I don’t have to say that sometimes I get confused. That because my nightmare about Oliver became reality, I start to wonder if Harrison was the dream. Not in the romantic way that people usually say that, but in that way when you wake up from a really good one and try so hard to capture the feeling you had while you were in it, to hold it. Like a moonbeam, a bolt of lightning. But it’s fleeting; it dances in your peripheral, teasing you, and then it’s gone. I can’t remember what my husband feels like anymore. What he smells like. The timbre of his laugh. And sometimes I go to sleep hoping he is a dream, if only so that I can see him again.
The plane is gone now and Oliver is still here. “I won’t stay long,” he says. “I just wanted to make sure you were . . . OK.”
I don’t have to tell him that I am both OK and not sure I’ll ever be OK again. So I just nod. “And you?”
He wiggles all the fingers on his right hand. “Almost good as new.”
“I’m glad,” I say. And then I ask after Caroline and find out she named her son Lewis. And I tell him I started taking a class, that I’ve decided to get my master’s in education. And he tells me he’s going back to Australia for his next trip. I ask him if he’s just trying to break up with someone and he laughs.
“No. But the gun laws are quite a draw.”
“Ah,” I say. “Right.”
We stare at each other another beat. And I think of the months we spent together trying to understand the how and why of it all. And how, strangely, I still don’t have any of the answers. Why was Oliver in my life? I could say it was to save me, but then that begs the question: Why was Whitney in Harrison’s life? One life was saved, only for another to be lost. And that’s when I think maybe Harrison was right—maybe there’s no rhyme or reason to it all. Maybe instead of wondering why we’re all connected, what’s important—the only thing that’s important—is to know that we are.
“I’m working on a book. A novel,” he says. “Another one. Figure it doesn’t hurt to try again.”
“Based on true events?”
“No,” he says, chuckling. “You know that saying—truth is stranger than fiction.”
“Yeah,” I say, smiling. “Well, congratulations.”
He shrugs. “We’ll see if it goes anywhere.”
I open my mouth to respond, to assure him it will, but a pain grips my belly. I clutch my stomach and grimace.
“What is it?” Oliver asks.
“The baby,” I say, and the next pain almost brings me to my knees. “It’s too early.”
* * *
When we get to the ER, I’m in so much pain I can’t even stand up. Oliver rushes in to get help and an orderly comes out pushing a wheelchair and somehow between the two of them they get me into it and the next thing I know I’m in a bright room with my feet in stirrups and a woman with a mask has her hand between my legs and is screaming for me not to push yet.
But I do anyway, because I can’t not. Oliver squeezes my hand.
Another woman enters and the nurse holds out rubber gloves and she shoves her hands into them and I realize it’s the doctor as she takes the nurses’ place between my legs.
“It’s too soon,” I tell her.
“This baby doesn’t seem to think so. How far along are you?”
I try to think. To do math. It’s the first week of August. How is it the first week of August already?
“Thirty-two weeks,” I say.
She nods, but the wrinkles in her forehead deepen and I know she’s concerned. And then I remember. That’s how long Harrison’s been gone.
“No, wait. I’m thirty-six weeks,” I say. But still, I had a plan. Or Vivian did. She was going to come up, a week before my due date. Stay with me until I went into labor, drive me to the hospital. “It’s not supposed to be like this.”
Oliver squeezes my hand again and all I want is for it to be Harrison’s hand. It’s not supposed to be like this.
The doctor’s expression relaxes as she peers between my legs. “There’s the head,” she says. “Keep pushing.”
Fire rips through my groin and I feel the pressure build like a bottle of champagne that needs to be uncorked.
“I can’t do this,” I say. “I can’t do this without him.”
“You can,” Oliver says. “Look at me.” I do. “You can do this.”
“Deep breath,” the doctor says. “One more big push.”
I follow her instructions and Oliver squeezes my shoulder. But it’s not one more big push, as the doctor promised. And it’s not two or three or four. During the eighth excruciatingly painful push, just when I start to think that it’s never going to end—that I will be in labor, my stomach contracting, my groin a hot ring of fire, until the end of days, the pressure in my abdomen suddenly lifts and I feel something flop out like a slippery fish from between my legs and into the doctor’s waiting hands.
“It’s a girl,” she announces, holding up a squiggling spaghetti squash covered in goo, with arms and legs and a tuft of curly brown hair, like an offering.
I stare at its scrunched face in disbelief. Stunned awe. It’s a moment I’ve conjured a million times in my head, but sometime after the third miscarriage never truly believed would materialize. It’s my baby. Harrison’s eyes peer back at me from her tiny head.
Our baby.
I lamely lift my tired arms, reaching for her, but a nurse whisks her away to a plastic incubator tray. I listen to her whimpers turn into full-on wails and think how unfortunate that all she seems to have inherited from me is my predilection to cry.
“Is she OK?” I say to no one in particular.
“She’s perfect,” the nurse responds, swaddling the baby in a white cloth rimmed with blue and red stripes. She hands the baby to Oliver, who brings her directly to me.
And just like that, I’m holding my daughter. She’s tiny, I can barely feel the heft of her beneath the swaddle, but when she looks at me, my breath catches. And I’m overwhelmed by how wonderful and miraculous and unfair it all is.
I think of that banal platitude: Love isn’t supposed to hurt. But really, if you’re doing it right, love hurts all the time. I look down into my daughter’s eyes and I see my husband. And my heart is so full it feels like it’s going to burst and so empty it feels like I could float away into nothing.
That’s love. For all the great mysteries in the world, perhaps it’s the most mysterious of them all.