The mother of my child, the woman I love, turns white as a sheet.
“It’s too early.” Her words are so weak and frightened, I almost don’t hear them.
She’s right. It’s too early. She’s barely eight months. Only thirty weeks.
My blinders go on, ignoring anything that isn’t her and our son in this moment. I move to her, scoop her up as if she’s light as a feather, and walk us to the door. My hands move on autopilot as I pull on her coat, then mine, and grab my wallet and keys.
We’re out the door in what feels like seconds, and those random assholes are still in my house. I don’t give a shit if they burn the place down at this point. Nothing else matters but Frankie and the baby.
I probably shouldn’t be driving, I’m so terrified, and it’s the middle of the night. I reach across the console and grip Frankie’s hand the entire way as she tries to bite back the sobs and fails.
Somehow, we make it to the emergency room.
I pull up, knowing that when we enter through those doors, we may learn the worst news any expecting parent has to hear.
38
Frankie
“You’re in preterm labor, and your placenta is failing.”
The words feel like they’re far away, even though the doctor is only standing two feet in front of my hospital bed.
“What does that mean, failing?” Sinclair clutches my hand as he sits on a hard plastic hospital chair next to me.
“Sometimes, the placenta grows weaker toward the end of a pregnancy. It doesn’t give as many nutrients to the baby as it should, or we see some blood or fluid loss. Part of the fluid that you were leaking, Francesca, was fluid that should still be in your placenta. It puts the baby in danger, and could stop development in some cases.”
I swear to God, I feel woozy just from the labor and delivery doctor talking to me. The things she’s saying, how matter-of-fact she’s being, as if this isn’t my baby we’re talking about.
I know she’s probably seen this before, but she’s talking about my entire life. This child is the center of my universe, and she just used the word danger. I want to rewind, stop this from ever occurring. If I could just go back, slow down how much I was working or how upset I worked myself up to be at Sinclair.
“What do we do? Is he … will he be okay?” Next to me, Sinclair’s voice cracks.
My gaze lands on him, and I realize I’m not the only one in the room going into a tailspin. I grasp his hand back, so hard that my knuckles begin to go white. Nothing else matters right now; not our argument, not the status of our relationship, nothing. Our son, that’s all we can see. And we’re his lifelines, so we’ll become each other’s lifelines. We’ll survive this together.
The doctor nods, and I realize I don’t even know her name. She’s not my OB, since we got to the hospital in the middle of the night. It suddenly strikes me that it’s weird this woman is about to tell me the fate of my child’s life, and I don’t even know her name. You notice strange things in periods of great shock or grief.
“You’re only thirty weeks. If this were a different situation, I’d recommend strict bedrest until we could get you to at least thirty-six weeks. But, this is not that situation. Your placenta is failing, rapidly. I’ll consult with your OB, but I believe he’ll say the same thing. We need to keep you here for the rest of your pregnancy. Hopefully, with medication to stop the preterm labor and strict bedrest with round the clock monitoring from our staff, we can get you to thirty-four weeks. We may be able to get you further, but that will be our goal.”
“Thirty-four weeks? That’s still so early.” I don’t even recognize my own voice.
Blinking back the tears, I try to focus on what she’s saying.
“It is. But we can give you steroid shots, to develop the baby’s lungs. We can give you other medications to keep him as healthy and developed as possible before his delivery. I’m going to warn you, though. You’re right, thirty-four weeks is still early. That means your son could require some NICU time. We are going to do everything possible to take care of you and your baby. Our goal is to bring your son into the world, healthy and able to thrive. I know this is a lot of information. I’m going to give you two some time to digest. You have a call button on your bed, you use it anytime you need someone. If you’d like to talk further, they can page me.”
The doctor gives us a small, meant-to-be reassuring smile. It’s not. At all.
Then, she leaves the room, and the sound of the shutting door is like a gunshot to my heart.
Sinclair is up and holding me in two seconds flat, pressing his lips to my face. I’m numb, unable to move.
And then it’s like a dam bursts, and everything I’ve been holding at bay floods my entire system.
“I can’t lose him. I can’t lose him.” I sob into Sinclair’s shirt, clinging to him.
He holds me up, and I hear him break himself, sniffles reverberating against my cheek and tears from his face leaking onto my hairline.
“We won’t. You heard her. They’re going to do everything possible.” But he’s not saying that our little boy will be okay.
The only thing I keep repeating, whether I’m saying it out loud or in my head, is that we can’t lose him. The only other thought that can penetrate my mind is that we haven’t given him a name yet. Nothing can happen to him when he has no name.
Even though Sinclair is holding me so tight I can barely breathe, trying to console me, all I see is darkness.
I feel like I’ll never be able to see the light again.
39
Frankie
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The machines bump, beep, and buzz around me, and I track their progress. I’ve gotten pretty good at that, knowing what levels and heart rate and contractions to look for.
For the past two weeks, I’ve lain in this hospital bed, hooked up to monitors, waiting for the floor to fall out from under me. It almost has a couple of times.
There was the night that I awoke to a searing pain in my side, and the nurses came running when they realized the baby’s heart rate was way too high. They had to push a bunch of medications into my IV, and I waited with tears streaming down my face, expecting them to tell me they couldn’t save him.
But he’d pulled through.
Then there was the time, about five days ago, my OB had come to check my placenta and told me there was basically no liquid left inside. I was starving my baby from inside my body. But it was still too early, we had one more round of steroids they had to pace out, and she said we could push a little further.
I felt like I, and the baby, were living on borrowed time.
Visiting hours mean nothing, not in this room. The staff seems to understand that, or they’re just looking the other way because I’m associated with the Callahans. Either way, I’ll take advantage of the family name if it means I don’t have to spend a single second alone in here. If I did, I think I’d go crazy with worry and fear.
Hannah, Colleen, even Walker at times, and Sinclair’s own mother … they come and visit me at least twice a week. Seth has been here, as has Whitney, a Callahan cousin I’m not close with, but she has children and was a source of calm and knowledge.