The doctor is a younger white woman with unruly red hair and a thick Yankee accent, one I’ve never actually heard anywhere other than TV. “Mr. Leroux?” she asks.
“Yes, yes. And this is my other daughter, Ramona.”
She nods twice, once at Dad and once at me. “I’m Dr. Donahue. I see your daughter Hattie has been receiving care at the free pregnancy clinic in Eulogy.”
My dad’s face is a puzzle. He has no clue. I love our dad, but he sort of dropped out of the parenting game once Hattie started using tampons. As far as he’s concerned, babies miraculously appear, especially when they come out of his own daughter’s vagina.
“Yes,” I interject. “She’s been going for regular checkups. She and the baby are perfectly healthy. That’s what they said at the last visit.”
“Well, it seems they missed a few things. Actually, this happens quite a lot with these clinics. You can’t blame them, though. They don’t always catch some of the more advanced complications, and—”
“Is she okay?” I interrupt. “Is my sister okay?”
“Yes. For now, she and the baby are stable. She’s still bleeding, but it’s beginning to taper off. Mr. Leroux, your daughter has a condition called placenta previa. Basically,what this means is that the placenta is covering the opening of Hattie’s cervix.”
I can see my dad’s eyes glaze over a little.
Dr. Donahue goes on to explain how this can cause extreme bleeding, and that Hattie will have to have a C-section when the time comes to deliver the baby, because she’s so high risk, and that she’ll be on bed rest for the remainder of the pregnancy.
We leave Freddie in the waiting room and follow Dr. Donahue to my sister’s room. Hattie sits up in bed, propped up by pillows. She’s hooked up to an IV, and the minute I see her there, the tears start again.
I push past Dad and Dr. Donahue and pull her into my arms. “Are you okay?”
I can feel her trying not to cry, but it doesn’t work.
“I’ll leave you three alone,” says the doctor.
My dad sits down on the bed lightly, like he’s scared he might somehow break Hattie. He squeezes her foot. “Baby, baby, baby. You’re gonna be fine.”
“I can’t work anymore,” Hattie says through sobs. “They said I can’t work until after the baby’s born. It’s only January. The baby isn’t due until April. How am I supposed to buy diapers or—or baby clothes and formula? Tyler isn’t answering my calls, and—”
“Hey,” I say. “Hey, we’ve got you.” Hattie’s life is a tightrope, and I’m the net underneath. Sometimes she forgets I’m even there. But I am.
My dad scoots farther down the bed and touches hishand to Hattie’s belly. “It’ll all work out,” he says. “Always does.”
He says that, but sometimes it doesn’t work out. Sometimes you’ve gotta make it work out, and I think that’s what my dad never quite got. That’s why we’re still living in the same deteriorating trailer that was only ever meant to be a temporary fix.
Hattie nods into my shoulder. “It was like a freaking horror movie this morning,” she says. “Blood everywhere. And I couldn’t get ahold of either of you.” She shakes her head. “I called you both before I even called nine-one-one.”
“You’re crazy,” I tell her.
She looks up at me, and I’m reminded of how much smaller than me she is. Despite our ages, she will always be the little sister. “You’re my nine-one-one,” she tells me.
I pull her knotted hair back away from her face. She looks so unlike herself in this moment. No makeup. Greasy hair. It’s almost as if the makeup and the hair—it’s all an armor. The protection she wears to survive it all. Here, in this hospital bed, flanked by me and Dad, Hattie can be the mousy version of herself who is scared and doesn’t have the ability to trust that it will all magically work out. Because it might not.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I am so sorry I didn’t have my phone on me.” I kiss her forehead. “I am always here for you. Always.”
THIRTY-FOUR
I sit with Freddie, Adam, and Ruthie in the courtyard at school. The three of them are busy working on their senior pages for the yearbook.
“How can I say ‘Eat a dick, EHS,’ but in a more eloquent way?” asks Ruthie.
“Uh, yeah,” says Freddie. “I think that’s as eloquent as it gets.”
“Say it in French,” Adam says. “No one will ever know what it actually says, and it’ll look classy.”
Ruth points to Adam. “Okay, that’s actually a good idea.”
