A Spark of Light(6)

Maybe God had been listening, because she had been released. But so were Joy, and Izzy, and Dr. Ward. And what about those who didn’t make it out alive? What kind of capricious God would roll the dice like that?

“Let me take you home and get you settled,” Allen said. And to the detective, “I’m sure Miz Deguerre needs a little rest.”

The detective looked directly at Janine, as if to see whether she was okay with Allen calling the shots. And why shouldn’t she be? She had done what he wanted from the moment she arrived in town, intent to serve his mission any way she could. And she knew that he meant well. “We’re more than happy to give you a ride wherever you need to go,” the detective said to her.

He was offering her a choice; and it felt heady and powerful.

“I have to use the restroom,” she blurted, another lie.

“Of course.” The detective gestured down the hallway. “Left at the end, and then third door on the right.”

Janine started walking, still clutching her foil blanket around her shoulders. She just needed space, for a second.

At the end of the hallway was another interrogation room, much like the one she had been in. What had been a mirror on the inside was, from this vantage point, a window. Joy sat at a table with a female detective.

Before she realized what she was doing, Janine was knocking at the window. It must have made a sound, because Joy turned in her direction, even if she couldn’t see Janine’s face. The interrogation room door swung open, and a moment later a female detective looked at her. “Is there a problem?”

Through the open doorway, she met Joy’s gaze.

“We know each other,” Janine said.

After a moment, Joy nodded.

“I just wanted to … I wanted to see …” Janine hesitated. “I thought you might need help.”

The detective folded her arms. “We’ll make sure she gets whatever she needs.”

“I know but—” Janine looked at Joy. “You shouldn’t be alone tonight.”

She felt Joy’s eyes flicker to the bandage at her temple. “Neither should you,” Joy said.

—


IN THE HOSPITAL ROOM, THERE was a piece of tape stuck to one of the slats of the air-conditioning vent overhead. It fluttered like a ribbon, like an improbable celebration, as Izzy lay on her back pretending she didn’t feel the doctor’s hands on her.

“Here we go,” the OB murmured. He moved the wand left, and then right, and then pointed to the fuzzy screen, to the edge of the black amoeba of Izzy’s uterus, where the white peanut of the fetus curled. “Come on … come on …” There was something urgent in his voice. Then they both saw it—the flicker of a heartbeat. Something she had seen multiple times in other women’s ultrasounds.

She let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.

The doctor took measurements and recorded them. He wiped the gel off her belly and pulled the drape down to cover her again. “Miz Walsh,” he said, “you are one lucky lady. You’re good to go.”

Izzy struggled onto her elbows. “Wait … so … that’s it?”

“Obviously, you’ll want to make sure that you don’t have any cramping or bleeding in the next few days,” the doctor added, “but given the strength of that heartbeat, I’d say that little guy—or girl—is planning on sticking around. Definitely takes after its mama.”

He said he’d write up some discharge orders and ducked out of the curtain that separated her ER cubicle from the others. Izzy lay back on the gurney and slipped her hands underneath the scratchy blanket. She flattened them on her stomach.

As soon as she had gotten outside the clinic, the EMTs had put her on a stretcher beside Dr. Ward, even as she had tried to tell them she wasn’t hurt. He would have none of it. “She’s pregnant,” he insisted. “She needs medical attention.”

“You need medical attention,” she argued.

“There she goes again,” Dr. Ward said to the young paramedic inspecting his tourniquet. “Won’t give me a moment’s peace.” He caught her eye. “For which,” he said quietly, “I am supremely grateful.”

That was the last she had seen of him. She wondered if he was in surgery; if he would keep the leg. She had a good feeling about it.

Maybe some people simply were destined to survive.

She had grown up with a chronically unemployed father and a mother who struggled to take care of Izzy and her twin brothers, in a house so small that the three kids shared not just a room but a bed. But for a long time, she didn’t even know she was poor. Her mother would take them on a spare change hunt. They’d go fishing for dinner. Occasionally they celebrated Colonial Week—when they used candles instead of electric lights.

When Izzy thought about her life, there was such a clear break between then and now. Now, she lived with Parker in a house three times larger than her childhood home. He was, on paper, the prince from the entitled family who’d fallen for a debt-ridden nursing-student Cinderella. They had met when he was in traction with a broken leg. Their first date, he liked to say, had been a sponge bath.

Parker had gone to Yale like his father and grandfather and great-grandfather. He had grown up in Eastover, the snobbiest neighborhood in the whole state. He went to private schools and dressed in miniature blazers and ties even as a child. He summered. Even his job—a documentary filmmaker—was possible only because of his trust fund.