Reunion Beach by Elin Hilderbrand (best ebook reader under 100 .TXT) 📗

Then she heard a lusty cry. Instinct rallied and she found the energy to lift her head in time to see a pair of nurses bent over a small bloody bundle of flesh at the foot of her bed. Then they hurried to a large metal scale. Elinor craned her neck to see her baby, but her view was blocked by their bodies. She heard her infant cry and reached out. The need to hold her baby came from deep within, from a place she didn’t know existed inside of herself.

“Give me my baby,” she called out.

The nurse holding the baby turned to look at her, confusion etched across her face. In her arms, Elinor saw the tiny pink legs kicking as the baby howled. She saw toes. Real toes of a real baby. Her baby. Instinct roared in her heart. She could make her baby stop crying. The baby wanted her.

She felt as fearless as a lioness. “Bring the baby here.” She gathered her strength and dragged herself up to her elbows. Perched on the side of the narrow bed she reached out her arm. “Please!”

The doctor turned his head toward the nurse and over his shoulder gave a barely perceptible shake of his head, then with a quick jerk, indicated the door. Elinor saw with horror that the nurse was hustling her baby away.

“Wait!” she cried. “No, stop! I want to see my baby. Please!”

“Settle down,” the doctor ordered with little sympathy. “We’re not done here yet.”

Elinor looked wildly around the room, panic stirring. She began to cry out, “I don’t want to keep the baby. I know I can’t. But please, just let me see it!”

It. The word felt wrong on her lips. “What did I have? Is it a boy or a girl?”

She was ignored. The doctor and nurse went about their work complacently, as though her anguish was standard procedure. No one would meet her gaze. No words of comfort were offered.

Elinor felt her uterus contract. Dazed and desperate in defeat, she fell back again on the bed, shaking her head from side to side, crying incessantly, “Please . . . please . . . please. . . .”

When the doctor was done, he left without a word. What could he say? Congratulations? The room was cold and empty. Elinor had never felt so alone. Not that she’d expected anyone to be in the waiting room for the happy news—not her parents, not her boyfriend. Not her sisters nor a friend. No one had come to visit her in the six months she’d been at the Home.

She put her hand over her belly, still full and flaccid. But inside, she knew her baby was gone. And with it, a part of her was gone forever. This loneliness was deeper and more devastating than she had been warned about in all the classes she had taken at the Home for Unwed Mothers. This was a dark, bottomless well, and she was sliding into it.

Elinor lay limp and stared up at the metal lamp, silent as tears rolled down her cheeks. The nurse with the full breasts was cleaning her up but Elinor knew nothing would ever wash away the pain.

The nurse came to stand beside her. She wiped her forehead with a cool cloth. “Now, now, it’s all right,” the woman crooned in a gentle voice. “You’ll be fine. You’ll see. It’s all for the best.”

Elinor just closed her eyes and shook her head. There were no words.

The nurse withdrew her hand. “I’m not supposed to say anything,” she said in a low voice close to her ear. “But if it were me lying there, I’d want to know this much. Your baby is fine, too. A healthy seven pounds, two ounces.”

Elinor opened her eyes and turned to look at the woman’s face. Her eyes were large and dark and full of sympathy. This woman had children; she could tell. She was a mother. She’d nursed her babies, watched them grow. She’d recognized the desperation in Elinor’s eyes.

Elinor didn’t have to ask.

The nurse took a breath, then said, “You had a girl.”

The cry of a seagull sounded again. Elinor blinked and once again saw the broad expanse of the ocean as it met the horizon in a line of infinity. She exhaled. The memory had been so real, she had water in her eyes.

“Elinor?”

She turned to see Maeve at her side. Then looked behind her. The beach was empty.

“Everyone is gone.” Her voice was dull.

Maeve nodded. She searched her face then asked, “Are you nervous? About today?”

Elinor didn’t reply. Feelings from her memory lingered, making her heart heavy. She merely nodded her head and looked again out at the sea. There had been a few times she’d stared out at the dark ocean water, feeling its pull, and considered following the turtle to its depths. To shed her earthly burdens, her myriad sadness and grief, and simply float cross the invisible barrier into another world. It would be easy. Stones in the pocket, like Virginia Woolf. One step too far, and she’d be released, too.

The hand on her arm tugged harder.

“Elinor, what’s the matter?”

“I’m not so much nervous, as afraid. Maybe it’s too late.”

“It’s never too late. You’ve been trying to find her all these years. You had to wait until she was ready. And now, it’s finally happening.” Maeve’s voice was encouraging. “She wants to see you. Tell you what. I’ll stay with you, if you like. You won’t have to be alone.”

Maeve felt an easing of tension at her friend’s words. You won’t have to be alone. She looked into Maeve’s brown eyes and her smile was watery. “Thanks. I’d like that.”

“Okay, then. What time is she expected?”

Elinor took a deep breath, bringing herself to the present fully. “She’s driving from Atlanta. She said she’d arrive around four, give or take traffic.”

“Are you making dinner?”

Elinor shook her head. “We decided we’d go to a restaurant, so there’d be no additional stress. I made reservations at the Long Island Cafe.”

“Perfect spot.”

“You’ll join us?”

Maeve