Chosen (8 page)

“I’ll let you go. We’re not even two centimeters dilated in there and already she’s screaming, so I’m here for the long haul, looks like. If it gets too intense, maybe I’ll stop by?”

“Okay.” Paul is grinning again, nodding. “Okay!”

B
ACK IN THE ROOM
, Eva is sitting up, pulling her hair back into a ponytail.

“Hey, sweetheart,” she says sleepily, as she has every morning since they first started waking up together. Paul smiles at her, scanning the room. Panic hits him in a deep wave that closes his chest.

The baby is gone. He never should have left them alone, her so tired. But he hadn’t gone far, maybe twenty feet down the hall, to talk to Chloe Pinter. He feels it bubbling up, that contempt that is bred of twelve years’ familiarity, of knowing someone so well that you love them with all the fierceness that you detest their flaws. The truth is, Eva can drop the ball, just when it is most important. She can blithely scribble off a check they can’t cover, double-book appointments with important customers, creating messes Paul has to untangle.

And here he has left her alone to watch over the baby, all drugged up, even at her best it might be…It might be too much for her.

“It’s okay.” Eva reads his mind. “The nurse just took him for a bath.”

Paul mocks a thumping heart, pounding his chest with his fist. She scoots over slightly in the bed, wincing, pats the mattress. Only when he is in bed beside her, careful not to jostle her IV, settling her in the crook under his arm, does his heart settle into a steady rhythm.

“So this is how it’s going to be for us from here on out, huh?” he jokes. “Stolen moments while the kid is occupied elsewhere.”

Eva beams up at him; he kisses her forehead. Ahhh, this girl, and now, the mother of his son.

“What did Maggie say?” she asks after a moment.

“What?”

“When you went out, you said you were going to make some calls. You called my brother, right?”

Paul is saved by a soft knock at the door, followed by the shining smile of Chloe Pinter peeking around the curtain.

“Oh, sorry, I can come back. I’ll just leave these bagels.” She holds up a paper bag and a tray with three tall steaming coffees.

“No, please, stay!” Paul insists, clambering out of bed to help her with the coffees, her folder falling from under her arm, sliding to the floor, papers everywhere. The girl needs a bigger purse, he thinks, a briefcase, and suddenly he wants to buy her one. Something buttery
and leather, like a broken-in baseball glove. Would it be so strange? he wonders. After all, she was their caseworker once, and they never thanked her properly.

Eva is struggling to sit up straighter as he and Chloe explain at once, on top of each other, that they met in the hallway, she’s here for a baby.

“But I’ll be here for hours,” Chloe repeats. “She’s not four centimeters, but they’re keeping her anyway, ’cause she’s a little…” Chloe twirls her finger by her ear. “We’ve been here all night, and I think it’s going to be another long day.” Chloe dumps a stack of sugar packets into her coffee. “In fact, I should probably go check on Penny, I mean, the birth mom. I should probably go check on my client.”

“Penny?” Eva’s head snaps up. “Francie’s birth mom? She’s here?”

Paul can see Chloe is torn, but she has already given them too much information. She nods, sits on the foot of the bed.

“Listen, are you guys still close? To the McAdoos? I remember, Paul, you said, when I saw you at Thanksgiving…”

A look passes over Eva’s face, but Paul ignores it. He never thought to tell her he had run into Chloe that night.

“I only ask because there are some problems. Francie says John’s out of town, making some excuses, like he can’t be reached by phone, but we
really
need him here. The birth father’s slamming around, my boss is all over me, Penny’s freaking, Francie’s not even going to be here for another hour because she says she doesn’t have a car seat. I told her she could buy one later, but then she freaked, like she thought I was trying to tell her
not
to buy one, like things weren’t going to go through, and who knows, so now she’s driving around trying to find a Target open. Things would just be a lot
better
if one of them would show up like they want this baby.”

“Is it going to go through, then?” Eva asks, and poor Chloe suddenly looks very tired, like she has been the one physically laboring all night.

“Once again, wish I had my crystal ball,” she says, yawning into her wrist.

“Well, you’re an angel to bring us coffee and bagels,” Eva says.

She doesn’t know, will never know, exactly how much of an angel Chloe is.

C
hloe is pacing in the lobby, the coffee churning in her stomach, when Francie McAdoo arrives, slipping as her wet loafers strike the tiles. Her ribbed black turtleneck clings to her birdlike torso, her thin blond hair fluffed out on her shoulders, a perfectly done face of peachy foundation makeup, gold hoop earrings. She is clutching a dripping arrangement of irises, a large Gund teddy bear, and a chic paisley Petunia Picklebottom diaper bag.

“I couldn’t find anyplace open with a car seat,” she yells shrilly from across the lobby. Chloe is anxious not to attract attention; Jason had said he was going out for a smoke and could be skulking around anywhere.

“It’s okay.”

“No, I know it is, I just spoke to friends of ours who had their baby this morning as well and he said we can use their car seat, that he’ll give me a ride home. Is he here?”

“Paul Nova? I just saw him.”

“No, the baby!”

“Oh, no. She’s got a long way to go. You don’t go from two centimeters to ten in forty-five minutes, not in the best scenario,” Chloe says, not caring how Francie takes it. Read a pregnancy book! she thinks. “Come on up.”

They walk together toward the elevators, Francie’s cheeks flaming.

“Where’s John?” Chloe asks.

“I still haven’t been able to reach him. He left at four this morning for Singapore and isn’t answering his phone. If he turns it on in L.A., I’ll have a chance of getting through.”

“Wait a minute.” Chloe stops, grabs Francie’s forearm like they’re best seventh-grade girlfriends. “John left this morning?”

“Yes, his flight is in a few minutes, seven ten, I think.”

“But I called you last night, when we got admitted. I told you we were in the hospital.”

Francie doesn’t say anything, pats at her hair, shifts the diaper bag to her other arm, makes like she wants to keep walking toward the elevator.

“Francie, he went anyway?”

“It’s a very important meeting. And you hear so much about false labor—”

“You don’t understand. Your son is going to be born today. If
you
were in labor, would he hop a plane to Asia?”

“Of course not. Of course he wouldn’t,” Francie says, her eyes darting around the hallway. “But this is different,” she adds softly.

Chloe turns sharply, keeps walking so that their precious gazillionaire client can’t see the look on her face.

In the room, Penny is thrashing on the bed, screaming, clawing at her IV.

“Get this fuckin’ thing outta me!” she wails, striking the nurse, and as she flops, a white breast falls out of her hospital gown, the nipple seeming to stare blankly at the ceiling.

“You have to calm down, or I’ll call security.” The nurse, surprisingly strong for her size, kneels on one of Penny’s arms and fixes Chloe with a look. “Perfect timing.”

“Penny,” Chloe says evenly, putting the folders and her small purse down on a nearby chair. “Hang in there, hon, tell me what I can do.”

“For one,” Penny huffs like a spooked horse, “get this bitch off me,
and for two, you can tell
her
”—she gestures with her stubborn chin at Francie—“to go the fuck home. We’re not giving him up.”

Chloe doesn’t look at Francie but can picture her, standing like a little girl on her first day of kindergarten at the edge of the playground, her big stuffed animal in hand.

“Okay.” She keeps her eyes on Penny’s. “First things first, let’s get you covered up here…” Chloe speaks soothingly, tugs Penny’s gown over her stray breast. At the same time, the nurse quietly dismounts, efficiently and purposefully adds another band of tape to her IV. “Now what’s going on?”

“She told me the doctor wants her to add something to this needle to make me hurt
worse
, and she won’t give me pain drugs yet.” Penny’s chin juts out even farther, and she looks out the windows at the sky streaked with orange.

“She’s not even three centimeters,” the nurse jumps in defensively. “It’s the policy. If we give her the pitocin, get her into a good pattern, get her dilated a little more, then we can do an epidural. Otherwise, as I was trying to explain to her, it could stop the labor. And you want to have this baby today, am I right?”

“Where’s Jason?” Penny says.

“You remember, he said he needed a smoke.” Chloe is gently smoothing Penny’s short hair off her sweaty forehead. Surprisingly, Penny lets her.

“I’m going to go see if we can get Penny some fentanyl. You got things here?” the nurse asks Chloe, who nods gratefully. An ally, for now.

Penny is faking sleep, and Francie is standing miserably by the sink, the diaper bag clutched to her chest, irises drooping. Chloe takes a deep breath, decides to honor Penny’s charade, and speaks in low tones to Francie. It takes her back to days of babysitting, trying to make peace between difficult children.

“Okay, Francie, why don’t you grab a seat here?”

“She’s not staying,” Penny says, eyes still closed.

“Remember, we talked about this in the birth plan? Do you want to
talk to me privately, Penny?” Chloe has to ask this, though she suspects Penny is bluffing.

“Where’s Jason?”

“He went out for a smoke, remember?”

“Longest fuckin’ cigarette ever.”

“You know,” Chloe says, thinking how much worse this could be with Jason here, “sometimes it’s hard for guys, powerful guys like Jason, to see the woman they love in pain, and not be able to help her. Sometimes they need to take a break.”

Penny opens her eyes, sits up awkwardly, scratches at the tape near her IV, but absently.

“Yeah.” Penny is smiling faintly now, nodding at the idea of Jason being in anguish for her. “Where’s your man?” She juts her chin at Francie.

“Um, he’s, uh, he’s on his way to Singapore. Business trip. I’ve been trying to reach him; I can’t get through.”

“Oh.” Penny frowns. “Didn’t he know I was having the baby?”

“It’s a long flight,” Chloe jumps in. “And you can’t turn your cell phone on on the plane.”

“You can’t?” Penny asks.

“No. It messes up the plane’s radar.”

“Oh. He’ll have to come a long way back.”

“Yes.” Chloe nods.

“He might miss it.”

“Yes.” Chloe is wondering where this is going.

“Maybe Jason could cut the cord, then?”

It had been in the birth plan, a standard in the agency’s papers, that the adoptive parents would do it together—Judith liked the symbolism.

“Yes, fine,” Francie says, too quickly. “I’m going to try John again.” She jumps up, rushes out to the hallway.

“Penny, it’s just you and me now. Are you changing your mind? Should I go home?”

“I need Jason.”

Chloe looks at the monitor; it’s been eleven minutes since the last contraction. They’re going to be here a while. She stands up, purposefully crossing the room.

“Wait,” Penny calls. Chloe sits back down in the chair by the door. Round one, Chloe.

“I fuckin’ hate needles,” Penny mutters. “Hate hospitals.”

For the first time, Chloe sees Penny’s legs, stubbled and crisscrossed with thick white scars. Penny senses her looking, jerks the sheet sideways over them.

“Car accident?” Chloe asks, just to fill the silence.

“Sort of.”

Chloe doesn’t say anything.

“Car accident, yeah. I was fifteen, and me and my girlfriends decide to sneak into a club in Denver. A few rum and Cokes, step out to smoke, and these three fuckin’ dickheads raped and beat the shit out of me, drove over my legs with a van. Doctor said the only reason I didn’t bleed to death was the cold, froze the blood. It was real cold in Colorado. Nobody found me till morning.”

“Oh, Penny…” Chloe doesn’t know what else to say.

“Yeah. You got no idea. I fuckin’ hate needles.”

E
VENTUALLY
, F
RANCIE REACHES
J
OHN
in Los Angeles. Judging from Francie’s side of the conversation, it takes some convincing for him to come back. Something he says makes Francie cry. She can barely stay in the room, flitting in and out, going for coffee, making calls.

“Maybe I should go out and look for a car seat? There’s got to be a place somewhere close…,” Francie says as the lunch carts go by the open door.

“I’ll go!” Penny offers, and for a brief moment, they all share a tentative laugh.

When the nurse helps Penny onto a bedpan, because she insists she’s too weak to stand—“And I’m gonna pass right out on the floor and sue this fuckin’ hospital!”—Chloe and Francie go into the hallway,
perch awkwardly on the love seat. There is nothing for Chloe to say to her, nothing reassuring or positive, nothing at all.

“Vultures are circling already, huh?” It is Jason, jingling the buckles of his leather jacket. He tips his shaved head toward Francie because he is holding a huge teddy bear, the kind you buy from the street vendors on Burnside who sell fleece blankets with unicorns, buckets of roses, and these cheap oversize stuffed animals.

“We’re just following the birth plan.” Chloe forces the calm into her voice, looking from Jason to Francie. Sometimes she feels completely unqualified to do this job.

The pitocin is working; Penny’s screams tear up and down the corridor. At four centimeters, she gets the epidural. It takes the anesthesiologist more than one try, and they are both cursing before it is over. Afterward, Penny falls asleep. Jason disappears again, Francie goes to visit the Novas, and Chloe finds a comfortable spot on the couch in the hallway lounge and closes her eyes.