He
left and moved away.
Her mother had died the year before.
Her father had been gone since she was a teenager.
No siblings.
No close relatives nearby.
She went into labor at four in the morning.
She drove herself to the hospital until contractions became too strong, then called an ambulance from a gas station.
She gave birth that morning.
It was a little girl.
Six pounds and something.
She was healthy, but Anna wasn’t.
Something went wrong afterward.
Bleeding.
Then more bleeding.
Then a series of words James had
clearly heard from doctors but couldn’t repeat properly.
She deteriorated fast.
“How did they call you?” I asked.
That was the part I couldn’t understand.
James swallowed.
“They didn’t at first.”
A nurse came out of the room while he was still talking.
She had a clipboard held against her chest.
She looked between us.
“Are you his wife?”
“I am.”
She nodded gently.
“Ma’am, I think this may help.”
Help what? I almost asked.
Instead, I waited.
“When she was going, we asked her whether there was anyone we
could call.”
My chest tightened.
“She wasn’t fully conscious by then,” the nurse continued. “Not really. But she kept saying one name.”
She tipped her head toward James.
“His.”
I looked at him.
James looked at the floor.
“Over and over,” the nurse said. “Nothing else.”
Eleven years.
She’d married another man.
Built a whole life.
Been abandoned inside it.
And at the end of everything, the only name she could reach for was a boy she’d trusted with her future half a lifetime earlier.
My first thought should probably
have been jealousy.
It wasn’t.
I thought about fear.
A woman dying alone.
A newborn baby a few rooms away.
No mother.
