PRESENT TENSE
Chapter Sixty-Four
Rose drove along the freeway toward Southland
in silence. Helga didn’t have much to say. Every few minutes she would look at
her watch, gauging the length of the contraction. In spite of her silence, her
eyes sparkled with excitement as they drew nearer to the hospital. In just a
few hours, she would have her baby.
As Rose drove up the off ramp from the
freeway, Helga looked at her watch again, her free hand resting on her
distended stomach. Just as Rose pulled up to the stoplight, Helga gave a
shocked exclamation.
"Oh! Oh, no."
"What? What is it?" They were only a
couple of blocks from the hospital. Rose looked at Helga to see what was wrong.
"My water just broke. I’m afraid your
passenger seat is soaked."
"Don’t worry about it." Rose turned
down the street toward the hospital. "It’s no worse than the bloodstains Jack
left on that seat." She glanced at Helga. "You are going to make it
to the hospital before you have the baby, aren’t you?"
"Since we’re there, I’m sure I
will."
"Oh, right." Rose had been so
concerned about Helga that she had almost driven past the hospital.
"Just drop me off at the hospital
entrance."
"I’m going to stay until the baby is
born. It isn’t everyday that one’s roommate has a baby."
"Well, go find a parking space, then.
But drop me off anyway."
Rose dropped Helga off at the hospital
entrance and hurried to join her. Helga was leaning on the admitting desk,
talking to the nurse there.
She turned when Rose came up behind her.
"They’ll admit me in a minute," she told her. "My doctor is on
her way." She wrapped her arms around her middle. "Finally, I’m going
to have this baby. It feels like I’ve been pregnant forever, even though it’s
only since last April. I just wish Fabrizio could be here to see the
baby."
"Maybe he knows," Rose responded.
"Maybe he’s watching right now, waiting for his son to come into the
world."
"I hope so. I really hope so. He would
have been so happy." Another nurse arrived with a wheelchair for Helga.
After sitting down, she looked up at Rose and asked, "Could you call Tommy
and Jack and let them know what’s going on? I think they’ll want to know,
too."
"Sure." Rose waited until Helga was
wheeled through the doors, then headed outside, pulling her cell phone from her
purse.
There was no answer to her first calls. Tommy
and Jack had not yet returned from the car show, and neither of them had their
cell phones on. Rose waited fifteen minutes, then tried calling home again.
This time, Tommy answered.
"Hello?"
"Tommy? It’s Rose."
"Jack and I found your note. Helga’s
having the baby?"
"Yes. She’s in Memorial Hospital. I’m
sticking around until the baby is born."
"We’ll be there as soon as we can. Helga
didn’t tell me it was Memorial Hospital she was going to have the baby
in."
"It’s the closest one."
"Right. I guess that makes sense.
Anyway, we’ll be there soon. Hang around."
"I’m not going anywhere. This is a
special event. How often does our roommate have a baby?"
"Not often," Tommy agreed.
"Listen, we’re going to get going now. Are you in the main waiting room or
the emergency waiting room?"
"The main waiting room. This isn’t an
emergency. Just a normal birth."
"We’ll see you in about forty-five minutes,
okay?"
"Great. See you."
Rose hung up the phone and headed back into
the waiting room, out of the still pouring rain.
*****
Jack and Tommy arrived about an hour later.
There had been an accident on the freeway, caused by the rain slick road, so they
had sat in traffic for quite a while before being able to move ahead.
Tommy rushed into the waiting room ahead of
Jack, concerned for his cousin. "How is she?" she asked Rose, who was
sitting in one of the chairs reading an ancient magazine.
"Fine, as far as I know," she told
him. "We can’t go up there with her—Helga doesn’t want an audience—but her
doctor promised to keep us informed. So far, so good."
"Good." Tommy sat down next to her.
Jack ambled in after him, taking off his coat and shaking the water droplets
from it.
"So, she’s fine so far?" he asked,
taking a seat on the other side of Rose. His voice was still a little hoarse
from the strep throat.
"Yes. Everything should be fine,
according to both her and her doctor. It just may take a while. Her water broke
on the way here, but apparently that’s not a sure indication of a quick birth.
It could take hours."
"I’m staying," Tommy told them.
"She’s my cousin, after all."
"Hey, we’re staying, too," Jack
spoke up. "She’s our roommate. While we’re waiting, does anyone want
something to drink?"
"No, I’m fine," Rose told him,
holding up her water bottle.
"I could use some coffee," Tommy
told him.
"One coffee and one Coke coming right
up." Jack looked at Rose. "You sure you don’t want something?"
"Well...get me some hot chocolate, if
the cafeteria has it."
"You sure you don’t want coffee?"
"One cup of coffee and I’ll be bouncing
around the waiting room. Hot chocolate is fine, or if they don’t have it, I’ll
stick to water."
"Okay." Jack got up and headed toward
the cafeteria, leaving Rose and Tommy to wait.
He returned about ten minutes later,
balancing their drinks.
"That was fast," Tommy commented,
taking his coffee from Jack.
"I know my way around. I’ve spent way
too much time here."
"No lie," Rose murmured, sipping
her hot chocolate. "You know, this definitely isn’t one of my favorite
places. It makes me think of waiting in fear, hoping that the person you’re
waiting for will make it, but fearing that they won’t."
"Like you waited for me—several
times."
"Yes. Like I waited for you. The first
time you were here, the doctor told me that your prognosis was very poor, and
that I shouldn’t get my hopes up. I couldn’t help hoping that you would come
out of that coma, though. I was so relieved when you did."
"And then I got sick, and tried to kill
myself, and you spent several hours waiting for me then."
"I was so mad at you. I couldn’t
understand why you would do something so stupid—in spite of the fact that I
tried it once myself."
"You tried to commit suicide once?"
Tommy asked, shocked.
"It was over a year ago, in November of
2002. I was overworked, under pressure, unhappy with my fiancé and my mother,
and I didn’t see any way out. So I tried to jump off the landing of the stairs
at Elias University." She glanced at Jack. "That was when Jack and I
first met. He talked me out of jumping, and then pulled me back over the
railing when I slipped. He saved my life."
Tommy shook his head. "No wonder neither
of you would talk about where you met, except to say it was at the Elias
University library."
"Well, please don’t spread it around
that I tried that. It was a bad idea, and one I’d rather not have
repeated."
"I won’t say a word," Tommy
promised. "I remember all those times waiting to see if Jack would be
okay, especially when he was in the coma, and when he had the brain
surgery."
"The brain surgery finally fixed
things," Jack told them. "At any rate, we’re not waiting to see if
someone will live or die this time. Helga’s having a baby. That’s a happy
event, and in a few hours we’ll get to visit with her and see the baby."
"It’s just a pity Fabrizio didn’t live
to see this," Rose said. "Helga was talking about how much she wished
he could be there, and how she hoped he could see the baby from wherever he
is." She paused. "At least the baby will have two good role models.
You two are the best uncles, or cousins, or whatever, a baby could ask
for."
"So I guess that’ll make you an
aunt."
Rose laughed at the idea. "An aunt
without having any siblings or in-laws."
"Well, you’ll be something to the kid.
I’ve heard her talking to the baby through that cardboard tube, describing his
cousin Tommy and his Uncle Jack and Aunt Rose," Tommy told them, trying
not to laugh at the memory of how Helga had tried to communicate with her
unborn child.
"She used to sing to the baby through
that cardboard tube, too," Jack commented, laughing at the memory.
"She learned the most polite of Rose’s folk songs and sang them to the
baby."
"I think the baby’s first words will be
sung," Rose added, laughing with them. "She told me to stop singing
my song from the musical because she didn’t want the baby to sing instead of
cry at birth, especially not a song like I Don’t Know How To Love Him."
"That would be weird," Jack agreed.
"It might just make the annals of medical miracles."
*****
The wait went on through the afternoon and
into the evening. The three walked down to the cafeteria to get something for
dinner, then returned to their vigil, waiting for the announcement of the
birth. They went through most of the magazines in the room and all of the bad
jokes Rose had learned from her step-grandfather, which had Tommy groaning and
begging Rose to stop and Jack laughing uproariously and egging her on, before
Helga’s doctor stepped into the waiting room just after 9:30.
"How is she?" Rose asked. Tommy and
Jack turned to look at the doctor as well.
"Your friend is fine. She has a healthy
baby boy, born at 9:08 PM. She said to tell you to come up and visit for a
short time before she falls asleep. It’s not usual hospital practice," she
added, "but Helga is well-known here and can get away with a few things.
Still, you’d better make it quick. Giving birth can be very tiring."
She turned and headed for the elevator,
followed by Helga’s three roommates.