Graham Reddick had been trying to hand his brother the dog’s leash for three minutes when Mara called from the labor room. “They want to do a C-section,” she said. “Can you come back?” The leash slid against his palm. “Now?”
“Now.”
Birdie kept backing away from Owen. She was a brown hound with a white patch under her throat, and each time the hospital doors opened, she stretched her neck to look for Mara. He’d planned to walk her between visits.
Behind her voice, someone asked her to turn onto her side. Graham heard the plastic wheels of a bed and a woman saying she needed the doctor in here. He pushed the leash into Owen’s hand so abruptly that Birdie stumbled.
“Stay with her. I’ll call.”
He left his jacket and phone charger in his brother’s truck. Inside, he hurried past the maternity sign and had to turn back when a nurse called after him.
Mara was forty, and this baby was due in three weeks. Her blood pressure had been climbing, so her doctor had asked them to come in Monday morning. She’d packed lunch for Graham and folded an extra shirt into the bag because he always spilled something on himself. Before the nurse started the medication, she had made him eat half a sandwich.
“You get mean when you’re hungry,” she’d told him.
“I get quiet.”
“You think that’s better.”
He had kissed the little crease beside her mouth. They’d been married eleven years, and he still liked making it appear. He had gone downstairs afterward to meet Owen, who was taking Birdie home and had brought a folder Graham needed to sign.
Now the labor room was empty. A nurse he’d never seen pointed him toward two closed doors. Mara’s slippers sat beneath the chair, heels flattened where she’d stepped on them instead of putting them on properly.
He asked what had happened. The nurse said the baby’s heart rate had dropped and wasn’t recovering. There had been bleeding. The obstetrician suspected the placenta was separating too early.
“She’s in surgery?”
“Yes. We’ll bring you in if we can.”
She helped him into a gown. He held up the wrong foot when she offered a shoe cover, and she waited without correcting him. Then another nurse appeared and spoke quietly to her, and the first woman guided him back to the chair.
“I need you to wait here for a little longer.”
Through the doors, he could hear people calling to one another. He looked at Mara’s slippers until the gray flowers on them stopped looking like flowers.
Their daughter Ada had been born too early three years before. Mara had come home with a small cardboard box, and Graham had put it on the highest shelf in their closet. For weeks he had answered her phone when it rang. He’d told people she needed quiet, that she wasn’t ready for visitors, that he’d let them know.
He could sand a damaged stair tread until the repair was hard to find. He could make an old cabinet door hang square in a crooked opening. At Owen’s restoration shop, those things had kept him occupied from morning until he was tired enough to sleep. In the house, he kept encountering questions he couldn’t answer.
This time Mara had insisted on buying a crib before the baby came. She had sat on the floor sorting screws while Graham assembled it, correcting him twice from the instructions. Birdie had walked off with a scrap of cardboard and chewed it under the kitchen table.
The dog had also developed an opinion about walks. If Graham tried to leave without Mara, Birdie went back through the house and nosed her knee until she stood up. They’d encouraged it, laughing as they put on their shoes together.
There was a crib in their bedroom now. A clean mattress. A little drawer of socks.
He heard a door open and stood before he knew who was coming through it.
The pediatrician introduced herself as Dr. Sloane. Her mask hung loose beneath her chin. She asked him to sit, but he remained on his feet until she sat herself and looked up at him.
Their son had been born without a detectable heartbeat. The team had put in a breathing tube, given medication, and performed chest compressions for more than twenty-five minutes. They had not been able to restore his circulation.
Graham could see a pale line on the doctor’s forehead where her cap had pressed into it. He kept looking there while she spoke.
“You’re telling me he died?”
“Yes. I’m very sorry.”
“And Mara?”
“She’s awake. They’re bringing her to recovery. She wants you with her.”
He had to bend forward to get his breath. The doctor stayed beside him. When he straightened, she asked whether he wanted to see his son, and he heard himself say that Mara would want to.
“I’m asking you, too,” she said.
He nodded without looking at her.
A nurse took him down the corridor to a private recovery room just beyond the operating suite. Mara lay with her head raised a little, a cuff around one arm and an IV in the other. Her eyes went immediately to his face. He couldn’t make his mouth do anything reassuring.
A nurse named Tess pulled a chair close enough that he could sit beside the bed. Mara caught his sleeve before he sat down.
“Did you see him?”
“Not yet.”
“They’re bringing him.”
She said it as though they were waiting for someone late to dinner. Her grip loosened, but she kept two fingers hooked in the fabric. Tess checked the IV pump and moved the cord from beneath Mara’s shoulder.
On the other side of the chair sat their overnight bag. The top was open, and Graham could see the cream-and-blue blanket Mara had finished during the last month of her pregnancy. Her mother had cut the flannel squares and sewn most of the center before she died. Mara had found them in a grocery sack with the receipt still inside.
She’d borrowed a sewing machine to finish it. The binding wandered, and one corner wouldn’t lie flat. Graham had offered to ask someone at the alterations shop to fix that corner, and Mara had taken it back from him.
“It’s done,” she had said.
He reached into the bag now. Mara watched him unfold the blanket and smoothed the lifted corner with her thumb.
Tess brought their son wrapped in a hospital blanket. His dark hair was flattened against his head, and there was a mark beside his mouth where the breathing tube had been taped. Graham had imagined a baby who looked like Mara. He hadn’t imagined recognizing Owen’s chin in a face this small.
Mara held out both arms. Tess helped her settle him high against her chest, beneath the flannel they’d brought from home.
“Ellis,” Mara said.
They had chosen the name together and then avoided using it. Graham had called him the baby, the little guy, him. Now Mara said it again, with her mouth touching his hair.
Graham rested a hand on the blanket. He couldn’t feel movement through it. He waited anyway, his fingertips pressing harder until Tess touched his wrist.
“You can hold him when you’re ready.”
He withdrew his hand. “She should have him.”
Mara’s eyes closed. A tear traveled toward her ear, and he reached for a tissue too late to catch it. For a few seconds, the sound of the blood-pressure cuff filled the room.
“Where’s Birdie?” she asked.
“With Owen.”
“Here?”
“Out front, I think.”
“I want her.”
He looked at Tess. “We can’t bring a dog in.”
“Let me ask the charge nurse,” Tess said.
“You don’t have to do that.”
Mara opened her eyes. “I asked her to.”
Tess went to the door. Graham stood beside the bed with the tissue in his hand.
Tess returned with permission for a brief visit. A door at the end of the passage opened into the visitors’ courtyard; Graham could bring Birdie through it. She had to stay leashed and on the floor. Tess remained beside Mara while he went for her.
Owen answered on the first ring. He was still outside. Graham went down the short passage Tess showed him and found his brother waiting at the courtyard gate.
“Mara wants the dog,” Graham said.
Owen searched his face. Graham shook his head, and his brother’s hand closed on his shoulder. Neither of them spoke again before Graham took the leash.
Birdie followed him through the courtyard door with her nose low. At home, she made a considerable show of greeting Mara, sneezing and knocking her tail against furniture. Here she approached the bed slowly and sniffed the edge of Mara’s dangling sheet.
Mara reached down. “There you are.”
The dog lifted her face into Mara’s fingers. Then her nose rose toward the baby. She stood with her mouth closed, sniffing, and took one small step closer.
“Back up,” Graham whispered, shortening the leash.
Birdie pulled against him. A thin whine came from her throat. She looked at the bundle, turned to Graham, then strained toward it again, her front nails slipping on the floor.
“She’s upset,” he said.
Tess bent to help Mara adjust the blanket. Birdie gave a sharper whine, and Mara stopped the nurse’s hand.
“Wait.”
Graham thought he heard a small wet sound. He couldn’t tell whether it came from Mara or the baby. Birdie went still beneath the bed rail, her head tilted.
“I heard that,” Mara said. “Tess, I heard something.”
The nurse lifted the blanket away from Ellis’s face. She watched him, then put her stethoscope against his chest. Graham stood so close that her elbow touched his arm.
Tess moved the stethoscope and listened again. Her free hand reached for the call button. “Get Dr. Sloane back here,” she said into the speaker. “Now. I’ve got a heartbeat…”
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