Found and Lost (13 page)

23

Unlike Belinda, Khloe, and Marcus, Violet wasn't destined for sleep tonight. Hours after Marcus lumbered off down the hall and Lee dismissed Belinda from the birthing room, Violet stood next to Wren's bed. She used Lee's phone to time contractions as well as the intervals between. Essentially, she was useless. Not like Lee couldn't time contractions herself. But of course, this wasn't about Lee needing help. She treated Violet like a cobweb. Mildly irritating, not worth brushing from the room, but definitely not expected to talk.

Time crept by, even with Lee and Wren's sporadic conversations. Somehow, both of them were able to chat while Lee pressed Wren's abdomen and checked between her legs. By now Lee had asked about Wren's family (brother, cousins, husband), job (receptionist for a dermatologist), and hobbies (horses and gardening).

After an hour of telling her own story, Wren propped up on one elbow and tilted her head at Lee. “My turn. Which hospital you work at?”

Lee shook her head. “Don't ask about me.”

The throbbing monotony of contraction, rest, contraction was wearing Violet's silence to the bone. She spoke for the first time in an hour. “Nothing dangerous, you mean?”

“Any detail could be dangerous.”

“Favorite color.” She shouldn't have said it. Lee would be annoyed. The pause lengthened.

“Teal,” Lee said.

Over the next hour, whenever Wren moaned through her teeth, whenever she curled a hand against her belly as if to press the pain away, Violet asked Lee a question. Each time, her apparently random timing eased the tension in Wren's body, and once brought a smile in the midst of a contraction.

“Favorite food?”

“Mexican.”

“Music?”

“Classical.”

“Pets?”

“Definitely not.”

Near seven-thirty, with a pink sunrise striping the carpet through the blinds, Wren tensed and started to pant again, and Violet started the timer. Forty-five seconds to a minute, and then Wren would relax against the pillows that propped her into a half-sitting position. She would rub her belly and catch her breath, and then in four minutes, everything would loop. Again.

But this time, Wren arched away from the pillows. Her hands squeezed the sheet, and she turned over onto knees and elbows. The low moan that had become the morning's soundtrack rose to a cry. Something flipped over, low in Violet's stomach.

“Lee?” Wren rocked forward and wailed.

Lee slid a hand between Wren's legs. “All right. You're fully dilated.”

Violet glanced at the forgotten timer. One minute, eight seconds.

“Ohhhhhhh.”

“You're doing well, Wren,” Lee said. “Breathe through it, the same way you did before.”

“Franklin, I want Franklin. Ohhh.”

“Breathe. Good. Good.”

One minute, twenty-five seconds.

Wren curled into a kneeling ball, panting hard. Too soon, before her breathing leveled, she moaned again. Violet checked the timer.

“Lee, it's only been two and a half minutes since the last one.”

Lee nodded. “All right. Wren, is this a comfortable position for you to push?”

Wren gripped the headboard in both hands and spread her legs.

Lee glanced at Violet. “Wash your hands.”

“What?”

“Now. Thoroughly. Count to thirty.”

Violet dashed into the suite bathroom and scrubbed her hands for thirty seconds. Longer than it sounded. She rushed back. Wren's nightgown was pushed all the way up her back, baring the lower half of her body. Violet focused on her upper half.

Lee knelt at the side of the bed, one hand between Wren's legs. “Push.”

Wren's body strained. Her head drooped between her arms. “Ohhhh, dear Jesus, help me.”

Violet stood by the rocking chair, ready with blankets and scissors and shoelaces, everything Belinda had compiled from Lee's list. She clenched her clean hands. Her own stomach cramped when Wren cried out. The next few contractions seemed to take longer than all the ones before them put together. If only Violet could help.

Lee, what's your favorite movie?
But her voice couldn't penetrate the pain swaddling this room.

“He's crowning, Wren. Push.”

“Ohhhhhhh!”

“Violet, come here.”

Violet darted to the bedside and crouched next to Lee. Fluid and blood glistened on the sheets.

“Be ready to catch him.”

Her heartbeat pounded through her whole body. Lee's face was a foot from hers.

“Violet. You have to look.”

She mustered the gall to glance between Wren's legs … at the head of wet, curly black hair. “That's the baby.”

“Yes,” Lee said. “One more contraction, maybe two. Be ready.”

“Aren't you going to catch him?”

“This is just a precaution. Hold your hands below mine.”

Wren's body tensed, strained.

“Wren,” Lee said. “It's time to meet him. Push.”

Wren gave a loud sob, and the baby slid into Lee's hands, slick and wet, staring and silent. Violet never had to move. Lee directed Wren to turn over and lie back against the pillows again, while she cradled the baby. A creamy sort of membrane was spread over most of his dark body.

“Blanket,” Lee said, and Violet grabbed one from the rocking chair.

Lee wrapped the baby up and set him on Wren's belly. He thrust a ball of fist up from the blanket folds and screamed. Wren caressed his hand.

“He's here.” Sobs shook her body.

Lee didn't pause from cleaning the baby and Wren. She didn't even look up from her task. “Yes, he is. Healthy and safe.”

Wren slid her hands under the blanket to cradle the baby. “Timothy Franklin Thomas. Our firstborn son. We tried for so long. I couldn't tell you before. I was afraid if I talked about it, how hard it was, he might never come. But he's here. We won't lose him? The Constabulary won't take him?”

“You're safe here,” Lee said.

“I need my husband. Oh, Franklin, we have a son.”

“Marcus will do everything he can.”

Wren rocked the baby in her hands. “Praise Jesus for all of you.”

Violet stepped back from the bedside, from the stinging gratitude. Her senses prickled, and she glanced up. Lee watched her. The calm, clinical caring of the last hours dropped away from Lee and exposed that same cold Violet had felt the first time the woman looked at her. Then she crossed to the rocking chair and picked up another blanket.

In a few minutes, Wren moaned as the last contraction rid her body of the placenta. She settled the baby on the loose flab of her belly and closed her eyes. “Can I nurse him? I want to nurse him.”

“Of course,” Lee said. She helped Wren work the nightgown over her head.

Neither of them seemed to notice or care that Wren now lay on the bloodstained sheet wearing nothing but a bra. Well, Lee must see naked bodies every day. Violet averted her eyes. When she next glanced at Wren, the bra had been removed as well, but Lee had draped a blanket over Wren's torso.

“We'll wait ten minutes or so to cut the cord,” Lee said.

“Thank you,” Wren said without looking up from Timothy's suckling lips.

In another few minutes, Lee finished examining Wren and straightened, tired satisfaction in her eyes. “Violet, let's try to find a heating pack for Wren.”

“Ohhh.” Wren rubbed low on her belly. “That would feel so good.”

Lee motioned Violet out the door without bothering to meet her eyes. If any breath of teamwork had blown through this room in the last five hours, it was gone again.

They found Belinda dozing in a chair in the living room. Her eyes shone at the news of the baby's safe arrival. She microwaved a gel pack and handed it to Lee, insisting that Lee let her know if she could do anything else to make Wren comfortable.

“Do you understand what happened this morning?” Lee said as Violet followed her back upstairs.

A right answer and a wrong one existed for that question.
“Wren had a baby”
obviously qualified as wrong. Unlike most people, Lee didn't answer her own question when silence piled up like a snow drift. They reached Wren's room, but Lee stood outside it, studying Violet.

“Um,” Violet said. “Wren had a baby.”

“Yes, she did. Without pain medication or a doctor or a sanitized environment. Because if she delivered in the hospital, her child would be taken from her and raised by someone else. Someone chosen by the state.”

“Or not, as long as she didn't preach at the nurses.”
Good grief, Lee.

“Hospitals require paperwork for admission. Patients have to mark their religious affiliation before they're treated, and Christians refuse to deny their faith.”

Oh. Violet crossed her arms against the blast of cold from Lee's voice. Her own voice sounded small and stupid. “I didn't know that.”

“The government has effectively denied them medical treatment. Or they can be treated and then transferred to re-education.”

Violet closed her eyes, but she could still see it. Wren, a mother who wanted her baby more than anything else, crying as a man in a gray uniform carried him away. Or Britney, a friend from school, who'd fractured her arm last year so badly that pieces of bone broke through the skin. Violet had signed her cast. If her parents had been Christians, what would have happened to her?

Re-education, of course.

“If Marcus hadn't confiscated your phone, you would have texted this address to the Constabulary. Correct?”

Violet's voice wobbled. “That's what I was supposed to do. Yeah.”

“Have you seen anything that would support what you've been taught about Christians?”

Violet opened her eyes. The steel-eyed statue in front of her hadn't moved.

“I've only been here two days.”

“Long enough to observe. To begin basing your opinions on reality.”

“You said … denied ‘them' medical treatment. You're not a Christian, either?”

“I'm not.”

“So why are you doing this?”

“It needs to be done.” Lee reached for the doorknob of Wren's room but then paused. “Your small talk was helpful. You calmed Wren several times without knowing it.”

“I knew. That's why I kept asking you stupid stuff.”

The inscrutable eyebrows lifted, and the flash behind her eyes could have been respect, if Violet were someone else. Then it vanished.

“I'll keep one of the cordless phones with me and leave it on Talk, so you won't be able to call out. And we'll have to sleep in the same room, so I can rig the door from inside.” At the last part of her plan, Lee's voice and expression withdrew more than usual.

Violet shook her head. “You don't have to do that. I'm not going to leave Khloe.”

“You believe we would harm her?”

“You'd tell her what I did.”

Lee studied her. “Eventually, she will find out.”

“I know. But not yet. And I'm going to be the one who tells her. Not anybody else.”

Not until Violet said the words did she know their truth. She could never escape without her friend, even if Khloe was safe here and she wasn't. She'd dragged Khloe into the stickiest quagmire of their lives, and she owed Khloe more than abandonment.

“Besides,” she said, as more truth filled her. “I don't leave my friends.”

No, you just ruin their lives with re-education.

Lee nodded. “All right. I'll set my phone alarm to go off every thirty minutes and check on you.”

“Lee, seriously, you can …”
Trust me? Right.

“Go to sleep, Violet.”

24

Violet tried to obey Lee's parting order. She slid into bed and stared across the room at Khloe's sleeping face.
Wake up, Khloe.
No. Better that Khloe kept up her summer habits and slept until noon. Or until Violet could tell her the truth. Every conversation they had from now until then would be a sort of lie.

The first time Lee leaned into the room, Violet met her eyes. Lee nodded and disappeared. After that, Violet dozed and dreamed a full confession after which Khloe hugged and forgave her. Around 10:00, she jerked awake and rolled over so that she no longer faced her friend.

Forget this. If she was awake, it was for a reason. Maybe she should search for more information. About something. Anything.
“It needs to be done.”
Not that Lee would say that about this particular task. And she'd better not wander far, or Lee would sound the alarm when she wasn't in bed.

The house lay under a spell, bright daytime outside and slumbering people inside. Clocks ticked too loudly in the hall. Violet passed a room with a cracked-open door and peered inside. Marcus slept face down on top of the covers. The floor was strewn with all four pillows from the bed as well as his gray-and-black tennis shoes. She padded farther down the hall and passed Wren's room. Feeble fussing and Wren's quiet “shh” slid under the door.

Violet kept going, farther down the hallway than she'd walked before. She'd walk to the end, then return to her room. The weight of the dream should be shed by then. Okay, here, the last bedroom.

Wait.

Low crying came from the other side of the door. Violet opened it and stepped into the room.

Lee?

Under the brightly patterned quilt, she lay on her back. Her hands curled at her sides. Her breathing labored with dry sobs, but she was asleep.

“Lee,” Violet whispered.

Lee twitched, whimpered, but didn't wake up.

“Hey.” Violet crossed the room. “Lee, wake up. Wake up.”

She gasped and sat up. Her eyes darted around the room, past Violet without seeing. “Marcus.”

Whoa. Had he done something to produce Lee's nightmare? But they'd been so unguarded with each other before.

“It's okay,” Violet said. “You were dreaming.”

Lee curled into herself, knees up. Her unblinking eyes saw something other than the dove-gray walls and the window blinds and the floral painting hung above the bed. She breathed too fast, inhaling almost before she released the last gulp of air.

“Hey.” Violet sat on the bed next to her. Probably shouldn't touch her, though. Or maybe she should.
What do I do?
This wasn't a normal nightmare.

“Marcus?”

“Hey, Lee, I'm not Marcus. I'm Violet. Can you hear me?”

A blink. Lee's eyes found hers, and a lost crease gathered between them.

“It's Violet. You're at Belinda's house. You had a nightmare, you were sort of crying.”

Lee jolted from the bed to her feet in a smooth motion that defied her rough breathing. “Go.”

“Were you asking for Marcus?”

“No.”

Violet stood and almost missed the flinch in Lee's shoulders. Way too jumpy. No way she was scared of Violet. The fear had to be leftover from the nightmare.

Violet backed toward the doorway. “Can I help at all? I could get Marcus.”

“Don't wake him. Just go.”

“Then I'll get Belinda. She'll know what to—”

Lee's eyes shot icicles. Her hands clenched at her sides. “I said no.”

Okay. Privacy. Respect that. Violet nodded.

Lee nodded back and collapsed to her knees.

The carpet burned Violet's shins as she dropped and skidded closer. Lee thrust an open hand right in her face.

“Get out!”

The glare no longer fit Lee's face, like a poorly fitted mask that cracked at every seam when forced onto the person's true features. Yet Violet had almost believed it, almost walked out on this woman while she trembled and struggled to breathe.

A lump filled Violet's throat. “I'll only stay for a minute, until you're better, okay?”

“I'm fine.”

“Which is why your legs just caved in.”

“Please go.”

“As soon as you can breathe again.”

Lee tried to stare her down. The seconds piled on, and Violet held her gaze until Lee shuddered and turned away. She cupped her hands and breathed into them. Minutes crept along. Violet scooted back and sat against the farthest wall. Lee could have her space bubble. She just wasn't allowed to crouch there and hyperventilate all by herself.

Maybe ten minutes later, maybe a little less, Lee's hands lowered and spread open on her knees. Her eyes held a flat exhaustion.

“Lee?”

Her legs coiled beneath her as if to push to her feet, but she must have not trusted them. She leaned against the nightstand and stretched them out in front of her, one at a time. The movements were off somehow, floppy, the way Violet moved after a night of the flu, when pulling a shirt over her head took every ounce of strength left in her muscles.

“Please … go.” The voice barely carried across the room.

“Okay.” Violet stood, but Lee looked … well, like a different person. Shrunken and brittle. “Maybe if you told me about it, what you dreamed? It could help?”

Releasing a nightmare always helped Violet. She could sleep again after she gave the darkness words. But Lee's face froze, then blanked.

“Lee?” After five minutes of silence, Violet backed from the room. “I'll leave you alone now, okay? You'll be okay?”

Not even a blink. Violet retreated to her own room and crawled under the covers. Somehow, she had failed Lee. And for some reason, that mattered.