Lights and sounds, flashing by, errant words penetrating the shadows like faint, ghostly whispers on chilly October wind. Blinding white bursts of stinging brilliance, reminiscent of the harvest moon, keeping eternal and indifferent watch. Someone shouted, the keen edge of their voice spreading through the darkness like a gunshot, and someone else barked what was clearly an order. Lily winced and muttered something that she herself couldn't make out; a plea, perhaps, or a cuss word. She stirred and gasped at the pain radiating through her body, poisoned heat wafting from a malignant fire; her chest was tight, her back howling; spasms cut through her stomach like violent ripples over the surface of a pond. She moaned deep in the back of her throat and tried to take a deep breath, but her lungs would not expand.
She jostled like a ship in a storm tossed sea, and realized all at once that she was moving yet not; her muscles were stiff, rigged, immobilized. She pried her lids slowly open; lights streaked by overhead, stinging her eyes, and faces flanked her on either side. Confusion filled her and she blinked. Where was she?
Groaning, she moved her head ponderously left and right. Metal rails, like those on hospital beds; gripping hands; doors passing; a woman in a white coat, a rust colored ponytail whipping back and forth. Something descended over her mouth and nose, and panic gripped her; she tried to fight it away, but was too weak, couldn't lift her hands or even move her head. Oxygen rushed into her lungs and she felt like she was drowning.
What was happening?
Her heart pounded and the panic deepend, sinking its talons into her and turning into hysteria. She tried desperately to remember where she was and what was going on, but her mind refused to respond to her commands.
A face appeared above her. Black man. Mid twenties or early thirties. He said something and nodded as if to lend credence to his words. Lily couldn't hear him over the roar of blood crashing against her temples and the hiss of air, but from the movement of his lips, Lily thought he said you're going to be okay.
Why would he say that? You only use that phrase when something is seriously wrong, was something seriously wrong with her? Was she hurt? She tried again to recall what took place before she came awake - memories loomed from the mist like dark, threatening shapes from dense fog. She remembered getting up and peeing - she was hot and her heart ached, then...nothing.
She was hurt, she must be.
Then it hit her, and her blood turned to ice water.
The baby.
Something was wrong with the baby.
At a T-shaped junction, the party turned right. People passed on either side: A nurse in white, a man in a hospital johnny, a security guard. Lily took a series of quick, shallow breaths in an effort to calm the terror raging in her chest. Horrible images flickered across her mind like a hellish slideshow on meth: Layna hurt, Layna sick, Layna dying.
That last one struck her like a dagger blade, and hot tears filled her eyes. She didn't want to lose her daughter. Please, God, don't take my baby away from me.
They rushed her through a set of double doors and into a sterile operating theater crammed with machines and doctors in scrubs and caps. They brought the gurney abreast of a strange looking bed and shifted her on. Pain consumed her, starting in her chest and spreading through her entire body, and she let out a wavering cry that came out as a low, inaudible moan. Darkness bubbled up from the depths of her brain and crested across her eyes like the coming night; her heart sputtered and she fought against it, trying to thrash and scream for help, for Lincoln, for her mother, even for Jesus, but she sank regardless like a body dropping sinking into the bosom of the sea. Please don't hurt my baby, she thought irrationally as she faded, please let my baby be okay.
The ocean closed over her, and she fell away from the surface.
For a time, she floated peaceful and weightless in the void like a cloud through the night sky. The black began to lighten, and trembling noises, echoing as if from a great distance, wormed their way into her consciousness. A chill ran through her and ahead, on the horizon, a crack of luminosity appeared, the first faint line of a new dawn. Trepidation bloomed in her and she tried to pull away, but she was drawn forward by unseen hands.
Here in the shallows, the light was brighter, the noises louder. She could make out voices now, but not words, their tones urgent and afraid, and she got the sense they were employed at a Great and Important task. Curiosity overcame her - what were they doing? And who were they? She faltered, then allowed herself to be dragged into the light. Low talking, the clicking of metallic instruments, the astringent scent of alcohol, and the soft beeping of machines flooded her senses. She lay flat on her back, numb and staring up at the ceiling. She felt a muted pressure in her stomach, and her breath caught. The baby. WHAT WERE THEY DOING TO HER BABY?
She willed her arms to raise, to fight off any danger to her child, but they weighed a thousand pounds each; she opened her mouth to speak, to demand they leave her alone, but only a thin rattled issued forth. Something twinged in her center, and she took a reflexive breath, only then realizing that she still wore the oxygen mask. "...right there," someone intoned, "hemorrhage…"
Lily's heart jolted. Hemorrhage? What hemorrhage? In her groggy state, she couldn't remember exactly what a hemoorge was, but she did know that they were bad...like really bad. What's going on? she screamed, but no words came out. What's the matter with my baby? She was suddenly so cold her teeth chattered and fresh tears blurred her vision. Where was Lincoln? She needed Lincoln. If he was here, everything would be alright; he wouldn't let something bad happen to her, he'd keep her and their daughter safe from harm.
Someone hissed a curse and a dozen voices started talking over each other in a meaningless confusion. The beeping became more frantic, swelling in pitch until it was a frenzied wail. Lily's body trembled and her teeth clanked harder, faster, vibrations shooting up her jaw and into the center of her skull. "Blood pressure's dropping," someone said worriedly.
"We have to do it now or we'll lose both of them."
Biting her bottom lip like a lonely child clutching a teddy bear protectively to her chest, Lily began to cry, tears sliding down her sunken cheeks. She made no sound, not even a whimper, nor did she move. The cold was worse now, filling her, and shadows encroached on the edges of her vision. Dread settled into her bones, and she knew with absolute certainty that if she lost consciousness again, she wouldn't come back.
And neither would Layna.
Summoning every last bit of energy she had, Lily beat back the creeping darkness, fighting with the desperate intensity of a mother protecting her child from danger. Pressure flared in her middle and she gave voice to her agony as the pressure begot red, ripping, rending pain - it swelled inside her head until her skull pulsated in time with her crazily palpitating heart. Her eyes strained from their sockets and her tiny fingers twitched on the rumpled sheet like the feet of a hanged woman tap dancing in midair. The pain expanded, becoming so great it tore at her brain with steely nails, and she shook harder. Without warning, her throat clamped shut and every muscle convulsed as one; her back arched and stars burst across her eyes, another scream tearing free from her quivering lips.
"She's seizing," someone said.
"She's losing too much blood."
Lily's head swam. She was fading again and nothing she could do would stop it.
Suddenly, the scene changed. She looked down on herself, laid out on a table and shaking, her face deathly white and her lips deep blue. A canvas divider separated the halves of her body; doctors worked feverishly between her legs, and there was blood everywhere. She should feel alarm or horror...something, anything, but she watched with cool detachment, above it all both physically and metaphorically. She waited with unending patience, her gaze going from her top to her bottom; she flopped like a fish on the deck of a ship, her pallor growing whiter still. The girl below her wasn't going to die, she thought dispassionately...she was already dead.
A high-pitched cry drew her attention back to the doctors. One twisted around and handed something to a nurse, and Lily's breath caught when she saw what it was. A tiny infant with sparse hair and covered in blood and fluid, its mouth open in a shriek and its eyes squeezed tightly shut. Lily's heart swelled with love and a happy beam lit the face she did not have. The nurse wrapped the baby in a blanket and carried her over to a scale. She's beautiful, Lily thought, she's so beautiful.
On the table, her convulsions stilled and one final exhalation rattled past the tongue lodged firmly in her throat. "...beautiful."
Lincoln Loud tapped one foot against the thin industrial carpet covering the waiting room floor and gazed sightlessly over the tips of his steepled fingers. His stomach was in knots and every moment passed with the glacial plodding of centuries. Next to him, Lola stared straight ahead like a shell-shocked refuge, her arms crossed over the front of her pink T-shirt as though she were cold. Mom and Dad sat across from them, holding hands and looking petrified; they'd both aged fifteen years in the past hour, and Mom somehow seemed thinner, like the life had been sucked from her, leaving behind a shriveled husk. Her phone sat on her lap; she called everyone from Lori to Lynn, and was waiting to hear back from Leni, who didn't answer. Dad's shoulders stooped under the weight of worry, and he kept his eyes on his scuffed penny loafers, resembling a scolded dog too afraid to look up at his disappointed master. Lucy texted someone, her face as expressionless as always, and Lana leaned forward in a posture similar to Lincoln's: Elbows propped on her knees and hands fisted to her mouth.
It was going on 11am and they'd been here nearly an hour, shoved into a tiny alcove off the main hall like painful memories. People rushed by in either direction, sparing them nary a look or thought - a thousand families had gathered here in the past, anxious over the prognosis of a loved one, and a thousand more would do the same once the Louds were gone. There was nothing special about them or their plight; hospitals are places of healing, but they are also places of death and dying.
Lincoln swallowed hard and glanced to the hall; an old man shuffled by with a bouquet of flowers in one hand and a silver colored balloon with GET WELL SOON across the front in the other. At a bank of elevators, he pressed a button, waited, then entered when the doors slid open. Lincoln took a deep, shivery breath, and blinked back tears. Black, gnawing anguish throbbed in the middle of his chest and nervous energy surged through him. He sniffled and flicked his eyes back to the floor. It was taking too long, it shouldn't take this long; someone should have come to tell them she was okay by now, why weren't they here? She was okay, right? It was just heatstroke...that's what Dad suggested in the car, and Lincoln seized upon it like a dog with a steak, because what was the alternative?
He went back to her face as she lay on the dining room floor, pale and bloodless, clammy to the touch, and terror threatened to overwhelm him. She was going to be okay...she had to be okay.
And the baby too.
The walls started closing in on him and the air grew heavy in his lungs. He looked strickenly around like a trapped animal - Lola with her lips pursed, Lucy like she didn't care his whole world was in jeopardy, Lana chewing her bottom lip, Mom and Dad...Lisa didn't even come; her fucking lab set was more important to her than Lily. Claustrophobia racked him; he had to get out of here before he went to pieces.
Sighing, he got to his feet and rushed off, ignoring his mother when she said his name. He took a left at random and wandered aimlessly down the corridor, his breathing coming ragged now as the foreboding settled in the pit of his stomach kicked up like dust and blew through him.
It wasn't heatstroke. It was something else, something worse. The girl he loved was somewhere right now alone, probably dying; and their daughter along with her.
His step faltered and a sob welled in his throat; he pressed his trembling lips together and swallowed it down.
It was going to be okay. Something terrible might be wrong, but she was going to pull through; he had to believe that. A doctor was going to come out of the back like a dutiful butler, sit him down, and say, very gravely, She's not out of the woods yet...but she's going to make it. There was no way she could do anything else, she was Lily, his angel, the light of his life...his love, hope, and happiness. They were going to live together one day and populate their home with laughter, love, and children, lots and lots of children. He could see them now: House in the suburbs, a minivan, Lily just as beautiful at forty as she was at thirty, and twenty, and now, a yard full of kids - ten, fifteen...the Duggars didn't have shit on them.
A chuckle that was half moan choked from his lips, and more tears sprang to his eyes. Before Lily, he was a hollow husk, unhappy, alone, and lost in the folds of his own self-loathing. She took his hand, bestowed her love upon him - a warm lamp in the damp chill of a winter night - and gave him reason to be a better man. Gave him faith for the future...and a child, the most precious gift a woman can give to a man. She was the most cherished thing in his life...he couldn't lose her. It would be like losing his heart...and we all know you can't survive without a heart.
He was in the lobby now, a wide space with a skylight through which rays of the afternoon sun cascaded like tropical waterfalls. A woman in scrubs sat behind a computer at the reception desk and a smattering of people sat in the waiting room - a man with a surgical mask over his mouth and nose, a teenage boy holding an ice pack to his head, an old woman in a floral print muumuu, a black guy wearing a red Arizona Cardinals snapback, and a group of Hispanic men, one looking dazed with a blood stained cloth wrapped around his forehead. Fox News played unwatched on wall-mounted TV in one corner, a bleach blonde telling the audience about a plane crash with a gleam in her eye. Lincoln raked his fingers through his hair and tried to get his breathing under control.
It was going to be alright.
But why was he crying?
He wiped his eyes with the heel of his palm and bumped into something. A Coke machine, its front glowing and a low hum emanating from its inner workings. Five buttons served as portals to different varieties of thirst quenching goodness. Sprite, Diet Coke, Coke, Monster, and orange Fanta - normal drinks for normal people who aren't in the middle of watching their world collapse.
Swallowing around a lump in his throat, he turned and started back in the direction of the waiting room. Long wooden rails affixed to the wall ran the length of the passageway, signs here and there ponting to RADIOLOGY, CARDIOLOGY, OB/GYN, CHAPEL, and CAFETERIA. Ahead, and orderly in white pushed an old man in a wheelchair out of a room and toward Lincoln; he stepped aside to let them pass; when they were gone, he tried to move, but his knees went weak and he leaned heavily against the wall for support. The tears came faster, and he fought with everything he could muster to keep from breaking down. Lily needed him to be strong, and so did Layna; what good was he as a man, husband, and father if he went to pieces at the first sign of trouble?
A nurse walked by, completely oblivious to his existence, and a fat man in a suit followed. Lincoln's knees knocked and he nearly fell. He needed to sit down, but he couldn't go back to the waiting room, couldn't bear to see his family's somber faces. Down the hall, a door stood open and Lincoln went to it. Inside, the chapel stood empty and dimly lit, a conservative and nondescript room featuring pews on either side of a broad, red carpeted path. He saw no altar or cross, no trappings of one denomination over another - that didn't matter. Going to the back right pew, he dropped to his butt and bowed his head, not in prayer or contemplation, but in weariness. He clasped his hands to his knees and drew a burdened sigh. Was this really happening? Were dark storm clouds really crowding his blue sky? The day started clear and bright, but now...now he felt like he was walking through the valley of the shadow of death, and cold rain was beginning to fall.
Please, God, he thought, let her be okay. Please, please, please. Don't let her die. Don't let our baby die.
He was still praying, openly and unashamedly, when someone sat next to him, startling him from his reprieve. His mother, looking old, tired, and wrung out, stared at the spot where, perhaps in the day before political correctness, a cross once stood; her pink rimmed eyes glistened with unshed tears and her lips quivered slightly, as though she were going to break down. Lincoln's heart blasted and a cold wind swept through him. "I-Is she…?"
Mom didn't reply for a moment, and when she did, her voice was barely above a whisper. "I don't know," she said.
Lincoln looked down at his feet again, his hands balled before him in the most obvious gesture of beseechment imaginable. "Do you think she'll be okay?" he asked, needing his mother's reassurance.
He didn't get it. "I don't know," she said.
Hearing doubt from his mother of all people made it all somehow more terrible; mothers were supposed to have all the answers.
For a long time, neither of them spoke, the sedate atmosphere heavy between them. Finally, Mom took a deep, fortifying breath, and let it out in a rush. "She's yours, isn't she?"
Even lost and bewildered in the midst of his darkest hour, Lincoln could not mistake who the she in question was.
Layna.
He and Lily had kept the secret of their love for over nine months on pain of their being separated. It was hard on both of them, and became, in a way, an obsession, but now he didn't care. "Yes," he said.
Mom let out a pent-up breath and reeled, literally reeled, in her seat, swaying drunkenly from side to side before steadying herself. "Oh, Lincoln," she murmured disappointedly.
Lincoln opened his mouth to defend and justify his feelings for his little sister, but any fight he had drained from him like blood from a dying body. Mom put her hand to her temple and shook her head as if in denial of the revelation. She crossed her arms and pursed her lips, the tears at last brimming and overspilling. She took a deep, shivery breath. "Why?" she asked, wounded, as though what he did was a personal affront.
He didn't have to consider his reply. "Because I love her."
Mom uttered a high, humorless laugh and tilted her head back, her face pointed toward the ceiling like a defeated atheist seeking guidance from God...and feeling like a goddamn retard doing it. "You…" she started, then trailed off, grasping for words but finding none. She hugged herself tighter and drew another breath. Lincoln watched her from the corner of his eye, too scared for Lily and their daughter to feel shame or contrition. What he said stood regardless, he loved Lily...and he didn't care what Mom or anyone else thought. He'd tortured himself plenty of the past ten months, he knew every way in which it was ostensibly wrong, but he also knew what was in his heart. His only regret (and it was a small one) was getting her pregnant now rather than later, and even then more for her sake than his. She would never be a normal teenager...never be free to go out and have fun with her friends, cruise, get drunk and sneak home after midnight, hoping Mom and Dad were asleep and wouldn't wake..she was skipping right from a child to a mother, do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars. She told him she didn't care...that she wanted him and Layna, not to be an airhead teenager like Lola. Maybe she thought that now, but what about when she was sixteen and starting to feel trapped? He wished he had the smarts to pull out, but he was a fuck up, and even though Lily might be flush with happiness now...he couldn't help thinking he fucked her life up just as badly as he did his own.
Other than that, he didn't care. Didn't care that she was only eleven, didn't care that she was his sister; perhaps there was something deeply wrong with him...maybe he was even a piece of shit pervert...but it didn't matter. He loved her and all he could do was shrug. The stars shine in the night sky, the sun also rises, and the autumn leaves fall from the trees, inexorable like his feelings for Lily.
It just was.
Mom blotted her eyes with her hand and shook her head again. "I suspected," she said, "but…" her throat bobbed up and down as she tried to force out the words. "The way you acted together...like a boyfriend and girlfriend." A shiver of disdain went through her, and Lincoln concentrated on the backs of his hands; he didn't know if he could handle this right now, not with Lily and the baby in danger. "Your father said I was sick." She barked a harsh laugh that turned into a sob. "But I know what a girl in love looks like...and I saw it every time Lily looked at you."
She turned her head and her hot gaze fell over him like the burning light of God's final judgement. He fought the urge to squint, but didn't meet her eyes. "I'm sorry," he said, more to pacify her than because he was genuinely remorseful.
"I just can't believe you." That statement came in an accusatory rush. "It's bad enough on its own...then you got her pregnant." She sounded like she was on the verge of crying. "Now look."
Those two words ripped through him like bullets.
She was right.
This was his fault.
"We'll talk about this later," Mom said and got to her feet. When she was gone, Lincoln wiped his tears away and fought to keep from breaking down. Lily needed him, he told himself; she was going to come out of this banged up but alive, and he had to be there to take care of her and their baby.
WIth that in mind, he got up and made his way back to the waiting room, his shoulders bowed and his head hanged. He tried to stand tall and firm, like a man assured in his own ability to handle the situation at hand, but he couldn't, because he wasn't a man; he was a glorified boy, and probably always would be.
Everyone sat where he left them, Lucy texting, Lana hunched over, Lola staring. Mom sat with her arms and legs crossed, one foot jittering anxious. Lincoln took his former place next to Lola, and was it his imagination, or did a cold, hateful chill radiate from his mother? He flicked his eyes up, and she wore a hard scowl, cheeks red and nostrils flaring. She glared at a point over his left shoulder, refusing to look at him, as though she found him repulsive. His chest tightened and swallowed hard. He couldn't blame her for feeling the way she did...but he wished she didn't. He kind of needed her right now. He glanced at his father, whose hands were fisted to his lips, thumbs hooked under his chin and his eyes dark, brooding. Did Mom tell him? He looked around the room, and none of his sisters seemed to notice he was even there...so probably not. He sighed and covered his face with shaky hands; they'd know soon enough, and they'd all hate him just like Mom did.
He squeezed his eyes closed to hold back the tears; his face suddenly hot and his heart aching, every unsteady beat sending ripples of torment through his chest. It was going to be alright...it was going to be alright...if only he kept repeating it, he would believe it, so he did, again and again like a mantra, his lips beginning to move and his fingers lacing. The chant became a prayer, imploring, beseeching, abjectly begging.
When someone spoke, he jumped.
"Mr. and Mrs. Loud?"
A tall man in blue scrubs stood over Mom and Dad, a white surgical mask hanging limply around his neck and a multi colored cap covering his head. Dark stains marred the front of his shirt, and Lincoln's stomach turned at the thought of what they might be. Mom and Dad both looked up, their faces darkening, and through some psychic osmosis, he knew.
"I'm Dr. Becker. Can I speak with you both? Alone?"
A shadow of alarm crossed Mom's features, and Dad looked like a deer in the headlights. Without complaint or protest, they got shaikly to their feet and followed Dr. Becker into the hall. Everyone stared intently after, even Lucy. Lincoln's heart sank into his stomach like a chunk of black ice, and he started to rock back and forth like a madman in a padded room. It's alright, he told himself, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright…
Then Mom wailed, and he knew it wasn't.
