Piece by Piece

Chapter 15

Double-checking the address on the car’s display screen with the address on the front of the single-story office building, Dani pulled into a parking spot not far from the front door and cut the engine. If it weren’t for the fact that her fingers smelled like gasoline from her brief stop at the station a mile or so back, she might actually consider the possibility she was having a nightmare.

But unlike those nightly occurrences, this one didn’t have her walking along the side of a highway searching for her family, or reaching toward their outstretched arms only to wake up alone, drenched in sweat and feverishly wiping a trail of tears from her cheeks.

No, this one had her sitting outside a nondescript brown brick building, with an equally nondescript matching sign, and marveling at a reality that was both cruel in its timing and ironic in its delivery.

Movement to her left had her glancing over in time to see a woman, about her own age, opening the door of a white SUV and carefully placing an infant seat onto its base atop the back seat. Once the carrier was secure enough to the woman’s liking, she took a moment to whisper a kiss across the snippet of baby skin Dani could see from her vantage point and then pushed the door closed. Feeling her body begin to tremble, Dani deliberately turned away, her watery gaze falling on the front door just as another woman was escorted through it by a man wearing a smile as big as the woman’s protruding belly.

Dani skirted her eyes to the ignition key and gave some thought to the notion of restarting the engine and making haste back to the Amish countryside, but she couldn’t. Because if she didn’t make herself do this now, Lydia would soon enough.

Lydia . . .

How many times had she stood at the window and quietly observed her friend with a fresh pair of eyes since the conversation with Caleb in the barn? A dozen, maybe more . . . And now that she knew about Rose, she could see something lurking beneath the surface whenever Lydia was alone. The slump of her shoulders . . . The slow, almost directionless steps . . . The rush to don a smile when Nettie or one of the boys came galloping around a corner or across the front porch . . .

Lydia, who saw with her eyes.

Lydia, who knew that simple didn’t have to mean boring.

Lydia, who encouraged her loved ones.

Lydia, who truly drank in her children, her husband.

Lydia, who’d masked her own soul-crushing grief to be a safe harbor for Dani.

“God’s will,” Dani mumbled, tossing the keys into her purse. “If taking a baby from someone like Lydia is Your will, then . . . yeah . . . no thank You.”

She tilted her head back against the headrest, breathed her way through the anger now holding her jaw and her fists hostage, and then stepped from the car onto the pavement. Once she was inside, a check of the building’s directory had her entering the first door on the right.

“Good afternoon, do you have an appointment?”

Dani turned toward the voice and the sixty-something woman seated behind a desk with a welcoming smile on her face and a headset atop her thick gray hair. “I-I do. I’m Danielle Parker. I called yesterday afternoon and you squeezed me in on a cancel—”

The woman’s eyes glanced up from the computer she was already consulting and the clipboard she was already sliding across the desk in Dani’s direction. “Please fill out this packet of information as completely as possible. The first page goes over your rights as a patient, the next is about your insurance, and the last two concern your medical history. When everything is filled out, just bring it back to me here at the counter, and the nurse will be out shortly thereafter to get you. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.”

“I—Okay. Thanks.” Pulling the clipboard to her chest, Dani made her way toward the waiting area and the row of empty seats bookended along the back wall by two large potted plants.

The first page was easy enough. She read the standard disclaimer, signed and dated on the appropriate lines, and moved on, her fingers tightening around the pen as she stared down at the second page.

Returning to her feet, she picked her way around the couple she’d seen entering the building, a woman reading a magazine while repeatedly checking her phone, and a nervous-looking teenager seated next to her equally nervous-looking mother. At Dani’s approach, the receptionist looked up. “Yes? Do you have a question?”

“I’m not sure if—” She stopped, cleared her throat of its audible tremor, and dug into her purse for her wallet. “Does insurance stop if the person who carried it through their job is . . .”

Unable to continue, Dani looked up at the ceiling.

“Mrs. Parker?”

Blinking hard against the tears she wanted nothing more than to keep at bay, she modulated her voice down to a rasped whisper. “My husband . . . He . . . He’s . . . He . . .” She squeezed her eyes closed. “He died. Two months ago.”

The woman’s chair groaned with the sudden shift of her weight as she jumped up. “I’m so sorry, dear. Come. Come with me.”

Warm hands shepherded her through a door next to the receptionist’s desk and into a long hallway flanked by a series of doors—some open, others closed. At the first open one they came to, the woman, who introduced herself as Martha, guided her inside and over to an exam table, her thick glasses unable to mask the empathy in her warm brown eyes. “Here,” she said, handing Dani a tissue. “You poor thing. I’m so sorry.”

She wiped her eyes and nodded.

“So you had insurance before, yes?” Martha asked.

Again, she nodded.

“Did you get notification from the company about continuing?”

“I don’t know.” She played with the tissue a moment, wiped her eyes again, and then crumpled it inside her palm. “I’ve been staying here. In Lancaster—Blue Ball, actually. I haven’t been home to deal with mail in almost five weeks.”

Martha cringed. “Five weeks, huh?” Then, wrapping her hand around Dani’s, she offered a gentle if not entirely reassuring squeeze. “I’ll see what I can find out on my end while you wait in here for the doctor.”

“Will he see me if I don’t have insurance?”

“Let’s hold off worrying about that until I know more, okay?” Martha turned toward the door, glancing back at Dani before she slipped into the hallway. “What a beautiful gift your husband gave you.”

She listened to the receptionist’s receding footfalls and, when they were gone, took in the walls of the examination room as she struggled to slow her breath. A poster next to the door showed a growing fetus inside a womb. A check of the two-month mark showed the embryo to be roughly the size of a kidney bean.

The wall to her left boasted the doctor’s medical school credentials as well as a number of awards he’d won for his work in obstetrics. To her right, a series of cabinets lined the wall above a narrow countertop with a small sink on one side and a trio of silver-lidded glass jars filled with cotton balls, gauze, and swab-topped sticks. A calendar sat beside a calculator and a stack of notepaper edged in a rainbow of whimsical colors.

On the only remaining wall, a smattering of framed photographs were arranged in rectangular fashion—black and white for some, color for others. All were stunning in their own right, but it was the one in the center that seemed to reach out to Dani with a calming hand.

A quick knock pulled her attention off the picture in favor of the slowly opening door and, seconds later, Martha’s wide smile. “You have insurance, Mrs. Parker.”

“I-I do?”

“You do. And it’s quite good.” Martha retreated, said something to someone farther down the hall, and then popped her head in once again. “Becky will be right in to take your vitals and go over your medical history with you. When that’s done, Dr. Braden will be in to see you.”

Swallowing against the growing tightness in her throat, she tried for something as close to a smile as she could muster. “Thank you.”

“Oh, honey, you are most welcome.”

Then Martha was gone, replaced, within seconds, by a dark-haired woman of about forty. “Mrs. Parker? I’m Becky, Dr. Braden’s nurse.”

“Hello.”

“If it’s okay, I need to go over your medical history with you real quick.”

The forms . . .

“Oh. I-I didn’t finish those papers the receptionist gave me.”

Becky held up her hand. “It’s nothing we can’t do together here.” The nurse rolled out a stool from beneath the counter and stopped it in front of a small laptop. “You’ve taken a home pregnancy test?”

The tightness was back. “Yes.”

“When was that?”

“Last week.”

“First day of your last period?”

She said the date aloud as her mind’s eye skipped back two weeks further—to her last and oft-revisited night with Jeff.

“Is this your first pregnancy?” Becky asked, her own eyes fixed on the laptop screen.

“ No. ”

“First live birth?”

“ No. ”

Becky glanced over her shoulder at Dani, waiting.

“It’s my fourth.”

“Any problems with those births?”

In a flash, she was back in the delivery room with first Maggie, then Spencer, and, finally, Ava, her arms aching with a longing so powerful she could hardly breathe.

“Mrs. Parker?”

“No,” she finally answered. “No problems.”

“C-sections?”

“ No. ”

“Morning sickness with those?”

“Nothing too bad. A little queasiness now and again. Some body aches, that sort of thing. But nothing major.”

“And now?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what’s from the pregnancy and what’s from . . .” She straightened her back, the motion stirring a crinkling sound from the paper beneath her. “Anything else?”

Becky looked at her for a moment and then returned to the computer screen. “How about your parents? Still alive?”

Swinging her focus back to the wall of photographs, Dani willed the one of the Amish farmhouse at sunrise to work its earlier magic, but whatever calming properties it had once held were gone. “No. My father died when I was a teenager. Heart attack.”

She heard the gasp, but, still, she couldn’t open her eyes.

“Oh, Mrs. Parker, I’m—”

“And my three children.”

The answering squeak of the stool’s wheels was quickly followed by a whiff of lilac-scented perfume and the press of a tissue against the palm of her hand. “Can I get you anything?” Becky whispered.

She shook her head. Swallowed.

“Are you sure?”

Nodding, she turned away from the voice.

“Okay. But I’ll be right outside if that changes. In the meantime, once you’re ready, here’s a cup. Use the bathroom right behind that door to collect a sample and set it behind the small metal door in the wall next to the sink. When that’s done, get yourself undressed and put on the gown I’ve left on the counter here for you. Put it on—open to the front—and give a knock at the door so I know you’re ready to see Dr. Braden.”

“I will. Thank you.”

“Of course.” The woman’s footsteps receded against the click of the door as it was opened and closed, leaving Dani alone, once again.

Breathe in . . .

Breathe out . . .

Breathe in . . .

Like a programmed robot, she stepped down off the exam table, left a urine sample inside the adjacent bathroom’s two-sided wall cabinet as instructed, and then returned to the exam room and the folded gown waiting atop the counter. Outside, just beyond her closed door, she could hear the nurse’s muffled voice interspersed by a soft clucking sound she attributed to Martha, and then, seconds later, the rumble of a man’s voice.

She didn’t need to hear what they were saying to know they were talking about her—the woman in Room Three. The one who’d lost her husband, her children, her mother in a single car accident and was two months pregnant with her fourth child. The words were impossible to pick up, but the pity with which they were spoken was as palpable as the slamming of her heart inside her chest.

Slipping her bare arms and body into the coarse cotton gown, she crossed to the door, gave the requested knock, and climbed back onto the exam table seconds before a portly man in his late fifties strode into the room with a warm smile and solemn eyes. “Mrs. Parker, I’m Dr. Braden. Welcome.”

She released the edge of her lip from between her teeth just long enough to issue a quick greeting in return.

“My nurse ran your sample. I’m happy to confirm that you are, indeed, pregnant. And based on the date of your last cycle, I’m putting you at about ten weeks.”

“Yes.”

“How are you feeling? Physically? Emotionally? My nurse filled me in on what happened and I’m terribly sorry about the loss of your family.”

She managed a quick thank-you and a half nod.

“Were you in the accident?” he asked, lowering himself to the stool and wheeling himself over to the exam table.

“ No. ”

“Thank God.”

She stared at him as he continued. “So the biggest hurdle we have in regards to this baby at the moment is managing your stress. Have you been eating?”

“A nibble here, a nibble there.”

“No appetite?”

“No appetite,” she repeated.

“You need to eat, Mrs. Parker. If you can’t handle a big meal, then eat smaller amounts more often. Fruits and vegetables are important, sure, but calories are, too. So get yourself a milk shake from time to time. That’ll help.”

He looked down at the tablet in his hand, typed something in, and then looked back up at Dani. “How about sleep? You getting any?”

“Some,” she said, shrugging. “Here and there.”

“You’ll need more of that, as well, although I’m sure that’s easier said than done in light of everything you’re going through.” At her slight nod, he slipped the tablet into the pocket of his white coat and stood. “Exercise can help in that regard, as well as with the kind of body aches you mentioned to Becky.”

“I try to walk in the evenings.”

“Good. Good. Any cramping in your legs when you’re walking?”

“No. Not really. Maybe once in a while.”

“Eating better will help with that. But, just in case, don’t walk too far by yourself.” He crossed to the sink, washed his hands, and then moved toward the door to summon Becky in for the exam.

“You have family here in Lancaster, Mrs. Parker?”

She shook her head and looked down at her hands. “I’m staying with a friend. She . . . she’s Amish.”

“Friends are important. Especially now.” He opened the door, poked his head into the hall, and then returned with Becky and her laptop in tow. “We’ll need to call in a prescription for prenatal vitamins to Mrs. Parker’s preferred pharmacy before she leaves, and I’d like you to send her home with some pamphlets on appropriate support groups in the area. I think they might be helpful.”

At Becky’s nod, he turned back to Dani. “Before we get to the exam, do you have any questions or concerns for me at this point?”

Lifting her attention to the center photograph once again, she drank in the simple farmhouse, the quiet dirt lane, the rocking chairs on the front porch, and the sun rising above it all. “Yes, I have one.”

Lowering himself to the wheeled stool, he scooted closer, waiting.

“Have any of your patients ever placed their child up for adoption?” she asked.

“On occasion, yes.”

“Is it difficult to do?”

“Emotionally, yes. Of course. But if both parental parties are in agreement, the legal aspect tends to go quite smoothly.” He paused, considering her words. “Do you know someone who is considering placing their child up for adoption?”

Dropping her gaze to his and her hand to her abdomen, she nodded. “Yes. Me.”