The Ariana Trilogy Read online

  Chapter Nine

  Paulette sat stiffly on my couch. Her dark eyes were large and frightened as she looked at me, tears rolling down her cheeks.

  “What is it, Paulette?” I asked, my voice sharp with worry. I glanced around the apartment. It appeared as if someone had thrown a wild party. Used cups and plates littered the floor and coffee table, and food was ground into the nice carpet. “Tell me!” My voice was beginning to sound hysterical. I ran to the bedroom, frantically searching for my baby. “Nette? Where are you, Nette? Come to Mommy!” But she was nowhere to be found.

  I ran over to Paulette and shook her. “Where is my baby? Did Jacques take her?”

  Paulette shook her head almost violently. “No, not like that. He wanted to surprise you, to show you he could take care of Nette. But she kept crying, so he went to the café and called me down at the bar. He was pretty upset and mumbling about how he was going to get a phone installed here, and how there was no one home next door, and how he couldn’t find the baby medicine. I could hear Nette crying over the phone, and some of the guys and I came to see if we could help. I played with her like I do at the café, but she just kept crying and crying and chewing on her fist.” Paulette bit her lip as the tears came faster. “Jacques couldn’t stand seeing her in pain, and he wasn’t thinking right. None of us were. We’d all been shooting up and stuff. Jacques had given us a lot of free stuff. He’s been dealing, you know, though I only found out last night, or I would have told you before.”

  I shook her again. “Paulette, my baby! Tell me about my baby!”

  Paulette gazed at me sorrowfully. “Jacques shot a little bit of stuff into her. You know, just a little, to try and get her to calm down—”

  “No! He didn’t!” I shook my head. Could anyone be so stupid as to give drugs to a baby?

  Paulette gulped. “She calmed down after that and seemed happy. She went to sleep, and everyone began to celebrate. But I was worried about Nette, so I kept checking on her. And once she wasn’t breathing, so I told Jacques. He gave her mouth-to-mouth, and she started breathing again, but she didn’t wake up. Jacques got real scared and took her to the hospital.”

  “Is she all right?” I demanded, holding my breath for the answer.

  “I don’t know!” Paulette wailed tearfully. “It’s all my fault, Ariana! I shouldn’t have let it happen!” She bit her lip again until a trickle of blood appeared. The pain seemed to help her concentrate. “After Jacques left, I went and called the police, and they sent someone to the hospital. I told them I’d come back and wait for you here, and we’d meet them down there. I’m so sorry, Ariana!”

  I was out the door before she finished talking. I didn’t wait for the elevator but shot down the stairs and into the stormy night, running for all I was worth. Paulette followed behind me, trying to keep up.

  Jacques was pacing the hospital halls when I arrived. If he had been drugged before—and I didn’t doubt that he had—all traces were blotted out by the stark realization of what he had done. Nearby, two policemen waited to take Jacques to the police station after Nette’s condition was known.

  I ran to the desk, tears blocking my vision. “My baby! How is she?”

  The nurse didn’t ask who I was. She just shook her head gently. “I don’t know. The doctor should be out as soon as he knows.”

  I waited there with my heart aching, hardly believing that such a thing could actually be happening. Surely this was a nightmare, and I would soon wake up. I shook myself repeatedly, but it seemed this nightmare was real.

  Jacques came close to me, his face lit eerily by the fluorescent lights of the hospital. “I’m sorry.” His were eyes pleading, begging for absolution. “It seemed the right thing to do at the time. She was in pain.”

  I turned on him in contempt. “And what about now, Jacques? What kind of pain is she in now? Oh, I wish you had never come back! We were happy without you. Why couldn’t you just leave us alone?” I retreated from him, backing down the orange carpet that contrasted so harshly with the stark white walls. Jacques started to follow me, but I held up a hand to motion him back. “Stay away from me!” Defeated, Jacques stayed where he was.

  The doctor came out minutes later, and the nurse at the desk guided him over to me. “This is the baby’s mother,” she said softly.

  The doctor looked at me, his face somber. “I’m sorry. Her body couldn’t handle the drugs in her system.”

  “No!” I whispered. “No!” The doctor and his words seemed unreal. I stared at him, noticing the short hairs growing stiffly out from his face as if he hadn’t had time to shave that day.

  “If it helps to know,” he said kindly, “she didn’t feel any pain at all. She just went to sleep.”

  My heart ached so badly I thought I would die. “Can I see her?” I asked hoarsely, not bothering to wipe away the tears streaming down my face.

  He nodded. “Of course. Come with me.” We turned to go through the door, but Jacques put his arm out to stop me.

  “Please, Ariana!” he sobbed. “I didn’t mean it!”

  Anger swept over me like a fire raging out of control. “I don’t care what you say!” I hissed at him. “Nothing can change the fact that you murdered our baby—the only person alive that means anything to me! You are a murderer, and I hope you rot in hell forever!” I wanted the words to burn into his soul, destroying him as surely as he had destroyed me.

  His face was stricken. “Ariana, I—” But I turned and followed the doctor. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the policemen leading Jacques down the orange carpet, a broken parody of the man I’d once loved.

  The doctor led me to a room crowded with equipment. In the center was a large table with a still figure on it, seeming small and lost in the midst of a huge expanse of white. Nette looked as though she were asleep, so perfect and angelic. At any moment, I expected her to open her eyes and smile at me. Strangely, I felt her presence in the room, though I knew she was dead. I touched her white cheek softly and then picked up her limp body and cuddled her to my chest. Already, my milk was letting down in anticipation of the baby who would never nurse again.

  “Oh, Antoinette,” I whispered. “I should never have left you. I’m so sorry. Now you will never grow up—but you will always be my little queen.” As I said her name, I remembered Antoine and how he had also died during a rainstorm nearly two years before. I also thought of Queen Marie-Antoinette and how she had been beheaded. “I shouldn’t have named you Antoinette,” I sobbed suddenly, sinking into a nearby chair. “People with that name never live very long.”

  I don’t know how much time passed as I sat there, holding my precious baby close to me. Eventually the doctor took her, and I let her go because the essence that had been Nette was no longer in the little body. The presence I had felt in the room had also gone. Nette was lost to me forever.

  I stood to go home but found my strength waning. I made it as far as the waiting room before I sank onto one of the brown couches in a haze of inner pain.

  “Ariana.” I looked up to see a young woman in a nurse’s uniform. Somehow she seemed very familiar to me. “It’s Monique. We had the same dance class in school when we were children.”

  I stared at her dumbly, wondering what difference that fact could possibly make to me. Yet uninvited, the memories came flooding back. She belonged to the happy times when Antoine had been alive—times that were gone and better forgotten.

  “I was with your baby from the time she came in tonight,” she added softly. “I left when you came in to see her. You didn’t notice me, and I wanted you to have time with her alone, so I didn’t say anything.” She had tears in her eyes. “I want you to know how sorry I am. It’s horrible to see these things happen, even though I know the children go straight to heaven.”

  “There is no heaven,” I replied dully. “She’s dead, and that’s all there is.” I got up quickly and went out into the rainy night, leaving Monique to stare after me. I didn’t want the stranger she was
now to see my pain. Besides, I knew deep inside the accident was my fault, that somehow I deserved what had happened. I kept seeing little Nette’s face before me, crying in Jacques’ arms, wondering where her mother was. I had failed her miserably.

  The rain had let up while I was in the hospital. The drops still came down but only halfheartedly. I made my way slowly, almost blindly, to the subway. It was very dark, and I saw no one in the street. The hospital district seemed quiet and peaceful in the early morning, as if denying the innocent death that had occurred. The narrow roads and sidewalks were full of large puddles, but I apathetically sloshed through them; it was too much effort to go around.

  A revving car sounded in the distance and soon came careening into sight around a corner. The windows were open, and I could hear the laughter of young teenagers, as yet unburdened by the sorrows of life and death. They came down the street at an incredible pace, swerving purposely into the deep puddle at the edge of the street. They laughed with renewed glee as the dirty water flew up to completely soak me. Abruptly they were gone, and I went on, barely noticing or caring about the indignity. What difference could a little dirty water make when my baby was dead?

  I made it home somehow, though I remembered little of the journey. I didn’t turn on the lights in my apartment but sat on the couch in the darkness, clutching my daughter’s white stuffed bear, the one I had bought her the day after Jacques had left us, and feeling my breasts fill with milk until I wondered if they would burst.

  I must have dozed off, because the apartment was suddenly bathed in morning light. Still I sat clutching the bear. I went to use the bathroom sometime later and noticed the white roses there. One by one, I pulled the petals from the flowers and let them fall to the tiled floor. I did the same to all the other flowers in the apartment. Vase after vase of white blossoms hit the floor, followed by the single vase of red. Their remains mixed red and white, like blood against pale skin, with the clutter and mess that Jacques’ friends had left behind. I felt a tempest of anger inside of me, but worse still was the horrible emptiness in my arms.

  And I kept seeing Nette’s crying face, calling to me hopelessly.

  Several times my doorbell rang, but I didn’t answer. I was slumped to the floor in my bedroom, once again clasping Nette’s bear to my swollen breasts. Night fell, and still I did not move. My breasts became sore and rocklike. The ache of a breast infection came swiftly after, with alternating chills and fever. But I didn’t care; the fever at least gave me some mental relief from the pain in my soul.

  The next morning, I heard someone ring the doorbell. This time they didn’t go away. A key turned in the lock. “What a mess!” someone said; and then, “Ariana? Are you here? Colette, why don’t you check that way, and I’ll look back there.”

  “Oh, I hope she’s all right,” Colette said. “I knew something was wrong when she didn’t show up to work yesterday.”

  “We’ve got to find her,” replied the other voice that seemed familiar to me, but I couldn’t quite place it. “I’ve even been to her parents’ apartment searching, after I came here yesterday and got no answer. But she hasn’t been there, and no one has seen her since the hospital.”

  The voice had moved from the living room to the bathroom and now into my room. At first she didn’t see me in a heap on the floor, but then she gasped and ran to my side. I looked up at her almost unseeing. It was Monique from the hospital.

  “Colette, she’s in here!” Monique cradled me for a moment until Colette came into the room. “Go get my bag, please, and bring a cup of water from the kitchen.” Colette quickly obliged.

  “How do you feel, Ariana?” Monique asked, but I just shivered.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Colette’s voice was worried.

  “Breast infection, I’d guess.” She reached out tentatively to touch my left breast. “Yes, it’s hard and swollen. She ran out of the hospital before I could get the doctor to give her something to suppress the milk. Now she needs an antibiotic, but I can’t get her any if she doesn’t go back to the hospital.”

  That brought a reaction from me. “No, I won’t go! Let me be!” I was nearly hysterical as I struggled to get away. If they thought I was going back to that place of nightmares, the place that had taken my baby away, they were crazy.

  “So what are we going to do, Monique—carry her?”

  Monique shook her head. “She won’t die from this. The body has a way of curing itself, and I brought some things to help. An antibiotic would do the job faster, but she’s a bit incoherent right now.” Monique’s words weren’t cruel; they were simply stating a fact.

  “Who could blame her?” Colette’s voice was rough with sympathy.

  Monique began removing items from her bag. “Vitamin C. She should take a thousand milligrams every hour until she’s better. We’ll also give her E, at least four of the garlic capsules, and four of these cayenne capsules. We should repeat these doses every four hours or so.”

  “How do you know all this?” Colette asked Monique. “I thought most medical people were against all this natural stuff.”

  Monique smiled. “I think that mostly we medical people are an impatient bunch and just don’t like to wait around for nature or the herbs God gave us to take their course. But my grandmother, who raised me, knew all about herbs and vitamins. Many people would come to her for help, and I sort of learned by watching. It’s part of why I became a nurse.”

  As she was talking, Monique had taken the capsules from the bottles and was making me swallow them. I did as she asked, too spent from my previous outburst to protest. Besides, a fiery pain had begun inside my chest, and I couldn’t breathe without feeling a sharp agony.

  “Now what?” Colette asked.

  Monique wrinkled her nose. “A bath, I think. How did you get so dirty, Ariana?” I shrugged indifferently, but as she started to lift me, I fleetingly remembered the youngsters and the dirty water splashing up to soak me. “We’ve got to get this dirt off,” Monique continued. “Then I can put a poultice on to help you get better.”

  They helped me into the bath. The hot water felt good and seemed to ease the pain somewhat. Monique found my hand pump and made me express my milk to relieve the pressure. It hurt incredibly but didn’t compare with the suffering in my soul. Afterwards, I lay on the bed while Monique made up the poultice.

  “Some slippery elm powder mixed with warm water, add a little comfrey, lobelia, and goldenseal, and there you have it.” She spread the mixture on two rectangular cloths. Carefully she applied them and wrapped them with plastic. “This is to keep the herbs moist. We’ll leave it on overnight and see how it does.”

  “Well, I’ve got to get down to the café,” Colette said. “But I’ll be back for a minute every hour or so to check on you, Ariana. And don’t worry about the café. Mother and I can handle it, and if we can’t, we’ll find someone to fill in. I’m also calling Marguerite.” She reached down to kiss my check and tears flooded her eyes. “I’m so sorry about Nette,” she whispered, looking so miserable that I felt I had to say something.

  “Thank you for coming, Colette.”

  She smiled slightly. “I’ll be back later.” She turned and left the room.

  That left Monique and me alone. “Thank you,” I murmured and drifted off into oblivion. But even there, I was not freed from the aguish in my heart or the throbbing emptiness of my arms.

  During the next few days I slowly recovered. At least my body did. Inside I still ached for Nette and for Antoine as well. On the fourth day the fever was completely gone, though I was still weak. Monique was with me, as she had been constantly except for when she had to work at the hospital. She had cleaned the apartment, washed my clothes, and put most of Nette’s toys in a box out of sight. Now she was making dinner, singing snatches of different songs as she worked. I mostly just sat and stared into space.

  Monique finished adding the final ingredients to her soup and came to where I sat on the couch. She looked at me
earnestly. “Oh, Ariana, you’re going to make it! I know it doesn’t seem as though you will right now, but you will. I know that when my parents . . .” She gulped audibly. “ . . . that when my parents died, I thought my life was over. But there was Grandma, and I found a new life and the gospel of Jesus Christ. It explained the reasons for why everything happened and gave me the strength to go on. And you’ll make it, too. You were always so strong, even when we were kids. I admired that in you.”

  I shook my head. “It wasn’t me; it was Antoine.”

  “No, it was you, Ariana. Antoine had strength, too, but you were his source. He loves you so much.”

  I began to cry. “Loved, you mean. Don’t you know that he’s dead?”

  She nodded. “I read about it in the paper. I felt bad, because I had run into him a couple of weeks before, and we had met a few times for lunch after that. We had planned to meet again the day after he died, but he never showed up or called. I thought he had dumped me.”

  “No. Antoine would never have done that to anyone.” Her story called up memories I had long forgotten, as I suddenly remembered Antoine telling me about running into the friend from my childhood dance class. He had wanted me to go to with him that last time. But then he died.

  “Just as you would never have done that to anyone,” Monique agreed. “I understood that afterwards, but at the time I didn’t know him well enough, though I was crazy about him. I thought I had finally found my Mr. Right—even if he was a year younger than me. He was such a good person.” She paused a moment before adding, “You and Antoine are a lot alike, you know.”

  “Well, we’re twins. Or were.”

  That seemed to spark something inside of Monique. “Are! You still are twins! Don’t you see that this life isn’t the end? The body dies, yes, but our spirits are eternal. Don’t you believe in God and that He created us? Well, I do. I know we’re His children, and we are as eternal as He is, only we haven’t progressed as far. Oh, Ariana, He loves us so much! Don’t you think He has a plan to reunite us with our loved ones? He does! I feel it! Please believe that!”