Four Years Later
Everyone was there. Well, everyone who mattered to Kelly and me. The waiting room was littered with our people. Miranda and Ainsley had driven up early that morning at 4:00 a.m. so they could arrive for Hope’s final surgery. They sat there, chatting quietly to each other, clutching balloons and flowers in their hands. Their husbands, Adrian and Holden, had stayed home with their herd of children. Our mothers sat nearby, their own flowers and stuffed animals tucked around them while they talked not so quietly.
And my girl, she was seated beside me. Her leg bounced next to mine and I lay my hand on it. She was nervous. So was I. But we were in the home stretch. With two surgeries under our belts already this should have been old hat. In truth, it never got any easier. Every time our baby underwent surgery we sat on pins and needles, waiting for news. Open heart surgery was always risky business.
But this was it, Hope was four now. This was the last of the three surgeries that would finally fix her heart. And ours. Long, sleepless nights of feedings and watching our baby girl in pain would come to a close soon enough. She’d probably never run track, but she’d run. Her prognosis was good. It was all we could ask for.
“It’s okay, baby. She has the best doctors in the world in there working on her.” I said the same thing every time our baby went under, but even the best failed. I was terrified, too, but I’d hide it for her.
She gave me a close-lipped smile. “I know. But I can’t help but worry, and I’m not feeling so great.” She lay her hand to her round stomach. She was almost thirty-seven weeks along. It was another girl. A healthy girl. We were ecstatic, if a little scared, but it was time.
Hope was still a lot of work but soon that wouldn’t be the case. The past three years seemed to have flown by in a flurry of doctors’ appointments and hospital stays and surgeries. Kelly was a rock star stay-at-home mom and me and Lucille we still spent our days saving the babies. In between surgeries and work when Hope was feeling well enough, we did manage to squeeze in a small wedding ceremony at the court house. We put Hope in a white dress and Kelly tucked tiny little flowers into her hair. They’d stood in our small three-bedroom house near the hospital in white dresses and I’d never felt so damn lucky in my life. She’d told her momma she thought she looked like a princess. I’d thought both of them did.
“You want some water? A snack?” I got up and started walking to the vending machines across the room.
“Anthony,” she hissed out and I turned around. I should have known something was wrong the minute she’d said my name. She never called me by Anthony unless she was pissed or upset. I was her Doc.
“What’s up, shortstop?” I walked back over to her. I got down on my haunches and put my hands on her knees. A sweat had broken out along her forehead and her face was flushed. I started to worry. “What’s wrong?”
She leaned close to my ear and whispered, “I think I’m in labor.”
I rocked back and almost fell onto my ass. “What?”
“I think I’m having a baby,” she whisper yelled at me.
“Why are we whispering?” I said softy.
She gave me big eyes. “Because I can’t have a baby today. I have to be here when Hope gets out. This can’t happen.”
I grinned at her and grabbed her face in my hands. It calmed her and I knew she needed to chill out. “You know as well as I do that you don’t get to pick the times these things happen.” I looked around the room. “Hey, at least this time we are actually at a hospital.”
Oh, that look. My girl could give me go to hell eyes like no other.
“Now is not the time to be cute,” she deadpanned, before leaning over clutching her stomach.
“How long have they been coming and how often?”
“Every four minutes now, lasting about a minute,” she groaned.
Fuck, my girl really was in labor. And we all knew how fast Hope had come. They said the second one was even quicker.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Everything okay?” Mom asked.
I looked over my shoulder and smiled up at her. “I think we might have a little bit of a situation.”
Kelly sat up. “Nope, no situation.” She tried to smile, but it came off more a grimace.
“She’s in labor.”
Kelly shook her head. “Nope, I can’t be in labor. I have to be here for Hope.”
Lucille looked at us both like we were crazy before coasting out of the waiting room and saying, “I’ll go get a nurse.”
“Doc, we can’t have a baby today.”
Wrapping my arms around her, I hugged her to me. “We can. We can do anything, baby. You know that better than anybody.”
“What’s the problem?” Miranda piped in behind me.
I let Kelly go and stood up. “She’s in labor.”
“Shit!” Ainsley said. “You people have the worst timing for these things.”
My girl laughed and I was relieved. And it was true. We didn’t do anything the conventional way. Our lives were always crazy, but we loved it.
“Move aside.” Abby pushed through and knelt down in front of Kelly like I had. “It’s okay, baby. Lucy went to get a nurse, and you and Anthony will go have the baby, and me and Lucy can stay here. We’ll be here when Hope gets out.”
She shook her head. “No, Momma, it has to be me.” Her eyes went to mine. “Or Anthony. One of us has to be there when she comes out.”
“Then I’ll stay. I’ll be here when she wakes up, baby, I promise.” I offered up.
Kelly swallowed and looked at her mom and Ainsley and Miranda. “Then I guess it’s just us ladies in the delivery room.” She looked scared, but firm in her resolve that I stay with Hope. She was the best mom I’d ever known.
Miranda lay her hand on Kelly’s shoulder. “We got this, girl. My vagina has been a freaking revolving door for years. I’m a professional.”
“Miranda!” Abby scolded and we all laughed.
Lucille entered the room followed by a nurse with a wheelchair.
“Let’s get you in this chair, Mrs. Jackson, and you over to the birthing wing.” The nurse smiled.
We knew everyone around here. I felt like our entire family was here at this hospital more than we were at home.
We got a contracting Kelly into the chair and they started to wheel her out and into the hallway.
“Doc!” she called out.
I met her in the hallway and kneeled down in front of her. “What’s up, little bit?”
She took my face in her hands. “I love you.”
“I love you too, baby,” I said, kissing her lips one last time. “Now bring it in.”
She rolled her eyes. “Not this. Not now.”
“Come onnnn. Indulge me and bring it the hell in.” I brought both of my bunched fist up and waited on her to bring hers up to mine. I tapped our fists together lightly. I laid my forehead to hers. “Team Jackson,” I muttered against her lips.
“Team Jackson,” she breathed back.
A different version of Team Hope but much the same. Our team had evolved and grown over the years and now we were about to add a new member. I was sad to miss it, but I knew where I was needed and I’d never leave Hope without her daddy when she needed him.
She already had one dud of a father. At least Cash had eventually done right by her by signing away his parental rights and letting me adopt her. He didn’t have a desire to see her and hadn’t tried the first year of her life. Drugs did that to a person—made them miss out on the best things that life had to offer. His loss was my gain, though, because when Hope was eighteen months old she became officially mine. It was just a technicality, though. She’d always been mine, even before she was born.
They wheeled Kelly down the hall and I went back to the small family room and waited. I thought of my sweet brown-haired, blue-eyed Hope with her small, imperfect heart. I loved that heart. It had given me everything. Without her broken heart, I wouldn’t be husband—a father. I owed everything to her and that heart.
It wasn’t long before I was called into a small conference and a doctor friend told me that my daughter was fine and the surgery was successful. Only a few minutes after that, I sat at her side in the recovery room until she woke up. It was four hours later when Hope and I finally got to meet our newest team member. A nurse wheeled my exhausted looking wife with our baby in her lap into the NICU room Hope would be staying in the next few days. Hope had already deemed our new bundle Faith months ago. “They just go together,” she’d said. Who were we to argue, besides she wasn’t wrong and she pretty much ran the show around here anyway.
“She looks just like you,” Kelly said, tears rolling down her face as I held Faith for the first time and she did. She had green eyes and blond baby fuzz covering her head. Her nose my nose. Her mouth mine too. She looked like Charles. I smiled down at her while Kelly held Hope’s hand as she slept.
We’d had a hell of a day. A hell of a couple of years, really, but I was learning that everything would be okay as long as we had a little Hope and Faith.
Things weren’t perfect by any means. We knew the greatest gifts life had to offer often weren’t the big and easy things. The amazing things were sometimes as hard as steel. But if you looked closely, you could see through all the bad straight to the good where imperfect things become impossibly perfect. Where grief is a road that sometimes leads you astray, but the memories and lost love bring you back home. Where a huge loss doesn’t always mean the end but maybe a new beginning. And where broken hearts go to get second chances and become healthy and whole again.
The End