Mixed Blessings (40 page)

"Mr. Coleman," a nurse said gently. They wanted to take the dead baby away. And someone was about to tell him that arrangements had to be made. They would have to make burial arrangements for their baby.

"Your wife is awake, if you'd like to see her."

"Thank you," he said, looking gray. He touched the tiny hand again, and then left her, somehow feeling that he shouldn't, that she still needed him, but of course, she didn't.

"How is my wife?" he asked the nurse, as he finally followed her to the recovery room, looking bleak.

"Feeling better than she was a little while ago." The nurse smiled.

But not for long, Brad thought, as he tried to sort out his feelings.

"Where are they?" she said weakly, when she saw him. She had lost a lot of blood, and been through so much pain, and now she would have to be stronger than she ever had before.

He almost couldn't bear it. And there were tears in his eyes when he looked at her.

"I love you so much, and you were so brave," he said, trying to fight back tears unsuccessfully, wishing things were different and not wanting to scare her.

"Where are the babies?" she asked again.

"They're still in the delivery room," he said, lying to her for the first time in their life together, but he knew he had to. She didn't have to know yet, it was too cruel to have seen that tiny angel's face and then learn that she was gone so swiftly. Her brother looked so much sturdier, so much better prepared for life than his sister.

"They'll be out soon." Brad lied again, and she drifted off to sleep.

But there was no hiding the truth from her the next morning. The doctor came in to tell her with Brad, and for a moment, Brad thought the shock was going to kill her. She grew deathly pale and closed her eyes, and for a moment she swooned as she sat in her bed, and Brad reached out and caught her.

"No . . . tell me that's not true!" She screamed at him, "You're lying!" She screamed at her husband and the doctor.

The doctor had actually said the words, and he had told her very simply. Her baby girl had died shortly after birth, from blood loss to her twin in twin to twin transfusion, complicated by undeveloped lungs. She simply could not have survived, he told her.

"That's not true!" She screamed hysterically. "You killed her!

I saw her! She was alive . . . she looked at me.

"Yes, she did look at you, Mrs. Coleman," he said sadly. "But she never began adequately breathing. She never took a full breath. She never cried, and we did everything we could to save her."

"I want to see her," Pilar said, sobbing, and she tried to climb out of bed, but she found she was so weak, she couldn't. "I want to see her now. Where is she?" The two men exchanged glances, but the doctor was not against showing Pilar the child.

They had done that many times before, sometimes it helped a family to see the child, and say good-bye. The baby was downstairs in the morgue, waiting for burial, but there was no reason why her mother couldn't see her. "I want you to take me to her."

"We'll bring her to a room in a little while," he said very gently, as Pilar leaned against her husband, sobbing and trying to absorb what had just happened. She had been so happy the night before, even for a moment, even as hideous as it had been, and now she was gone. She hadn't even gotten to hold her. "Would you like to see your son now?"

She started to shake her head, but then she looked at Brad and nodded.

He looked so devastated, he was so overwhelmed by what happened to them, the knew she had no right to make it worse, but all she wanted to do was die, and join her baby.

"We'll bring him in," the doctor said, and returned a moment later with her strapping son. He weighed nine pounds, which was enormous for a twin. But his tiny sister had weighed less than four. He had gotten everything he needed to survive, at her expense, and she hadn't gotten enough. It had been a classic case of survival of the fittest.

"He's beautiful, isn't he?" she said sadly, almost as though he weren't there, and she didn't reach out her arms to hold him.

She just sat staring at him, wondering why he had lived and his twin sister hadn't. Brad held him as they both looked at him, and then he placed him gently in his mother's arms, and she cried copiously as she kissed him.

And when at last the nurse took him away, she asked again to see her daughter.

They took her in a wheelchair to a room downstairs, it was an empty room, and it was very cool, and everything about it was bleak and sterile. And a moment later they brought her in, still in her isolette, tightly wrapped in her blanket, her tiny face so sweet, so pure, she still looked to Brad as though she were sleeping.

"I want to hold her," she said to him, and he reached in carefully and placed her in her mother's arms, where she had never yet been, and Pilar sat quietly as she held her. She touched her eyes, her mouth, her cheeks, the tiny hands with her lips, and kissed each tiny finger, as though she hoped to breathe life into her. As though she could change what had happened the night before, because she couldn't accept it.

"I love you," she whispered softly to her, "I always will. I loved you before you were born, and I love you now, sweet baby."

She looked up at Brad then, and saw that he was crying uncontrollably, he just stood and shook with grief as he watched Pilar hold the baby.

"I'm so sorry . . ." he said to her. "I'm so sorry. ."

"I want to name her Grace," Pilar said quietly, and gently touched his hand. "Grace Elizabeth Coleman." Elizabeth for her mother. Somehow that seemed right now. And all Brad could do was nod. He couldn't bear the thought that in the midst of so much joy, now they had to bury this baby.

Pilar sat for a long time, just holding her, and looking at her face, as though she needed to be sure she would always remember her . . . perhaps when they met again one day in Heaven. . . . And then at last the nurse came for her again, I" and they had to leave the baby, so she could go to the funeral home Brad had called early that morning.

"Good-bye, sweet angel," Pilar said, and kissed her again, and as they left the room, she felt her heart torn from her soul øwith a pain she would never know again. It was a piece of her rent from deep within, and gone to be buried with her baby.

When they went back upstairs, their baby boy was sound asleep in his bed in her room, and another nurse was waiting.

She was somber-faced, knowing where they'd been, and she gently helped
 
Pilar back into bed, and handed her her sleeping son.

"I don't want him now." Pilar shook her head and tried to send him away, but the nurse would not be dismissed and she put the child in the mother's arms and looked into her eyes firmly.

"He needs you, Mrs. Coleman . . . and you need him. ."

And then she left the room, and left the little boy with his parents.

They had fought long and hard for him, and he had come and brought with him both tragedy and blessing. But it wasn't his fault his sister had died. And as Pilar held him, she felt her heart soften. He was so sweet and round, so different than little Grace had been. He looked all boy . . . and she had looked like a tiny angel, a mere whisper of a child . . . a I whisper gone back to God forever.

It was an odd day for them, a day of joy and grief, of anger and elation mixed with sorrow and disappointment, a rainbow of emotions none of them understood, but at least they were together. Nancy came and sobbed in Pilar's arms, unable even to tell her what she felt, but her tears said enough. And Tommy cried, too, and told them he was so sorry. Todd called, not having heard about Grace, and Brad cried terribly when he told him. And in a moment alone, Pilar called her mother told her. And for the first time in her life, her mother surprised her. She wasn't the Good Doctor Graham, but grandmother of a child who had died, the mother of a woman suffering terrible grief, and for almost an hour, they talked cried together. And she took Pilar's breath away when she Pilar of the son they'd had, who had died of crib death be she was even born.

"He was five months old. And in some ways I don't think I was ever the same again. I always blamed myself because I been so busy after he was born, I never spent enough time him. And then I got pregnant with you, and I never dare close to you. I was so afraid you would die, too. I never want to care that much about any human being again. Pilar darling . . . I'm so sorry......"Her mother sobbed, and cried uncontrollably.

"I hope you know how much I've always loved you She could barely speak through her tears, and Pilar choked on her emotions of more than years as she listened.

"Oh, Mommy . . . I love you. . . . Why didn't you tell me?"

"Your father and I never talked about it. Things were different in those days. You weren't supposed to talk about pa things. It was embarrassing. We were all so stupid then. It the worst thing I ever went through, and I had no one to talk to about it, and eventually I just learned to live with the pain. helped when you were born, and I was glad you were a girl at least you were different. . . . His name was Andrew," she softly. "We called him Andy.......And as she said it, sounded so sad and young, and Pilar's heart went out to She had lived with her grief for almost fifty years, and Pilas never known. It explained a lot of things, and it was too now for the little girl she had been, but it meant a lot now to hear what had happened.

"It won't go away easily," her mother said gently. "It'll take a long time . . . longer than you think you can bear. And it will never go away completely. You'll live with it every day, Pilar or maybe you'll forget for a day or two, and then something will happen to remind you. But you just have to go on, day after day, moment after moment . . . for Brad's sake, for your own . . . for your little boy. . . . You have to go on, and the pain will fade eventually. But the scar will stay on your heart forever."  They cried together again after that, and eventually, reluctantly this time, Pilar hung up the phone. But for the first time in her life, she felt as though she knew her mother.

She had offered to come out for the funeral, but Pilar had asked her not to. She knew now how painful it would be for her, and she didn't want to put her through it. And for once, Elizabeth Graham didn't argue.

"But if you need me, I'll be there in six hours. You just remember that. I'm no further away than a phone call. I love you," she'd said again before she hung up, and Pilar felt as though she'd gotten a gift from her. It was just a shame it had to be provoked by so much tragedy.

And through it all, their son woke and slept, and cried for his mother, and whenever she or Brad held him, he was happy and quiet. It was as though he already knew them.

"What'll we call him?" Brad asked her that night. They had named Grace, but they hadn't named her brother.

"I like the name Christian Andrew. What do you think?" she said sadly. The middle name was for the brother she hadn't known about until that day, and she had told Brad after her mother had told her.

"I like it." He smiled through his tears. It felt as though they had been crying all day, and they had. The day they had waited for for so long had turned into a day of mourning.

"Life is a mixed blessing, isn't it?" she said quietly as Brad sat beside her that night. He didn't want to leave her, but she thought he should go home. He looked worse than exhausted.

But he insisted he didn't want to leave her, and a nurse had wheeled a cot into the room in case he decided to stay. She thought they needed to be together.

"It's all so strange, you expect one thing and you get another, you pay a price for everything in life, I guess . . . the good, the bad, the dreams, the nightmares . . . it all comes rolled up together. Sometimes it's hard to tell them apart, that's the hard part."

Christian was to be their joy, and Grace their sorrow, and yet they had come to them together. She had wanted children so badly finally, and now she had lost one before she even started. It seemed to taint everything, and yet when she looked at Christian sleeping quietly beside her, life seemed infinitely worth living. And as Brad looked at her, he wondered how she'd gotten through it. It had been the worst agony he'd ever seen, and then at the end of it all, they'd lost a baby.

"Life is full of surprises," Brad said philosophically. "I thought I'd never recover from it when Natalie died." She had been Nancy and Todd's mother. "And then suddenly there you were, five years later . . . and I've been so happy with you. Life has a way of blessing us once it's punished us. I imagine Christian will be that way too. We've been hit hard . . . but perhaps he will be the greatest joy we share for the rest of our lives."

"I hope so," she said softly, looking down at him, and trying to forget the little face she would never see again . . . the baby she would always remember.

Christian cried lustily the day they left the hospital and took him home. Pilar dressed him before they left, in a little blue knit suit she had bought. She wrapped him carefully in a blue blanket and held him close to her, as a nurse rolled them downstairs in a wheelchair. A nurse's aide followed with a rolling table full of flowers. And all most people knew was that she had had the babies. No one knew that one of them died. And double everything had come in, in pink and blue, with little dolls and teddy bears and Raggedy Ann and Andy.

Brad drove them home, and they gently put Christian down in the bassinet in his room. Brad had already taken the second one out and put it in the garage. He didn't want Pilar to see it.

But she knew it had been there, and when she opened the drawers to put the baby's nightgown on, she found the little pink ones, too, and she felt as though her heart were being squeezed as she closed the drawers.

She almost couldn't bear it. So much sadness and so much joy all at once. It was impossible to forget that there had been two babies, and now there was only one. How would she ever forget her?

Christian was a good baby and easy to feed. Her milk had come in copiously, as though even her body wasn't aware that there were no longer two babies. And she held him as she nursed and sat in the rocking chair in his room and Brad watched her.