Chapter 25

Yirmeyah

It was October, not quite a year since the wedding. It was, in fact, just six days from our first anniversary. These things seem to always happen in the middle of the night. I was sleeping soundly when something began shaking me. I came awake, and it was Cassie. "It's starting," she said, and though she'd never been in labor before I didn't doubt her. She knew what was happening to her better than I did. And anyway I'd rather take her to the hospital and find it was false labor than wait and have her get into some sort of trouble.

I was getting dressed when she gave a sharp little cry, on top of her breathing. I ran out into the living room and found her with one hand on the back of the sofa and one on her belly, bent as much in half as she could get. "Hurry, Yirmeyah!" she said. It was a labor pain that had caused her to cry out. I finished getting dressed, and got her to the car. She'd timed the pains and they were far enough apart that she didn't think we needed an ambulance. I took her word for it.

While we were on the road she called the doctor on her cell phone. The hospital would have done it, of course, but she wanted to do it herself. My wife might be little and she might still be a girl in some ways, but what I'd told her during our courting was true. She had grown up a lot since I'd known her. As much as I loved her, I didn't think she'd have been mature enough to handle pregnancy and labor when we first met.

She had one pain while we were traveling, but just the one. She called the hospital too, and they were waiting for us at the emergency room entrance. They got Cassie onto a gurney, and directed me to the waiting room, though I parked the car in the lot before I found a seat. Once they finished doing to Cassie whatever they did to her, they came and got me, and I sat with her while I filled out forms. Since we'd known this was coming most of the paperwork was already done, and the form filling was a short exercise. When that was done, they took me to change into scrubs, while they took Cassie to the delivery room.

I have no idea how long labor is supposed to last. I know it varies from woman to woman, and that the same woman can be in labor for different lengths of time for different children. If it's true for cows, surely it's true for women – and of course the doctor had explained that anyway. Cassie's seemed to me to be progressing nicely, though I didn't tell her that. By the time I was with her again, she was sweaty and already getting tired. I just held her hand, and didn't say a word when the pains came and she like to squeezed my fingers to jelly. I'd have cut my hand clean off if it would have helped her, so a few mashed fingers were nothing.

A couple of hours later things were looking good, according to the doctor. And then one of the monitors began beeping. A nurse said, "We've got a drop in BP, Doctor." Simple words, but the doctor's reaction wasn't simple.

He ordered a check of Cassie's vitals. The blood pressure – I'd figured out that's what BP meant – kept dropping. I was near Cassie's head, but I craned forward and realized that there was more blood than there ought to be, if my experience with calving was any indication. And the doctor lost his cool – or perhaps got cooler. He swore viciously.

He started giving the nurse orders. I didn't understand most of them, though whole blood I got the gist of. And then he looked at me. "Mr. Hudson, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to wait in the waiting room."

I just said one thing. "Will she be all right?"

"Right now I don't know. I've got a situation here, Mr. Hudson, and I need to take care of it."

We had pretty good luck, if you want to call it that, with our animals when I was growing up. But I'd seen vets go into the same crash mode a few times. I knew that he needed to give all his attention to whatever was going wrong with Cassie and the babies. I got out.

I had just enough mental strength to call my deacon chairman. And then I collapsed into a chair and prayed and wept. I don't know how long it was before there was a hand on my shoulder. I looked up and it was Jason. He wasn't a deacon, but obviously the chairman had called him. I sure hadn't thought to do it, though I surely ought to've. I leaned over against him, not caring a bit that men don't cry on each other's shoulders. Cassie was dear to both of us, and cry together was exactly what we did.

Finally I was able to explain what I knew of what was happening. By the time I finished Katherine was there too, and a couple of the deacons. They couldn't do a thing, anymore than I could. But just having them around me was something. I was 22 years old and my wife was going through I didn't know what. I needed people there. I needed people older than I was. I needed steady shoulders to lean on. And I had them.

We spent time praying, and crying, and just sitting. I don't, to this day, know how long it was. But eventually the doctor came out, looking weary and with a little spray of brown on the front of his scrubs ... Cassie's blood, I realized. Jason stood and gave the doctor his chair. The doctor – his name was Crenshaw – sat down with a sigh.

"Mr. Hudson," he said, "I have been in this business for a long time. Tonight was one of the toughest I've seen." He rubbed his hand over his face. "Your wife is stable right now. She began hemorrhaging during the delivery. We had to perform an emergency Caesarian and take the babies. They're doing fine, and you can see them whenever you're ready. We finally got the bleeding stopped." He paused. "The hard part is that we don't know why your wife hemorrhaged. Sometimes things happen and we never understand why. This looks like it's going to be one of them. We don't know why it began, and we're not entirely sure which of the things we did stopped it. We do have her on drugs to help her blood clot, which reduces the risk of a recurrence. She's asleep right now – it was a difficult time for her, and the anesthesia hasn't worn off yet. I can let you go in for five minutes."

I was out of my chair. "Lead the way, Doc."

After I visited with Cassie, though she was indeed out like a light, and seen my sons in the nursery, I finally went back and put my own clothes on again. I was dog tired – dead dog tired – and the group gathered around me and formed a little barrier against the world. I sat in a corner, and hard plastic chair or not, leaned on the wall and slept a little.