Chapter 78

DORIS

We were at the Cheesecake Factory having dessert when Mia put her hand on her chest and seemed to have trouble breathing.

"What’s wrong?" I asked her.

Mia's eyelids drooped a little, and she looked woozy.

"I don’t know, Mommy."

Arthur didn’t take any chances. We rushed her to the hospital.

Sitting in the waiting room was agony. Arthur’s face was tortured. I held his hand and grabbed it tightly while we waited for news.

When they rushed Mia to the emergency room, they told us she was having an irregular heartbeat. That had been an hour and a half ago, and we still hadn’t heard anything new.

Finally, an older doctor, a white man with thinning gray hair and large glasses, came up to us.

"You’re Mia’s parents?"

"We are," said Arthur.

"We’ve had to put in a pacemaker to regulate her heartbeat. The surgery went fine, and she’s completely stable. You can see her now. She’s under heavy sedation, and she needs her sleep, but you can go in and sit with her."

The doctor took off his glasses and wiped them with an old-fashioned handkerchief. "We’ll have to keep her overnight for observation, but you should be able to take her home around noon."

We went into Mia’s room. She looked so frail and pale that my heart lurched.

It reminded me of all those years that Noah was in the hospital in a coma. I knew Mia was just sleeping, but she was so out of it she looked dead to the world.

Arthur pulled a chair next to her on one side of her bed and held Mia’s hand. I went to the other side of the bed and took her other palm in mine.

Mia was cold and clammy, but when I felt her wrist, her pulse was strong.

I looked at Arthur over Mia’s prone body. I have never truly been Mia's mother, even though she called me "Mommy". But looking at her so still and quiet made me realize that the way I loved her did make me a mom.

Arthur used his influence to quickly transfer Mia to a large luxury private room. He got two reclining lounger chairs put in so that both Arthur and I could spend the night with Mia.

When Mia woke up, it took her a minute to stop being groggy and stop yawning. But when she did, she said, "I had another bad heart day, didn’t I?"

"You did, pumpkin," Arthur said. "But you’re fine now."

Mia considered that for a moment. "Every time I’m in the hospital, I get ice cream. We were going to have dessert at the cheesecake factory but didn’t have a chance to, so I think I deserve double ice cream."

I laughed. "Maybe so."

Mia wanted to watch the movie Frozen again, so Arthur got out his tablet, and we watched the animated film.

We were about halfway into the film, and there was a knock on the door. It was Susan, Arthur’s new assistant, who I hadn’t met yet.

"Special delivery for a special girl." Susan said it with a smile, and that made me like her immediately.

Susan had a cake box in her hand. She opened it up to show Mia.

"It's Anna and Elsa!" Mia exclaimed.

We all ate vanilla ice cream cake with the frozen characters on top that Arthur had custom-made, and Susan rushed over to us.

Susan left right after the movie.

Mia asked if she could call her friend Becky and invite her to the hospital tomorrow, and Arthur agreed.

"Now you have to get your rest, sweet girl," I said. I took a napkin and wiped some ice cream from Mia's upper lip.

"But I’m not tired," Mia said with a big yawn. She was asleep before Arthur could even extol the value of getting a good night's rest.

Arthur leaned back in one of the big lounge chairs, and I settled in his lap and rested my head on his shoulder.

I was dozing off when the alarm sounded. The beeps from Mia’s monitor increased.

Before I was fully awake, two nurses, one male and one female, rushed in.

The female nurse cut the alarm so it stopped blaring. The male nurse began compressions on Mia’s chest.

I felt like my heart was in my throat. I was so worried.

A doctor I hadn’t seen before I came in.

He took a stethoscope and put it on Mia’s chest.

“Let’s get her into the ER,” the doctor said.

Suddenly our private room was a whirlwind of activity. Two other medics came in, and the two nurses in the two medics quickly lifted Mia onto a gurney and rolled her out of the room at a pace that was almost a run.

I looked at Arthur. He had gone as white as a sheet. My face probably looked the same.

“She’s going to be OK,” I said.

“Of course,” Arthur said, but the look of worry on his face was in direct contrast to his words.

The wall clock sounded loud as the minutes ticked away. I couldn’t eat, drink, or think.

I chewed my fingernails down to the quick waiting for news.

“It shouldn’t take this long, should it?” I asked Arthur.

It was the wrong thing to say. I put my hand on Arthur's chest and let my face express how sorry I was that I asked a question he couldn't answer.

“It’s just that I care for Mia so much.”

“I know you do, baby.” Arthur kissed me softly on the lips and then kissed each of my closed eyelids as I let myself relax against him.

The sun was rising, sending in little shafts of filtered light through the half-open window blinds before the doctor came back to give us a report.

“I have your daughter stabilized,” he said. “She’s fine for now, but she is far from out of the woods yet. You should prepare for her to be here at least a couple of days, maybe the entire week.”

The following days went by in a blur. I was still haunted by the fact that Noah had been in a coma for so long that I was terrified that something else would happen to Mia.

I knew Mia was getting the best care, but that wasn’t enough to make me feel better.

My stomach ache became my constant companion, fueled by my worry.

Even though Arthur was strong for me and strong for Mia, I could tell he was worried too.

There was some irony that we now owned a pharmaceutical company, but there was nothing we could do to help Mia except wait and pray.

Mia was a trooper, though. She handled everything with her normal smile and energetic good humor. She even joked about her pacemaker.

“It’s my arc reactor,” Mia said.

I looked at her quizzically. “What’s an arc reactor?”

"It’s what Iron Man’s chest piece is called. It powers his suit and keeps him alive. Mommy, how could you not know that? Everybody knows that."

Mia put her fingers in a circle around where her pacemaker was as if she was showing me where her Iron Man portal would be.

“Oh,” I said. "I got it."

“We can buy you some Iron Man pajamas if you want to match your new heart pacemaker,” Arthur said.

“I think I want Iron Girl and not Iron Man,” Mia said.

“Whatever you want, pumpkin."

Becky came by a few times after school.

Nina came one day when Becky was here. Nina had borrowed a make-up case from a friend who worked on movies. Mia, Becky, Nina, and I all put on heavy make-up and purple or blue wigs.

Arthur took photos of us looking more like anime characters than our normal selves.

Cathy called twice when Mia was in the hospital.

I thought that when Arthur told Cathy that we would adopt her baby once it was born, Cathy would leave us alone until she went into labor. But every time Cathy called she said something that was, in a subtle passive-aggressive way, designed to cut me down.

Just as Mia got the go-ahead to go home the next day, Cathy called again and said she would come in an hour to visit Mia in the hospital.

It seemed petty, but I didn’t want her to come. I couldn't help feeling that Cathy was trying to weasel her way back into Arthur’s life, and I didn’t like it.

.

.

.

.

.

.

To be continued.

————————————

I'm really sorry for the slow updates on this story. I'm working hard on it, though. Thanks for your patience and support!