Part 1, Chapter 11 // Though I Make My Bed In Sheol

His knees were knocking, and he tried to stop tapping his foot as they sat in the waiting room.  She was scrolling through her phone.  He had tried that, but to no avail.  He checked his watch every thirty seconds.  He hadn’t slept well the night before.  She wanted him there.  That was the only reason he’d come.  But he didn’t want to see it.  Not now.  

     When they finally called her name, he wiped his sweaty palms on his pants as he waited for her to slowly rise and shoulder her purse.   A nurse took her vitals, she disappeared briefly to give a urine sample, and they waited again.  He studied the charts depicting the stages of a vaginal delivery.  He winced.

     “Is that what it’s like?” he asked, gesturing to the poster.  She studied it and nodded with approval.   

     “There’s just a lot more blood.” 

     The ultrasound technician appeared and led them into a dimly lit room.  He didn’t know where to sit, first taking the tech’s seat, then blocking the monitor, then standing in the path of the tech’s elbow.  

     “Sorry, babe. I’m not used to having anyone with me.” Reagan motioned to a stool near the bed.  “Sit here.” He obeyed.  She hadn’t called him that in ages. 

     The tech attempted to squeeze some gel on to Reagan’s skin, but announced the tube was empty, and had to get more.  The monitor displayed an empty field, black and grainy.  They waited silently, and he watched her swollen belly, occasionally seeing an alien undulation, like the fin of a strange creature skimming the surface of the ocean.  

     “He’s moving,” she whispered.  She took his hand and placed it against her skin.  He didn’t want to feel it.  He didn’t want to see it.  “It feels so weird.”

     “You think it’s a boy?”

     “I don’t know why.  I just do.” 

     When the tech returned, offering a feeble excuse which was intended to be funny, Reagan graciously laughed, and he cracked his knuckles for the fiftieth time.  She began pressing the probe all over Reagan’s stomach, as it were difficult to spot something in her uterus which was the size of a bell pepper, so he’d been informed.  

     Suddenly, the image flashed on the screen.  The forehead, nose, lips.  A hand poised by the chin.  The tech narrated each view, pointed out the legs, the arms, the spine.  She asked if they wanted to find out, and Reagan answered.  The tech smiled and adjusted the probe.  Even he could tell.  

    “It’s a boy,” he breathed.  A boy.  Immediately, the strange being, so separate and sequestered, came within his reach.  A boy.  He felt himself squeezing Reagan’s hand.  God.

     The tech congratulated them, then said she needed to capture a few shots of the heart and internal organs.  She continued narrating.  Then she stopped.  She peered at the screen.  She adjusted the probe.  She stopped again.  She excused herself.  When she entered the hallway, he heard her call for a doctor.  

    “What’s wrong,” Reagan whispered.  He could see the whites of her eyes in the dim light.  

    “It’s okay,” he offered.  He swallowed.  

    “The doctor never comes in unless there’s a problem.  What’s wrong?”  He stepped into the hallway and searched for someone he could ask.  A nurse he’d never seen before came striding down the hall.  He asked her what was happening as if she’d know, and she nodded, apologized for not being privy to any new information, and promised to find out.  She disappeared.  

    “It’s probably nothing,” he said, coming to stand next to Reagan.  

     “I don’t understand.  He’s been moving a ton,” she insisted as she stared into Casper’s face, searching for something he couldn’t give.  “He’s been hiccuping this whole time.  I felt it.”  She took his hand and placed it below her belly button.  Her icy fingers were shaking.  “Can’t you feel it?” There was a barely perceptible, irregular rhythm being produced.  

     “Are you sure that’s a hiccup?” Instantly, he knew he had asked the wrong question.

     “Yes!” she cried, her voice instantly near a sob.  “This whole time, nothing has been out of the ordinary.  I would have known, I swear!  I’ve been more sick than with Charlotte, but everyone says that’s normal with subsequent pregnancies.”  He tried to calm her by agreeing with whatever she said, but she frantically continued.  “I promise, I didn’t do anything different.  I promise.”  She made some kind of prayer under her breath.  “Cass, I promise,” she said, her eyes earnest with terror.  

     “I believe you,” he said.  “There’s nothing—,”

     The nurse returned with the tech and an authoritative-looking woman.  She told them her name, and Reagan offered her a polite, shaky hand, attempting to recover herself.  It killed him to hear her apologizing to strangers for nothing.  The doctor sat down and assured them that she only wanted to take a closer look. 

     “What are you looking for?” he asked.  The doctor replied that sometimes the fetal scans are unclear.  Casper tried to determine what she was analyzing, as she pressed the probe and studied the screen.  She didn’t say another word as she conducted the exam, then excused herself.   The nurse and the tech followed.  

     “What’s wrong?” Reagan asked again, her voice hoarse and helpless.  “Did you see—,”

     The doctor reappeared and asked Reagan to dress, then to follow her down the hall.  He helped her to her feet, and he could see her fingers shaking as she fastened her jeans and pulled down her sweater.  She moved toward the door, then reached behind her and grasped his hand.  

     He had never been to the principal’s office, except to receive an award.  He couldn’t shake the feeling of dread, as if they were about to be punished, about to be exposed.  

     The doctor’s face was gentle and grave.  

     “We’ve detected a cardiac abnormality.”  She explained what it was, or rather, what she thought it could be.  She handed them a piece of paper with a name scribbled on it.  A colleague of hers, and the best pediatric cardiologist in the state, she assured them.  Reagan sat motionless, her arms clamped over her belly, hunched forward in the chair, still clutching his hand. 

     “What does it mean?” he asked.  The doctor looked at them steadily.

     “It’s too early to tell,” she said carefully, “but it does appear to be serious.”  Reagan’s nostrils flared, and her lip trembled.  The doctor reached to pat her arm.  “Miss Fisher?”  Reagan looked up.  “I’ve called Dr. Shakir, and he is ready to see you as soon as you’re able.  I’d recommend making an appointment this week.”  Reagan nodded and thanked her.  The doctor told them to call her if they had any more questions, and promised she would follow up.  

     They stood outside her car in the parking lot.  

     “The doctor said she didn’t know for sure what it was,” he offered, after ten minutes of silence.  “Could be—,” he paused to look at her.   She was staring straight ahead, her arms folded tightly.  Could be nothing.

     He drove her car and brought her home.  It was eleven o’clock in the morning, and the house was quiet.  He was glad Charlotte was at preschool.  Mark was at the table, reading his papers.  

     “You’re home?  I thought you were heading to work after the appointment.”  Mark looked up when Reagan didn’t answer.  He hobbled to his feet and came over, his oxygen tank rolling behind him.  “What is it?” he asked Reagan.  He looked at Casper.  “What is it?”

    “It was going to be a boy.”  Reagan murmured.  She was staring at the floor. Mark shook his head and took her hand.

    “No, honey.”  Reagan pulled away and went upstairs.  “You lost it,” he said quietly, his eyes on the empty staircase.

    “No,” Casper answered quickly.  “He’s okay for now.  But it’s a bit more complicated.”  He handed Mark a copy of the doctor’s notes.  “The doctor referred us to a specialist. He’ll help us figure out what’s next.”  Mark read the document.  The oxygen tube popped and hissed.  He handed the papers back to Casper.  

    “I’m sorry,” he said at last.  

    “Should I stay, Mark?  In case she needs anything?”

    “I’ll take care of it,” Mark answered.  Casper was stricken as he watched the weak, sick man square his shoulders.  

     “Let me know,” he offered lamely.  “Please.” 

     His bike was at work.  It was a thirty minute walk.  He folded the paper and put it in his pocket.  

     As he walked, he listened to the sounds of the barbarous world continuing around him.  Dogs barking, planes flying overhead, people talking, cars honking.  It seemed impossible that everything dared to go on, as if the entire universe had not been disrupted.  As if the cruel snarl in the tiny, bravely beating heart was not a rip in the cosmos itself.  As if his own life were not caught in the balance along with that one.

     He didn’t know how it happened, but it was the only thing he could do.  As soon as he heard the phone ringing three hundred miles away in Grover, his heart began to surge, welling up to release itself.  Help was near.

     But he was ashamed when Dad’s voice greeted him.  Suddenly he became frightened.  Months without a word.  They know nothing.  They would never understand.  Once they find out, they will know who to blame.  They will never forgive me.  

     Dad said his name, asking if he was there.  His mouth hung open, and he was unable to speak.  He ended the call and put his phone away again.  

     He shivered in the autumn air as he walked all the way to University Ave.  Instead of taking it toward Carver, he turned down Mendota, toward the lake.  It was a pleasant street, a long row of old, beautiful houses.  It was gray and quiet in the middle of the work day, but an elderly lady shuffled out to her mailbox on his left, and a garbage truck idled in the street as a worker shook a blue box of recyclables into the hopper.  A mother pushed a stroller down the sidewalk opposite. 

     At the lake, he leaned over the split rail fence and rested his elbows on it.  He picked at the rough wood with his fingers, breaking off splinters and flicking them away.  He was capable of nothing but the tedious task he had found for himself, ignoring the catch of a splinter as it snagged his skin, taking some satisfaction in the thought that if he continued long enough, the entire rail would eventually yield to his aimless hands, and would collapse into pulp and dust.  

     Where can you flee from My presence?  

     I’ve committed no crime.  I’ve done no different than anyone else would do.  People do this all the time and You don’t punish them for it.    

     If you take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea.

     Nobody could blame me.  I had every right.  He balled up his fists and braced them against the rail.  I’m not the only one.  It’s not fair to put it all on me.  Why do you demand so much?  You could have stopped me.  You didn’t have to let this happen.  Not to him.  Tear a hole in my heart instead.  Why him?  Why should he pay for it? What has he done?

    If you ascend to heaven.  If you make your bed in Sheol.

     The lake disappeared.  The fence disappeared.  The sky disappeared.  Beneath his feet, the abyss opened before him, a terrible black maw, hot, ravenous, swirling nearer and nearer.  It would swallow him.  It should swallow him.  His body became rigid, numb, paralyzed.  He knew it was for him.  He had always known it.  He was meant for it, destined for it.  He couldn’t deny the perfection of it, its precise, terrible beauty.  

     You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. 

     He knew.  He had heard every hideous unspoken thing, and seen the dead, putrid filth concealed in his deepest, darkest parts.

     Surely the darkness shall cover me and the light about me be night.  

     Where can you flee from My presence?  

     He had always known.  He had always seen.  Even as He saw the poor, brave boy with the gnarled heart, and knew his unformed substance, and carefully wove the strands of his being into existence.  

     Casper sank against the railing, buried his face in his hands, and wept.

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