“HELLO, CAN YOU HELP ME? MY SISTER IS here?”
Nathalie said the sentence she had been practicing in her mind since she’d gotten the phone call a half hour ago, jumped in her car, and sped to the hospital on Sunset Boulevard.
“Ms. Nathalie Kneller?” the nasal voice on the other end of the line said. “You are listed as Ms. Lyndi Kneller’s emergency contact on her insurance . . .”
It had been hard to hear any words after that, but Nathalie did manage to make out that there had been an accident, and her sister was in the hospital. What unit, Nathalie didn’t know. What the injuries were, Nathalie didn’t know. And she wouldn’t let herself speculate. Instead, all she did on the (way too long, what the hell was with traffic today?!?) ride down was practice her first sentence.
She would take every moment after as it came.
Of course, it would be helpful if the veritable sloth manning the front desk was able to hang up the phone long enough to hear one complete sentence.
“Yeah—no, she said that’s what the eggplant emoji was for. I didn’t get it either—”
“EXCUSE ME.”
Nathalie didn’t have time for her teacher voice to take effect. She went right to holy-hell-my-sister’s-been-hurt-and-your-emoji-cluelessness-is-stopping-me-from-seeing-her voice.
“I was called. My sister was in an accident. She’s pregnant. Where. Is. She.”
It might have been the snarl. The gritted teeth. The Do Not Mess with Me Belly. But something got the hospital receptionist off the phone and onto the computer, asking how to spell “Kneller.”
With her visitor sticker slapped on her suit jacket, Nathalie broke into a run to the elevators, stabbing at the button marked “4th floor, Labor and Delivery.”
The nurse on the desk in Labor and Delivery was a lot more helpful. But then again, it might have been because it looked like she was a pregnant lady with labored breathing who was freaking out in the Labor and Delivery department.
Once they figured out they didn’t need to hook up Nathalie to a monitor, they led her to the hospital room where she finally, finally, got to see her sister.
The room was dim, the curtains pulled across the windows and the encroaching twilight. The only sound in the room was the beep of a monitor, hooked up to the still and quiet form of Nathalie’s little sister.
The last time Nathalie had been in a hospital room like this was when she was eight. When she had visited her mother.
Her mother had never let her come unless she was awake and able to play with Nathalie. She wouldn’t let her daughter see her weak. Toward the end, Nathalie wasn’t allowed to come visit at all.
So to see Lyndi so lifeless . . . so vulnerable . . .
She reached out and took her sister’s hand. It was alarmingly cold. So much so that only the steady beeps from the monitor and the visible in-and-out of Lyndi’s breath reassured her. That, and the harness-looking contraption that encased her other arm from elbow to knuckle. It was so stiff and had so many different buckles that Nathalie wondered that it wasn’t a torture device instead of a healing one.
At that moment, Nathalie didn’t know what to do. She had come to the hospital, she had said the line she had practiced over and over in the car, which had taken her here. But now that she was here, she didn’t know if she was supposed to do any more than hold her sister’s hand.
Was she supposed to hold Lyndi’s hand? Was that allowed?
Was she supposed to flag down a doctor and force them to tell her Lyndi’s status? Was she supposed to sign forms? Was she supposed to notify loved ones? Make medical decisions?
Was she supposed to feel anything other than horrible and regretful and as if she was the worst person on the planet?
“Are you holding my hand because you’re going to propose? Or is this just a weird hospital thing people do?”
“Oh my God!”
Nathalie actually jumped in the air when her sister’s sardonic voice interrupted her own unfocused thoughts. But instead of dropping her sister’s hand, she ended up squeezing it tighter.
“Ow! Nat, are you trying to break my other hand?”
“No! Sorry! God . . . I thought you were . . .”
“Comatose?”
“No . . . although your hands are really cold.”
“They’re always cold.” Lyndi frowned at her icy fingers. “I have Mom’s circulation.”
“Right,” Nathalie said, and immediately felt a rush of guilt at any thought of Kathy. She had been studiously avoiding letting her mind tend in that direction for the past few days.
“What are you doing here?” Lyndi asked, breaking the awkward silence.
“I was called.”
“Oh . . . I didn’t realize they called you,” Lyndi replied dully.
“Lyndi.” She hesitated. Then she asked, “You . . . you listed me as your emergency contact on your insurance?” The why was implied.
“Well, of course I did,” Lyndi replied, looking at Nathalie as if she were stupid—and in this instance she probably was. “I always put you down.”
Nathalie felt heat coming to her cheeks, oddly affected by Lyndi’s words.
But then, of course, was the awkward silence again. Bred by two sisters who hadn’t been able to talk to each other in months.
“So, er, what happened?” Nathalie said. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Come on. If you were fine, you wouldn’t be in the hospital,” she argued, putting her hands on her hips. “They wouldn’t have called your emergency contact.”
“I’m certain you were only called because I’m pregnant. It seems to be the reason for everything nowadays.”
“Didn’t you ask the doctor?”
“No, I was unconscious when I came in.”
“Lyndi!” Nathalie cried.
Lyndi sighed the sigh of the deeply suffering. “I was riding my bike . . .”
“You were RIDING YOUR BIKE?” Her heart practically stopped beating. “How could you be so stupid? Riding your bike? In LA traffic? When you’re six months pregnant?”
“Okay, can you let me get through the story, and then berate me?” Lyndi said. “It would save a lot of time.”
“Fine. But, Lyndi—” One look from Lyndi shut Nathalie up. “Fine.”
“I was riding my bike, turned right into the sunset. I didn’t have my sunglasses on me so my eyes took a minute to adjust. By the time they did, I was in a car’s blind spot. It swerved into me, I swerved away from it and into a pole.”
“You hit a pole?” Nathalie tried very, very hard to keep the judgment out of her voice. “Are you okay? Is the baby okay?”
“I broke my wrist,” she said, holding up her splint-covered hand. “And they’re monitoring the baby.” She lifted up her hospital gown, showing two sensors strapped to her belly—one low and one high. “One’s for fetal movement, the other’s the heartbeat. So far so good, but they’re going to keep me overnight.”
“Good.” Nathalie took a deep breath. “Good. But, um . . . that doesn’t explain why you were unconscious. And why they called me.”
“When I came in they drew my blood and you know how the sight of blood makes me pass out, so I . . .”
“You passed out.”
“That must have been why they called you. Because I was out for a little bit.” Lyndi cleared her throat, resettled herself in her hospital bed. “So, as you can see, everything’s good. You don’t have to stick around.”
And with that, Nathalie lost it. And by it, she meant the top of her head, because it practically exploded.
“I’m sorry, I don’t have to stick around? Oh okay, I’ll just leave my pregnant little sister in the hospital. Never mind that I rushed all the way here afraid she was dying. Never mind that she was a total idiot riding her bike and hit a freakin’ pole. Never mind that obviously someone is going to have to help her because she broke her wrist and can’t take care of herself.”
Lyndi turned shocked eyes to Nathalie, but Nathalie didn’t see them. She wouldn’t see them until they had gone as steely as Lyndi’s voice.
“Okay, you really can go now.”
The low control in her words made Nathalie stop pacing.
“You didn’t mean that I can’t take care of myself because I’ve got a broken wrist.” Lyndi’s eyes narrowed. “You meant I can’t take care of myself, period. So how am I going to take care of a baby if I can’t take care of myself? That’s what you’re really saying, isn’t it? That’s what you meant to say at the baby shower and that’s what you meant to say now.”
Nathalie was caught. She could lie. Deflect. Not kick up any dust, and bring everything back to a state of even. But suddenly, after the last however many months of tight smiles and keeping things even, and one colossally disastrous baby shower, Nathalie didn’t want to keep things even. She wanted to do what came naturally to sisters.
She wanted to finally have it out.
“Okay, Lyndi,” Nathalie said, throwing her hands up in the air. “Yes—you’ve always had someone taking care of you. Dad, Kathy, me. Now Marcus. Although Marcus obviously isn’t taking very good care of you if he isn’t even here right now.”
“Marcus is on a plane. Coming back from New York. And I’m sure that I’m going to get the same lecture from him that you’re giving me, so don’t worry about me being ‘taken care of.’ Your version of care is well covered.”
“You’ve never had to worry about anything the way we worry about you,” Nathalie replied. “For heaven’s sake, I had to schedule your OB appointments!”
“Only the first one. And you didn’t have to—you just did! Because that’s what you do. You take over. Because you don’t think I can stand on my own two feet. Just like Mom and Dad. And you know what,” she rushed through before Nathalie could counter, “you can be mad at me for ‘stealing your pregnancy’—whatever the hell that means—but I didn’t do this to you. It honestly has nothing to do with you. Maybe, just maybe, you could consider the possibility that it’s you who is stealing my pregnancy.”
Nathalie gaped. “That’s ridiculous!”
“It’s not ridiculous. People actually want you to be pregnant. They’re happy for you—no one is happy for me.”
Nathalie was about to retort . . . but something stopped her. Something had broken in Lyndi’s voice. Something raw and true and little.
“You really feel that way?” she asked, quieter.
“Come on—I hear what people say about me. All of Mom’s friends at the gender reveal party? And what they say about you.”
“About me?”
“Everyone is so happy for you.” Lyndi swiped at the corner of her eye.
“Everyone is happy for you, too,” Nathalie tried, gently sitting on the edge of the bed.
“No, everyone wants to ‘help’ me. Mom, Dad . . . everyone tries to ‘guide’ me. And all that talk about how having a baby earlier is so great! My body will just spring back!” Lyndi rolled her eyes. “They’re trying to think of something good to say. Because saying ‘you don’t have your life together enough to have a baby’ doesn’t really fit on a Hallmark card.”
Nathalie stared at her sister. Minutes ago, she had been struck by how young and vulnerable she had seemed. Now, she was struck by how smart and forceful she could be.
“You’re right,” Nathalie said. “I’m sorry. I’ve been a total, selfish bitch.”
“It’s not just you. It’s like no one can believe I do see how hard it’s going to be and that things are going to change,” Lyndi finished. “It’s as if I’m not allowed to want my own child.”
“You do want her, don’t you,” Nathalie said with wonder.
“I do.” She turned her head and met her sister’s gaze. At some point, Nathalie had taken Lyndi’s hand. Held it. “I really do. And so does Marcus. Say what you will about him, but at least Marcus wants this baby. Sometimes it feels like he’s the only one who does.”
“Well, at least you have that going for you.” Nathalie sighed, allowing herself to indulge in a little self-pity.
“What do you mean?” Lyndi asked. “Everyone is happy for you.”
“Right,” Nathalie agreed. “Everyone, except the one person who really matters.”
Lyndi blinked twice. “David?” Then, her eyes narrowed. “I’ll kill him.”
“What? No, come on.” Over the course of David and Nathalie’s fifteen-year relationship, Lyndi had looked up to David like a big brother. There were times Nathalie had thought Lyndi liked David better than her.
“I’m serious. He’s dead to me,” Lyndi said through a stern face.
Nathalie nearly laughed. “Lyndi, you’ve known David since you were a kid.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“He taught you to drive.”
“Dead. To. Me.”
“You were maid of honor at our wedding.”
“Yeah, and do you know what I told him ten minutes before you got married?” Lyndi said, struggling to a sitting position. “That if he ever did anything to hurt you, I would travel to South America, buy an authentic machete, bring it back, and hack him to pieces with it. I know whose side I’m on.”
“You said that?” Nathalie blinked. “You were thirteen.”
“I was precocious.” Lyndi shrugged. Then she frowned. “And I was in my horror-movie-watching phase.”
A giggle burst forth from Nathalie’s lips. And then another, and another. And along with it, came the sweetest relief she’d felt in some time.
“I’ve missed this,” Nathalie said, holding her belly as she laughed. The baby kicked (or was it hiccups?) in time with her chuckles.
“Aw, Nat. I’ve missed you, too.”
Slowly, Nathalie’s chuckles turned to sniffles, although the smile stayed wide on her face.
“Okay. Tell me everything,” Lyndi said.
“Everything about what?”
“Being pregnant, dummy! I’ve been dying to compare notes.”
AND SO THEY did. And they did not limit themselves to their pregnancy symptoms. Although when Lyndi described how her little girl had once gotten her foot stuck in Lyndi’s ribs, Nathalie was silently grateful for her far more banal hip stretching symptoms, flatulence, and overriding desire to pee all the time.
No, they talked about everything. They talked about the baby shower, about the strange freedom of being allowed to be large. They talked about the latest episode of Fargone and how they were decorating their nurseries (although, for Lyndi, it was more how she was decorating the corner of the living room that was going to be the nursery). It was wonderful, and it was necessary.
Because they each had their sister back.
They talked so long, by the time Dr. Keen came in on rounds to check on her patient, she discovered not one but two pregnant women in bed, sitting side by side.
“I’m sorry you had to come in, but I’m glad you did,” Dr. Keen chirped. “I always feel better when my patients have family around.”
“Not a problem,” Nathalie said, waving away the concern. “On the plus side now I don’t have to worry about going on a hospital tour—I’ve got down where I’m supposed to go now.”
The doctor palpated Lyndi’s abdomen, and asked all the right questions, to which Lyndi gave all the hoped-for answers.
“No bleeding. And yes, she’s been kicking.”
“Quite a bit,” the doctor said, reviewing the printout from the monitor. “Well, you look good. I’ll be back in a little bit with the ultrasound machine, so we can make absolutely sure, but I think you have dodged a bullet.”
“I didn’t dodge anything. I hit a pole,” Lyndi said, as Dr. Keen left.
“David would be appalled at your lack of peripheral attention. He’d never have let you drive out of our driveway.”
“What’s up with him anyway?”
Nathalie told Lyndi all about David—about his outburst at IKEA and how it had seemingly come out of nowhere, but in truth it had been building brick by brick every day since she’d announced she was pregnant.
“He’s been killing himself at work, even though his own boss says he shouldn’t be. And when he does come home, all he does is play video games,” Nathalie said. “It’s like pulling teeth to get him to do anything baby-related . . . or even talk about it.”
“Sounds like someone needs a serious sister-in-law knock upside the head.”
Nathalie’s brow came down. “You have become surprisingly violent while pregnant.”
“And hungry. And horny. And angry. And weepy. And uncoordinated,” she finished, holding up her splinted wrist. “But seriously. I crave some of that standoffishness. Marcus wants to make sure I’m doing everything right all the time. Every day when I come home he’s there, ready to rub my feet and force-feed me a prenatal vitamin.”
“That’s . . . good?” Nathalie said.
“Yeah, it’s hard to be pissed off when he’s so good at being good to me.”
“But you were right to be pissed off. About that article.”
“Thanks. The only thing I feel I can trust is my daily pastel email.”
“Your what?”
Lyndi took out her phone and showed her.
“‘How to Give In to the Bloat, and Nine Other Ways to be Gleefully Pregnant,’” Nathalie read. “That’s . . . cheering.”
“And it tells me how big my baby is by comparing it to produce. Look, this week it’s an eggplant.”
“This gives a whole new definition to an eggplant emoji,” Nathalie mused, and then cracked up while she told Lyndi about how she had nearly leaped across the check-in desk at the hospital, and why.
“I’ll have to see what . . .” Nathalie whipped out her own phone. Then, she was suddenly self-conscious. “Never mind.”
“No—no, never mind,” Lyndi replied automatically. “What is it?”
Hesitantly, she handed over her phone. “I’ve got my own online guide for pregnancy,” Nathalie admitted, and Lyndi’s eyebrow perked up.
“Please tell me it’s not pastel. I would kill to have a non-pastel baby app.”
“It’s not. And it’s not an app. It’s a Twitter feed.”
As she guided Lyndi to the @WTFPreg feed, she told her how completely eerie it was. How everything that she was thinking or feeling would turn up on this person’s feed. Every symptom—hell, even every tiny observation! How they always made her feel better, to know someone out there was having the same difficulties she was.
“But who is it?” Lyndi asked, scrolling down and occasionally laughing at what she read.
“I don’t know. It has to be someone who’s about as far along as I am, right? Our pregnancies line up. You know for a while there, I thought it might be you.”
Lyndi smiled at her sweetly. “Sorry to disappoint. I’m overloaded just keeping the Favorite Flower’s Instagram going. Did you know we have over a hundred thousand followers now?”
“Wow . . . is that a lot? It sounds like a lot.”
“It’s enough to make me exhausted just thinking about doing more on social media. So, not me.”
“Yeah, I figured that out. For one thing, you’ve never shied away from wearing horizontal stripes.” Then, she hesitated. “Actually, I thought it might be my mom.”
“You thought it was Mom?”
“Not Kathy. My mom. I know it’s crazy,” she said immediately. “But I thought that . . . maybe she was showing me that I wasn’t alone in this. Stupid, right?”
“No,” Lyndi said, soft. “Not stupid.”
“I know it’s impossible. It’s probably some sarcastic mom-to-be, venting her frustrations to three Twitter followers from the middle of nowhere Kansas.”
“I don’t think so.” Lyndi frowned. “The things she talks about? And the times they post? I think she’s on the West Coast. In the Pacific time zone, at least.”
“How can you tell?” Nathalie leaned in, and was promptly schooled like a noob by her younger sister on the archiving aspects of Twitter—i.e. she showed her where to find the time and date stamp on the individual tweets.
“How do you know all this?”
“A hundred thousand Instagram followers, remember? I may not be on Twitter, but I have to know how to use it to do my job.”
“You’re really good at it,” Nathalie said softly. “Aren’t you?”
“I am,” Lyndi replied, but there was a hint of bleakness to her voice. “It’s the first thing I’ve ever been really good at.”
“But . . .”
“But. I just wish I had figured out how good I was at it a little earlier.” Then, Lyndi proceeded to tell Nathalie all about her work. About how she had ruthlessly organized and streamlined their orders. How she’d figured out how to optimize their website and online presence without ever taking a programming course. How she loved getting to be creative and build beautiful arrangements, like a chef built his menu from the fresh ingredients at the market.
And she told Nathalie about Boston. And how she wasn’t going to be going there.
“That’s outrageous!” Nathalie cried. “That’s workplace discrimination. You could sue!”
“I don’t think so,” Lyndi replied. “If I went to Paula tomorrow and said I wanted the job in Boston, baby and all, I think—hell, I know—she’d give it to me. But come on. I can’t do that.”
“Why can’t you?” Nathalie asked. But apparently it wasn’t a question Lyndi was prepared to answer. Instead, she stared at her fingers for a while, before finally looking back up.
“I just feel like there’s a lot I’m not going to get to do now.”
She told Nathalie about what she had been doing down at Echo Park Lake. How she always saw runners and sunbathers and pedal boats, and how those people all seemed so carefree.
“And I’m not going to get to be carefree anymore.”
Nathalie thought for a second before patting her sister’s hand. “I’m sorry but that’s bullshit.”
Lyndi blinked at her.
“I’m serious. If you looked at those runners, I’d bet you’d see that every third one is pushing a stroller. And those picnickers? Half of them have kids with them, I’m sure.” Nathalie shrugged. “So what if you won’t be able to be carefree and do stuff on a whim? You’ll still be able to do stuff. The only person stopping you from riding a pedal boat is you.”
Lyndi seemed to take that in, as a knock on the door sounded the arrival of Dr. Keen, pushing the ultrasound machine.
“Let’s see how she’s doing!” Dr. Keen declared, as she lubed up Lyndi’s belly, and rubbed the detector over her abdomen.
“Hey, there’s my wiggly little eggplant,” Lyndi said.
“And my wiggly little niece,” Nathalie added, all eyes on the white-and-gray blob on-screen, outlining the head, the spine, the perfectly beating heart of Lyndi’s baby.
“Baby’s moving great,” the doctor said, moving the detector across Lyndi’s belly. “Heartbeat is strong, your fluid looks good. We want to keep you monitored for a little while longer, just in case, but I would say you and baby are A-OK.”
“Thank God,” Nathalie said.
“Thank God,” Lyndi whispered.
“Thank God,” came the voice from the doorway.
“Marcus.” Lyndi’s voice broke when she saw him. He looked like he was one big wrinkle. His usually neat clothes were a mess, his hair tufted and askew, like he’d been pulling on it out of stress. And his face was lined with worry beyond worry.
“I got the message when I landed at LAX. I just jumped in the car . . . my bags are still at baggage claim, I think.”
Nathalie glanced toward her sister, who held her breath, every ounce of her being entirely focused on Marcus. Slowly, Nathalie slid out of the hospital bed. Marcus filled the space she left, coming to stand by Lyndi’s bedside.
“ . . . How was New York?” she asked.
“Well.” He took a deep breath. “Looks like I’m going to be writing a book.”
“Really?” Lyndi smiled warmly. “Congratulations.”
“Yeah.” He rubbed the back of his head. “It’s not going to be a lot of money, I’ll still have to keep my job. But . . . I’m going to be an author. And I wouldn’t be doing this without you, Lynds.”
As Lyndi began to sniffle, Nathalie started to get the impression she probably shouldn’t be here to witness this.
“How . . . how was Frankie?” Lyndi finally said.
“Frankie was . . . Frankie,” Marcus replied. “It was actually really good to see him.”
“It was?”
“Yes. Because seeing him in New York kind of illuminated just how amazing my life is right now. With you. The person I’m in love with.”
Yeah, definitely shouldn’t be witnessing this, Nathalie thought as she tiptoed to the door.
“Nat,” her sister called after her.
She turned.
“Thank you.”
“Yes, thank you for being here,” Marcus said, the look in his eyes pretty much a full-bodied hug from across the room.
“Anytime. Well, not any time, because I don’t want you running into a pole again. But . . . anytime.”
“Love you,” Lyndi said.
It was so damn good to have her sister back, Nathalie realized. This was what she had been missing most. How could she have ever let her selfishness get in the way of that?
“Love you, too.”
As the door eased shut behind her, Nathalie heard Marcus’s gentle whisper. “So . . . how are my girls?”