Chapter 7: Corabelle
I might be spending too much time alone. My graduate courses are only a few hours a week and there’s no office to hang out in on campus. Gavin works extra so we can find some way to pay for a baby.
My days are filled with studies and notes and plans for my thesis. Sometimes I sleep, finding midafternoons long and difficult now that I’m pregnant.
I haven’t told Gavin about the dreams.
They come almost every night and sometimes during naps. Their intensity and vividness don’t surprise me. I had them with Finn too, technicolor spectacles with majestic soundtracks and convoluted storylines. They felt so real that when I would awaken in the night, I had to roll over to Gavin and touch him to ensure that this dim silent world was the real one after all.
But those were mostly happy, silly, giddy, or strange.
Not these.
In the new version of my pregnancy dreams, I see the baby, floating in the watery world of my belly, red-tinged and ghostly. The view closes in on a precious face, tiny hands, and a round belly strung with its umbilical cord.
Then we’re inside of him, his blood vessels, his lungs.
And his heart.
It beats oddly, lopsided, pulsing and pushing like a distorted accordion. Then a spring pops, and screws spew out. After a few more swollen beats, there’s a little explosion and his heart becomes a gutted music box, bits of metal and wire hanging loose.
Every night, the same.
I’ve learned to dread it, even while I sleep. When the view starts to close in on his heart, I know what is coming. I fight the dream, trying to wake myself, shaking hard, knowing my body can’t move. I want away from it, to avoid the journey inward. But there is no escape. Until the heart explodes to bits of machinery, I can’t change the course.
Yesterday I wrote Stella, the baby loss support group leader who helped Tina. She’s seen so many women, so many ways of grieving. I hoped she could tell me how to stop the dreams. I’m still waiting for a reply.
I have an hour until I have to leave for class. My comfy armchair cradles me. Gavin left for work early this morning, so like most days, I am alone.
My laptop glows softly in the cave-like room, shutters closed to keep out the heat and save money on air-conditioning. I check my email and there’s a note back from Stella.
I open it eagerly.
My dear Corabelle,
So nice to meet you in Houston and for you to be there for Tina. As you have guessed, it is very common for women to have intense dreams during pregnancy and they often turn pretty dark after one has died.
My best advice to you is for you to learn the parts of a human heart. Look at pictures, see videos of a heart beating. Your mind is putting in the mechanical parts to replace what it doesn’t know. It’s telling you to learn.
Ask your doctor if you can take a magnesium supplement as well. This will often slow down the whirring of your mind and help your dreams. (Good when you aren’t pregnant too.)
Fondly, Stella
I think she’s right about this. I don’t know why I haven’t thought of it. When I picture a human heart, I can see the outside clearly. Red and veined with arteries coming out. But not inside. I can’t see that at all.
The search results are immediately helpful. Cutaways show the ventricles and veins. I watch videos of how the blood pulses in and out and even a clip of an open-heart surgery.
It takes some courage to open the next links, but I search “hypoplastic left heart syndrome.” This is what Finn had. The doctors had not even tried to fix it, because he was born too early, too weak, and they didn’t think he would survive.
There’s so much more information now than there was then. The hypoplastic hearts don’t look terribly different from healthy ones in the drawings. Narrower arteries, and a left ventricle that is too small. In the images, it seems as if it almost wouldn’t matter.
But it does.
When I was researching during the few days Finn was alive, frantically in moments I could get to a computer between time at the NICU, I didn’t really look into the likelihood of it happening to another baby. That wasn’t even on my mind.
Naturally, it is now.
I type in “genetic cause of HLHS” then shut my eyes. Is this going to help? What could I do about it now? It might make the dreams worse, not better.
A tiny lightning streak of pain shoots through my belly down to my groin. I clap my hand against my stomach. It’s gone as quickly as it came, but I snap my laptop shut.
I don’t need any more sign than that to stop.
My phone buzzes, but it’s clear across the room. I’m not up for moving from my safe place, so I open my laptop again, quickly closing the search results before I can read anything.
My phone messages show up on my messaging app on the computer.
It’s Mom.
Gavin’s father has heart surgery tomorrow. Very risky. You coming?
What?
I quickly text her back.
What happened?
While I wait for her response, I text Gavin.
What is going on with your father?
My parents have no love lost for the Mays family, who have lived across the back alley since before Gavin and I were born. We never told Mom or Dad outright about Gavin’s father, but they knew something at his home wasn’t right. They accepted Gavin as one of us.
Well, up until he left during Finn’s funeral. That took some work to forgive, for all of us.
I haven’t told them about the new baby yet. I don’t know why. I’m scared, I guess. And I want to wait for the first sonogram, still two weeks away.
But now this.
Both messages come through at the same time.
From Mom. He has congestive heart failure and needs a quadruple bypass. I just took a casserole over. I offered to help.
From Gavin. The old man’s bad karma has finally caught up with him.
I respond to Gavin first. When are we leaving?
He responds: The day after never.
Are you sure? It sounds serious.
I’ll show up at his funeral and dance on his grave.
Oh, Gavin.
I know. I get it. One of the reasons Gavin and I got so close as children was that Gavin never stayed at home. And when his father forced him to help around the house, I helped too. Mr. Mays wouldn’t hit him in front of me.
But when I wasn’t around, it was bad. Real bad.
Mom’s message is still sitting there, so I answer her.
He won’t go.
Not even to let his father make amends?
Is his father planning to?
I don’t know. It’s so sad. I grieve for Alaina.
My mom and Gavin’s mom Alaina became friends after I got pregnant, out of necessity. Gavin leaving town during the funeral hurt their relationship.
Probably Gavin’s father has not changed. And Gavin isn’t going to give him absolution he hasn’t earned.
But I know Gavin is making a mistake. I just know it. Mom thinks Mr. Mays has changed.
I need to make him go. Like lighting the rainbow candle and turning down the adjunct job, I know it’s the right thing to do.