Chapter 184
Claire
still hadn’t told Jamie she wanted a divorce, but she tried to push that burden
out of her mind as she shuffled slowly through the maternity ward alongside her
mother. She felt sore already without
adding in the pain of her marital problems, and besides, she wasn’t here to
dwell on Jamie. She was here for her
daughters, them and them only.
“Should I
come in, or do you want go alone?” asked her mom, outside the NICU doors.
“Alone,”
admitted Claire. “For now, anyway.”
“Sure,
honey.” Offering an understanding smile,
her mother patted her shoulder. “I’ll
just be down the hall in the waiting area then.”
“Thanks,
Mom.” Claire offered a brief smile over
her shoulder as she passed into the NICU.
Cut off from her mother, she instantly felt a flicker of relief. She was grateful to have a supportive mom
around, but at the same time, it was aggravating to be living under the same
roof as her parents again. She hated
relying on her mother, but right now, she had no other choice. The only way she could get out of the
condominium was if someone drove and went with her, and even then, the exertion
was almost too much this soon after surgery.
It was all
worth it, though, to see her babies.
Looking
into the two incubators, she drew in a slow breath. They looked slightly bigger than she
remembered, even Delaine. It was a happy
thought, but in a way, it almost saddened her.
In just two days, she felt like she’d missed out on precious moments of
their young lives. She wished she could
bring them both home to the condo, where the cribs still lay empty, but it
would still be weeks before they were ready.
And yet,
minor milestones were being reached every day.
Something
about Caitlin was different, and she realized it upon second glance. The ventilator, with its large, snakelike
hose that had once connected to the breathing tube in her throat, was
gone. It had been replaced by thin tubes
that ran into both of the baby’s nostrils, and for the first time, Claire could
get a good look at her tiny, rosebud mouth, the soft pink lips pushed into a
slight pout.
It was hard
to look away, but concern made Claire’s eyes drift to Caitlin’s monitors,
anxious to make sure her daughter was still breathing well without the help of
the ventilator. The numbers for her
oxygen level were right in the normal range, though, and a happy sigh passed
through Claire’s lungs. “That’s my
girl,” she whispered, smiling into the incubator. “I knew you were strong.”
“She sure
is,” said a sweet voice behind her, and Claire turned to find the girls’ nurse,
Fernanda, coming over, a smile on her face.
“We took her off the vent last night, and she’s doing great without
it. She’ll be on oxygen for a little
longer, just for some extra help, but her lungs are maturing, and her sats are
excellent.”
Claire
grinned. “That’s incredible.”
“It is,”
Fernanda nodded. “And how are you
doing?”
“Oh, I’m…
I’m pretty good.” Claire was hesitant,
unsure of how to answer that question.
This good news about Caitlin made her feel ecstatic, like she and her
daughters could get through anything, but beneath the thrill of happiness, she
still felt sore and weak, and then there was that minor detail about her ending
her marriage…
“That’s
good to hear. It’s not an easy recovery,
but you’ll feel a little better every day.
In a way, it’s probably nice for you to not have to worry about caring
for twins on top of everything else.”
Claire
forced a smile; she had tried to tell herself the same thing the day she’d come
home from the hospital, but she still knew she would rather have Caitlin and
Delaine at home with her than here in the NICU.
“I miss them, though,” she murmured, resting her hand on top of
Caitlin’s incubator. “I feel like I’m
missing out on their first days of life, not being here…”
Fernanda
returned the smile sadly. “I
understand. This is a hard thing for new
moms to cope with. You’re doing a great
job, though.” She patted Claire’s
hand. “Now that the vent’s out of the
way… would you like to hold her?”
Her heart
leaping as she processed the question, Claire turned to look at the nurse with
wide, hopeful eyes. “Really?? I can hold her?”
“I think
she’s ready. Let me get you a
rocker…” She dragged over one of the
many rocking chairs, positioning it in between the two incubators. Claire sat down carefully, hand pressed over her
incision, and Fernanda opened up Caitlin’s incubator.
Gently
untangling the wires and IV lines still hooked to the tiny preemie, she picked
up Caitlin with care. The baby was small
enough to be held in one hand, Claire observed, but Fernanda used two. Drawing in a breath, Claire opened her arms
to receive the infant, scarcely able to wrap her mind around the fact that the
moment had finally come, the moment when she would hold her firstborn child for
the very first time.
It wasn’t
as simple as she’d expected; Fernanda took her time in positioning Caitlin’s
little body against Claire’s chest, showing her the right way to cradle the
baby in order to make her feel safe and calm.
“Don’t talk to her much while you hold and rock her,” advised Fernanda
in a low whisper. “Too much can actually
overstimulate her.”
But Claire
found that she didn’t need to talk.
Words could not express how she was feeling at the moment, anyway. Sitting back in the rocking chair, with her
tiny infant snuggled against her chest, she felt an overwhelming sense of
peace. Everything up to this point had
been worth it, she decided, as she rocked slowly back and forth. From having her eggs extracted and fertilized
with Jamie’s sperm, to her rocky pregnancy, weeks of bed rest, and a painful
C-section; it had all been worth it for this moment. This was the baby she’d dreamed of, prayed
for, and fought to have, and for the first time, she truly felt like a mother. This was her child, curled up against
her breasts, her baby… her own flesh and blood…
The feeling
was incredible.
She found
it hard to take her eyes off the little bundle in her arms, but at one point,
she did manage to glance up, absently so, her gaze drifting across the NICU.
It was a
mistake.
Instantly,
her eyes were drawn to him, standing out in the hallway, on the other side of
the large, glass window. A groan escaped
her. “Now he decides to show up,”
she murmured to her daughter, cupping her a little more firmly, knowing she
wouldn’t be able to hold her for much longer.
Jamie was here, and it was time she talked to him. She was already annoyed at him for
interrupting this special moment and knew that it would never be any easier for
her to drop the divorce bombshell on him than it was going to be right now.
Waving
Fernanda back over, she let the nurse take Caitlin from her and place the baby
back in her incubator. Then she rose
from the rocker with difficulty, holding her incision, and forced herself to
shuffle away from her babies and out of the NICU.
“How are
they?” Jamie asked, when she made it into the hall.
Claire
forced herself to answer him calmly.
“Better. Cait’s off the
ventilator. They let me hold her.”
“I saw.”
That was
all he said, and she felt a flicker of anger which made staying calm even
harder. That was it? He was their father, and all he could say in
response to this wonderful news about his daughter was “I saw”?
It was one
of many reasons she was done with the marriage.
“Your dad
said you’d be here,” Jamie went on.
Claire
arched an eyebrow, distracted by the change in subject. “You’ve been to the condo?” She wondered what else her father had told
him, but apparently not everything, because Jamie looked quite passive and
subdued. She had a feeling his reaction
would be much different when she told him she wanted a divorce.
“Yeah. I wanted to see you… say goodbye before I
left…”
“You’re
leaving?” she blurted, before she’d even had time to think about it. Don’t tell me you’re leaving; I’m the one
who’s supposed to be leaving you!
His adam’s
apple bobbed as he swallowed. “I have
to. Work, you know. I can only take off so many days; they need
me back.”
“Oh…
right.” In all the drama of the last few
days, she had almost forgotten that he’d skirted out of his business trip early
to come back and still had a job to go to in Des Moines. Something as ordinary as work seemed far
removed from her life as of late.
“I’m
sorry. I’ll be back as soon as I can…
next weekend, maybe?”
She shook
her head, jumping on the perfect moment to deliver the blow. “Don’t bother. Not for me, anyway. If you want to come back for your daughters,
that’s your prerogative, but… I don’t want to see you.”
She expected him to question her, but Jamie just frowned, his dark eyebrows
furrowed. “I know you’re mad,” he
offered after a moment’s pause. “About
the whole transfer thing. I don’t blame
you. It was a shitty thing to do…”
“Gee,
that’s the understatement of the century,” Claire snapped, unable to resist the
biting remark. She could feel her blood
pressure start to rise as the annoyance turned to anger and realized that the
middle of a hospital hallway was not the place to have this conversation with
him. “Look, can we find a more private
place to go? I need to sit, and we need
to talk.”
Looking
nervous, Jamie agreed, and they walked down the hall to an abandoned rest area
with vending machines and a pay phone.
There were a couple of chairs there, and, slightly woozy from the walk,
Claire instantly sank down into one of them.
Jamie perched next to her, turning his body to face her. For a few seconds, they just sat in silence
that was broken only by the low hum of the vending machines.
Claire
braced herself, working up the will to say what she needed to say. But now that she was here, sitting so close
to him, it was harder than she had imagined.
She was still angry at him, but he was her husband… her first love… her
friend of fourteen years. He was Jamie,
and even if she didn’t know him as well as she thought she had, she knew all
too well the wounded expression his clear blue eyes would take on when she told
him she was leaving him. She hated to
see that look on his face. It angered
her when it was all for show, the pathetic puppy dog face he made when he was
trying to persuade her of something, but when it was genuine, it broke her
heart. She hated that she was about to
put it there.
But then
she remembered all the reasons why – his lies about the job transfer, his
selfishness, his jealousy and possessiveness when it came to Nick, his lack of
compassion for her during the selective reduction ordeal, his abandonment and
neglect – and she knew it was the right thing to do. She had to do it.
“I’m not
gonna beat around the bush,” she told him bluntly, wanting to get it over with. “I want a divorce.”
His blue
eyes grew wide, immediately taking on the sad basset hound look. She looked away, trying to avoid them, but
his voice chipped away at her defenses.
“Claire… no…” he murmured breathlessly.
“You can’t mean that. I know we’ve
got our problems, but we’ll… we’ll work through them.”
“How? You wanna do marriage counseling or
something?” Claire snorted, steeling
herself against him. “Like you’d
actually go for that. Jamie Turner, talk
about his feelings? Never. You’d just sit there and scowl and not say a
word. It’d be all up to me to fix our
problems myself. And I can’t do that; it
doesn’t work that way.”
“I can do
better. Look, I know I haven’t been the
best husband to you, but-”
“No, you
haven’t. I’m sorry, Jamie, but I deserve
better. I thought I knew you; I thought
I loved you, but you’ve only let me down. I can’t keep going in this kind of
marriage. I want out, for my own
sanity.”
Jamie
seemed to refuse to accept this. “We
took vows,” he practically whimpered, in a pitiful attempt to convince
her. “Before God! How can you just renounce them?”
“You’re the
one who didn’t keep his vows, Jamie,” accused Claire, and now her voice shook
just a little. “Love, comfort, honor,
and keep, in sickness and in health. You
didn’t do it, Jamie. That makes them
null and void, in my mind. I think God
will understand that I made a mistake… that you and I were never meant to get
married.”
“How can
you say that, Claire?” Jamie’s voice rose with emotion. “We’ve loved each other since high school!”
“I did love
you in high school,” replied Claire, finding that as his voice grew more
impassioned, hers reached a dull calm.
It was becoming easier to come clean with him now, and even though she
knew she was hurting him with every word, he needed to hear it. “But you’ve changed. I thought I was marrying the Jamie I fell in
love with, but that was stupid. We’re a
lot older now… we’re both different people.
We don’t work as a couple, and if you think we do, you’re only kidding
yourself. Think of all the crap we’ve
gone through this year. A couple that
was truly meant to be would be able to get through it a lot better than we
have. All we do anymore is fight, and
I’m sick of it. I can’t take it
anymore. Please understand that. We’ll both be better off apart.”
Jamie shook
his head, but he didn’t argue this time.
He seemed at a loss for words.
“I haven’t
talked to a lawyer yet,” Claire said, and her voice quivered again, “but I’m
going to. I’ll take care of drafting up
the papers and everything. I’ll be
fair. I’m not out to ruin your life; I
want you to be able to move on and find happiness without me. All I’m asking of you is your
cooperation. Please, don’t make this any
more difficult than it already is for both of us.”
He didn’t
respond, not even a nod, but she was okay with that. She knew he needed time to process this, and
she was sure that once he had, he would come around. If he cared about her at all, he would let
the divorce be amicable.
“We can
talk more after we’ve both had some time to think about this. Not anytime soon though. I need some time… we both need some time,”
she stressed, as she started to stand up.
It was time to leave. She
couldn’t stand to stick around any longer, not now that the cat was out of the
bag. She was anxious to leave him to his
thoughts.
“Just like
that? You’re leaving?” Jamie mumbled, as
she stood, not even looking at her.
Claire
hesitated. Then she shrugged. “I don’t know how else to do it. This is new to me too.”
She wanted
to walk away, but his voice stopped her once more. “What about the twins?”
She
swallowed hard, picturing the two beautiful babies they had created
together. “They’re the best gift you’ve
ever given me,” she said, the raw emotion returning to her voice, “and I’ll
always be grateful. You’re their father;
you’ll always have a place in their lives if you want to be. But I think they’ll appreciate growing up in
a household without parents who argue and lie.”
Jamie
didn’t reply, and she knew she had said enough.
If she stayed any longer, the conversation would just keep going in
circles, as he tried to convince her not to leave him, and she was not about to
put up with it. Her mind was made
up. Her will was strong.
She used it
to turn herself slowly around and walk away.
He did not
call out to her, and she never looked back.
Of all the things I believe in
I just want to get it over with
Tears form behind my eyes
But I do not cry
Counting the days that pass me by
I’ve been searching deep down in my soul
Words that I’m hearing are starting to get old
Feels like I’m starting all over again
The last three years were just pretend
And I said goodbye to you
Goodbye to everything that I knew
You were the one I loved
The one thing that I tried to hold onto
- “Goodbye to You” by Michelle Branch
***