HE FORGETS NOT HIS OWN by Edward L. Woodyard

He Forgets Not His Own Part Six

When Scott McCulloch woke up, they had crossed the Mississippi River at Davenport and were an hour into Illinois. They then drove across the top of the three Old Northwest states of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. Scott promised Maya they'd stop that night in western Pennsylvania to take showers and stretch out on mattresses. Using a travel-accommodations app on her cell phone, Maya had found a motel for them in Clarion, Pennsylvania; however, due to the high occupancy rate and lack of vacancies because of all the Thanksgiving travelers, she and Scott would have to share a double room. Since that wouldn't be a problem for either of them and she didn't want to lose the room to someone else, she confirmed the room immediately.

Eight hours later, they arrived at the motel. Scott unpacked the Bimmer as Maya immediately went into the bathroom to shower. He chain-locked the motel door and lay on the bedspread of the first queen bed, still dressed in his clothes. There were no messages or texts on his cell phone which he then charged by plugging into a socket below a desk in the room. A TV in the room was off, letting him hear the shower running and Maya singing something inaudible as she finally washed her hair.

Waiting his turn to shower, Scott thumbed through a pamphlet on the desk highlighting tourist places in the Keystone State. A hazy yellow glare of LED pole lights in the motel parking lot seeped through the drawn window curtains which had also failed to block any whizzing or rumbling sounds of vehicular traffic on I-80.

Pennsylvania made Scott think of Wendy. She had talked about how much she loved growing up north of Pittsburgh and going to college at Penn State. Scott had hoped to make her as happy in San Francisco by helping her overcome her internal struggles.

Scott Harris McCulloch and Wendy Amelia Flanagan had been married in a judge's chambers in the San Francisco City Hall when she was six months pregnant. When Wendy's obstetrician discovered that her pregnancy was a placenta previa, Wendy confined herself to their apartment and quit exercising which she at first thought would strengthen both her and the baby.

Three nights before their one-month wedding anniversary, Scott took Wendy to the hospital after she discharged vaginal blood. When the obstetrician performed a sonogram, they were relieved to hear the swoosh-swoosh of the baby's heartbeat over the audio monitor, like a tiny locomotive starting out on life's wondrous journey. A nurse then sedated Wendy and urged Scott to go home for the night, saying that Wendy was staying in the hospital under observation.

Scott couldn't sleep. Instead, he draped rolls of crepe paper streamers he had planned to hang around the living room for their one-month anniversary celebration. It would now celebrate two more things: Wendy coming home from the hospital and the successful conclusion of her pregnancy in two more months. He twisted and curled blue and pink streamers, first taping then strewing them from the ceiling corners of the room to a center overhead light fixture and finally along the crown molding. When Scott appraised the room as the morning sun filtered through its curtains, he smiled at his efforts. The place was festive, life-affirming and optimistic. He confidently drove back to the hospital.

As Scott entered the hospital parking lot, he received a cell phone call from a nurse that Wendy was having Braxton Hicks contractions. He made it to her room in time to see a doctor remove the sonogram monitor from her stomach; it had been silent, no sound or swoosh-swoosh.

The doctor induced labor and the baby was delivered stillborn.

Scott watched as the baby was slipped from Wendy into an aluminum bedpan which was handed to a nurse, the doctor softly telling him that it was a boy. The doctor left the room so that Scott and Wendy could be alone. They stared into each other's tear-drenched eyes, their vision blurred by the most painful moment of their lives, together or alone.