THINK YOU CAN WAIT
THINK YOU CAN WAIT
BY John Tuft and Jennifer Aniston
Barry rolled over in bed and stared at the alarm clock, daring it to be not the dead of night. No such luck. It read 3:13. His last shift ended at 11pm and the next one started at 7am. The life of a resident in emergency medicine. Some nights the bone weary fatigue was enough to knock him out for some much craved sleep. Other nights, the day would replay in his head, over and over, until an eye would start to twitch and his hands cramp up like he was sewing six dozen tiny stitches without a break. Tonight, though, it was about something else. Tonight his restlessness was from the Simpson babies, a pair of MoMo twins, or as he called them, the ghost twins.
Monoamniotic-monochorionic twins, MoMo, sharing the same placenta, the same amniotic sac and fluid, but two different umbilical cords. Umbilical cords that are notorious for getting entangled with a not unusual outcome of stillbirths. Mrs. Simpson arrived by ambulance and the evening became a rush of life-saving measures, culminating in the successful Cesarean section delivery of the twins. Their survival was a miracle unto itself, but the two infants were strangely silent. They were sent to the NICU and were doing well enough to be swaddled and placed side by side in one bassinet. Intrigued by this, Barry stopped at the NICU on his way out of the hospital. He stood over them, simply staring. As he turned to leave, he heard a very clear, “WAIT.” Barry turned back, and the eyes of both twins slowly opened and stared right at him. He knew it was crazy; newborns don’t focus or track with their eyes. But as he moved, their eyes followed him. He shook his head and turned away again. “You think you can wait.” Clear as day, the voice sounded in his brain.
Now Barry lay awake in his room, watching the slow turning of the ceiling fan, willing it to mesmerize him into a trance so he could find peace. He pictured the swirl of soft hair crowning both babies, “Wait.” Wait for what, he asked himself for the hundredth time. He looked but the clock still read 3:13. Damn. The entire NICU had felt so still when he had been in there. Full of newborns struggling, but the air was still. As though the presence of the MoMo twins calmed the very forces of nature. “This is crazy,” he said aloud. But the fan kept turning and the memories kept churning. He blinked and the alarm announced it was 6:00 and time to get up. Maybe it had all been a dream. Maybe he was working too hard, trying to hard too sleep. Maybe. “You think you can wait.” He sighed, then shouted, “For what?” startling the parking lot attendant at the hospital.
He stood over the NICU bassinet again. The twins were fast asleep, breathing in perfect synchronicity. He looked at the heart monitors. Their heartbeats synced up as well. Remarkable. Now the still air felt eerie to Barry. He shifted his weight and looked away. Something made him turn back. Both pairs of eyes opened at the same time and stared at him. “Wait for what?” he whispered with urgency, ignoring the stern looks from the nurses. The babies just stared, right through him it felt like this time. He apologized to the nurses with his eyes and turned to go. “Wait for her. Think you can wait?” Barry spun back to the bassinet. “Her?” Then he knew.
Her. A nameless baby girl. A nameless baby girl from his first year of medical school. He and Susan fell in love, a rocky kind of love. When Susan became pregnant, it brought more fighting. So much so, that when they lost their little girl, they could not agree on a name for her. She was buried quietly, beneath a small stone with no name upon it. Barry felt these memories welling up inside of him as stood over the bassinet. His head was filled with a roaring and his knees buckled. He grabbed at the side of the bassinet. The twins eyes were closed again, their monitors softly beeping in perfect sync. Barry staggered to the hallway and leaned against the wall, gasping for breath.
He felt a presence at his side. It was an older woman, wearing the smock of a volunteer. “Honey child,” she said with great kindness. “Grief is a ghost. It either haunts us. Or, it hallows us.” Barry’s heart broke all over again. For what he could have had, for what he could have been. Darkness welled up and threatened to snuff out what little hope he had left to offer. “You think you can wait,” he gasped. “But all that comes is pain. More pain.” He opened his eyes. The woman was gone. The air in the hallway was perfectly still. The faint sounds of the baby monitors in the NICU kept up a syncopated lullaby as the world waited.
At 3:13 the next night, Barry pulled off the road at the small church. Tree frogs and katydids filled the air with night music. Still in his scrubs he got down on his hands and knees in the darkness, seeking peace at long last. He found the stone. Barry pulled out some pink chalk and wrote on the stone; MoMo. “My child, my baby girl, you are MoMo. Go to them now. Daddy can rest.” Grief is a ghost. It either haunts us. Or it hallows us.
Words are magic and writers are wizards.
