Chapter 23: Corabelle
Sitting in the radiologist’s waiting area with my parents is an experience. My father, in his infinite wisdom, has something to say about every detail. The notices on the wall. The hairstyles of the assistants.
He makes small talk with the pregnant women, asking questions about their due dates. Mom frequently places her hand on his leg as a subtle command to shut up, but the women’s eagerness to talk about their babies keeps him going. They find it adorable that a grandfather is at a sonogram.
Then comes the question I always dread, but this time it is aimed at my father.
“Is this your first grandchild?”
The woman who asks it is mid-twenties, glowing, and obviously near her due date. She asks with such innocence.
And it is a simple question, the sort of thing you might say to anyone who expresses that they are expecting a new member of the family. It’s as ubiquitous as “When is your wedding day?” to future brides or “How old are you?” to small children.
Dad falters, glancing at Mom for guidance.
“This is our second,” Mom says. “Another boy.”
“How delightful,” the woman says, tucking a blond lock behind her ear as if she hasn’t just shattered the joviality of our entire group.
Thankfully she is called back and we have the area to ourselves for a moment.
Dad decides to pretend nothing has happened, a common tactic when things are hard or awkward. “How is Tinker Bell today?” he asks.
My first instinct is to snap something like “We’ve been together for almost an hour. You already know.” But it’s the stress talking and I rein it in.
“Anxious to see how he’s doing,” I say.
We fall silent as another couple strolls in, tall and happy, holding hands. They turn in their paperwork and sit nearby. I glance at her belly, in the cute round stage of the halfway point. Gender sonogram. I wish I could be like her, happy and eager and ignorant about how things can go.
But I’m not.
My hands seek the rainbow pillow, but I left it behind, feeling silly bringing it along with my parents in tow. It’s come to all the other appointments. That bit of fluff is literally the only thing we have for the baby so far. I know I’ll have to shop eventually.
“Corabelle?” The same woman as before, this time with blue tips in her hair, calls for me.
The four of us stand up.
“You got a party goin’ on out here,” she says with a laugh.
“You changed your hair,” I say.
“Matches the stars on my scrubs,” she says, gesturing to the green shirt with blue shooting stars.
She takes us to the same room, dim and humming with the machine.
“Let me grab one more chair,” she says, hustling back out.
Gavin helps me onto the table and stands nearby as Mom sits on the lone plastic chair. The woman returns with a second chair. “Does Dad need one too?” she asks, looking at Gavin.
“I’m happy right here,” he says.
“All right.” She comes over and arranges my clothes for me. It feels awkward having my belly exposed with my dad in the room. They hadn’t been there for the one sonogram we had with Finn.
“Shelly will be right in,” she says and steps out.
“Interesting room,” Dad says, and I want to groan. I close my eyes, counting the seconds it takes for each breath to go in and out. I’m not as bad as last time, especially since the morning sickness has faded. But it’s still stressful, waiting to hear if your baby is better or worse.
He swims in my belly like a wave rolling. I place my hand over him. He’s not quite big enough that you can see his movements from the outside yet. But I definitely feel them all the time.
The door opens. “Hello, family,” Shelly says and shakes everyone’s hands. “You ready to take a peek at the baby?”
Dad rubs his hands together. “I know I am!”
Shelly shakes the bottle of gel and squirts it on me. The warm goo piles on my skin. She brings up my info as before and slides the paddle through the gel.
“He’s definitely bigger,” she says. She locks in on the head and the numbers pop up. Thirty weeks, one day.
The femur gives us thirty-one weeks, four days.
“He might end up being tall,” she says, glancing at Gavin. “Like Dad.”
My father chortles. “You should have played basketball, Gavin,” he says.
My mom squeezes his leg. I focus back on the screen.
Next the belly. Thirty weeks, four days.
“This is all in range,” Shelly says. “Let’s take a look at the heart.”
She focuses in as she studies the screen. I can see the pulse of his heartbeat.
The image zooms, and the four chambers of the heart appear.
I have studied sonogram after sonogram on the Internet. I’ve seen bad valves, holes in hearts, underdeveloped atriums. But when looking at a real live feed, I can’t tell anything.
She zooms, prints a picture, shifts, prints another. This can’t be good. You don’t document a healthy heart. My heart rate skyrockets.
I hate that she always studies before she’ll say anything. Just tell us what you see!
Finally, she pulls back. “Let’s take some fun shots,” she says. She finds a profile that perfectly delineates the baby’s nose. More printouts churn from below the machine.
She types “Hi, Grandma and Grandpa” on one and prints it too. Mom claps her hands, delighted. They are all smiles.
But I saw how she documented his heart. I’m bracing myself for what’s next.
Shelly tears off the cute shots, handing one to my parents and a couple to Gavin. She leaves the machine on as she takes the paper away from my pants and wipes off my belly.
“The diagnosis has to wait on your doctor’s review of the scans,” she says, “but they will be forwarded to a perinatologist and a pediatric cardiologist.”
Tears stream out again. So, it’s bad news.
She walks over to a trash can, presses the foot pedal to lift the lid, and tosses the gooey paper in the garbage. She turns to Gavin. “You can help her up so she can see.”
I struggle to sitting and we all stare at the blips on the screen. She scrolls back to the stills of the baby’s four-chambered heart.
“Right here is what is called the foramen ovale,” she says. “It’s a flap that is open while your baby is in utero and his lungs don’t function yet. With his first breath in the real world, pressure in the heart causes the flap to close and oxygen from the lungs goes into the bloodstream. At that very important moment, we have a human who can live outside of amniotic fluid.”
She moves the pointer to circle a blip of white dots that mean nothing to me, although I can see the heart chambers. “Your baby’s foramen is present, but it is undersized. This means that when the flap closes at birth, it will not completely seal. This may be a big deal, or it may not. We won’t really know until he’s out and breathing and we can test his oxygen levels and hear that heart.”
My eyes swim with black spots, and I feel like I will pass out. Gavin puts his hand on my back to steady me.
I can’t speak. I feel like I’m the one not getting enough oxygen. I suck in a big breath.
“Lie her back,” Shelly says quickly. She opens the door to the exam room. “Can I get a nurse?”
The world feels like a funhouse mirror, going in and out of focus, long and skinny, big and fat, images shimmering.
A large woman pushes Gavin aside and fits a mask over my nose and mouth. The air is sharp and smells like a hospital. Oxygen. I remember it from when I had pneumonia.
After a moment, I settle down.
“There you go, love,” the woman says. She’s not familiar, wearing pink scrubs and sporting wildly spiked hair. The people who work here are really into their wild ’dos.
I just want to sleep, but the nurse takes the oxygen away and an even sharper odor snaps me awake. Smelling salts.
“Let’s sit up now,” the nurse says. “See how you’re doing.”
The world is back in color and normal shapes. Did I forget to breathe? Did my old habit of passing out when things got hard kick in without me trying? I can’t do that now. Not with the baby.
My stomach grumbles.
“She probably has low blood sugar,” the nurse says. “I’m going to go get some juice.”
Gavin closes in as soon as she leaves. Mom and Dad also crowd the table.
“You okay, baby?” Mom asks. Her face is pale and etched with concern.
“I’m okay,” I say. “I just didn’t handle the news well.”
Mom digs through her purse and tugs out an energy bar. “Please eat a little something.”
I don’t want it, but I take a bite to appease her.
Shelly still stands near. “Your color is coming back,” she says.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m screwing up your schedule.”
“Don’t worry about us,” she says.
The nurse returns with a little container of orange juice. “Here you go,” she says. “You’re looking better, though.”
I take the juice and tear a bit of the foil. It tastes like a dream, and my body gulps it greedily.
I pass the empty cup back to her. “Thank you.”
“No problem,” she says. “You need to sit here a little longer?”
“No,” I tell her. “I’m fine now.”
Mom and Gavin help me off the table.
Shelly passes Gavin some papers. “We’re going to send you a referral to the pediatric cardiologist. The office might give you a call. When the baby is born, he’ll be advised about the situation and if he is needed.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“Good luck,” Shelly says. “For what it’s worth, most of the babies are just fine. Our bodies are amazing healers.”
I don’t answer that. Finn wasn’t healed. He didn’t even get a chance. A doctor like the pediatric cardiologist she just mentioned made that decision.
But we have our answer. And now there is nothing we can do but wait for the baby to be born.
~*´♥`*~
Thanksgiving is otherwise nice. My mom does the cooking in our tiny kitchen. Dad insists we go shopping on Black Friday and they outfit a mini-nursery in a corner of our bedroom with a bassinet, tiny changing-table unit, and some hanging shelves to store the baby’s first clothes and diapers and burp cloths.
We start our birthing class. Each weekly session is another increment toward reality hitting. A baby. Sleepless nights. Midnight feedings. All the normal things we might actually experience this time.
Maybe.
It occurs to me that I don’t know a thing about handling a baby.
And yet, I don’t study. I don’t read baby books or anything past pregnancy. I’m stuck in this terrible no-man’s-land of being pregnant but not expecting a real live baby to ever come home.
Gavin brings a freshly cut tree home to decorate for Christmas. I frequently sit on the sofa, staring at the tinsel and smattering of ornaments, wondering how to find any holiday spirit, any excitement in life.
I have only four weeks until the term ends in January. I’ll be done with my coursework, but my thesis remains unwritten.
If I can rally, I might still complete it before the baby’s due date in early February and at least be ready for whenever I want to look for a job.
But I don’t think I’m going to pull myself together. Depression tugs me down. The only thing I really look forward to are the candlelight vigils I do alone now that Tina has had her baby.
Then one day Gavin comes home with a bag of supplies. He doesn’t mention them to me, just goes to the kitchen to heat up some leftover pizza, and starts to unpack on the dining room table.
Card stock. Glitter paint. Thin wire.
I know what he’s doing immediately.
Making the butterfly mobile again. The one we did for Finn that I destroyed after Gavin left me at the funeral.
Four years later, he re-created another flock of these butterflies in the trees outside my apartment in an effort to get me to forgive him.
He sits there, chewing pizza and cutting out the shapes. After he gathers a good number, he takes them out the back door. It’s a warm day despite being December, so he leaves the door cocked as he sprays glitter on the butterflies on the back porch.
Gavin and I don’t speak, but when he starts to spread the butterflies out to dry on the cabinets, I picture glitter glue permanently on the cabinets and hop up from the comfy armchair.
We don’t have any newspaper. But I pull out a couple large garbage bags and cut them open. Gavin helps me spread them on the counters and one by one we transfer the sparkling butterflies from the porch to the counters.
When he sits down to cut more butterflies, this time I sit with him. I vary the size and color a little more than he does as I cut.
We stay silent as he checks on the painted butterflies, finds they are dry, and turns them over to spray the other side.
I come to a bright blue piece of cardboard and have to pause to collect myself.
The special butterfly Gavin made for Finn two years ago remains in my bedroom. I saved it from the trees so it wouldn’t get blown away.
While Gavin sprays the back sides, I head to my room. It’s not quite the same as having a piece of Finn’s old butterfly mobile for the new baby, but it does have a lot of meaning. It’s one of the links in the chain of events that brought Gavin and me back together.
Gavin’s back to cutting when I return. When he sees what I’m holding, he smiles. “When I assemble it, I’ll make sure the new baby can see Finn,” he says.
“I guess we should name the baby,” I say. “Any ideas?”
“I guess Thor is out,” he says. “I’m also partial to Batman.”
This gets a smile. “I’m assuming not after your father.”
“Hell, no,” he says.
“We should tell them,” I say with a sigh. “Mom is threatening to do it for us.”
“I’ll call Mom on Christmas,” Gavin says. “Soon enough?”
I nod. There isn’t much else I can do.
We work until late, cutting and spraying and stringing the butterflies on the lines. I get sleepy and lie on the sofa, but Gavin works on. He seems intent on finishing it tonight.
And it’s a good thing, because when I awaken in the wee hours of the morning, it’s time to panic.
I’m in labor.