Jodie sat next to the hospital bed watching the purple plasma slowly drain into her sleeping sister’s arm. This experience of watching blood flow into Penni’s body was more frightening than that of watching it flow out. Perhaps this was only because now she had the time to reflect on the situation, wasn’t immersed in the struggle to save her sister and her niece.
But she guessed there was more to her disquiet than just circumstances. That life-restoring liquid had been drawn from someone’s arm maybe nearby or faraway, recently or some time ago, checked and double-checked and barcoded and safely inventoried to be prescribed and drawn from storage and labeled for release and billing and hung on this stainless steel IV tree and connected to the shunt already inserted and taped to Penni’s arm to boost her hemoglobin count and thereby her body’s ability to transport dissolved oxygen to all the living tissue within her, that was her. The clinical order and structure of the process on this side, the reinsertion of blood, was so radically different from the process on the other side, the loss of that same blood, as to be two separate realities. And while she might one day learn the order and structure of life on this side, the only one she knew and therefore the only one she was comfortable with was the disorder and randomness and sometimes chaos of life on the other side, where life poured out along with blood from her sister’s womb, from around her emerging baby’s head. She’d learned long ago to be comfortable with chaos. Tidy order and planning would take some training.
Randall had finally got her messages and rushed over shortly after they’d been moved up to Maternity. He’d stopped by the room, kissed his sleeping wife’s lips then forehead, and checked her vitals indicated on the monitor. “She’s going to be fine,” he said, to which Jodie had replied simply, “I know.” He thanked his sister-in-law for tending his wife through the crisis, though his eyes narrowed just a bit when he’d said “I’m told you delivered the baby.” Jodie nodded and laughed. “But don’t ask me to do it again.” Randall had replied, “I won’t” before rushing off to find his daughter and check on her condition.
As Jodie drifted off into an open-eyed slumber of her own, her phone chirped its signal for an incoming text. Part of her, maybe most of her, wanted to ignore the message. Hadn’t she done enough for one day (and it wasn’t even nine in the morning)? But some other part of her, newborn as her niece two floors below, accepted the obligation to pick up the text. She pulled the phone out of her bag and saw New Message from Leah’s Cell posted on the screen. She suddenly realized she’d not yet shared news of the birth with her mother or aunt. Had Randall thought to call them? She hoped that would be the message—Congratulations! Well done! Send pics!—but somehow knew it wasn’t. She opened the text.
Brooke worse. Don’t alarm Penni. Call when you can. Love Leah.