Dance Away with Me(18)

Bianca was gone. His beautiful, fragile Bianca . . . His inspiration, his burden, his touchstone, his punishment . . .

He rubbed his eyes. Tried to ease the ropes strangling his chest. He’d hiked for miles in the dark, slogging through the trees and the frozen underbrush, barely staying above the flooding as he searched for an elusive cell signal. He had to get help. Had to make this end differently.

His flashlight battery had failed, but he’d kept moving, sometimes managing to avoid the fallen logs and tangled roots, sometimes not. When he’d finally cleared the flooded highway, he’d tried to hitch a ride, but there weren’t many cars on the road, and those that passed weren’t eager to pick up a filthy wanderer.

It was dawn before he’d managed to get a call through. The state police picked him up not much later and took him to the hospital, where the staff put him in a small consultation room. Finally, a social worker appeared to tell him his daughter had arrived and he could see her. He’d sent the woman away.

A doctor showed up and explained it to him. “We can’t be sure yet, but all signs point to an amniotic fluid embolism. The condition is fatal without surgical intervention.”

Putting a name to what had happened didn’t change the outcome. Bianca was gone.

The elevator hadn’t moved. He’d forgotten to press the button.

The doctor had talked to him about the baby. He didn’t remember much of what she’d said. Didn’t care. But Tess Hartsong cared, and since he had no heart, he’d dumped everything on her—the unhappy Dancing Dervish—and now here he was.

The elevator doors opened. A woman on the other side took one look at him and quickly stepped back. His eyes itched. His throat felt as if it had been rubbed with sandpaper.

Bianca was dead, and it was his fault.

*

The wad of cash North had thrust at her before he’d stalked off burned her palm. She didn’t want his money. Walking out on his daughter, trusting someone he hardly knew to make life and death decisions, was wrong. But Tess recognized grief all too well, and she almost understood.

One of the nurses found her a sanitary kit and a set of scrubs. She could never look at her bloody clothes again, and she tossed them in the trash. She hesitated only over Trav’s sweatshirt, but it now smelled of blood and death. She shoved it in the bin along with her jeans, then locked herself in a cubicle and threw up.

*

She fell asleep in one of the NICU recliners.

Bianca’s tortured face. “Help me! Why won’t you help me?”

Blood pooled around Tess’s ankles. An ocean of blood pulling her into its depths. Leadened arms. Missing legs . . .

She jolted awake from her nightmare. The skin between her breasts was damp with sweat. She blinked her eyes. Tried to get her bearings.

It was evening. The baby lay in the Isolette, cradled in a horseshoe-shaped nest of blankets with an IV, a pediatric cannula in her tiny nostrils, and electrodes fastened to her chest. In the way of preemies, she looked like a frog. “Let’s give her twenty-four hours,” the nurse said, “and then you can hold her.”

Tess didn’t want to hold her. Didn’t want to contaminate her more than she already had. But she knew hospital protocol. All babies needed skin-to-skin contact with their mothers—none more so than preemies. Except Tess wasn’t her mother. This little one had no mother, and right now, no father. Tess’s skin was the only skin the little one could count on.

She fled the NICU. The corridor was deserted. She leaned against the wall and made herself breathe. Made herself do the right thing

The volunteers at the information desk steered her to a B and B only a few blocks away. From there, she walked to the closest store to pick up a couple of changes of clothes and some toiletries with Ian North’s money.

She set the bedside alarm clock for exactly one hour but she couldn’t fall asleep for fear the nightmare would return. Eventually, she got up, took a shower, and walked back to the hospital, where she once again settled in a lounger near the baby.

Toward morning, a nurse took the baby from the Isolette and asked Tess to unbutton her top so the infant could feel her skin. Tess had made the same request of dozens of new mothers, but she wasn’t this baby’s mother, and her fingers trembled on her buttons.

Tess put the infant in the proper position, holding her upright against her breast, the head turned so she could breathe. The nurse placed a blanket over them both for warmth.

Bianca should be holding her baby. Or North. But there was only Tess.

The infant nestled against her breast. Nothing there for you, little one. Nothing there.

*

The next few days passed in a blur. Tess learned from the nurses that North had checked in by phone, but he didn’t contact Tess. She called Phish. The town grapevine had been at work, and everyone knew about the baby and Bianca’s death. Tess didn’t ask what people thought, but Phish wasn’t one for subtlety.

“Hey-ll, Tess. It’s all anybody’s talkin’ about. Nobody knew you was a nurse, and now all kinds of stories ’re floatin’ around. People are sayin’—”

“I can imagine. Is the road open?”

“Yep. You want me to come and get you?”

“No. I . . . I need to stay here for a while.”

*

Tess began feeding the baby. Each day, she held her longer, the little bird clad only in a diaper as she rested against Tess’s bare skin, both of them wrapped warmly in a blanket. The infant had a fuzz of dark hair underneath her newborn’s cap. Tess counted the baby’s breaths and listened to the little protests she made.