Vow to Cherish Page 5

  After twenty minutes of nervous waiting, Ellen heard her name. She looked up to see the nurse standing in the doorway, an enigmatic expression on her face. The woman motioned to Ellen and led the way to a small room at the end of the hall.

  “Well, Mrs. Brighton, you are indeed pregnant. I hope that’s good news.” She glanced suspiciously at Ellen’s plain gold wedding band. “Of course you’ll need to make an appointment with your doctor to determine an accurate due date and make sure everything is progressing as it should.”

  She handed Ellen a small stack of pamphlets. Ellen muttered a thank-you, gathered her coat and purse, and made her way down the corridor that led to the street. She had walked the mile and a half from the apartment, and now, in spite of the biting cold, she welcomed the time it would take her to get home.

  As the confirmation of her suspicions sank in, Ellen was filled not with apprehension, but with the purest joy she had ever known. She was carrying the child of the man she loved more than anyone or anything in the world. She wanted to turn cartwheels and shout at the top of her lungs. She felt invincible. They would find a way around any obstacles to have this child. Their humble plans suddenly seemed insignificant in the face of this new life they had created.

  But as each step took her closer to the apartment—and John—her confidence dwindled. By the time she pushed open their front door, the joy had been displaced by uncertainty.

  The house still smelled like this morning’s bacon and eggs. John was sitting at the small table in the kitchen, reading the newspaper. They couldn’t afford a subscription to the Tribune, but Oscar and Hattie shared their paper with them each day. John looked up. “Hey, where have you—”

  Ellen burst into tears. “Oh, John, I’m pregnant!”

  His face registered shock, but no words came from his gaping mouth. He pushed the newspaper to the floor and stood up hesitantly. Then he gathered Ellen in his arms and held her as great sobs racked her thin frame. They stood that way for long minutes until finally he croaked, “Ellen, are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.” She gulped back her sobs. “I just had a test at the clinic. Oh, John, I’m sorry. I thought I was so careful.”

  He held her at arm’s length. “Ellen, is it that terrible? I mean, are you okay? Everything’s all right, isn’t it?” There was worry in his voice now.

  “Everything’s okay with the baby, but look what I’ve done, John. How will you ever go back to school now? How will we buy a car?” She pointed to the newspaper that lay tented on the floor. “We can’t even afford to buy a newspaper,” she wailed. “And where will we put the baby?” She dissolved into tears again, collapsing against his chest.

  He gave a quiet laugh that startled her and made her draw back and look into his eyes.

  “Um…excuse me, Mrs. Brighton, but if I remember my biology correctly, I get just a little credit for this, too!”

  Ellen smiled through her tears. “Oh, John…A baby! I’ve worried so much that you’d be upset…but…oh, honey, I’m so happy. I can’t help it. I want this baby—more than you can imagine.”

  John was thoughtful for a moment. “You’ve been acting really strange the last couple weeks. I couldn’t figure out what I’d done to upset you. Now it all makes sense.”

  She laughed. “Was I that obvious?”

  He nodded. “How long have you known?”

  “I started to get suspicious right after Christmas, but I didn’t know for sure until the test today. I know the timing is terrible, but I’ve been so happy thinking about this baby, I would have been crushed if the test had been negative. Is that awful of me?”

  “Honey, it’s…it’s wonderful! So we’ll have to change our plans a little. Will it really make any difference twenty years from now that we got a little behind on our big financial schedule? I’m just relieved that this is what has been eating you. I’ve felt like you were a million miles away lately, and I couldn’t figure out what I’d done.” His tone turned stern. “You should have told me. Don’t ever keep anything this important from me, El.” Softening, he took her face tenderly in his hands and touched his nose to hers. “I love you, Ellen Brighton.” He crushed her fiercely to himself. “Our baby will have the most beautiful mother in the world. This is a blessing.” He spoke the words like a decree.

  Catherine MaryEllen Brighton was born August 17 at five o’clock in the afternoon. After twelve hours of labor Ellen had given birth with relative ease, but as soon as the doctor announced it was a girl, the nurses whisked the baby out of the room with grim faces. John stood over her at the head of the delivery table, stroking hair away from her face while the doctor stitched her up.

  “What’s wrong?” Ellen asked. “Is my baby okay?”

  The doctor evaded her question. “The nurse will be in with a sedative.”

  “But my baby? Our baby…is she okay?”

  The doctor scooted his stool away from the foot of the bed and murmured something to the remaining nurse.

  Something was terribly wrong.

  Things went fuzzy then. Ellen gripped John’s hand, drifting in and out. She awoke to John’s gentle nudging and Dr. Jensen’s low voice.

  “I’m so sorry.” The doctor shuffled his feet and looked at the floor before meeting Ellen’s eyes. “Your baby died a few minutes ago. She was born with a severe heart defect. We did everything we could for her, but there was really never any hope. It was nothing you did…nothing you could have known or done anything about. Please don’t blame yourselves. This is a very rare occurrence, and there’s no reason you cannot have another healthy baby when Mrs. Brighton has recovered sufficiently.”

  Though Ellen was lying flat in the bed, the room started to spin. An oddly hushed buzzing pounded in her head. In the hour since the baby’s birth, she had tried to prepare herself for the possibility of this news, and had prayerfully, agonizingly given the child into God’s hands. But now the uncertain fear had become a cruel reality. The baby they had dreamed about, planned for and waited nine endless months for was gone before they could hold her in their arms. They had loved this baby before they had even felt her move within Ellen’s belly. Ellen felt the emptiness like a deep abyss. It was too much to bear. How could the doctor even speak about another baby? How could anyone be expected to survive such grief?

  John sat in a straight chair beside Ellen’s hospital bed. He had barely moved from this place for almost fourteen hours. Through a haze of grief Ellen watched him sitting there, his head buried in his hands, but she was too numb to reach out to him.

  Then suddenly summoning strength, she spoke, her voice fierce. “I want to see my baby.”

  “Mrs. Brighton…” The doctor seemed to grasp for words. “Do you…do you understand that your baby is gone?”

  “I understand. I just want to hold her one time.” Her voice broke. “Please don’t deny me that.”

  Dr. Jensen hesitated. “All right. It will be some time before they can bring her up to your room, but I’ll let them know your wishes.” The doctor scribbled a note on Ellen’s chart and left the room.

  At twilight a nurse brought the baby to Ellen’s room. The young woman—no older than Ellen—was teary-eyed and unable to speak, but she put the bundle gently in Ellen’s arms and left the young couple alone.

  Someone had dressed the baby in a tiny undershirt and booties and wrapped her in a soft pink blanket. Her face was translucent as fine porcelain, with blue veins tracing a pale web. She was perfect. She had fine auburn hair that curled around her neck and forehead. “Like yours, Ellen,” John said. His words were a gift.

  For half an hour they held their baby and marveled at her beauty. They counted her fingers and toes. They called her by her name and told her they loved her. And they said goodbye. It was almost more than they could bear when the nurse came and took the baby from Ellen’s arms and carried her forever from their lives. But John and Ellen never regretted having spent that sacred time with their firstborn. They often spoke of it as a blessing
, and they were to look back on those moments as the beginning of their healing.

  They buried Catherine in a tiny white coffin under an ancient oak tree in the Randolph family plot. The cemetery was a peaceful, secluded place in the country. It sat on a hill behind Ellen’s childhood church, surrounded protectively by a wrought-iron fence. As children, Ellen and her sisters had scaled the fence and played hide-and-seek there while their parents visited after Sunday services. It comforted Ellen to think of their baby in a setting from her own childhood.

  John and Ellen stayed with the Randolphs until the weekend. Ellen was feeling strong physically, though the fullness of her breasts and the dwindling flow of blood were constant reminders of how recently her baby had been cradled warm and safe in her womb. But it was heartening to be pampered by her mother and her sisters, and it was a bittersweet pleasure to share the farm with John. They walked in the fields and along the country roads for hours, praying together, talking out their feelings and planning how they would go on with their lives after this bitter disappointment. And somehow in spite of the sorrow, they knew there was a blessing hidden somewhere in the pain. They had a child in heaven. No one could take away the love that had grown in their hearts for this child, or the bond that had melded them together through the joy and the sorrow and the hope.

  When they got back to Calypso, Oscar and Hattie were there to offer their sympathy. They enveloped John and Ellen in warm hugs.

  “The good Lord has a reason for everything, child,” Hattie told Ellen. “Just give Him time and He’ll take care of the hurt. I speak from experience, you know. Time and God are mighty healers…you’ll see.”

  There were the nursery things tucked in the corner of the bedroom to deal with. On the first night they were back, John carried the cradle down to Oscar’s garage and then came up and sat on the bed as Ellen folded the blankets and packed the tiny sleepers and gowns into a cardboard box.

  Ellen warmed a can of tomato soup and set a package of stale saltines on the table, but they ate little. They prepared for bed wordlessly and fell asleep, exhausted, in each other’s arms.

  She awoke several hours later to find John’s side of the bed empty. Seeing the bathroom light was off, she padded silently into the living room and found him hunched over the desk, his head on his arms. At first she thought he had fallen asleep, but as she moved toward him she saw his shoulders heave and fall. And then she heard him. She stood there in agony, frozen, unable to move, while her husband sobbed like a child. Not knowing how to comfort him, she crept back to bed and lay quietly, sick at heart, until she finally heard him wash his face and come to bed. He pulled her to himself, not realizing she was fully awake. They lay together, her body curved to his, like nesting spoons, until at last she felt his even breaths on the back of her neck and knew he slept. She lay awake till dawn, aching more for her husband than for the child they had lost.

  Yes, there had been sorrowful times early in their marriage. And though it was a tired cliché, time and God really had healed their wounds. Of course, wounds left scars that would always be there, a testament to the pain they’d endured. Catherine’s death would forever be a tender spot in their memories. But John and Ellen had found comfort in the psalmist’s words, “Joy comes in the morning.”

  Now, as Ellen thrashed to the surface of reality, she wondered: Would there be a morning of joy to this dark night? Had their luck run out? The young wife and mother from those memories hadn’t believed in luck. But sometimes, when her thoughts blurred and the future turned murky, luck seemed easier to grasp than faith.

  Chapter Seven

  The receptionist pointed John and Ellen toward a small alcove near the elevators, and they took seats and waited there.

  Clinic waiting rooms were becoming far too familiar. Two more days of testing at Northwestern Memorial had still produced nothing definite. They’d waited an endless ten days for the last test results, and finally, they’d been called in for this consultation with Dr. William Gallia.

  Ellen sat erect and motionless on a gray metal chair, while John fidgeted in the seat beside her. He jumped up and paced to the window and back, picked up a magazine from the stack on a low table and leafed aimlessly through it, then tossed it back on the pile and resumed his pacing. It struck him that anyone watching them would have thought he was the patient.

  Finally a nurse appeared in the doorway. “Ellen Brighton?”

  Ellen looked up, obviously recognizing her name, but she didn’t move from her seat. John nodded to the nurse and took Ellen’s arm and led her, following the nurse down the unadorned hallway.

  Dr. Gallia’s office was cold and austere, like the man who inhabited it. The pungent odor of alcohol and disinfectant assaulted John’s nostrils. Once he would have perceived the odor as clean, even wholesome. Now it repulsed him, conjuring images of death and decay.

  The nurse motioned for Ellen to take a seat on the side of the examining table. John felt awkward and irrelevant, towering as he did over both women. He perched on the rolling stool at the foot of the table and then realized this was the doctor’s seat. Finally, he settled on a folding chair that had been hidden behind the open door.

  Ellen had not spoken since they got off the elevator. John wondered what she was thinking. The thoughts she’d given voice to lately were so inscrutable that some days he despaired of ever understanding her mind again.

  He’d tried to talk to her about the problems she was having. He knew she must be worried, too. They had always been able to talk things out with each other. But whenever he questioned her now—and he was always gentle about it—she’d pretend she hadn’t heard him, or she changed the subject. Or she would give him a quasi reply that had little to do with what he’d asked.

  The nurse took Ellen’s blood pressure, pulse and temperature, recording them on the chart in silence. Then without explanation or instruction, she left the room. John was becoming frustrated with the sterility—not only of the premises, but the personnel, as well. How out of place a warm smile would have been in this frigid clinic—but how welcome.

  Finally, after twenty minutes, Dr. Gallia tapped on the door and entered before either of them could respond. He was short of stature, with a fringe of white hair emphasizing the shiny baldness of his head. He wore wire-framed glasses low on his nose and looked over these as he addressed Ellen.

  “Hello, Mrs. Brighton. How are you feeling today?”

  Ellen spoke slowly, suspicion tingeing her voice. “I’m fine, I guess. I wish you people would figure out what’s wrong with me so I can get on with my life.”

  She didn’t sound like herself, and John wanted to apologize for her. Compared to her usual friendly manner, she seemed almost rude. But this man didn’t know Ellen, so John kept silent.

  Ellen seemed to have retreated to that place deep inside her mind where she fled so often recently.

  The doctor looked at the chart in his hands, appearing to avoid her eyes as he spoke. “Well, for starters, I’m going to have you answer a few questions.” He spent five or ten minutes going over the same questions Ellen had been asked by nearly every specialist they’d seen. He put her through a battery of simple questions about the day’s date and identifying simple objects like his watch and a pencil. As before, she answered the questions easily until the doctor asked her to spell a word backward, and count backward from one hundred.

  It was all John could do not to prompt her. The task seemed simple to him. He couldn’t imagine why Ellen was making it so difficult.

  Like the others, Dr. Gallia asked about Ellen’s daily routine and inquired about her health history. Didn’t they have these things on file? Why couldn’t these doctors get their information together and save themselves—and Ellen—the annoyance of going through the same routine all over again.

  Some of the questions were deflected to John. He answered as briefly and honestly as he could.

  Finally, the doctor closed the folder that held Ellen’s chart and abruptly left
the room without explanation.

  John thought it rude, but Ellen seemed not to notice.

  Dr. Gallia had a reputation for being one of Chicago’s finest neurologists, but John decided the man’s talents must lie in an area other than patient-physician rapport.

  After another ten minutes, a nurse—a different one than before—stuck her head in the door. “Would you come with me, please.”

  She led them down the hall to a small but handsomely appointed office. “The doctor will be with you in a few minutes.”

  They sat facing the desk, backs to the door, not speaking, like defendants waiting for a judge to sentence them—or acquit them.

  Dr. Gallia entered the room and situated himself at the desk. “Mrs. Brighton, Mr. Brighton, as you know, we have all the results back now from the tests that were completed at the medical center?” He spoke it like a question but didn’t pause for a response. “I’m very sorry to have to be the bearer of bad news, but all the test results are consistent with my original suspicion of Alzheimer’s disease. I assume you are familiar with the term?”

  Stunned, John nodded mechanically. He reached for Ellen’s hand and squeezed it.

  “Do you understand what I’m saying, Mrs. Brighton?”

  Ellen turned her head toward John, but her eyes glazed over and her gaze traveled beyond him. He knew she had not understood at all.

  Dr. Gallia apparently realized it, too, for he directed his next comments at John, speaking as though Ellen wasn’t in the room. And in many ways, she wasn’t.

  “It is rather unusual, though not unheard of, to see Alzheimer’s in someone as young as your wife,” the doctor said, shifting in his seat. “Unfortunately, we are beginning to see it more and more in people in their forties and fifties. You must understand that there isn’t a definitive test for Alzheimer’s, except with an autopsy.”

  Though John heard the doctor’s words clearly, they came as through a long tunnel, muffled and echoing harshly back at him.