Ghosted: A Novel

Eddie

Isit bolt upright: the door to the delivery suite is opening. I realize I must have been sleeping. I feel terrible. And I’m freezing, shivering all over. Why didn’t I take a a hat, or some gloves? Why didn’t I plan this properly? Why have I messed up everything, from the moment Sarah left my barn back in June?

“Is there an Eddie Wallace here?” asks the woman standing in the doorway. She’s wearing scrubs.

“Yes! That’s me!”

She pauses, then nods over at the lifts, where we can talk without my waiting-area companion hearing. He’d fallen asleep, too, but now he’s watching me with jealous eyes.

Arrows of fear circulate my body like the science videos they showed us at school, and I walk far too slowly. The woman in scrubs waits for me, her arms folded, and I realize she’s looking at the floor.

I realize quickly that I don’t like that.

I realize even more quickly that if she gives me bad news, my life will never be the same again.

And so, for the first few seconds, I can’t hear what she’s saying, because I’m absolutely deafened by fear.

“It’s a boy,” she repeats, when she realizes I haven’t taken anything in. She starts to smile. “Sarah gave birth to a beautiful baby boy about an hour ago. We’re doing a few tests at the moment, on Mum and baby, but Sarah asked me to tell you that it’s a boy and he should be absolutely fine.”

I stare at her in sheer astonishment. “A boy? A boy? Sarah’s okay? She’s had a boy?”

She smiles. “She’s very tired, but she’s okay. She did really well.”

“And she wanted you to tell me? She knows I was here?”

She nods. “She knew you were here. She found out just as we took her in for a C-section. Her sister told her. And your son’s lovely, Eddie. An absolutely gorgeous little thing.”

I fold forward on myself, and a sob of wonder, of joy, of relief, of amazement, of a million things I could never name tumbles out of me. It sounds like laughter. It could well be laughter. I cover my face with my hands and cry.

The woman puts a hand on my back. “Congratulations,” she says, somewhere above me. I can hear her smile. “Congratulations, Eddie.”

Eventually I manage to straighten up. She is turning to leave. It defies belief that she’s off to bring more lives into being. That this miracle is commonplace for her.

A boy! My boy!

“Sarah’s recovering in her room, and she’ll need to stay a few days on the postnatal ward. I’m afraid you won’t be able to come in tonight, but visiting hours on the ward start at two P.M.,” she says. “Although, of course, it’ll be up to Sarah.”

I nod stupidly, joyously. “Thank you,” I whisper, as she starts to walk away. “Thank you so much. Please tell her I love her. I’m so proud of her. I . . .”

I haven’t cried like this since the day they told me my little sister was dead. But that was the worst moment of my life, and this is the best.

After a long while I stagger outside, where the wind has dropped, and a thin gray is beginning to filter through the night sky. It’s silent, save for the sound of my tears and sniffs. Not so much as a distant car engine, just me and this towering, dizzying news. “I’m a father,” I whisper, into the nothingness of predawn. “I have a little boy.”

And I repeat this several times, because I don’t have any other words. I lean against the cold wall of the Women’s Center and try to recalibrate my vision of the universe, so it can include this miracle, but it’s impossible: I can’t imagine. I can’t compute. I can’t believe. I can’t do anything.

A lone car enters the car park, makes slowly for a disabled space opposite me. Life goes on. The world is waking. The world contains my son. This is all his. This air, this dawn, this crying man whom he might one day call Dad.

Then my pocket buzzes and I see Sarah’s name, and the word “Message,” and I’m off again, crying uncontrollably, before I’ve even read the thing.

He’s beautiful, she’s written. He’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.

I watch, breathless, as she writes another message.

He looks like you.

Please come and meet our boy tomorrow.

And then the final one: I love you too.