Car Crash Neglect Christmas Divorce novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Get Out

Maddy is born by emergency cesarean and Dean arrives asking whether Brandy can wait in the lobby; Claire tells him to leave, and Brandy appears at the door with flowers.

I woke up in a recovery bay with a tube taped to my hand and a hollow, sore feeling where my daughter had been.

A nurse with silver glasses was writing numbers on a whiteboard.

"Welcome back, Ms. Gruber. You had a placental abruption. We took her out by emergency cesarean at five-oh-two."

"Her," I said.

"A girl. Four pounds, six ounces. She cried, and she's in the NICU right now getting oxygen."

I put my hand on my stomach, and it was flat and wrong under the blanket.

"Is she going to live?"

"She's breathing on her own with a little help. The neonatologist thinks she has a very good chance."

I cried for a minute, quietly, and the nurse handed me tissues and didn't hurry me.

Then she cleared her throat.

"Your husband is here. The paramedic who brought you in texted him the floor. Do you want him to come in?"

I looked at the clock above the door.

It was seven-forty.

He had been two floors below me for hours.

"Yes," I said. "Send him in."

Dean came through the curtain with his coat over his arm and a paper cup of coffee in his hand.

He looked tired and handsome, and he had a smear of makeup on his collar.

"Claire. Thank God. They said you were in surgery."

"I was."

"I got here as fast as I could." He put the coffee down on my tray, and I saw that the cup said Brandy in black marker. "How's the baby?"

"She's alive."

"Oh, that's great. That's amazing." He sat on the edge of the bed, and the mattress dipped and pulled at my stitches. "Listen, I have to ask you something, and I don't want you to get upset."

I waited.

"Brandy's parents are in the lobby. Brandy is really shaken up, and I don't want her sitting out there alone. Would it be okay if she came up and waited with me in here?"

The monitor beside me beeped steadily.

"Dean," I said. "Where was your car at four o'clock?"

"What do you mean?"

"The text you sent me at twenty past two said she had a little accident in the parking lot. You said you'd see me at home."

"Yes. In the lot. She backed into a pole."

"And that's why you left me standing outside the clinic."

He rubbed his forehead.

"I was going to come back for you. Then she started crying, and her mom and dad were two hours out, so I couldn't just leave her."

"I'm not asking about two o'clock," I said. "I'm asking about four. I was bleeding in a car on the highway, and you told me to stay calm."

"I didn't know it was that bad."

"I said the word bleeding."

"People say they're bleeding all the time, Claire. You've been so anxious for months." He took my hand, the one without the line in it. "The doctors said your blood pressure was high. You were probably panicking."

I looked down at his fingers on mine.

I had loved his hands for five years.

"The doctor took our daughter out of me in an emergency," I said. "She weighs four pounds and six ounces."

"And she's okay now. Isn't that what matters?"

"Did you go look at her?"

He blinked.

"I wanted to see you first."

"You've been in this building for three hours, Dean. You didn't come to see either of us."

"That isn't fair. I was dealing with Brandy's family, and I texted the whole time."

"You texted who?"

He took his hand back.

"What do you want me to say?"

"I want you to say her name."

"Whose?"

"Your daughter's."

He opened his mouth, and nothing came out, because we hadn't picked one yet.

I had a list on my phone. Three names. He had said he didn't have a preference and that I should choose whatever I liked.

"Claire," he said. "You're exhausted. Let's not do this tonight."

"Then do this," I said. "Take your coffee with Brandy's name on it, and get out of my room."

"You can't be serious."

"I'm going to ask the nurse to put one name on my visitor list. It isn't yours."

"I'm your husband."

"You were not here."

The nurse with the silver glasses had stopped writing on the whiteboard, and she was looking at the floor very carefully.

Dean stood up. His face went flat, the way it did in meetings when someone told him no.

"Fine," he said. "You'll feel differently when the hormones settle. I'll go sit with Brandy, and we'll come back in the morning."

"Don't come back with her."

He laughed once, short and disbelieving, and left through the curtain.

I heard him say, "She's upset," to somebody in the hall.

A woman answered him in a soft, sorry voice.

"Oh, the poor thing. Of course she is."

The curtain moved again.

Brandy Lorimer stood in the opening in a long camel coat, her auburn hair brushed over one shoulder. She was holding a pot of white poinsettias with a red bow.

She had a clean white bandage wrapped around her left wrist, and it looked brand new.

"Claire, sweetheart," she said, with her eyes already full. "I am so, so sorry. I brought you something."

The nurse stepped between us.

"Ms. Gruber, I'm sorry to interrupt." Her voice had changed. "The NICU just called. Your daughter's oxygen level dropped, and they need a parent there right now."

I tried to sit up.

The incision pulled hard, and the room went white at the edges.

"Get me a chair," I said. "Get me a wheelchair now."

Behind her, Dean and Brandy both took a step toward me.

"Neither of you," I said.

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