I exhale, and push my hand through my hair. “Whew,” I say, then breathe out hard again. “Thank God. I thought you were going to say…” But I trail off, because I don’t know what I thought he was going to say. I just assumed the worst, because that’s what I do. But this isn’t so bad, right? “Does any of this have to do with the accident though? The car accident,” I add, and then quickly explain what happened a week ago.

  “Hmm,” he says, tapping a pencil against his chin as he considers. “I don’t think so. This is entirely separate. But it sounds as if her symptoms—headaches, dizziness, and tiredness—could easily be confused with the minor trauma from a fender bender. And the pain she said she was feeling in her abdomen was likely epigastric pain from her liver, since preeclampsia can impact that organ.” Then he points his pencil high in the air. “It’s a good thing she almost fainted, then. If she hadn’t, we might have thought it was all accident trauma. You caught it in the nick of time. I’ll be back shortly to see how she’s responding. And to get the results of some other routine tests we run for preeclamptic patients.”

  He heads off, and I’m left scratching my head over his chipper attitude. But cheery is better than the alternative, I reason, as I return to the room, where Harley’s nurse has started the mag sulfate drip and is recording some information on the chart. Harley’s lying on the hospital bed, a flimsy blue gown tied at her back, her hair pulled into a ponytail. She turns her gaze to me and smiles weakly, then lifts her hand to wave. “Hi.”

  I close the distance between us quickly. “Hi,” I say softly, standing by her side, taking her hand in mine. “How do you feel?”

  “Well, the nurse said the side effects of mag sulfate include headaches and blurry vision… so about the same,” she says, her voice slow and sluggish, the sound of it digging hard into my gut. I wish I could take the pain away from her, bear it myself so she wouldn’t have to go through any of this.

  “This should kick in soon, and reduces the risk of seizure,” the nurse says, flashing a businesslike smile as she drops the chart in the holder at the end of the bed with a clang. But all I hear is that last word. Seizure. Sharp, like a nail in my back.

  “What? Nobody said anything about seizures. Is this from the medicine?”

  The nurse shakes her head. “It’s one of the possible side effects of severe preeclampsia. That’s why we’re doing the mag. To reduce the risk of seizure.”

  Holy shit. “The doctor didn’t say anything about seizures,” I say in a voice coated with nerves.

  The nurse pats me on the arm. “That’s what preeclampsia can lead to. That’s why we need to deliver her, sweetie. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  She leaves and I turn to Harley, and it nearly breaks me as I see the rabid fear in her eyes. But I push aside my worry because I have to be strong for her. She’s the one who has to go through this. She’s the one whose body is taking a pounding. All I have to do is be here for her, and that’s easy, and I have to show her how easy it is. I can’t let on that my heart is running the one-hundred-meter dash. I squeeze her hand. “Did the doc tell you they want you to deliver today?”

  She nods, her eyelids fluttering with sleepiness. I have no clue how she’s going to have the energy to handle labor. This high blood pressure and the meds are sapping all her strength.

  “I guess we really better come up with a name soon,” I tease.

  She nods. “Fred.”

  “Barney.”

  “Wilma.”

  “Betty,” I offer.

  “Bonnie.”

  “Clyde.”

  “Calvin,” she says.

  “Hobbes.”

  “Batman.”

  “Robin.”

  “Starsky,” she suggests.

  “Worst name ever.”

  “Then you’re nixing Hutch too?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  We toss out names for the next several minutes, none of them serious, all of them a distraction to pass the time.

  When the nurse returns, her first task is to recheck Harley’s blood pressure. We both stare hard at the cuff as it puffs up on her arm and expands with a tick, tick, tick. The nurse keeps her eyes trained on the readout on the machine. Then she tsks once, shakes her head, and turns to Harley. “I need to get the doctor.”

  She leaves quickly, her rapid clip the surest sign that whatever is happening to Harley is speeding into the danger zone. My blood races at a frantic pace, because when the nurse takes off to find the doctor, you know the news is going to be bad.

  “Sherlock.” Harley’s voice is so soft now, so weak, as she tries to play the name game again.

  I’m about to say Watson when she draws a sharp breath and slaps her palm against her forehead. She scrunches her eyes closed and moans like a trapped cat, and the sound turns my skin cold. “What is it?”

  “My head hurts so much.”

  My stomach drops. I can’t sit here and let this happen. “We need to figure out what’s going on.”

  I stand up and head to the doorway, scanning the halls quickly for the nurse or the doctor. I look past the counter where all the lab techs are gathered around charts and computers, then back in the other direction, where I come face-to-face with the doctor.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” I ask heavily.

  “Her blood pressure is rising, and her platelets are low,” the doctor says.

  “Which means?”

  “It means her preeclampsia has advanced into HELLP syndrome.”

  “I have no idea what that is.”

  “It’s a variation of pregnancy hypertension. She and the baby are at risk, so we need to deliver immediately.”

  “Okay. But I thought that was already the plan. To deliver,” I say, and my throat is dry, my heart is thumping. “So, are you going to induce or something?”

  He shakes his head. “No. We need to deliver right away. We were hoping to give her more time on the mag, but we need to move quickly. She’s going to need an emergency C-section. We’ll need to start prepping her now.”

  Emergency.

  The word rattles in my head, rings in my ears. The word I least want to hear. The word no one wants to hear.

  With leaden feet, I follow the doctor into Harley’s room, where he gives her the new diagnosis.

  “Is the baby going to be okay?”

  The doctor clasps his hands. “Our goal is always to protect the health of both the mother and the baby, and to do that, we need to get the baby out of you as soon as possible.”

  She turns her head to me, and it looks like it takes all the effort in the world for her to move just that much. “Can he be with me during the operation?”

  The nurse chimes in. “You can’t have the epidural with your platelets this low, so you need to be under general, and that means no one can be in there but the doctors and nurses. But we’ll bring the baby to your husband as soon as he or she is born.”

  “You’ll meet our baby first,” Harley says to me, and her hoarse voice hitches. “Please give my love to our baby.”

  My heart lurches toward her. I’d do anything to comfort her. “I will. I promise. And you’re going to be fine,” I tell her, leaning in to give her a sweet kiss on the forehead. “I love you.”

  “I love you. I’ll see you on the other side.”

  And then they wheel her away.

  34

  Trey

  I wear a tread on the linoleum in the hallway. I can’t bear to be in the waiting room. I can’t sit and fidget and check messages on my phone, like half the people in there are doing.

  Debbie and Robert are here too. Debbie’s spent most of the time looking at her watch. But I’m in the hallway, and yeah, I’m looking at my phone, but I’m not texting, that’s for sure.

  I’m researching.

  And I’ve just learned how fucking awful preeclampsia is. I learn it can show up silently.

  Check.

  That its symptoms often masquerade as symptoms of other conditions.

  Check.

  That it can all go to hell quickly.

  Check.

  Check.

  Check.

  But the worst part I learn is this: that HELLP syndrome is life-threatening. Those two words blare at me like a neon sign.

  Life-threatening.

  It can damage the liver. Some moms and babies die from HELLP. I read words like bleed out and renal failure and hemorrhage, and I want to shout, Make it stop!

  My entire body is tight, coiled with tension. I want to hope so badly that everything will be fine, but I don’t know how anymore. Because all I can see is the possibility of the end, and it’s fraying me inside.

  Maybe I’m the curse. Maybe I bring bad luck to people I love. Maybe there’s no such thing as lightning only striking once, twice, three times. There is only things happen. And so many things are happening that it feels like I’m dodging blocks of concrete being dropped from the windows in a cruel cartoon.

  Everything I learn about HELLP is a black hole of awful. I open page after page, desperate for information, for a fact, a piece of data that can somehow soothe me. But even if I find it, how could a statistic reassure me? I am a statistic of one. One family—mine. And I have no idea how the hell my wife is doing. Or why this C-section is taking so long. Or when I am going to see her and the baby. Or if the baby is even okay. If my kid survived. Or if I am going down the route of planting another tree—and the prospect of that makes me feel as if a limb is being amputated.

  I am existing in an endless loop of information as life goes on around me, as nurses walk down halls and check on patients, as technicians roll by with machines, as doctors make their rounds.

  All the while, my Harley—the only woman I love, have ever loved, and will ever love—is unconscious with her belly sliced open and her blood pressure rising and her platelets falling, and I don’t have a clue what happens next.

  Then I hear the tiniest little cry, and I know.

  Don’t ask me how.

  Don’t ask me why.

  I just know the sound of my own kid, and it stills all the jittery nerves inside me. It is like a balm to my aching heart.

  I turn around to see a ruddy-faced nurse with wide shoulders and big hands walking toward me. She’s wearing Snoopy scrubs and carrying a baby wrapped tightly in a white blanket with blue-and-pink stripes.

  “Mr. Westin?”

  I nod.

  “This is your daughter.”

  The world slows to this moment, all time has become this second as she hands me my baby girl, and I hold her in my arms for the first time. Everything in me shifts, the terror fleeing my body, as my heart starts to jump wildly, pumping joy and wonder through my veins.

  She’s perfect in every way. Her face is still red, and she looks like she’s been screaming, but her eyes are wide open and gray, and she has little tufts of blonde hair from her mom. I lean in to plant a gentle kiss on her soft baby cheek, and she feels like a complete and absolute miracle, and already I can feel—deep in my bones and my cells—that sense that she’s mine. And I don’t know where it comes from, how you can go from never having met someone to loving them in the blink of an eye, but here it is. It’s happened to me.

  I love her. “I love you, little girl,” I say, the first words she hears from her dad. “And your mom does too.”

  When I glance up, a tear streaking down my cheek, the nurse is still here, a grave look etched on her sturdy features.

  And I know too—in the blink of an eye—that something’s wrong with Harley.

  “How is my wife?” The question tastes like gravel in my mouth.

  “It was a very rough delivery. Her liver nearly ruptured, and she’s lost a lot of blood, and she’ll likely need a transfusion.”

  “Do you… do you need some?” I hold out my arm, as if she can stick a needle in me and take whatever she needs for Harley.

  She flashes a brief, but kind smile. “We have some.” Then she sighs. “But I want to let you know she had a seizure during the delivery.”

  I stumble against the wall, clutching the baby tight as my back hits the bricks and I sink to the floor.

  “A seizure?”

  The nurse bends down. “It happens with HELLP,” she says, trying to reassure me, but there is nothing reassuring about a seizure. “The doctors are working on her now. They’ve dealt with this before. She’s in good hands.”

  “Is she going to be okay? Is she going to live?” I choke out.

  “We’re doing everything we can.”

  But they don’t know if everything is enough. How can anyone know? Nobody can. One minute you are here, the next minute, gone.

  One moment you are unborn, the next you are loved.

  Life is strong, and life is fragile. It is beauty, and it is pain. I have both, so unbearably close to each other right now that it feels like a cruel game that some wicked master puppeteer is orchestrating.

  Not once, not even in the overactive far reaches of my mind, did it occur to me that I could lose Harley. I only ever believed I could lose a baby. That’s all I ever worried about. That was the fear I had to face every day, the fear I had to learn to live with every second. But never, in all those moments of staring that fear in the face, of walking past it and through it and by it and over it, did it ever dawn on me that I could have my child safely in this world, healthy and whole and with a strong beating heart, all while Harley lies bleeding out, unconscious on a hospital table somewhere nearby, and I am helpless to do anything.

  The nurse takes the baby back to the nursery for monitoring, and I pace the halls, hunting out more info. I can’t stop looking at site after site, and I don’t know why I’m doing this, sticking my finger in the fire and watching it burn. I can’t turn away, even when I start watching a video on my phone of a young father who lost his wife to HELLP. When his voice starts to break and he lowers his head to his baby, I hit stop.

  I can’t take it anymore. I can’t watch another second. I turn off my phone and jam it into my pocket. Now my head is cluttered with facts that have done nothing to change my reality, or Harley’s. I return to the nursery to hold my child.

  I cling to my daughter, clutching her in my arms so tightly. She is my anchor. She is rooting me to this earth. Without her, I’m sure I’d fall off the planet, tumble into the void of space. I reach for her hand, small and precious, and she grasps my finger instinctively, and we hold onto each other.

  One half of me is singing; the other is caving in. I am empty without Harley, and I am flooded with happiness for the six pounds of joy in my arms.

  Soon, Debbie and Robert find us, and they sit with the baby and me. Tears flow down their cheeks too, for this new life, for their great-granddaughter, for everything that is lost and found at the same terrible time.

  35

  Trey

  The minutes tick by, knitting themselves into an hour, and the nurse threads her way over to me in the far corner of the nursery. She tells me two things.

  One, Harley’s having a blood transfusion now.

  Two, she also thinks I ought to feed the baby.

  Life hangs in the balance, and yet daily needs must be met.

  The nurse gives me a bottle, and I feed my hungry child for the first time, and the four of us wait and wait and wait. Only the baby is immune. She sucks down the formula as if it’s all that matters in the world, her tiny lips curved around the bottle tip.

  I watch her the whole time, the way she’s so focused on one thing only—eating. When she finishes, she pushes the bottle away with her lips, closing her mouth, content with the meal inside her. And still, there is no Harley. No news. No reports. Only other doctors, other nurses, other parents roaming the nursery.

  Then, someone clears her throat. The doctor is in the house, but not the baby-faced guy. This doctor is older, with lines on her face and dark-blue eyes that have seen more than I want to know. I stand up, and give the baby to the nurse. My hands are shaky, and my legs are like jelly. I follow the doctor into the hall, Debbie and Robert close behind.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I’m Dr. Strickland, the surgeon who took care of your wife.”

  Took care.

  That’s good, right?

  I try to form words, to ask how she is, to ask if she is. But the doctor is faster than me. “She’s out of surgery, and in recovery.”

  Recovery.

  With that one beautiful word, relief flows fast through my veins. Dr. Strickland keeps talking, saying transfusion, and lost a lot of blood, and still not awake, but all I can think is she’s alive.

  I want to grab the doctor and kiss her. I want to fall to the ground and hug her knees and cry thank you over and over. But most of all, I want to see Harley.

  “When can I see her?” I say, the words practically blasting out of my mouth.

  “Not yet. She’s in the recovery room. She’s not awake yet. Probably not for another hour.”

  The next hour is the longest of my life, and I wish I had asked for an extra dose of patience for Christmas because it would have really come in handy as I watch the minute hand move so slowly. But the nursery is a safe haven, and my daughter falls asleep on my chest, warming me with her tiny little body. Somehow, that bundle of heat against my heart makes me feel as if everything is going to be okay.

  Okay.

  I have officially decided that’s the only word I ever want to hear anymore.

  Okay.

  “She’s going to be fine,” Debbie says, squeezing my shoulder. “And you two are going to have to get to work on naming this sweet little girl.”

  “Yeah,” Robert says, chiming in from our little huddle in the corner. “Why don’t you have a name yet? We want to start cooing at Sally, Jane, Mandy, instead of saying Hi, baby all the time.”