Chapter 25: The Newborn

By a/k/a Simon
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The call had come from Doug Schenkman, proud new father of Celeste Elaine Schenkman. “Are you the woman who drove my wife to the hospital?” he asked. Megan told him that she was. He thanked her, then asked, though he hated to do it, if she happened to have the spare set of keys to their house and, if she did, would she do his wife a favor. Megan reached into her pocket and found the keys. Everything had been so chaotic at the hospital that she’d forgotten to give them back. Imagining Doug would want to stay as close to Wanda as possible for the immediate future, she felt like it was her duty to help.

That was how Megan found herself alone in the house on the edge of the Willow Lawn Cemetery, rifling through drawers, looking for clothes for a woman she barely knew. To say the situation felt a little awkward to her would be an understatement.

Rather than aimlessly sift through all of Wanda’s personal belonging, she’d called Doug and gotten details on where to find certain things and a list of items Wanda had requested. It was all pretty standard stuff, pajamas, toothbrush, deodorant, magazines, a camera. Still, it seemed creepy to be collecting the property of a virtual stranger, to be wandering around their house when they weren’t home. She almost felt like a cat burglar on the prowl.

Having that image suddenly made the whole thing more fun. She played into the fantasy and started to slink around on her tiptoes, taking each step quietly, careful not to agitate any floorboards. She would stop at every corner and poke her head out suspiciously, eyes wild, pretending to be afraid of getting caught. It was an amusing little distraction from everything that was going on in her life, a chance to enjoy being someone she wasn’t for a few minutes.

Walking by a large mirror in the upstairs hallway, Megan caught her reflection. It was a ridiculous image, her stooped over and exaggerating her steps like a cartoon sneak thief. A laugh formed itself in the back of her throat. She almost let it escape, but then her fake paranoia kept it at bay. She wanted to stay in character for as long as she could, to savor every minute as the world’s greatest pilferer of periodicals and pajamas.


It was the third time she’d been to Keen Memorial Hospital in four days, though she drew a blank on most of her first two trips. The long drive up from DC seemed so far away now, like another lifetime. She couldn’t remember anything they talked about the whole ride. There were large blank spots when she tried to think about pulling into the parking lot, running down the halls, only to find her mother already gone. She had a vague memory of sitting at her bedside, crying until the nurses insisted that she leave. The only thing that was clear in her mind was Eddie. She could still feel his cold hand moving up and down on her back as she sat there, collapsed and sobbing into her lap. He didn’t know that his touch was giving her shivers, that along with the heaves from crying she was shaking from the chills. But her mind didn’t log it as a bad feeling. It was a gesture of affection and, at that moment, she was just glad to have it.

The second trip to the hospital had been so frantic and disjointed that her brain couldn’t possibly have taken in all the information. As soon as Wanda’s water broke, all rational thought disappeared, replaced by pure instinct. Looking back, she was amazed she didn’t stall the car trying to pop it into first, her leg was shaking so badly with nervous energy. She couldn’t remember the faces of the nurses that ran to the car and lifted Wanda out. Nor could she picture the walk down the hall, though she remembered the sensation of Wanda’s steel grip around her hand as they moved toward the delivery room. Her memories came into focus only after Doug arrived and Megan was pushed out of the room and into the hallway, left as only an observer to what was happening. She didn’t stay to watch the whole thing, only looking long enough to see Doug holding Wanda’s hand, telling her everything was going to be OK.

Death and life. Does anyone ever go to the hospital casually, she wondered. Even now, leisurely making the drive up the hill to Keen Memorial, she was nervous about seeing Wanda, about delivering the bag she’d been asked to bring. It all just seemed too surreal to her that she would be stopping by to see her friend, who had just brought a new life into the world, then going to the cemetery to mark her mother’s exit from that same world.


Megan asked at the admissions desk for Wanda Schenkman and was given the room number. Walking to the elevator, she passed a door with a large window in the center of it. Through the window she saw a doctor sitting across from a middle-aged couple, the woman’s arm around the man. The glass blocked the sound of the doctor’s voice, but it was clear by the man’s reaction the nature of what had been said. Over the course of a scant few seconds, the man’s face changed from desperate hope, to short-lived denial, to hysterical acceptance. His cheeks turned red, lines dug deep into his face as tears streamed down from squinted eyes. He rested his head on his hand, a thin line of saliva dropping from his lip as he did. The woman held him close, gently rocking him back and forth like a child. She nodded as the doctor stood up and said something to her. He took her hand for a moment, passing some of his strength to her before turning and walking to the door. As he exited the room, Megan stood there and stared at the doctor’s expression. With one sigh he seemed to release all emotion, looking to his left, then his right, and taking off down the hall to find the next case. His reaction seemed cold, detached. But then Megan realized she was expecting too much from him. She took a final look through the window. Inside the woman continued to comfort the man. That was the real connection, the only connection that mattered. The woman would heal the man in a way no doctor could ever be trained to.


She rode the elevator with an orderly and an old woman in a wheelchair, a drip bag dangling at the end of a hook, inches from Megan’s face. She hated needles, and the proximity of the bag, though there was nothing pointed about it, was a constant reminder of the final destination of the tube attached at its bottom, the skin pierced and the vein violated on the top of the woman’s hand. Just the thought, never mind actually taking a look down, made her squeamish. Megan did her best not to grimace.

The maternity ward smelled antiseptic and foul at the same time, like sickness wore a cloak and was acting as if no one noticed it was in the room. It was the uniform stench of all hospitals that said this was a place for humanity not at its best, the healing and the dying.

Doctors, nurses, orderlies and other staff moved through the halls at a quickened pace, every person on an important mission. There was a low drone of machines but, other than that, it was quiet.

Megan stopped at the front desk and asked for Wanda. A nurse led her down the hall and instructed her to stay by the door to the room. Looking in, the first thing she noticed was a large, colorful fold-out display made from tissue paper, the kind that people use as cheap decorations during the holidays. A cardboard attachment shouted out in type It’s A Girl! The nurse walked over to Wanda’s bed and adjusted her pillow. Wanda lay there, looking exhausted, like half the life had been drained out of her body, which, in a way, it had. Her skin was pale and her hair was matted from dried sweat. As the nurse fidgeted behind her, she opened her eyes and saw Megan.

“Meg,” she said, flopping an arm up but unable to keep it aloft. “Thank you so much for coming.”

“I brought the stuff you wanted,” Megan said, holding the bag up. “I think I found everything. It felt kind of weird being in your house without you there.”

“I know. I’m sorry. Next time I’ll be better prepared.” Like people getting tattoos, as soon as Wanda had her first child, she was already planning for her next.

“So, how’d it go?” Megan asked, setting the bag done on a dresser and moving to take a seat in the chair next to Wanda’s bed.

“It was hell,” Wanda admitted, shaking her head in disbelief of what she’d been through. “Twenty hours of labor. I thought I was going to die. And poor Doug, the things I said to him. I think the whole nursing staff knows all our secrets now.”

“But everything turned out fine?” Megan tried not to touch the sensitive subject of Doug’s infidelity. “The baby…?”

“Oh, she’s beautiful,” Wanda said, beaming. “She’s got his blue eyes and my mother’s nose. And dark hair, just like Doug. And the cutest chubby cheeks. Those she got from me.”

Hearing the description, curiosity begged Megan to ask about the child’s paternity. But she felt it was the wrong question to ask at that time. Her silence, however, ended up doing the job for her.

“In case you’re wondering,” Wanda offered, sensing what Megan must be thinking, “It’s his.” Then she thought about it again. “At least, I’m pretty sure it’s his. They haven’t run any tests yet, so we can’t compare blood types or anything. I just…looking at her…I know who her father is.”

It wasn’t the most confident statement ever made. Megan chalked it up to the rapture of the moment, emotion clouding logical thought. She wanted to ask the same question six months down the road, once Wanda has been worn down from caring for a baby all day and Doug is still off screwing other women. She suspected the answer might be a bit different then.

“Hey Meg,” Wanda began. “All that stuff I said yesterday, about Doug and his running around, about accepting men for what they are, don’t pay any attention to it. It was probably just hormones. I was about to have a baby, so I probably wasn’t in my right mind. Doug’s a good man. Sure, he’s made some mistakes. I’m not perfect either, you know. But this baby, this is a chance to change everything, to start over.”

“But how can you be sure that things are going to be any different than before?” Megan asked, forgetting not to upset the woman.

“Because Doug told me,” she said.

“And that’s all it takes?” Megan said in harsh disbelief.

“It was the way he told me,” Wanda clarified. “He was holding our baby in his arms, this tiny, precious gift, and he looked at me. He told me that he was going to give up all the other women, that being a father suddenly put everything into perspective. He realized how stupid he’d been and he promised to make it all up to me. I looked at him and knew he was telling the truth. You can’t imagine how having a baby makes you rethink your priorities.”

Megan couldn’t argue with the woman. It was pointless to tell her anything contrary in her current euphoria. And Megan didn’t want to anyway. If Wanda had a chance at happiness, who was she to say different? Maybe it wasn’t her idea of happiness, what she would want for herself, but she had to respect that Wanda looked at the world through different eyes. Happiness is a matter of perspective, even if the odds are stacked against you.


The two friends sat and talked about nothing for a while. Mostly Wanda basked in the fantasy of motherhood, going on and on about walking her baby in the park, play dates with other kids, the first day of kindergarten, starting a college fund. Nothing was too far in the future for her to revel in. Ironically, though it was doubtful Wanda noticed, none of her moments had Doug in the picture. She didn’t say he was gone, it was probably understood that he was working when these things happened, off being the breadwinner. But Megan picked up on it. Things had changed for Wanda. It was mother and child now, with father back in the distance.


At Wanda’s pleading, Megan agreed to stop by and see the newborns before she left. She said her good-byes to her friend, expecting they’d never see each other again, and walked to the other end of the hospital floor where they kept the children.

Through the glass she could see row upon row of babies, at least thirty, lined up in a grid of rectangular beds. They varied only slightly in size, all having been born within days of each other. Some were awake and twitching around in their blankets. Others slept soundly; once again unaware that they had been flushed from the womb and brought into a strange world they wouldn’t fully understand if they lived to be a hundred.

Megan looked at each of them, discerning the differences in each of their faces, looking for hints of Wanda or, less likely she thought, Doug in any of their characteristics. All she saw were wrinkled, pink balls with three dark slits, two eyes and a mouth, and two black dots, their nostrils. She’d always been bad at identifying babies. A mother would come to her class to pick up her child with a new one in a stroller. They’d ask her to look; showing off their accomplishment, pointing out a feature that said this little person was part of their family. Megan would nod in outward recognition, but inside she didn’t see it. She would look at the older child and could see the similarities with his or her mother. But babies always just looked like babies to her.

A nurse passed by and Megan stopped her. “You wouldn’t happen to know which one is Celeste Schenkman?’ she asked.

The nurse looked through the window and scanned the children. “Second row, third from the right,” she said.

Megan counted up and over to a newborn in a yellow blanket. She was awake, waving her tiny, curled up hands in the air, like she was swatting at something that only she could see. They’d put a terry cloth cap on her head, hiding the dark hair that Wanda swore was a tell-tale sign of her parentage. Megan squinted her eyes, trying to get a better look, but it didn’t help. There was nothing about the child that she could see that told her anything about her genetic heritage.


Once she knew which one was the Schenkman child, she thought about everything she knew abut the family. She thought about what kind of life this kid had been born into, what kind of hornets’ nest she would have to deal with just by having the parents that she did. The baby had done nothing yet, hadn’t made a single mistake. But there was already so much looming over her. Megan apologized to the newborn, for everything she knew was ahead.
While Megan stood there, examining young Celeste from a distance, the man who at least two people claimed was her father appeared at the end of the hall. He was standing in the doorway with his back to Megan, talking on a cell phone.

“I told you, no,” he said sternly into the mouthpiece, pacing back and forth in short lines.

His voice caught Megan’s attention and she did her best to listen, while still looking ahead to the newborns to avoid looking like an eavesdropper.

“No,” he said again, getting more perturbed. “I’m a father now.” A pause. “It is a big deal.” Another pause. “You’re not getting it. It’s over. I’m done with all that. I have a child to think about now. I can’t be running around all over town anymore like some stupid teenage kid.” Again, a pause. “Let me say it one more time, because obviously you’re not getting it. Don’t call me later. Don’t call me tomorrow. Don’t call me ever again. It’s over.”

A nurse approached him. “Sir, you can’t have that on in here,” she instructed.

Doug nodded in acknowledgement. Turning back to the phone he said a final, “Over.”

He slammed the flip-phone shut and put his hands on his hips. His shoulders rose and fell dramatically as he calmed himself down, wiping sweat from his brow. He stretched his neck to each side, then stretched his arms wide.

Doug walked up to the window, taking a spot next to Megan. “See one you like?” he asked in a genial voice. She turned to him. It took a second, but his change of expression alerted her the second he made the realization. “Hey, you’re Megan, right? I recognize you from the cemetery the other day. You brought Wanda to the hospital yesterday.”

“One and the same,” Megan said.

“Look, don’t worry about your mom’s funeral,” he assured her. “My guys have taken care of everything. The plot is all set. No worries.”

“I appreciate that.”

“And thanks for helping Wanda out. I wish I could have been there,” he said, revealing nothing about where he was or who he was doing at the time. “I’m just glad she wasn’t alone when it happened.”

“I did what I could,” Megan said demurely.

Doug pointed a thumb to the newborn room. “Would you like to see her up close?” he asked. Megan nodded and Doug tapped on the window gently, getting the attention of a nurse inside. With simple hand signals he asked the nurse to bring out Celeste. The nurse walked over, scooped up the child, and came into the hallway. She passed her to Doug, who took her in his arms and brought her face close to his.

“Isn’t she amazing?” he stated more than asked.

Megan looked at the two faces next to each other. At that moment she could see it. She could see Doug’s features in the child’s fresh face. Maybe the kid had a chance after all.

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