She didn’t usually dream during her naps, but on this third Saturday of May, she dreamed of men and four-legged beasts running to the second floor, of brilliant light spilling from Daniel’s room, of Rufus split open, his ribs sprung apart, his heart floating in midair.
She woke with a start, and the dimness of the room, the dullness of her mind, made her twist toward the alarm. Four thirty. She’d slept three hours when she planned only one. She roused herself and made it to the toilet, amazed she’d lasted so long.
After splashing water on her face, she was returning to her room but stopped short in the hall. Someone was singing, a lone man’s voice. Supporting her belly with an arm, Evangeline walked toward the sound. A contraction stopped her halfway, forced her hand to the wall. She’d been having Braxton Hicks for weeks, and she dismissed this as nothing more. She was due any minute if Dr. Taylor were right, but she’d heard a lot of women were late the first time.
The spasm passed, and she made it to the kitchen. Rufus lay curled in his chair. Isaac knelt before him, his back to the door, cradling the dog’s head in his arms. He sang in a craggy voice, a low lamentation that gave each syllable its own space.
“The o’cean is breath’ing.
The o’cean is breath’ing me.
The o’cean is breath’ing.
The o’cean is breath’ing you.
The o’cean is breath’ing.
The o’cean is breath’ing . . . us.”
It was a song not of loss but of solace, and Rufus’s labored breaths wove through that pained sweetness as if he were singing too.
A floorboard popped under her foot. A flicker of hesitation caught in Isaac’s voice and a muscle flinched at the side of his neck. He didn’t turn or stop, he simply sang the song once more. When he was done, she went in and laid a hand on his back. She saw how far gone the dog was and sank to her knees before him. She didn’t cry. Something far too important was going on.
Isaac’s full attention was on the dog, on the particularities of how his hands cupped Rufus’s head. He took another breath, and this time when he started again, she joined him, matching his tenor with her shaky soprano.
On hearing her voice, Rufus opened his eyes. She regretted the effort it took, but the look was a miracle, for it was as if the skin of the sky had been peeled away to reveal all that was or, as Evangeline later said to Natalia when attempting to explain it, “the nature of love or God or some shit like that.”
Who could say how long she was held in that place? When Rufus’s eyes released her, she was still singing, but Isaac had fallen silent. Rufus was transformed. His eyes were open and serene, his lips almost a smile. He appeared more himself than he had in months, his muscles clear and full as if he had leaped into that chair with the energy of youth. Death—having completed its task—had left his body at peace.
She threw herself on Rufus, keening and wailing, the pleasure of her grief intense.
WHEN SHE WAS SPENT, when she’d collapsed off the dog’s body to the floor, she felt arms slide beneath her as if to lift her like a baby. She tried to press herself up. With his bad back, Isaac shouldn’t be doing this.
As she rose to her knees, pain gripped her ribs and spine and pelvis, her bones shot through as if electric, and she collapsed to her side.
Isaac’s voice was near. “Where’s the pain?”
“My back . . . my belly.” Speaking was an effort. Her face and arms had gone clammy, and a warmth was spreading down her legs.
“I’m calling 911.”
When he was at the phone, she tried to push up, grabbing the arm of the chair. Once again, she collapsed to the floor. Even as Isaac confirmed the address, a siren rose in the distance, and Evangeline loved this little town, loved everything about it—the haunted old buildings, teachers at bus stops on Saturday nights, how everything you needed was always near. How an ambulance might arrive in minutes to save you and your baby.
Isaac hung up, knelt beside her, and took her hand. “They’re almost here.” Something caught his eye, and he touched the chair’s arm. “Did Rufus bleed?” He yanked his hand from hers. “Dear God. You’re the one bleeding. Where?”
“Down there. Something happened.”
Isaac gripped her hand again. “It’s okay. Just breathe. Another minute.”
A siren careened up the drive, and he lumbered to a stand. “I’ll be right back,” he said, and went to direct them in. As she waited, she touched Rufus’s paw, but it wasn’t his paw any longer. It was something emptied and stuffed with hard cotton batting, like the old lumpy mattresses she’d slept on as a kid.
When three uniformed men burst in, she was wondering if she and the baby were dying. She couldn’t describe the men, other than to say one was old and the other two young. The young ones were at her side, touching her reassuringly, taking her blood pressure, listening to her heart and the baby’s. They kept asking questions, repeating them, but she was distracted by the older man a few feet back, with his energy of command and his radio that staticked on.
“Engine 19,” he said, “requesting dispatch PD.”
Static again. “What’s the nature?”
“Could use officer assistance.”
His voice, though not alarmed, was firm, and Evangeline realized how it must look with the dead dog and the blood smeared about. Isaac hadn’t mentioned blood in his call.
“Try to focus,” said the young one near her face. His breath smelled of peppermint and taco-truck burrito. “Tell us what happened.”
She answered their questions as best she could, but it seemed Rufus was key to it all, and they didn’t see it that way.
“We’re going to pull down your leggings, check things out, okay?” said the young one by her hips.
The older man took Isaac by the arm and led him across the room, and the young guy pulled at her leggings, each tug blinding her with pain. He stopped, and she heard scissors cutting, felt cool air on her belly and thighs. The one by her hips said to the one with Isaac, “Significant vaginal bleeding.”
“The baby?”
“Recommend transfer.”
EVANGELINE WASN’T SURE OF THE SEQUENCE AFTER THAT, except the words “placental abruption” appeared in the room and with them a flurry of activity. It was hardly a minute before a blanket was laid over her bare legs and she was lifted onto a gurney, placed on her left side, and rolled out the drive.
A police car swung in as she was being loaded into the ambulance. She couldn’t see the officer, but she heard his car door slam, the crunch of gravel under his steps.
“Isaac,” she called. “Isaac!”
“He won’t be coming with you,” said the officer, not bothering to come into view.
Already she hated him.
She started yelling, “He didn’t do anything! I was upset about the dog. Please.” But it was as if no sound came from her. One of the young guys placed an oxygen mask over her face as the other inserted an IV into her arm.
“They’re waiting for you in L&D, Labor and Delivery.”
The peppermint-burrito guy said that, and through the haze of oxygen and pain she thought he was sweet-faced, hardly yet shaving, like Jonah.
“Am I having the baby?” she said into her mask.
The guy lifted the mask, and she asked again.
“You will be. A C-section, I suspect.”
“Is the baby okay?”
“We hope so,” he said, but she heard the softness of doubt. “I’m putting this back on. Just try to relax.” When he’d secured the mask, he placed his hand on her wrist as if to take her pulse, but Evangeline was certain he just wanted to touch her.
“I was upset about the dog,” she whispered to herself.
She closed her eyes, blotted out the siren wailing, and let herself imagine—it seemed a reasonable enough allowance—that it was her mother’s fingertips searching out the beating of her heart.