2
A few weeks after the premiere of The Hall Surprise, Maddy finished writing her screenplay. She emailed it to Zack, who loved it but had some notes on the character of Max Sandoval, so she spent the next few weeks revising. She had decided to title it Pinhole.
One night in May, she was sleeping next to Steven when she was awakened by Steven’s voice. He was on his phone, and though it was only ten P.M., according to the clock, she had already been asleep a few hours. He went downstairs, and when he came back, she said, “Is everything all right?”
“It was Ryan,” he said. “He’s going through a really hard time.”
“I thought you guys didn’t speak.”
“He got back in touch.” He said Ryan had done a crime picture set in 1930s Atlantic City and was upset by his poor reviews. He had gotten involved in a restaurant deal and lost a chunk of money. And his parents had just split up after forty-two years of marriage.
Maddy didn’t care what was going on in Ryan Costello’s life and wished her husband would never speak to him again. “Anyway,” Steven said, “I’ve never heard him this down before. I’m going to take him out on Jo for a couple of days next week.”
As soon as he said the name of the boat she felt a wave of nausea and her first thought was that maybe it was labor. “But I’m due in a month.”
“That’s a long time away. You’ll be fine.” He fell asleep soon after, but she stared at the ceiling a long time.
Over the next couple of nights, Maddy began to have strange dreams. Sometimes they were just old nightmares, like the car-driving dream. But others were sexual. Dan was in many of them, and old boyfriends from theater camp. Her very first make-out on top of a bunk bed. A tattooed jerk from her hallway, freshman year of Dartmouth, who had taken her virginity.
Sometimes after these dreams, when she awakened, she would notice that her panties were wet. Soaked through. She figured the erotic dreams were about the past versus the present. Stress over the change about to come. She and Steven hadn’t agreed on a boy’s name or a girl’s name, and she was anxious about it.
One morning when she woke up and came downstairs for breakfast, woozy from fitful sleep, Steven said this was the day he was taking Ryan on Jo. She hadn’t quite forgotten, but as the days had passed and he hadn’t mentioned it, she had convinced herself that he might not go.
“Look how big I am,” she said. “Do you have to leave?”
“You’re going to be fine. It’s just three days. To Catalina.”
“Do it after the baby.”
“He’s going to Vancouver for a movie, and this is the only window we both have.”
“What if something happens? At least take your phone.”
“Nothing is going to happen.”
“Fine, but will you take your phone anyway?” She gripped both of his shoulders. “Just this one time. Please.”
He kissed her gently on the mouth. “Anything for the mother of my child.”
He took off in the Mustang. The house was empty and bleak. In the morning, she ran a few errands, arriving home at one for lunch. Around three, she got drowsy. She got in bed to take a nap and dreamed that she was on Jo with Steven and the young Alex from the glossy photo. Steven was the Steven of now, but Alex was in his twenties. The men were kissing and she was yelling at them to stop, but they couldn’t hear her and went down to the cabin.
She was awakened by a sharp pain in her uterus. Not the mellow kind, like the Braxton-Hicks contractions she had felt before, but a deep, awful one, far worse than her most painful period. The sheets were sticky. She ripped off the comforter and saw a pool of yellowish liquid.
She dialed Steven on his cell, and it rang until it went to voice mail. She left a frenzied message saying she was in labor. She dialed Dr. Baker and said she thought her water had broken. Dr. Baker said to come to the hospital. Maddy called Zack and then Kira, not sure why, but wanting a woman there. Kira was strong and could help her. The Moon and the Stars didn’t matter now. Maddy left another message for Steven and then dialed Alan, who arrived in twelve minutes in the Highlander. She threw together a bag with toiletries, a few changes of clothes, and slippers before waddling out to the car.
Everything that happened in the two hours after her arrival felt like a wrong turn. The contractions were coming more strongly now, and Dr. Baker put her on an antibiotic drip to prevent infection. Then there was another drip, an IV, she heard someone say. It seemed like tubes were coming out of her everywhere, and when she moved, the drips had to move with her, and the pain, the pain, she wanted to do it naturally, she did the Lamaze breathing she had learned in class with Steven, but the pain was brutal and unfamiliar. She watched Dr. Baker watch a monitor and shake her head. “Late decel.” And the doctor was gone, returning with a nurse, who was removing one of the drips. Maddy thought that could be good, fewer drips had to be better.
“Maddy, the baby isn’t responding well to the Pitocin, and we don’t have a lot of time because your water broke.”
“Can’t I push? I want to push. I want a normal birth.”
“We have to get the baby out because of the risk of infection. We have to do a C-section. You’ll be fine. We’re going to give you a mini-prep and then we’ll go to the OR.”
“But I don’t want surgery!” she cried, suddenly afraid she might die. This wasn’t the way she had envisioned it.
“We have to take care of the baby. You’re both going to be fine.”
While she was talking, Zack had come in. His first words were “Where’s Steven?”
She shook her head violently. “He’s on the sailboat with Ryan Costello. You have to find him. Call your mother. His phone is on silent or something. Have them radio him from the yacht club. Bridget will know who to talk to. Or have them call the Coast Guard.”
“You don’t want me to stay with you?”
“I want you to bring him here.”
Zack was gone and a new nurse was in the room, a pretty Mexican girl, shaving Maddy’s pubic hair. And then she was on a gurney like in a television hospital show, and they weren’t quite running but moving her quickly, and Kira was beside her in the hallway, saying, “I got here as fast as I could.” Maddy was numb, not weeping, just thinking about the next moment, getting the baby out of her alive, there was no room to cry, this was happening, they were going to cut it out of her.
“Where’s Steven?” Kira asked.
“He’s on the boat, Zack’s trying to find him. Can you come in the operating room?” Maddy looked up pleadingly at the doctor.
“She can come in,” Dr. Baker said.
“What if something goes wrong and I don’t make it?” Maddy cried out to Kira. “I don’t want to die.”
“You’re not going to die. You’re going to be fine.”
And then a nurse was guiding Kira away. They would have to put her in scrubs because it was an operating room and it would be sterile.
An Israeli anesthesiologist injected something into Maddy’s back after telling her she had to stay very still. Then she was flat on her back with her arms extended like she was being crucified. A sheet went up in front of her, held between two poles. Kira was on one side of her and the anesthesiologist was on the other. Over the curtain was the baby’s team; she wasn’t supposed to watch because her guts would come out; they’d watched a video of a C-section in Lamaze . . .
The anesthesiologist was saying something about pressure, and she could hear Dr. Baker talking on the other side, and then there was a loud, startling noise. A baby’s cry, healthy and long. Piercing the din.