Round Ligament

Theron

He had not been inside a hospital since the spring he was twenty-five, and the smell found him on the threshold like a hand on the back of the neck.

It was the same smell. It was the smell of every hospital in the world: floor wax and iodine and bleach and boiled coffee, laid over a deeper, fainter note of something sweet and chemical and faintly rotten, like flowers in a vase left too long. It was the smell of the oncology suite at Sloan Kettering. It was the smell of a vinyl recliner, a bag on a pole, a pale resident who could not meet his eyes, and a voice saying, Mr. Wexcombe, if you could just roll up your sleeve.

He stopped in the automatic doors.

They slid closed behind him, and slid open again, and slid closed. He stood in the vestibule with the snow melting off his shoulders and his arm around a pregnant woman in an old parka, and the world went slowly white at the edges.

"Theron," said Dess.

"I am quite well."

"You're gray."

"It's the lighting."

"You said that at the gala. I don't believe it now either." She had stopped walking. She was looking up at him with a small furrow between her brows, and in the cruel overhead glare her face was pinched with pain, and he thought, with a kind of distant outrage: She is the one who is hurt. I will not be the one she must look after. "Are you going to faint?"

"I have never fainted."

"That's not an answer."

"I shall not faint." He drew a breath and held it. "I need only a moment. This is a— it is an old association. It will pass."

She said nothing. But she shifted her weight, and put her hand flat against his chest, over his coat, over his heart, and stood there, quite still, in the middle of the Charlton Memorial emergency vestibule at a quarter to three on Christmas morning, breathing.

In for four, he heard, though she did not speak. Out for six.

He breathed.

After perhaps half a minute, the white at the edges retreated. The floor steadied. He opened his eyes and found her looking at him with an expression he could not name, grave and tender and furious, and he said, with great dignity:

"Thank you. I am recovered. Let us find you a doctor."

"You're an idiot," said Dess.

"Quite possibly."

"You drove through a blizzard to be here."

"I did."

"You couldn't have mentioned that you hate hospitals?"

"I did not think it relevant."

"You thought a woman in labor pains could—" She stopped. She laughed. It came out as half a gasp. "Not in labor. Sorry. Pains. Whatever. Come on. I'm the patient. I'll hold your hand."

"That is out of the question."

"Too late," said Dess, and took it.

…

It took four hours.

He would remember them afterward as a long, dim, strange suspension of time, like a voyage in a fog. They were put in a curtained cubicle in the corner of a busy emergency ward, with a gurney and a stool and a machine that beeped in a wavering, hopeful, indefinite way. A nurse took blood. Another took blood pressure. A tired young resident named Dr. Sandhu, with a three-day stubble and a paper Santa hat that he had plainly been ordered to wear, asked a series of questions in a gentle monotone while typing on a laptop. When did it start? Where does it hurt? Does it radiate? Any discharge? Any fever? Any trauma? Dess answered each one with the clipped exactness of a woman filing a claim. Theron sat on the stool beside the gurney with his hands on his knees, and said nothing, and was not asked to.

It was the first time in his life he had been in a room full of doctors without being the patient. He found it unaccountably difficult.

"You're her husband?" said the nurse, bustling past.

"No."

"Partner?"

"No."

"Brother?"

"I am the baby's—" He stopped. "I am a friend."

"A friend." She gave him a look of the long-suffering, all-seeing, infinitely patient kind that nurses reserve for men in waiting rooms. "Well, a friend's fine. Just don't faint on my floor. I've had two already tonight."

"Madam, I have never—"

"Everybody says that."

She whisked out. The curtain swung.

"She likes you," said Dess, from the gurney.

"She thinks I am about to collapse."

"That's the same thing."

He looked at her.

She lay propped on the pillows with her knees drawn up, in the oversized hospital gown, with an IV in the back of her left hand and a blood-pressure cuff on her arm. Her hair was loose and tangled. The pink had left her face. She looked small, and tired, and very young, and more beautiful than he'd ever seen her, with the specific unguarded beauty of a woman who is too frightened to remember she should be on guard.

She was watching him with her head tilted on the pillow.

"You've gone quiet," she said.

"I am attempting not to be a burden."

"You're not."

"I am sitting in your cubicle."

"I want you in my cubicle." She said it simply, and her cheeks went slowly pink. "That's why I called."

"You called because the other options were unavailable."

"I called because I wanted you." She closed her eyes. "I figured I'd say it now. In case I'm dying. It would be embarrassing to go to my grave without having admitted it."

"Dess."

"What?"

"You are not dying."

"I'm quite sure I might be."

"You are in the fifteenth week of an uncomplicated pregnancy with a mild case of ligamentous strain," said Theron. "I know, because I have read the pamphlet."

Her eyes flew open.

"You read the pamphlet?"

"I read it this morning. In the car. At the red light on Route 24, while I was driving too fast." He looked at the floor. "There was a copy in the glove box of the rented car. I do not know why. A previous renter. It said that sudden sharp pains at the sides of the lower abdomen are common in the second trimester and are caused by the stretching of the round ligament. It said it was not dangerous. It said that rest and a warm compress were the first course." He swallowed. "I have been repeating it to myself since Route 24. It has not been entirely effective."

She stared at him.

Then she began to laugh, helplessly, softly, under the IV, with a hand pressed to her side. "Oh," she gasped. "Oh, don't. It hurts. Don't make me laugh. You drove through a snowstorm reading a pamphlet."

"At a red light."

"At a red light! In a blizzard! On Christmas!"

"There were no other cars."

"Oh my God. You're the worst." She wiped her eyes. "You're the worst person I've ever met."

"I have been told."

"By who?"

"By you. On several occasions."

"Well, I was right." She reached for his hand, found it, and held on with surprising strength. "I'm going to say something stupid. And you're going to let me."

"I shall try."

"I'm glad you're here."

He could not answer.

…

The ultrasound was done at 5:20 by a technician in a snowman sweater, who had the grace to say nothing about the three people in the room. Colleen had come in, escorted by a nurse, in her coat and hairnet, with her purse clutched to her stomach. Ray had stayed in the waiting room, where, as far as Theron could ascertain, he had fallen asleep with his mouth open in front of a television showing It's a Wonderful Life.

The screen lit.

He had steeled himself. He had told himself, at the foot of the gurney, that he would be calm; that he would stand with his hands clasped behind him, as he had done at St. Brendan's, and look at the ceiling until he was told. But when the image came up, a dim gray swirl and in it a small, bright, kicking shape, he found that his hands had come out from behind his back of their own accord. They hung open at his sides. They would not be clasped.

"There we go," said the technician. "Strong heartbeat. One fifty-eight. Look at that baby move."

It was moving.

It was a great deal more developed than it had been at thirteen weeks. It had a spine, a skull, a curve of rib. It had two perfect hands, and it was holding them in front of its face, and it appeared to be, with great concentration, picking its nose.

"Oh," breathed Colleen.

"Oh, my God," said Dess.

"Is it—" Colleen leaned over. "Is it doing what I think it's doing?"

"They do that," said the technician, with a perfectly straight face. "It's very common. They explore."

Colleen began to laugh. It was a high, helpless, wet, delighted whoop, and she put both hands over her mouth and leaned against the wall and shook. Dess was laughing too, with tears running down her face, and Theron stood between them with his hands open and his face in the cold blue glow of the monitor, and felt the whole shape of the moment, small and ridiculous and sacred, close around him like the palm of a hand.

Kit, he thought. Look. Look at it. It is picking its nose.

It is exactly like you.

He made a sound.

It was not a laugh. It came from somewhere lower and older, and it got out before he could prevent it, a dry broken croak, and Dess's head turned. He saw her see his face. He saw her stop laughing. He saw her put out her IV hand, and take his wrist, and pull, gently, until he was bending over the gurney, and then she did something that no one had done to him in thirty-six years.

She took the folded white handkerchief from the pocket of her parka, the very one he had given her, laundered now, pressed, with a small blue W on the corner he had not known was there, and wiped his forehead with it.

She did it slowly. She pressed the linen against his hairline, and drew it down the side of his face, to the corner of his eye, and there, with great gentleness, she caught something that he had not known was falling.

"There," she said, in a low voice. "There. You're all right."

"I am not—"

"Shh."

"It is only—"

"I know what it is."

He shut his eyes.

He stood there, bent over a hospital gurney at half past five on Christmas morning, with his hands hanging helplessly at his sides and a woman's hand against his cheek, and let her. It was the single most terrifying thing he had ever done. It was also, in some way he would never be able to explain, the only time since the funeral that he had been able to stand upright.

…

"All right," said Dr. Sandhu, at half past six. He had taken off the Santa hat. "Round ligament pain. Textbook. It's a muscle spasm. Your uterus is growing faster than the ligament expects and it's complaining. I'd also say you're a little dehydrated, and you've been under stress." He looked at the three of them, one after another. "I'm going to give you a bag of fluids, a prescription for acetaminophen, and some very firm advice. Rest. Warm baths. No lifting. Sit on your left side. And Ms. Rourke, if you get a fever, or bleeding, or the pain goes to both sides, you come straight back."

"I will."

"Do you have any questions?"

"Can I go home?"

"In an hour."

"Can I go to Providence?"

"You can go anywhere you like, as long as you're lying down."

"Great." Dess closed her eyes. "I'm going to sleep for a week."

"Merry Christmas," said Dr. Sandhu, and went out.

There was a silence in the cubicle. It was a very soft silence, the silence of three people who have stopped being frightened and don't yet know how to be anything else. The machine beeped, slowly, evenly. Outside, in the corridor, a cart rattled past. A woman somewhere was singing a carol in a cracked contralto.

"Well," said Colleen, in a trembling voice.

"Well," said Dess.

"Well, that's that."

"It's just a ligament."

"It's just a ligament, thank God. Thank God, thank God." Colleen crossed herself, three times, rapidly. Then she turned, and looked at Theron.

He had not moved. He stood at the foot of the gurney in his rumpled dark coat, with the melted snow dried in stiff white tracks on his shoulders and his hair standing up on one side, and the look of a man who had been through a war and been told, by a cheerful person in a sweater, that it had been a drill.

"Mr. Wexcombe," said Colleen.

"Mrs. Rourke."

"I'd like to shake your hand."

"I'm— Of course."

She took it in both of hers. She did not shake it. She held it, small and warm and fierce, and looked up into his face. Her eyes were full of tears and extraordinarily bright, and he understood with a little shock that he had never in his life been looked at quite so thoroughly, or by anyone who loved so recklessly.

"I'm Colleen," she said.

"Colleen."

"You drove in the snow."

"I did."

"With no hat."

"I forgot it."

"You carved me a spoon."

"My brother carved it."

"You sent it." She tightened her grip. "Mr. Wexcombe— Theron— I'm going to say something, and I'd like you not to interrupt, because I get shy and I'll lose the thread. All right?"

"All right."

"I don't know who you are. I don't know what you're after. I know my daughter says you're not after anything, and I know she's a woman who's never told me a lie. But I'll tell you what I know. I know I raised that girl on my own, with no money and no sense, and every man she ever saw was a man who left. And I know that tonight she woke up in the middle of the night, in pain, and she didn't call her best friend. She didn't call me. She didn't call 911." Her voice cracked. "She called you. And you came."

"Mrs. Rourke—"

"Colleen."

"Colleen, I—"

"Don't you dare say you were just being decent." She shook her head. "Decent men send flowers. They send a fruit basket, they say call me if you need anything. They don't drive thirty-five miles in a blizzard without a hat."

He opened his mouth, and found nothing in it.

"I don't need to know what it means," said Colleen. "I'm not asking. I only want you to know I saw. And that whatever happens, I'll remember. And that if you hurt her—" She stopped, and her chin went up, and for a moment she was five feet and one inch of pure Fall River ferocity in a pink hair net. "If you hurt her, I will find you. I have a cousin in the Teamsters."

"I believe you."

"Good."

"I do not intend to hurt her."

"I know." She let go of his hand and patted it. "That's what they all say. But you're the first one who looked scared when he said it."

…

Joelle arrived at seven fifteen, in her scrubs and her parka, with snow in her braids and a paper bag in her hand.

She had driven straight from St. Brendan's at the end of a twelve-hour night shift on the labor floor, through the same drifts that had stopped the plows, and she came into the cubicle at a dead run, flung herself on the gurney, and said, in a voice that rose through two octaves in the space of one sentence: "I'm so sorry I didn't pick up, my phone was in my locker, I saw nine missed calls when I came out, what happened, is the baby okay, is it a cramp, are you bleeding, why didn't you call me, I'm going to kill myself, I'm going to cry—"

"Jo."

"—and I made muffins—"

"Jo. Jo. Jo." Dess caught her friend's face in both hands. "I'm okay. We're okay. It's a ligament. It's a stupid muscle."

Joelle burst into tears.

She cried with a magnificent abandon, with her whole body, collapsing onto the gurney and wrapping both arms around Dess's shoulders and sobbing into her neck, while Dess patted her back and murmured nonsense and Colleen, behind them, pressed a tissue into her hand. It lasted about two minutes. When it was over, Joelle sat up, red-eyed and damp, and wiped her nose on her sleeve, and looked around the cubicle with the grim, appraising clarity of a woman who had just remembered she was a professional.

Her gaze fell on Theron.

She did not say anything.

She stood. She smoothed her scrubs. She tucked a braid behind one ear. And then she said, in a voice of perfect, level, pleasant calm, "Mr. Wexcombe. Would you step into the corridor with me? I'd like a word."

"Joelle," said Dess.

"Just a word."

"Jo—"

"Five minutes." She did not take her eyes off Theron. "I'll be nice."

"You won't."

"I'll be thorough."

Theron looked at Dess. She was watching him with an expression half alarm and half something very like amusement, from her nest of pillows.

"I believe I shall be all right," he said gravely.

"Don't let her bully you."

"I shall do my best."

"If she brings out the needle, call a nurse."

"I have no needle," said Joelle. "I have principles."

…

The corridor was empty. The Christmas decorations, a string of tinsel along the nurses' station, a paper wreath on the pharmacy door, lent it the air of a battlefield after a truce. Joelle walked to the vending machine at the far end, and stood in front of it with her back to him for a moment, looking at the rows of pretzels and cheese puffs and peanut butter crackers.

Then she turned around.

"I'm going to ask you five questions," she said. "And you're going to answer them truthfully. Because if you don't, I'll know. I deal with liars for a living. Every man who ever told me he was 'pretty sure' he'd put on a condom. Every woman who swore she'd quit smoking. I can smell it."

"I shall not lie to you."

"That's not an answer."

"It is my answer."

"Fine. Question one." She held up a finger. "What do you want?"

He had been asked it before. He had answered it in a café, and a flat, and a bare room full of sun. But he found, standing in the fluorescent glare of a hospital corridor, with the vending machine humming at his back and a nurse's laughter drifting from the station, that he had no prepared answer. The question stripped it away.

"To keep them safe," he said. "Both of them."

"From what?"

"From—" He hesitated. "From a number of things. From loneliness. From want. From the sort of people who would take advantage."

"Like you."

"Yes. Like me. I include myself."

Joelle's eyes narrowed. She lifted a second finger.

"Question two. What will you do if she says no?"

"To what?"

"To anything. To you. To the whole thing. If she wakes up tomorrow and says get out of my life."

"I will leave."

"Just like that."

"I will leave," said Theron, "the building. I will not leave the city. I will find a place on the other side of the river and I will stay within reach, in case she should need a hand. But I will not come within sight of her door. I will not write. I will not call. I will not ask a single question of anyone who knows her."

"For how long?"

"Until she asks me to return."

"And if she never does?"

"Then I shall have loved her very badly," said Theron, "and the child very well. And I shall consider it a fair price."

The word loved hung in the air.

He had not meant to say it. It had come out of him whole and unconsidered, like a stone out of a sling, and he stood there with his heart hammering, listening to it echo off the linoleum.

Joelle was silent. She looked at him for what seemed a very long time. Her face did not change, but something moved behind her eyes.

"Hm," she said.

"I misspoke."

"No, you didn't."

"I— It was a figure of speech."

"Don't." She lowered the finger. "I'm not going to pounce. I'm going to put it in my pocket for later. Question three." She raised another. "Will you hurt her?"

"I intend not to."

"That's not what I asked."

"It is the most honest answer I have." His voice was low. "I cannot promise you that I will not. I have already, in certain respects, done so. I will do all in my power to prevent more. But I am a man who has made a number of grave errors, and I have no illusion that I am immune to the next."

Joelle's mouth twitched. "That's the best answer I've ever heard to that question."

"It is not meant to be clever."

"I know. That's why." She raised a fourth finger. "Question four. Are you hiding something?"

He felt it before he heard it. A small cold click, like the shifting of a latch in a lock.

"Yes," he said.

She did not blink.

"What is it?"

"I cannot tell you."

"Does it affect her?"

"It does."

"Does it affect the baby?"

"Not its health or its safety. But its—" He stopped. "It touches on something of significance. I have promised to tell her. Before the end of February. I mean to keep that promise."

"Why not now?"

"Because I do not yet know how to say it in a way that will not wound her."

"That's not a reason. That's an excuse."

"Yes," said Theron. "I know."

She stared at him.

"I'm going to say something," said Joelle, slowly, "and I want you to hear it. Because I like you. Which is a thing I did not expect, and I resent it. I've watched you for six weeks, from a car, from a window, from a corner of a café. I've seen a man who stood in the rain for two hours and didn't say a word. I've seen a man who fell apart over a bowl of beige soup. I've seen a man who drove through a blizzard without a hat. And I think you are, God help me, one of the good ones."

He said nothing. His throat had closed.

"But you have a secret," said Joelle. "And I know secrets. I deal with them every day, in a hospital where women lie on tables telling nurses things they've never told their husbands. And I'll tell you what they all have in common. They get bigger. They never, ever, in the history of the world, get smaller."

"I know."

"The longer you wait, the more it costs."

"I know."

"And when it comes out—when, not if—she's going to ask herself one question. Not what it was. Not why you hid it. She's going to ask: did he tell me, or did I find out?" Joelle's voice was quite gentle. "That's the whole difference. That's the entire thing. Whether it's a gift or a theft."

The corridor was very quiet.

Somewhere, a pager chirped. The vending machine hummed. On the other side of a partition, an old man coughed, a long wet rattling cough, and a nurse said, There you go, Mr. Pelletier, that's it, let it out.

"Tell her," said Joelle.

"I will."

"Soon."

"I will."

"Before she finds out. Because she will. She's the most thorough woman I've ever met. She'll turn over every stone in the garden."

"I know."

"Do you?"

"Better than anyone," said Theron.

She nodded slowly. Then she lowered her hand, and the finger she had not raised, the fifth, stayed curled against her palm.

"And question five?" he said.

"Oh." A faint, grim, glinting smile touched her mouth. "I'm saving that."

"For what?"

"For when you need it." She turned back to the vending machine, put in two dollars, and pressed a button. A bag of cheese puffs fell with a thump. "Now come on. She's going to be pacing. And I'm going to go in there and tell her you were very nice, and you answered everything, and I think you're probably a good man."

"Are you going to say that?"

"I'm going to say you passed." She extracted the bag and tore it open. "Provisionally."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me. Eat a cheese puff."

"I couldn't possibly."

"You've been awake for twenty-four hours, you've got a hole in your sleeve, and your hand's been shaking since you walked in. Eat the cheese puff, Theron."

He took one.

It was bright orange and appalling, a puff of salt and air and artificial cheddar, and it dissolved on his tongue with a sweetness that was almost unbearable. He swallowed. He took another.

They stood together in the empty corridor at seven-forty on Christmas morning, a labor nurse and a shipping magnate, eating cheese puffs out of a vending machine bag, and neither of them said a word.

Through the window at the end of the hall, the snow had stopped. A pale, thin, pearly light had begun to creep across the car park, touching each parked car with a rim of gold, and beyond the drifts the old brick mills of Fall River stood up against the dawn, enormous and silent and rose-colored, like a row of sleeping giants.

It was Christmas Day.

He had not wished for anything in twelve years.

He wished, with a sudden fierce and ruthless clarity, that he had told her. All of it. The will, the shares, the uncle, the clause. He wished he had told her in a bus shelter, or a café, or on the floor of a bare room in the winter sun. He wished he had told her before the snow.

Soon, he thought. Before the kick.

I will tell her. I swear it. I will tell her before the end of February.

He ate another cheese puff.

It tasted, for some reason, of ash.