The Story of Therapy Dog Tails 480
Where Everyone Gets a Dose of Puppy Love
FICTION 40: Colors of the Past 15
Colors of the Past
a novel
W.D. Haverstock
Part Two
Chapter Four
… The door to room 507 was ajar. George hesitated outside and thought of the many times he had tried to foresee this moment. They had wanted this child and had often talked about the happiness this day would bring. In those moments it had been easy for him to forswear his past. He could see the brown-skinned child who had tormented him for what she was - a farewell to his youth. He could remember the dark-haired girl back east as nothing more than the fulfillment of an urgent need that one day would no longer exist. In those moments he could believe that what he felt for the person who had become his lifelong companion was love.
He looked inside with all of these memories swirling inside his head. The room was large with high, white ceilings and walls as clean as the nurse’s uniform. The bed was in the back and to the right. Susan lay asleep on her back with her hands clasped upon her chest.
George walked to the bed and stood over her. She was breathing softly. The window blind threw gray bar-shadows across the smooth, white linen and onto the floor. He sat down at the side of the bed, folded his hands on his lap like a naughty child in a chapel, and stared into the empty corner of the room.
Sometime later he noticed that the baby outside had stopped crying. Susan had not moved.
He kissed her and walked back into the hallway. The nurses’ station was vacant. All was quiet. He went on to the long windows of the nursery.
A nurse he had not seen before was rocking an infant back and forth in her arms. George strained to read the information on the tiny cards attached to the cribs. There were seven newborns. Five of them were girls. He read the names of the three closest but none of them was his. The cards on the two cribs opposite were pink but he could not read the names. In one he could see only the top of a tiny head with stringy brown hair. The other was empty.
The nurse stood up. George watched as she set the baby back into the empty crib. The baby had fallen asleep. She had brown skin and a profusion of black hair.
He looked again at the other crib and started to walk round to the other side when he heard a woman’s voice call his name. The nurse he had seen on the elevator was standing near the nurses’ station.
“Mr. Grange, your wife is awake now. She’s asking for you.”
George searched across the nursery for his baby but she was hidden beneath the blankets. He smiled and turned away.
Susan was facing the door when he entered. “Were you here a little while ago?”
“Yes.” George crossed to the bed and kissed her.
“I thought so. You must have walked out just as I was waking up. I thought I had dreamt about you so I called the nurse and she told me you were here.”
“Of course I’m here.”
She smiled weakly and held her hand out to him. “It’s a girl.”
“I know.”
“Have you seen her?”
George nodded. “I was at the nursery just now. She’s beautiful.”
Susan laughed. “How do you know that? You can’t see very well through those windows in that little room.”
“She’s your daughter. I know she’s beautiful.”
Susan squeezed his hand and closed her eyes. “I feel as if I could sleep for a week. My legs are still numb. It all happened so fast. I was expecting it to take at least half the day but I don’t think it could have been more than two or three hours. That’s why we waited so long to call. I thought it would take longer.”
George sat down on the edge of the bed. “I’m glad it didn’t.”
“It started about eleven. I was home with Uncle James and we were about to have lunch. At first it felt too mild and I didn’t think it was anything. And then all of a sudden I knew it was time.” She opened her eyes as she said this. “Thank goodness Uncle James took care of everything. Is he here?”
“He said he could come to see you tomorrow.”
“I wish he was here. I don’t know what I would have done. I was going to stay home this morning but he called and invited me for lunch and said that Randal was already on the way. I hadn’t been there half an hour when it all started.”
She pulled against his hand and tried to lift herself into a sitting position but fell back at the effort. “I guess I’m weaker than I thought,” she said and pulled George down to her. “Are you happy?”
George fell to his knees at the side of the bed and laid his head on her shoulder. “Of course.”
“Do you remember how we talked about this the night of the wedding?”
“Yes.” He remembered the cool ocean breeze on his arms as they had lain on the terrace and he remembered the girl in the car beside him with his lighter in her hands twenty-four hours before.
“Wasn’t it beautiful?” Susan said. The light through the window grew weaker and the shadows across the bed had already begun to disappear. “We were lying there and could hear the waves down below on the beach. We could see the outline of the hammock outside the door in the wind.”
“It was quiet.”
“I was so happy that night. George. I was so happy to know that you wanted to have a baby as soon as we could, that you didn’t want to wait.”
“You knew all along that I didn’t want to wait.”
“I know. Maybe it didn’t seem real before. Nothing did, but that night you couldn’t stop talking about it. There was nothing I wanted to hear more.”
He had talked about it because he knew that she’d wanted to hear it but even now he could remember his thoughts. These hadn’t changed. Maybe he’d talked so much about their own baby to drive those memories away. Now even with the baby here, nothing had changed.
“I think I always knew that I would have a baby very soon and I think . . . .” She touched his hair with her fingertips.
He raised his head. “What?”
“I think I knew it would be a girl. I may have wanted a boy, but I really thought all along that it was going to be a girl.”
“I’ve been thinking about that night a lot, too. It’s hard to believe it’s been more than a year already.”
She pushed his head back onto her shoulder.
There had been other nights, nights when he had thought of other things. Only a few weeks had passed when Susan had felt homesick and had wanted to spend more time in Wilmette. He had spent the next few nights with her there but finally had insisted that business demanded that he stay in the city. On those night he had believed that love could exist only where freedom, too, existed.
“Do you think the nurse would bring her into the room so we can see her?”
George looked up at the sound of her voice. “What?”
“Do you think the nurse would bring the baby into the room for us?”
“I’m sure she would.”
He pressed the button at the head of the bed. The nurse that George had met on the elevator appeared at the door.
“Nurse,” George said, “we’d like to see the baby.”
“I’ll bring a wheelchair,” she replied, “if the Mrs. feels up to it.”
“We’d like to see her here, if that’s all right. Mrs. Grange is still very weak. I’d rather not move her. Do you think you could bring the baby into the room for a few minutes?”
“We don’t normally do that, Mr. Grange. I . . . .” She hesitated and glanced into each of their faces.
“I’d be so grateful,” Susan said, “if you could bring her in for just a little while. If she’s any trouble, you can take her back.”
The nurse smiled at this. “Well, since this is a private room and since both of you are here and nobody‘ll know the difference anyway . . . .”
“I don’t think there can be a problem,” George said.
“If you’ll just wait a minute then, I’ll see what I can do.” The nurse hurried out of the room.
George went to the door and looked into the hallway. A woman in a hospital gown was standing just outside the next room. She seemed to be staring through the window at the end of the hallway. He looked toward the nurses’ station but turned immediately back into the room.
“George,” Susan said, “what’s the matter? You’re acting as if the baby hasn’t even been born yet. Why don’t you come over here and sit down ….”