On Mystic Lake

Dr. North nodded. “She still has a lot of hurdles to overcome, Annie, but she’s alive. Would you like to see her?”

Annie clamped a hand over her mouth and nodded. She was crying too hard to answer any other way.

Blake stood aside as the doctor helped Annie into the wheelchair stationed in the corner. Then, feeling left out, he followed them down the hallway and into the neonatal ICU.

Annie sat huddled beside the incubator. Inside the clear plastic sides, the baby lay as still as death, a dozen tubes and needles connected to her thin red arms.

Blake came up beside her and laid a hand on her shoulder.

She looked up at him. “I’d like to call her Kathleen Sarah. Is that okay?”

“Sure. ” He glanced around—up, down, sideways, anywhere except at the incubator. “I’m going to get us something to eat. ”

“Don’t you want to sit with us?”

He didn’t look at the baby. “I . . . can’t. ”

Annie didn’t know why she was surprised, or why it hurt so deeply. Blake was no good with tragedy or fear; he never had been. If the emotions couldn’t fit in a neat little box, he pretended they didn’t exist. She would have to handle this in the way she’d handled every upset in her life: alone. Dully, she nodded. “Fine. Get yourself something. I’m not hungry. Oh, and call Natalie. She’ll want to know what’s happening. ”

“Okay. ”

After he left, she reached through the bagged opening in the incubator’s side and held her baby’s hand. Though she couldn’t feel the skin, she could still remember the velvety softness. She tried not to think about Adrian, and the four futile days she’d sat beside him in a room exactly like this one, mouthing the same useless prayers, crying the same wasted tears.

Katie’s hand was so damned small and fragile. Annie tucked her fingers around the minuscule wrist. For the next hour, she talked, hoping that the familiar sound of her voice would soothe her daughter, make her know that even in this brightly lit new world full of needles and breathing machines and strangers, she wasn’t alone.

She couldn’t have said later what she talked about, what she dredged up from her frightened soul to spill onto that austere, frightening plastic box.

But it didn’t take long for the words to dry up, taking the false optimism with them.

Finally, the nurses came and took her away. They reminded Annie that she needed to keep her strength up, that she needed to sleep and eat. Annie had tried to argue with them—didn’t they know that she couldn’t? Not while her precious newborn was struggling for every breath of life.

But of course, she went back to her room, climbed back into her narrow, uncomfortable bed, and stared at the blank walls. She called Stanford and talked to Natalie, who had booked a flight for Friday evening—right after her big Oceanography test. Then she’d called both Hank and Terri.

When the calls were done, Annie lost her strength. She kept thinking about those tiny red fists and the legs that looked like strands of spaghetti, and she closed her eyes. The pain in her chest was so great, she wondered if she could withstand it, or if this old heart of hers would simply seize up and die.

Somewhere, a phone rang. The sudden, blaring sound jarred her from her thoughts. Blinking, she glanced around, realized it was the phone beside her bed.

She picked up the phone and answered dully. “Hello?”

“Annie? It’s Nick. Your friend Terri called me . . . ”

“Nick?” That’s all she said—just his name—and the floodgates opened. She couldn’t hold it in anymore. “Duhdid Terri tell you about the baby? My beautiful little girl . . . oh, Nick . . . ” She sobbed into the telephone. “She only weighs five pounds. Her lungs aren’t fully developed. You should see all the needles and . . . ” She cried until there were no more tears inside her, until she felt exhausted and drained and inexpressibly old.

“Where are you?”

“Beverly Hills Memorial, but—”

“I’ll come right down. ”

She closed her eyes. “You don’t have to do that. I’ll be fine, really . . . Blake’s here. ”

There was a long, scratchy silence between them, then finally, Nick said, “You’re stronger than you think you are. You can get through this, whatever happens, you can get through it. Just don’t forget. ”

She wiped her eyes. “Forget what?”

“The rain,” he said softly. “It’s an angel’s tears. And every glass you’ve ever seen is half full. Don’t let yourself forget that. I know what it does to a person . . . forgetting that hope is out there. ”

She almost said, I love you, Nick, but she held the words back just in time. “Thanks. ”