Jet

Chapter 9

Two Years Ago, Trinidad

“My water broke.”

The nurse took Maya’s hand and led her to a seat. After a hurried discussion on the telephone, she turned to face Maya again.

“The doctor is on his way, darling. Just come lie over here, and we’ll get you ready. Don’t worry about anything,” the nurse cooed in a heavy island lilt, motioning at a gurney an orderly had pushed through the double steel doors of the emergency room.

With the nurse’s assistance, Maya did as instructed, and within a few minutes, she was wheeled into a private room. Another nurse took her vital signs and helped her into a hospital gown, hanging her clothes carefully in the small closet.

The contractions were coming more regularly, and when the doctor rushed in wearing street clothes, she exhaled a sigh of relief. He performed a brief examination and listened to her stomach with a stethoscope, then told the nurse in a hushed voice to bring a portable ultrasound unit in immediately.

“What’s wrong, Doctor?” Maya asked.

“Probably nothing. Don’t worry. I just want to check something,” he said, but wouldn’t look her in the eyes.

The nurse returned with a cart, and the doctor quickly put gel on the probe tip and moved it slowly around her abdomen. His expression as he watched the monitor was strained. When he looked up at her, he was frowning.

“There’s a problem. The baby’s heart rate is in a critical zone. We’re going to have to do a C-section immediately.”

“No! I don’t want one. I told you I want to deliver naturally.”

“I’m afraid there’s no choice in the matter. I’m sorry. We don’t have any time to waste. Seconds count. Both you and the baby are in danger.” The doctor turned and issued a set of terse instructions to the nurse.

Maya processed his statement, sweat rolling down her face.

“Fine. Do what you have to do. Just make sure my baby is okay.”

He nodded at the nurse, who hurried out of the room, returning in a few moments with an orderly pushing another gurney — this one with an IV bag suspended from a hanger. Maya shifted onto it with the orderly and the doctor’s help, then the nurse started an IV line and motioned to the doctor. He withdrew a syringe from his bag and approached her, then fixed her with a caring gaze.

“We’re out of time. I’m going to give you the anesthesia and get you into surgery. The injection is much faster than gas. Are you ready?”

She grimaced. “Yes.”

He slipped the plastic cap off and then slipped the needle into the IV line.

“All right. Here we go…” He slowly depressed the plunger. “Just relax. Everything is going to be okay. This will be over in no…”

His voice seemed to be coming from a great distance as the room faded and everything went dark.

~ ~ ~

The first thing she registered when she came to was the smell. The distinctive antiseptic odor typical in hospitals everywhere in the world. The lights were low, the temperature moderate. It took her a few seconds to remember where she was.

In her hospital room. She was groggy and felt drugged. Everything was foggy and seemed muted, surreal, slower than reality. It took almost superhuman effort for her to turn her head and look at the window. It was dark out. It had been light when she’d arrived.

Maya fumbled around until she found the call button. She pressed it after a few tries — her hands felt like someone else’s and seemed to lack the dexterity to operate the gizmo.

It was all she could do to keep her eyes open.

A nurse entered a few minutes later and moved to the side of the bed.

“Take it easy, now. You’ve been through a lot,” she said with a look of concern on her face. She looked at the monitor and adjusted the sensor on Maya’s finger, then turned the volume on the box down a little.

“I am taking it easy. I’m awake now. I want to see my baby. My daughter. Hannah.”

The nurse’s eyes darted to the side, and she stepped away from the bed, suddenly all hurried efficiency.

“All right, then. Let me call the doctor. He’ll be in shortly,” she promised, offering a timid smile. The nurse patted her hand and then eyed the IV before hurrying off, leaving Maya to the altered state that was a kind of chemical purgatory. She listened as the nurse’s footsteps echoed down the hallway outside of the door, then went back to drowsing uneasily, drifting in and out of consciousness.

She didn’t know how much time had elapsed when the doctor entered and approached the bed.

She looked up at him, her eyes struggling to stay focused. His face was impassive.

“I want to see my daughter, Doctor.”

“I can appreciate how you would.” He hesitated. “Look, there’s no easy way to say this…”

“What? What isn’t easy to say?” Her eyes got larger, and her vital signs spiked, her pulse and blood pressure increasing by twenty percent in seconds. She fought against the fog, forcing herself to clarity.

“You need to calm down. This isn’t good.” He picked up the phone on the side table and dialed an extension. “Nurse? I’m in room eleven. This is Doctor Barsal. Can you come here, please?”

Ten seconds later, a nurse stuck her head in.

The doctor moved to the door, and they had a hasty discussion before she left the room.

“What’s happened, Doctor?” Maya blinked, straining to shed the drug haze.

“I have bad news, I’m afraid,” he began. Her vitals continued to climb. He stopped talking as he watched the monitor.

“Bad news? What kind of bad news?”

He wouldn’t look at her.

The drugs made it so hard to concentrate. The doctor wasn’t making any sense. He had bad news. What bad news? Was her baby sick? Had she been injured during the procedure?

The nurse returned and quietly slipped the doctor a syringe. He moved to the IV and closed off the drip, then injected the contents into her line.

“This is just a sedative. It will help you relax. It’s for your own good.”

She felt instantly dreamier. Maybe he was right. It was good to relax. And he was helping her to do so…

Her vital signs normalized almost immediately as her heart and breathing slowed.

“That’s better. Now, as I was saying. I have some bad news. Your baby…there was a complication caused by the umbilical cord wrapping around her neck. I’m afraid we didn’t get to her in time. She…didn’t make it. We did everything we could, but it was too late. I’m so sorry…”

The walls seemed to close in as she listened to the impossible words. Her baby didn’t make it? That was crazy talk. What did that even mean, didn’t make it? Of course the baby made it. She didn’t understand.

Maya shook her head. “No. I don’t understand.”

The doctor frowned and took her limp hand in a caring gesture.

“I know it’s a shock. I’m so sorry. But your baby was pronounced dead half an hour after the attempted delivery. I signed the death certificate myself. We did everything possible, but sometimes…” He shrugged and frowned again. “Sometimes nature beats us no matter how hard we try. It’s one of the great frustrations of medicine. We can only do so much, and then it’s out of our hands.”

The words struck her like hammer blows, each one causing more damage than the last.

Her baby was dead.

Her daughter, Hannah, dead.

Maya’s tortured scream was audible all the way to the elevators at the end of the wing.

~ ~ ~

Maya stood by the side of the small plot as the tiny casket sank into the ground, the wind blowing huffs of salt air from the sea, carrying with it the smell of life. She hadn’t wanted anyone around — just her and her baby, her Hannah, gone forever before getting a chance to live.

Tears rolled down her face, shoulders shaking as she sobbed her grief into the blue absolute of the heavens, repeating the same unanswered question over and over again. Why? Why Hannah? What kind of God would do this?

The casket came to rest, and the two men who had lowered it into the grave removed the straps, pulling them free before the taller one looked at her.

“I’m sorry for your loss. Would you like to put in the first soil?”

Maya moved woodenly to the banked-up pile and grasped a fistful of moist loam, vision blurred, her breath rasping in harsh bursts as she struggled to retain her composure. She stood above her hopes and dreams, now dead as her soul, and paused to offer a blessing before relaxing her fingers and letting the cool earth fall from her hand.

She stood at the edge of the gravesite, crying, alone, as grieving mothers had cried at their children’s graves since time immemorial, her pain so visceral and intense she wanted to join her daughter in death’s indifferent embrace. But that wasn’t to be. The unlucky suffered on in a hell of their own devising while innocents paid the ultimate price in homage to a frivolous universe.

Maya knelt at the small headstone, as she had every week for the last two years.

“Sweetheart, there isn’t a minute that goes by that I don’t think about you. I wanted you so much…”

Her voice cracked. She couldn’t go on. She fell forward and sobbed quietly, supporting herself with one hand clutching the grass that had grown on the small mound that was the barrow of her treasure.

Maya stayed in place, head bowed, her anguish a raw nerve, the most devastating blow of her existence nestled a few feet beneath her. For the umpteenth time, she railed at an uncaring deity for taking her baby instead of her. The rage came, as always, like a black tsunami; it was all she could do to fight it back and find the will to go on another day.

Eventually, she stood, streaks of sorrow traced upon her face.

“I’ll be back again next week, Hannah. I love you. Mommy loves you. Always.”