But those arms . . . those arms were wrong . . . they should have been bent at the elbows, one hand over her head or on her belly. . . .
He couldn’t breathe.
His wife was gone . . .
His wife . . .
It wasn’t a dream. He knew that now, and he let the tears flow unchecked, sure they would never stop.
Sometime later, Doris came in to say good-bye as well, and Jeremy left her alone with her granddaughter. He moved through the hallway in a trance, only vaguely noticing the nurses he passed in the hallway and the volunteer who was pushing a cart past him. They seemed to ignore him completely, and he didn’t know whether they avoided looking his way because they knew what happened or because they didn’t.
He returned to the room where he’d met the doctor, feeling drained and weak. He couldn’t cry anymore. There was nothing left, and he simply didn’t have the energy. It was all he could do not to collapse. He replayed the images from the delivery room countless times, trying to figure out the exact instant the embolism had been triggered, thinking he might have seen something to warn him of what was coming. Had it been when she gasped? Had it happened a moment later? He couldn’t shake the feeling of guilt, as if he should have convinced her to have a cesarean section, or at least not to strain as much as she had, as if her strenuous efforts had triggered it. He was angry with himself, angry with God, angry with the doctor. And he was angry with the baby.
He didn’t even want to see the baby, believing that somehow, in the act of receiving life, the baby had taken one in exchange. If it weren’t for the baby, Lexie would still be with him. If it weren’t for the baby, their last months together would have been devoid of stress. If it weren’t for the baby, he might have been able to make love to his wife. But all that was gone now. The baby had taken all of it. Because of the baby, his wife was dead. And Jeremy felt dead as well.
How could he ever love her? How could he ever forgive her? How could he see her or hold her and forget that she’d taken Lexie’s life in exchange for her own? How was he not supposed to hate her for what she had done to the woman he loved?
He recognized the irrationality of his feelings and sensed their insidious, evil character. It was wrong, it went against everything a parent was supposed to feel, but how could he silence his heart? How could he possibly say good-bye to Lexie in one moment and say hello to the baby in the next? And how was he supposed to act? Was he supposed to scoop her in his arms and coo sweetly, as other fathers would be doing? As if nothing at all had happened to Lexie?
And then what? After she came home from the hospital? At the moment, he couldn’t imagine having to take care of someone else; it was everything he could do not to curl up on the floor right now. He knew nothing about infants, and the only thing he was certain about was that they were supposed to be with their mothers. It was Lexie who had read all the books; it was Lexie who’d baby-sat as a child. Throughout the pregnancy, he’d been comfortable in his ignorance, assured that Lexie would show him what to do. But the baby had other plans. . . .
The baby who had killed his wife.
Instead of heading to the nursery, he collapsed into one of the chairs in the waiting room again. He didn’t want to feel this way about the baby, knew he shouldn’t feel this way, but . . . Lexie had died in childbirth. In the modern world, in a hospital, that just didn’t happen. Where were the miracle cures? The made-for-television moments? Where in God’s name was any semblance of reality in all this? He closed his eyes, convincing himself that if he concentrated hard enough, he could wake from the nightmare that his life had suddenly become.
Doris eventually found Jeremy. He hadn’t heard her enter the room, but at the touch of her hand on his shoulder, his eyes flew open, taking in the swollen, tear-streaked wreck of her face. Like Jeremy, she seemed to be on the verge of breaking apart.
“Have you called your parents?” she said, her voice ragged.
Jeremy shook his head. “I can’t. I know I should, but I just can’t do it right now.”
Her shoulders began to shudder. “Oh, Jeremy,” she gasped.
Jeremy rose and wrapped his arms around her. They cried together, holding on, as if trying to save each other. In time, Doris pulled back and swiped at her tears.
“Have you seen Claire?” she whispered.
The name brought all his feelings rushing back.
“No,” Jeremy said. “Not since I was in the delivery room.”
Doris gave a sad smile, one that nearly crushed what was left of his heart. “She looks exactly like Lexie.”
Jeremy turned away. He didn’t want to hear that, didn’t want to hear anything about the baby. Was he supposed to be happy about that? Would he ever be happy again?
He couldn’t imagine it. What was supposed to be the most joyous day of his life had suddenly become the worst, and nothing in life could prepare someone for that. And now? Not only was he supposed to survive the unimaginable, but he was supposed to take care of someone else? The little one who had killed his wife?
“She’s beautiful,” Doris said into the silence. “You should go see her.”
“I . . . uh . . . I can’t,” Jeremy mumbled. “Not yet. I don’t want to see her.”
He felt Doris watching him, as if reading him through the fog of her pain.
“She’s your daughter,” Doris said.
“I know,” Jeremy responded, but all he could feel was the dull anger pulsing beneath his skin.
“Lexie would want you to take care of her.” Doris reached out to take his hand. “If you can’t do it for yourself, then do it for your wife. She would want you to see your child, to hold your child. Yes, it’s hard, but you can’t say no. You can’t say no to Lexie, you can’t say no to me, and you can’t say no to Claire. Now come with me.”
Where Doris found the strength and composure to deal with him, he was never certain, but with that, she took his arm and marched him down the corridor toward the nursery. He was moving on autopilot, but with each step he felt his anxiety growing. He was frightened at the thought of meeting his daughter. While he knew that the anger he felt toward her was wrong, he was also afraid that he wouldn’t be angry when the time came, and that seemed wrong as well—as if somehow that meant he could forgive her for what happened to Lexie. All he knew for certain was that he wasn’t ready for either possibility.
But Doris wouldn’t be dissuaded. She pushed through a set of swinging doors, and in the rooms on either side, Jeremy saw pregnant women and new mothers, surrounded by their families. The hospital buzzed with activity, nurses moving purposefully around them. He passed the room where the embolism had occurred and had to put a hand to the wall to keep from falling.
They passed the nurses’ station and rounded the corner, toward the nursery. The gray-speckled tile was disorienting, and he felt dizzy. He wanted to break free from Doris’s grasp and escape; he wanted to call his mother and tell her what happened. He wanted to cry into the phone, to have an excuse to let go, to be released from this duty. . . .
Up ahead, a group of people clustered in the hallway, peering through the glass wall of the nursery. They were pointing and smiling, and he could hear their murmurs: She’s got his nose, or, I think she’ll have blue eyes. He knew none of them, but suddenly he hated them, for they were experiencing the joy and excitement that should have been his. He couldn’t imagine having to stand next to them, to have them ask which child he had come to see, to listen to them as they would inevitably praise her sweetness or beauty. Beyond them, heading toward the offices, he saw the nurse who had been in the room when Lexie had died, going about her business as if the day had been utterly ordinary.
He was stricken by the sight of her, and as if knowing what he was feeling, Doris squeezed his arm and paused in midstep.
“That’s where you go in,” she said, motioning toward the door.
“You’re not coming with me?”
“No,” she said, “I’ll wait out here.”
“Please,” he pleaded, “come with me.”
“No,” she said. “This is something you have to do on your own.”
Jeremy stared at her. “Please,” he whispered.
Doris’s expression softened. “You’re going to love her,” she said. “As soon as you see her, you’ll love her.”
Is love at first sight truly possible?
He couldn’t fathom the possibility. He entered the nursery with tentative steps. The nurse’s expression changed as soon as she saw him; although she hadn’t been in the delivery room, the story had made the rounds. That Lexie, a healthy and vibrant young woman, had suddenly died, leaving behind a husband in shock and a motherless newborn. It would have been easy to offer sympathy or even turn away, but the nurse did neither. Instead, she forced a smile and pointed toward one of the cribs near the window.
“Your daughter is on the left,” she said. Her expression faltered, and it was enough to remind him of how wrong this scene was. Lexie should have been here, too. Lexie. He gasped, feeling suddenly short of breath. From somewhere far away, he heard her murmur, “She’s beautiful.”
Jeremy moved automatically toward the crib, wanting to turn back but wanting to see her, too. It seemed as if he were watching the process through someone else’s eyes. He wasn’t here. It wasn’t really him. This wasn’t his baby.
He hesitated when he saw Claire’s name written on the sheathed plastic band around her ankle, and his throat clenched again when he saw Lexie’s name. He blinked away his tears and stared down at his daughter. Tiny and vulnerable beneath the warming lights, she was wrapped in a blanket and wearing a hat, her soft skin a healthy pink. He could still see the ointment that had been applied to her eyes, and she had the strange mannerisms of all newborns: The movements of her arms were occasionally jerky, as if she were working hard to get used to breathing air as opposed to receiving oxygen from her mother. Her chest rose and fell quickly, and Jeremy hovered over her, fascinated by how oddly uncontrolled her movements seemed. Yet even as a newborn she resembled Lexie, in the shape of her ears, the slight point of her chin. The nurse appeared over his shoulder.
“She’s a wonderful baby,” she said. “She’s been sleeping most of the time, but when she wakes, she barely utters a cry.”
Jeremy said nothing. Felt nothing.
“You should be able to take her home tomorrow,” she continued. “There haven’t been any complications, and she’s already able to suck. Sometimes that’s a problem with little ones like her, but she took right to the bottle. Oh look, she’s waking up.”
“Good,” Jeremy mumbled, barely hearing her. All he could do was stare.
The nurse laid a hand on Claire’s tiny chest. “Hi, sweetie. Your daddy’s here.”
The baby’s arms jerked again.
“What’s that?”
“That’s normal,” the nurse said, adjusting the blanket. “Hi, sweetie,” she said again.
Beyond the window, Jeremy could feel Doris staring at him.
“Do you want to hold her?”
Jeremy swallowed, thinking she seemed so fragile that any movement would break her. He didn’t want to touch her, but the words came out before he could stop them. “Can I?”
“Of course,” the nurse replied. She scooped Claire into her arms, leaving Jeremy to wonder how babies could be handled with such matter-of-fact efficiency.
“I don’t know what to do,” he whispered. “I’ve never done this before.”
“It’s easy,” the nurse replied, her voice soft. She was older than Jeremy but younger than Doris, and Jeremy suddenly wondered if she had children of her own. “Have a seat in the rocker and I’ll hand her to you. All you do is hold her with one arm under her back, and make sure you support her head. And then, most importantly, love her for the rest of her life.”
Jeremy took his seat, terrified and battling an urge to break into tears. He wasn’t ready for this. He needed Lexie, he needed to grieve, and he needed time. He saw Doris’s face again just beyond the glass; he thought he saw her smile ever so slightly. The nurse drew nearer, handling the baby with the ease and comfort of someone who had done this a thousand times.
Jeremy held up his hands and felt the gentle weight of Claire as she came down into them. A moment later, she was nestled in his arms.
A thousand emotions swept through Jeremy at that moment: the failure he’d felt in the physician’s office with Maria, the shock and horror he’d experienced in the delivery room, the emptiness of the walk down the hallway, the anxiety he’d experienced only a minute before.
In his arms, Claire stared up at him, her silvery eyes seeming to focus on his face. All he could think was that she was all that was left of Lexie. Claire was Lexie’s daughter, in features and spirit, and Jeremy found himself holding his breath. Visions of Lexie coursed through his mind: Lexie, who’d trusted him enough to have a child with him; Lexie, who had married him knowing that while he would never be perfect, he would be the kind of father Claire deserved. Lexie had sacrificed her life to give her to him, and all at once he was struck by the certainty that had there been a choice, she would have done it all over again. Doris was right: Lexie wanted him to love Claire in the same way that Lexie would have, and now Lexie needed him to be strong. Claire needed him to be strong. Despite the emotional upheaval of the past hour, he stared at his child and blinked, suddenly certain that what he was doing now was the sole reason he’d been placed on this earth. To love another. To care for someone else, to help another person, to carry her worries until she was strong enough to carry them on her own. To care for someone unconditionally, for in the end that was what gave life meaning. And Lexie had given her life, knowing that Jeremy could do that.