Richie Zaborowske: STAY ON THE LINE • Cleaver Magazine

Richie Zaborowske
STAY ON THE LINE

A tornado of nurses blew in. The whole maternity care team. Cracking commands. Swirling around. Wheeling your wife away. And when you stood to follow, they told you, no. To wait, and not worry.

So now you’re waiting. You’re worrying. Pacing the room. Scrolling on your phone. Looking out the windows to where great gusts of snow are detonating across the parking lot in explosions of shimmering particles that whip past the wind-whipped humps of powder on the vehicles and are already obscuring the footprints of the solitary figure, bundled in a blue parka, wearing a blaze orange hat, making his way, hunched against the cold, toward a trembling pickup truck. You have the urge to throw open the window, to feel the bracing blizzard air on your face, on your naked arms, in your mouth as you holler to the stranger and ask him if everything is going to be okay.

But you don’t. You continue your back-and-forth rubber band trek. On your phone, looking for answers, you skip across the pages of WebMD. Reddit forums. Quora. Inscrutable dead ends that go on and on and on.

Pacing no longer expending enough energy, you began straightening up the room. Something tangible, the least you can do for your wife. The empty coffee cups scattered about, the damp towels draped over the fixtures in the bathroom, and your things: a reading light, the toothbrush on an end table, your work laptop on the recliner, all suddenly embarrass you.An irrational overabundance of caution makes you leave your wife’s belongings exactly where they are; her brush by the heart rate monitor, her phone on the hospital bed, her duffle bag, the one she refuses to part with even though it has a broken zipper, on the couch.

You turn on the television, stumble through the channels, land on cable news. An animated host, with a slick suit and slicked-back hair, red ticker tape of text speeding below him, leaps from one catastrophe to the next; a landslide took out an entire village in a country you recognize but wouldn’t be able to point to on a map; a celebrity has died of an overdose. The screen fills with grainy drone footage of tank carcasses in the desert and rising from the wreckage, smoke.

The events are horrible, and in a way, unfathomable. And even though you realize the thought is selfish it seems odd to you that there is anything worth reporting, anything more important occurring in the entire world than what is happening right now, in this hospital, down the hall, or wherever it is they have taken your wife, however long ago. You aren’t sure.

Startling you, your phone vibrates in your pocket. The number unknown. You assume it’s a marketer, one of those political polls, or maybe a scam. Yet you turn off the television and answer anyway; it could be a doctor, or a nurse. But it’s a scam. You hang up. And your phone vibrates again. This time it’s a different voice. But the same scam. You half listen as the caller tells you there is a virus on your computer. And for a small fee, he can fix the problem. You end the call.

But your aunt Linda had fallen for a similar scam. Sitting across from you during Thanksgiving, you sat there in disbelief as she told you how she followed the scammer’s directions; how she booted up her laptop and installed the software he requested. It was ridiculous, you thought. How could anyone fall for that? But your aunt had. And it cost her a small fortune too.

You understood that she was looking for sympathy. But at the time, you had been driving a forklift, scraping to get by. And while your aunt worked, she was a lawyer for non-profits, an honorable profession for sure, you knew she never had to scramble, or sweat to make ends meet. She never had to walk out of a factory with the sun rising on the horizon, bone-tired, and jittery with exhaustion. So as your aunt told her story, even as she poured you a glass of wine, and buttered for you a dinner roll like you were still a kid, you found that your sympathy didn’t lie with her, but with the scammer.

Your phone rings again. You tap the red decline button.

A quick knock and the door opens. Your wife, still in a wheelchair, is pushed into the room. Like a late autumn sun, she’s beaming but exhausted; a smile hangs off her face, and her cheeks are flushed the same pink as the blanket that’s swaddling your daughter in her arms.

You ask her if she’s alright. If the baby is okay. She doesn’t tell you the specifics – you would learn those later – but her smile rises, and she hands you your daughter.

What’s it like to hold your daughter for the first time? Baffling? Confusing? Amazing? She’s so red, so fiercely calm. Familiar, yet completely and utterly alien; a gentle incongruity.

She’s lovely, your wife says. A million different words, a million different responses tumble through your head, but you settle on one, Yes.

You help your wife back onto the hospital bed. Pillows are adjusted, and with your daughter in the crook of one arm, a natural fit, you fill your wife’s water bottle.

Parents are called. Your wife’s brother. Several of your wife’s friends. You do a slow, swaying dance of irregular circles around the room, your daughter dozing in your arms, while the buzzing of all these voices swarms up from the phone on your wife’s lap. You feel a drunken elation and half expect at any minute to see a disco ball descend, lit up, dangling, spinning from the ceiling, or the messy, multicolored melange of a great burst of confetti; for if this is anything, surely it’s a celebration.

A nurse visits your room. She’s young, a tattoo of a swallow on her neck dives toward her sea green scrubs, a severe bob cut sways. On both arms are stacks of colorful beaded bracelets. She checks on your wife. With skillful, business-like movements, she lifts your daughter from your arms. Her ease embarrasses you.

Just a few tests, the nurse assures you. Then a stop at the nursery. You can visit, she tells the two of you as she leaves, but it might be a good time to catch up on some rest.

Your wife turns off the overhead lights, and snow, lit up from the parking lot, explodes past the windows. The bed reclines. Half-asleep, murmuring, your wife tells you to rest. When she was here your daughter hardly made a sound, but now with her gone the room feels incredibly quiet, yet somehow charged, expectant, like standing in the aftermath of a siren’s scream. Rest? You imagine laying on the pullout bed, staring into the darkness, your thoughts unspooling through the snow-filled night. You’re elated, you can’t rest.

You turn to tell your wife that you’re heading to the cafeteria to make a few phone calls; you want to call your friends, tell them the news. But she is already sleeping.

The hallway is vacant. By now it’s late. But not too late. Not too late for new child news. Who should you call? You walk down the maze-like corridor, the snow outside swirling around the windows, heading deeper into the hospital, flipping through the contacts on your phone. The list goes on and on and on. But they’re all acquaintances, not friends. After high school, you moved north. Then twice more. Always heading towards the cold, climbing the corporate ladder, but with each rung, with each move, you left more and more friends behind, leaving you now with a phone full of people you’ll likely never see again.

It feels cheap and exploitative but you hastily post the news on social media and pocket your phone.

The cafeteria is large, bright, and empty. There are refrigerated displays packed with items along the outer wall, and a couple of buffets of steaming prepared food near the cashier, a young guy who’s looking at his phone. A placard, handwritten in chalk, today’s special: spaghetti and meatballs. The black round tables, the green stackable chairs, the scent of tater tots, reminds you of high school.

You’re not hungry, but you’re here. What you’d like is some champagne, wine, or even a couple of cans of beer. But you settle on a small carton of skim milk and enclosed in surprisingly flimsy plastic, and sold at a drastically reduced price, someone named Timmy’s birthday cake.

In the checkout line, the cashier looks up from his phone. His black hair is longer in the front and he pushes it back to scan your items with a couple of beeps and a bored indifference. Handing him your credit card, you tell him that you’re celebrating. He looks from you to the cake, from the cake to you, and says, happy birthday.

You tell him, thanks.

Sitting at a table you check your phone. Scott from the office commented on your post. Congrats, he said. Let me know if you need anything. Followed by several fireworks emojis. Scott’s a new hire in your department. While you’re out on paternity leave he’s watching your accounts for you. It occurs to you that you have his number in your phone. And it wouldn’t be all that weird to call him. Ask him how the Murphy account is doing. Or you could invent a last-minute instruction that you hadn’t remembered until just this moment.

You’re just about to dial Scott’s number when your phone rings again.

You answer. This is Micheal from Microsoft, he tells you. How are you this evening? Each syllable is polished with a professional sheen, educated, curt, and confident. There’s an accent; obvious, even if you can’t place it.

You tell him the truth, that you’re having the best day of your life. He cuts you off.

That’s good, that’s good, he says. But I’m afraid I have bad news.

There’s another set of doors that leads in from the outside. A woman plods in from the cold. The scarf wrapped around her face has a comical amount of snow on it, as if she’s just been pelted with a snowball. She unwraps it, stamps the snow off her boots, throws you a smile—this weather? She walks straight toward your table. It’s your wife’s friend, then it’s your coworker Ruth from accounting, you’re going to tell her about your daughter, but then she walks past your table. It’s no one that you know.

Are you a father? you ask the scammer.

There’s a bit of hesitation. A father? he asks.

The idea takes shape as you form each word; you explain to him that you’ve just had a child. You can Venmo him, PayPal, whatever. You’d need someone to chat with for a bit, to share the news with. Would he be willing to do that? Just a quick chat?

The universal office ambiance swells over the receiver; murmured voices, clacking keyboards, an insistent beeping. It could be any office or not an office at all. It could be an apartment, a basement, a vast vacant warehouse. Two states away or on the other side of the world. Warm or cold. A blizzard.

There’s a click. Silence. An ocean of a pause. Finally, a voice telling you, congratulations.

Richie Zaborowske is a dad, librarian, and author from the Midwest. He puts a contemporary twist on traditional library offerings; his monthly Short Story Night packs the local brewery and features trivia, comedy, and author interviews. His writing appears in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Brevity, The Los Angeles Review, HAD, X-R-A-Y Lit, Identity Theory, Jet Fuel Review, and others.