WE GATHER TOGETHER by Edward L. Woodyard

We Gather Together Chapter Ninety-Six

Scott McCulloch was lying on the bedspread of a double bed in a motel room in Clarion, Pennsylvania, still dressed in his clothes. There were no messages or texts on his cell phone which he had plugged 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 for the shower, he thumbed through a pamphlet that had been 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 the interstate.

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. They had committed to sex, then to each other, and now to their child. As part of the wedding vows, Scott surprised his bride by quoting from Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run," "Together Wendy we can live with the sadness/I'll love you with all the madness in my soul." Hearing Scott recite these words to her made Wendy fall apart, she telling him that she'd always heard those lyrics, but now they meant something. She made him promise that they could live with the sadness of her depression, but that they would always love each other with all the madness in their souls. Scott then gave her "an everlasting kiss" and the judge pronounced them husband and wife.

Scott decided that he would wait until Wendy was farther along in her pregnancy to set up a nursery in the apartment; nevertheless, Wendy told Scott that he could start to think about trading in his "bachelor Bimmer for a practical Pathfinder," as she termed it, now that he was to be a father.

However, Wendy's pregnancy was a placenta previa where the placenta blocked her cervix. She confined herself to the apartment and quit all 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. After an obstetrician performed a sonogram on her stomach, 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 they were keeping Wendy in the hospital for 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 the 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 quietly 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 eyes, their vision blinded by tears. It was the most painful moment of their lives, together and alone.