Starter House(10)

The ultrasound machine printed out a picture, and Lacey saw the child in the gray stars, the large curve of his head, hands under chin, thin legs drawn up and crossed. There he was, a real person, already alive. It was good to think he instead of it. She was bleeding, the doctor told her, because the placenta had partly torn away from the wall of her womb. There was no surgery and no medication, no help but rest, and no promise that rest would help. If the placenta tore away—unzipped, the doctor said, if it unzipped itself from the wall—the baby would die. If it scarred, the baby would survive. She spoke as calmly as if she were reading a recipe. “We want to keep you overnight for observation,” she said.

Lacey wished the doctor would leave the machine hooked up to her so she could listen to it all night. Hush-hush, hush-hush. Even more, she wished the doctor would stay and interpret the pictures and sounds. Still alive, the doctor would say every hour, on the hour. It’s a boy, and he’s still alive. “Will he be okay?” Lacey asked, and the teacher voice admonished her, Don’t ask if you don’t want to know.

“Most likely,” the doctor said. “You relax.” She left, taking the ultrasound machine with her. Lacey put the picture on the bedside table. Every few seconds, she touched it, imagining the baby’s heart, hush-hush.

Eric slumped in the chair with his hands over his eyes. After a while, he said slowly, with a weight in his voice, “I have to get down to the office.”

“The office?” Resentment flowed up Lacey’s left arm into her heart. “You’re not staying?”

“I’ve got to. Uncle Floyd’s given me a dozen divorces, and I’ve got to get up to speed.” He stroked her belly and then bent down to kiss her. She let him do it, holding her lips stiff under his mouth. Then she was sorry, and it was too late, he was gone, because his work was important.

Eric’s work was always more important than hers; when they were dating, he would cancel on her without a second thought if he had a big test or paper due, and she never did. Even when she was working to put him through school, his work was a career and hers was a job. The first thing he said when Uncle Floyd offered him the position was now you can stay home till the baby starts school, as if that had been their plan all along. She thought not, and she’d let him know in good time.

Eventually, the nurses fed her a flat gray piece of turkey, or possibly a boiled sponge, along with a dinner roll, boiled carrots, boiled spinach, and a boiled potato, with cherry Jell-O. She drowsed, propped up in the bed with her hands folded over the belly bump, feeling her son spinning and dancing inside her. “We’ll go home tomorrow, baby,” she said. “We’ll get moved in; I just have to unpack a few boxes.”

The door opened. If it was another nurse with another needle, Lacey would beat her off with the dinner tray. But it was the bicycle boy from Forrester Lane, little mister trouble-at-home. “I could help,” he said. “Maybe I could.”

Grayness whirled over her, the same strange gray panic that had closed her sight on the stairs; she disappeared into it. This child should not be here. It was wrong. She searched for the call button, but it had slipped away and its cord was caught in the machinery of the bed.

“Why are you here?” she said. She found the cord and pulled it sideways. It gave an inch and then stopped.

“My mom came here.”

“Your mom had a baby?” Though Greeneburg was a small city, it surprised her to land in the hospital at the same time as some near neighbor. She yanked the cord, and the call button jumped into her hand. Its solidity in her palm gave her strength. Why was she so flustered by this ordinary child? Stupid hormones. “Why aren’t you with her?”

“I can’t find her.”

The child looked terrible, dirty around the hairline and neck, clean-faced as if he had been washed carelessly and against his will. He sniffled and smeared the back of his hand against his nose. “Have you been lost for long?” she asked him.

“Ages. They left me and they took the baby and I can’t find them.”

“I’ll call the nurse.”

“They’re no good. Nobody listens to me.”

“I’m listening. What’s wrong?”

His body swayed, as if he meant to run over to the bed and cast himself upon her. He held himself tense by the door, twisting his dirty hands. “It’s the baby,” he said. “She cries, and Mom’s real tired all the time, and I only wanted to help.”

Parents never knew how sweet their children were. At conferences, when Lacey said something good about a child, especially a boy, the parents often responded with Are you sure that’s my kid? right in front of the child. So this little guy wanted to help, and his parents wouldn’t let him. Probably they were afraid he’d drop the baby.