After Tonight

“Stay with me, Abbey! Breathe, honey you have to breathe!”
Despite the tiny infant in my arms, I was pushed aside as another crowd of doctors swooped in around Abbey. In a matter of seconds, the machine beeped faster. What the hell was happening?
“Abbey?” I shouted now, my brain finally registering my surroundings. I held Ella closer to my chest, wanting to shield her from the madness. But it was too late. A nurse snatched her out of my hands as she told me I would have to leave the room. My feet couldn’t be lifted, as if they had planted roots into that floor.
“She’s hemorrhaging!” I listened to a different nurse shout instructions as I stood in the back corner, unable to breathe.
“Her heart rate is getting too high. We’ve got to get her out of here.”
“Mr. Pattinson, you’ll have to leave the room.”
“What’s happening to her?” My voice cracked and I felt vomit lick the back of my throat.
Was Abbey dying? I wasn’t about to lose her after all of this.
“Mr. Pattinson, I’m sorry. You’ll have to leave.”
“Can somebody please tell me what the bloody hell is happening to her?” My cries were ignored.
When one of the younger nurses tried to usher me out, I brushed her hands away and backed against the wall. A few male nurses carefully and quickly placed Abbey’s limp body onto a stretcher. Before I could argue with the nurse, Abbey was wheeled out of the room and down the hall.
I was alone in the room and it suddenly felt extremely cavernous. As I tried to process what had just unfolded before my eyes, I slid down to the floor. The molding dug into my back as I slid, inch by inch, but I felt absolutely nothing.
It all happened in five minutes. Less, even.
They were both gone.
I circled the topic, marinating on every possible thing that could have gone wrong. This was something Susan had left out of our classes. What was I supposed to do? What could I have done? I could have pushed her to eat healthier, though it always seemed as though she was eating the right stuff. I could have tried harder not to drop those baby dolls—I knew she had been so stressed about that. I could have comforted her. I could have loved her more. Jesus, I could have never left her. And now she had left me.
We never covered how to respond to this in that ridiculous class. So I did all that I felt I could do. It was part of being a human.
I sobbed.
“Rob?” I heard faint voices enter the room but I only buried my head further into my hands. “Rob!”
Like the flurry of nurses who had swept in over Abbey, our family and friends encircled me in a fit of hysterics. I was suddenly embraced by four pairs of arms, which I knew belonged to Grace, Allie, Joplin and Emma. When I looked up I saw Tom, Keith and Josh idling in front of me looking absolutely horrified. It didn’t help at all when I saw Abbey’s dad slumped in chair with tears streaming down his face.
I didn’t want to move, I was becoming accustomed to the cold tile floor. But who knew what could be passing me by? I had to talk to the doctors. I had to see Abbey. I had to hold Ella.
“What have you heard?” Tom mindlessly fidgeted with his fingers as he stared at me.
I tried to find the words--how it all happened so fast, how I had just looked into my daughter’s blue eyes and had her taken from me before I could say hello, how Abbey’s skin went ghostly pale and the machine echoed with raging beeps. But I couldn’t open my mouth.
Instead I shook my head and walked out of the room, fighting another convulsion of tears. Where was the doctor? I needed a doctor.
My vision was bleary, but I managed to find a nurses’ station. “My uh, my…Abbey Jones, where is she?” The woman at the desk looked up at me, resting the phone on her shoulder.
“I’m sor—”
“Abbey. The woman…she…she just had a baby—”
“Sir, what is your relation?” I sucked in air, trying to hold my trembling limbs still.
“I, I’m her…her husband. Please?”
“And who is it that you are looking for?” Was she really making me answer that again? I’m sure Abbey had been the only woman in the past twenty minutes to have been rushed to ICU. Which, by the way, was down the hall and to the left of this nurses’ station.
“Are you kidding me?” I ran my fingers through my hair, tugging harder than I ever had. It amazed me that this woman was so unconcerned, whereas I was uncontrollably leaking tears.
“Mr. Pattinson?” My head snapped in the direction of the grim voice. Oh God.
“Where is she?” Something in me changed. I was no longer frantic. I was furious.
“Abbey suffered major hemorrhaging right after the birth. It caused her heart to speed up tremendously—we think this all had to do with complications prior to the pregnancy—”
“Do you have ears?” I shouted at her, grabbing my own ears for emphasis. “I need to see her, I need to see my daughter!”
“You’re daughter is fine, sir. Please—”
“Oh God, oh God. Abbey.” My voice shook, my body going numb. “Please. I need to see them.”
“Mr. Pattinson, if you’ll just calm down. You’re daughter is perfectly fine, she’s healthy. A little early, but she’s doing well.”
“What about Abbey?”
“We’re working on her right now. So far, we’ve been able to get her heart beating at a regular pace. There’s just some trouble with the hemorrhaging. But I assure you, she’ll be fine.” I backed into the wall and closed my eyes.
“Can I see her?” I could barely hear my own voice as I choked on more tears. Black spots popped in and out of my sight.
“No, I’m afraid not.”
I mindlessly turned my back to the nurse. I wanted this to go away. I would give anything to take it all back. This was my Karma. This is what was happening because I had to steal some money out of my dad’s wallet when I was twelve, I had to copy off Matthew Morrison’s math test when I sixteen, I had to lie to Abbey about dating Kristen, I had to get Abbey into that car wreck that wrecked her body, I had to abandon her, I had to fuck somebody else. I stopped—this was not about me.
“Uh. Yeah, alright.” I sighed and walked over to where the rest of our family had gathered.
“What’s going on?” Allie spoke first, walking up to me and enveloping me into a hug. “What’d she say?”
I tried to explain to them, about the hemorrhaging and Abbey’s heart. I told them that Ella was safe, to which everyone responded with more tears. Abbey’s dad still hadn’t said anything. He sat away from everyone, staring off into space.
“Faye was admitted this morning.” Tom had followed me to the coffee stand. “Sometime around six.”
“What?” I double-backed, making sure I’d heard him correctly.
“Yeah, I guess the chemo had some adverse affects.” We both glanced over at Abbey’s dad. “It’s gotta be rough on him. First his wife, and now his daughter.”