didn’t even think about it. I couldn’t blame you even though I knew it was a mistake. At a moment like that, it’s hard to prioritize your fears.
We walked through the waiting room doors to the inside of the emergency room. It looked like an infirmary inside. The fluorescent lights were unforgiving in their starkness. I could hear them buzzing beneath the nurse’s chatter and the cries of the patients. The patients were lined up along both walls, lying on cots, with makeshift curtains the only thing separating one person from the next. We followed a nurse down the aisle in the middle of the room until we got to your cot. She asked you to take off your clothes and put on a hospital gown. I pulled the curtain around us and helped you undress. That’s when I saw the blood. Your underwear was drenched. It was a dark crimson color. Your hands were shaking as you bent down to take them off. I reached down to help you. Where the hell was the doctor?
We got you changed and up on the cot. Minutes later a doctor came in. He didn’t look much older than me. He asked us why we were there. You spoke to him calmly. You told him your symptoms.
“Have you been seeing a doctor?” he asked.
“No,” you replied, shaking your head. I looked down at my hands, feeling impotent. We had talked about getting you to the doctor’s but I didn’t think we could afford it. We needed to save money. I knew that there were going to be emergencies. This just wasn’t the type of emergency that I was accustomed to.
“We’re going to have to run some tests,” the doctor said, before pulling the curtain aside and walking away again.
“You gave them your real name,” I said to you without thinking, once the doctor stepped away.
“Don’t do this to me now, Joe,” you answered. I let it go. I figured that we could worry about it later. I could only hope that we’d still have something to worry about.
The doctor came back with a nurse. They took some of your blood. He had you spread you legs so that he could examine you. I looked the other way when he did. Then another nurse wheeled in a machine that looked like a television set on wheels. I had seen it in the movies before. It was an ultrasound machine. I turned away again. I didn’t want to look at the screen in case something was wrong. The doctor began to run a scanner over your stomach. “Let’s see what’s going on here,” he said.
Then we waited. We waited for what seemed like forever, though it was probably only a minute or two. “What’s happening, Doctor?” you finally asked.
The doctor didn’t answer for a moment. He just kept moving the scanner in his hand over your stomach and watching the screen. “There it is,” he finally said. I looked up. I couldn’t help it. I needed to see, even if I didn’t want to. “You said that you’re almost five months pregnant?” the doctor asked.
“Yes,” you answered, on the verge of tears. “Is everything okay?”
“Well,” the doctor said, “you see that movement on the screen?” I looked at the screen. I could see it. It was a tiny flicker. I could feel my own pulse increase. “That’s your child’s heart beating.” I looked over at you. You couldn’t take your eyes off the screen. I looked at the screen again too. There was the flicker again, beating steadily. I could feel my own heart race until my heart and the baby’s heart seemed to be beating at the exact same pace.
“Is everything okay?” you asked the doctor again.
“The heartbeat looks good,” the doctor answered, “but I want to get the results of some of the tests we’re running and I want to monitor you for a bit. We’re going to move you upstairs.”
“We don’t have insurance,” I said to the doctor. He knew what I meant. He knew that I meant we couldn’t pay for anything.
“I’ll let the people upstairs worry about that,” the doctor answered before walking away. They wheeled you to the elevator without making you get out of your cot. I walked beside you, holding your hand. We passed other people in the emergency room, coughing and screaming and crying out for painkillers. Then we got the elevator, the doors shut behind us, and all was quiet.
When we got upstairs, they wheeled you into your own room. There was another bed in the room but it was empty. A whole team of people began attending to you. Nurses came in and hooked you up to a couple of machines. There was a heart monitor and an IV and some other machines whose purpose was beyond me. No matter how many times we asked, no one would tell us if everything was normal. No one would tell us anything. I sat down in the chair next to your bed. “Everything is going to be okay,” I said to you.
“You don’t know that,” you replied. “Don’t you dare say that to me unless you know that it’s true.” So I stopped talking again and waited. At one point they came in and did more tests. I lost track of everything they did to you. I wanted to see that flicker again. I wanted to make sure that it was still there. That flicker had instantly become my whole life.
Soon the testing stopped, though they kept you hooked up to a couple machines. Maybe an hour later, another doctor came in. This one was older. He wore regular clothes beneath his white robe. He looked me up and down over his glasses as soon as he walked into the room. He was carrying his clipboard in front of him. I didn’t trust how he looked at me. I immediately thought that he was one of them. The only reason that I didn’t do anything about it was because he was our only hope. We needed him to save our child. After that, all bets were off.
“Can I talk to you alone, Ms. ________?” The doctor spoke your last name, your real last name. The suspicion inside me grew even stronger. You looked at me. You didn’t want me to leave. I could see it in your face. You didn’t have to worry. There was no way I was going anywhere.
“He can stay,” you answered.
“I’d really prefer to speak with you alone, Ms. _______.” He said your name again.
“No.” Y
our answer was firm. “He stays.”
“Okay,” the doctor finally relented. “I’ve got a few questions for you and there are a few things that I can tell you.” He looked down at the chart in his hands. “The good news is that your baby’s heartbeat is strong and everything seems to be progressing fine. The baby is a good size and appears to be growing at the proper rate. Everything with the embryo looks good.”
I could hear you breathe a partial sigh of relief. You still had questions. “Then what’s happening?” you asked.
The doctor put the chart under his armpit so that he could talk to you directly. “The bleeding and the cramping are from a condition called placental abruption.” I tried to commit every word to memory thinking that, if I knew what the problem was, I could help fix it. “That means that at some point during your pregnancy, your placenta partially separated from the wall of your uterus and blood has collected between the placenta and the uterus.”
“Is it dangerous?” you asked. You were ahead of me with every question, asking it even before I could properly process my thoughts.
“It can be,” the doctor answered. “You can lose a lot of blood and that can be dangerous for you and for the baby. It can also cause premature labor, which, this early in your pregnancy, would not be a good thing, since your baby is not viable yet.”
You looked over at me. You were scared. I gave you my hand and you clutched it tightly. “Why is this happening?” you asked. You were looking right at me, as if I could answer you, but you knew that I didn’t have any answers.
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you alone about,” the doctor answered. “For someone like you, in their first pregnancy, who doesn’t smoke or do drugs, the cause is usually some sort of trauma.” The doctor glared at me again. It was the same look he had given me when he first walked through the door, the look that made me think that he was one of them. I knew now that he wasn’t one of them. He had other reasons for glaring at me.
“Are you accusing me of hitting Maria?” I asked him, knowing full well what he was implying.
“No one is accusing anyone of anything,” the doctor answered. “It’s just that in cases where there are no other obvious causes of trauma, spousal abuse is not an infrequent cause.” The doctor looked at you again. “We just like to be sure,” he said.
“Joe’s not like that,” you replied, shaking your head. “He’s not violent like that.” You meant it. I guess it was true. I wasn’t violent like that. A wave of guilt rushed over me before I even knew the extent of things that I had to feel guilty about.
“Okay,” the doctor said. “Can you think of any other trauma that you might have had?” He looked down and made a few marks on the sheet on his clipboard.
I could think of one. I wish that I couldn’t. “We were rear-ended,” I said to the doctor. It was a half-truth. The truth was so much uglier. I thought back to the image of that boy’s body lying in the mud in front of his wrecked car, the rain falling down and splashing in the puddles around him. “But that was months ago,” I finished.
“Well, that could do it,” the doctor said, making another note on your chart. He turned toward you again. “Do you have a history of high blood pressure in your family, Maria?” he asked. You shook your head. “Because your blood pressure is extremely high. The car accident you were in could have caused the abruption and you may not have had any symptoms until now because it was suddenly exacerbated by your high blood pressure. Have you been under a lot of stress recently?” the doctor asked. I looked at you. You didn’t even know how to answer his question. Stress didn’t begin to describe what you were under, Maria. It didn’t matter that we hadn’t run into any trouble in months.
“Some,” you offered as a compromise between the truth and a boldfaced lie.
The doctor nodded. “I’m going to keep you on fluids for a couple more hours,” the doctor said. “The bleeding has seemed to calm down but we’ll want to monitor that as well. There’s not much else we can do at this point. I’m going to prescribe you some medication for your high blood pressure. That might help. Beyond that, you need to do whatever you can to eliminate your stress.” The doctor looked at me again as if I were the cause of all your stress. I suppose, this time, he was right. “You should probably also try to stay off your feet as much as possible. I realize that bed rest at this early stage in your pregnancy probably isn’t possible, but whatever you can do might help. Either way, no strenuous activity.”
I wanted to ask him what we should do if that wasn’t possible. What should we do if we had to physically run for our lives? What if, no matter what we did to avoid stress, we knew full well that stress was going to find us? I wanted workable answers to questions that I didn’t even have the courage to ask. “That’s it?” was the only question I could think of.
“That’s it,” the doctor answered. “Do those things—and hope for the best.” He looked at us again from over his clipboard and smiled. “The good news is that the heartbeat is strong. The baby is strong.” He paused. “Did they tell you the baby’s gender after they did the ultrasound downstairs?”
“No,” I answered, finally getting the words out before you.
“We can’t always tell this early but we got a pretty clear picture this time. Would you like to know the baby’s gender?” he asked you.
We looked at each other. I let you answer. “Do you think the baby’s going to be okay, Doctor?”
“I can’t make any promises,” the doctor said. “Pregnancy is always touch and go. The odds of you making it full term aren’t very high. But your baby looks strong. It’s trying. It only needs to make it another couple months to be viable.”
“Then I want to know,” you answered him.
“Your baby is a boy,” the doctor said. It’s a boy, Maria. We’re having a baby boy. I wanted to be excited but the risks suddenly seemed almost unbearable. Placental abruption. I had another name for my growing list of enemies. I couldn’t forget our other enemies, though. They were still out there. They were still looking for us. So tell me how I’m supposed to relieve your stress and keep you from doing anything strenuous. How am I supposed to figure out how to do the impossible?
Sixteen
We should have left Charleston as soon as we got home from the hospital. We should have come back to the motel, gathered up our things, and left town forever. That would have been the smart thing to do. You gave them your real name. I should have made us run right away but I was afraid. I was afraid of what might happen if I made you run again. Fear had been my ally for so long, I didn’t know how to act once it became our enemy. Fear equalled stress. No one knew that better than me. I lost focus. I was afraid of what fear might do to our son. I just wanted you to be able to relax. I wanted everything to be calm. I wanted our son to be safe. So I tried to act like everything was fine. Everything wasn’t fine. You had given the hospital your real name. I knew deep down that now it was only a matter of time.
It’s only been five days since we left the hospital. So much has changed already. We made it almost four months in Charleston before we had to run. Maybe we’ll make it even longer this time. I try to stay positive for you. I keep writing in this journal because I can tell it things that I’m afraid to tell you. I can tell it how scared I am right now. One day I’ll give you this journal but I want our son to be born first. I want to know that he’s safe first. Until then, all I want to do is protect the two of you. There are things you should know about Charleston, about how we left Charleston. There are details that I kept from you because I didn’t understand them. I still don’t.
After we got home from the hospital, I knew something was going to happen. I just didn’t know what and I didn’t know when, so I waited like a fool. It could have been worse. If we hadn’t gotten that phone call, we might not have even made it out of our motel room.
I woke up that night before the phone even rang. I can’t explain why. Something was wrong. I could feel it. I might have started ignoring some of
my instincts but they weren’t dead yet. My body was drenched in sweat. My heart was racing. I tried to catch my breath. I could feel you move beneath the covers next to me. You moved a lot in your sleep now, trying to find a comfortable way to lie despite your ever-growing stomach. I took a few long breaths. You didn’t wake up. Not yet. I glanced over at the window, trying to remember what woke me up. Our blinds were drawn. A pair of ugly yellow drapes covered the window overlooking the motel parking lot. I began to think that someone must be out there. Someone must be waiting just outside our window. I must have heard them and that had to have been what woke me up. I thought about walking over to the window to look but I didn’t want to wake you. I couldn’t afford to frighten you unless I was certain we were in danger. Besides, if they were outside, it was already too late.
So I just lay there, paralyzed by some sort of irrational fear that turned out to be all too rational. I could feel a large weight pushing me down onto the bed. I lay there and waited for something to happen. I glanced over at the clock beside the bed. It was two-thirty in the morning. The room was dark. All I could see was the light creeping in from the crack just below the curtains. My eyes scanned the ceiling and the walls. I watched a cockroach run from one end of the ceiling to the other. I couldn’t see any signs that something was wrong. It was just my instincts running amok.
I heard a clicking sound come from the phone before it started ringing. It was just the slightest noise but I heard it. Then the phone rang. I leapt across the bed and reached for the receiver. I picked up the phone before the second ring. I had no idea what to expect. All I wanted was answers. I held the receiver to my ear and sat straight up in bed. You barely budged.
“Hello?” I whispered.
The voice on the other end was muffled but it spoke with urgency. “You’ve got to get out.” There was something that I remembered about the voice, something that I recognized. It was a voice that I’d heard on the phone before.