by Sally Quinn
She looked around frantically for Des but couldn’t see him.
“Des,” she called out. “Where’s Des?”
Nobody seemed to hear her.
She saw them take a silent bundle away from the table and over to another table where several white coats hovered, their arms moving rapidly as they bent over to examine it.
“Apgar zero at one minute,” she heard. “One at five minutes… three at ten minutes… there’s no meconium below the cord.”
“What’s happening? For god’s sake will somebody tell me what’s happening? Where’s my baby? Somebody tell me something. I want my baby.”
One of the doctors with a mask on leaned down to her.
“There’s a problem,” he said. “The cord was around its neck. We’re working on it now.”
“It.” He had called Kay Kay “it.” Not “she.” Not “her” but “It.” “Its.”
“She” would have a brain, a soul. “It” would not.
“Why is she so quiet?”
The white coat looked at her. He put his hand on her shoulder.
“Doctor, it’s seizing!” There was a note of urgency in the nurse’s voice.
He walked quickly over to the table and left her with the blinding light overhead searing her eyes and the deafening silence of her newborn daughter grating in her ears.
More voices “severe… call Children’s Hospital… ambulance.”
“Des, somebody, please, help me. Please. I can’t bear it. Des, my baby. Kay Kay, what are they doing to you? I want my baby.”
Somebody had put an IV in her arm and she began to rapidly drift away.
“I want my baby,” she could hear herself say from afar. “I want my baby.”
* * *
Des was standing by the window, his back to her, staring out. He was hunched over, the posture of a defeated man.
She watched him for a while, not saying anything to let him know she was awake. She looked around the bare hospital room. It was so stark and unappealing. Yet for some reason it made her feel calm and almost peaceful, like a blank canvas. She didn’t want to talk to Des right then. She knew that he would put paint on the canvas and it would be black. Now, just for a moment, she could lie there and be the mother of a baby girl and Des could be the father and she could pretend that Kay Kay was in the nursery and any minute they would bring her to the room and she could hold her and kiss her and love her. Kay Kay would look up at her with her beautiful blue eyes and they would finally meet face to face, two best friends who had been like pen pals for nine months. She would coo and gurgle and wrap her tiny pink finger around Allison’s and she would smile even though new babies aren’t supposed to smile. Allison would take her finger and put it in Kay Kay’s mouth and let her suck it and she would fall in love like she had never been in love or even imagined was possible. Des would come and sit on the edge of the bed and put his arm around her and look proudly down at them and call them his two precious girls and she would be happier than she had ever been in her whole life. She would finally have a family.
She lay there in her reverie until Des finally turned and looked at her, his face ravaged. He seemed a hundred years old, lines and wrinkles emerging that she had never noticed before. She smiled at him, still dreaming of Kay Kay, knowing that in a second or two he would pick up his paintbrush and splatter the canvas with anguish.
He walked over to the bed and handed her a Polaroid. She looked down and there in the picture was the most beautiful baby she had ever seen. Her hair wasn’t blond but dark, and there was one large curl on top of her head. Her eyes were closed but her lips were little rosebuds and her cheeks were round and plump and her tiny hands were perfect, five fingers on each one. She was wrapped in a blanket and she looked like an angel and Allison’s heart leaped as she looked at Des silently pleading, hopeful.
“She’s so beautiful, isn’t she?”
“Yes. She is.”
Now her heart was about to pound its way out of her chest. He hadn’t said “was.” He said “is.”
“Where is she?” she asked, the accent on “is.”
“At Children’s Hospital.”
“I want to go see her.” She threw back the covers and started to get up when she felt a surge of pain in her abdomen that made her gasp.
“Not today. Tomorrow. They said you can go in an ambulance and a wheelchair tomorrow… if she’s…”
Now she could feel her throat close up.
“If she’s what?”
“Tomorrow. You’re not well enough today to travel.”
“If she’s what?”
“Sonny. She lost a lot of oxygen. There are problems.”
The phone rang. Allison picked it up.
“Is this Mrs. Shaw?”
“Mrs. Shaw?”
At first she didn’t know who they were talking about and she paused.
“Uh… this is Allison Sterling, uh, yes, uh, Mrs. Shaw.”
“Katherine’s mother?”
“Katherine?”
“I’m Tamsin Cooper. I’m a social worker at Children’s Hospital. I believe your daughter, Katherine, was admitted last night.”
Katherine’s mother—that was she. Your daughter—that was Kay Kay. There was a person, a child, her child. She was a mother. This was the first time anyone had called her a mother, had said the word daughter to her. She felt elated. Kay Kay was alive. She was real.
“Yes, of course.” She recovered her voice. “It’s just that we call her Kay Kay. I’m sorry. I was a little confused. It’s all so new and…”
“I understand.”
Her voice sounded sympathetic. Too sympathetic.
“How… how is she?”
Now the pause was on the other end of the phone.
“She’s in the N.I.C.U.—that’s the neonatal intensive care unit. I know you’ll want to come and see her as soon as you’re able. But for now I just wanted to give you a call and let you know that I’m here and that there is a chaplain available at the hospital if you should care to see one.”
“A chaplain?” She caught her breath again. She could feel the dread now permeating her body. She seemed unable to do anything but repeat everything the woman said with a question mark on the end.
“Sister Madeleine is Catholic but she works with people of all faiths.”
She couldn’t speak.
“Mrs. Shaw?”
She managed a whispered “Yes, thank you for calling” before she hung up.
Des was looking at her, his face creased with worry.
“Des. I have to go see her. Now.”
“Sonny, I just told you what the doctor…”
“Fuck the doctor, Des,” she said in a murderously low, even voice. “If you love me, if you’ve ever cared about me, you will get me over there. Even if you have to carry me out of here. I’m not kidding. If you don’t I will never speak to you again and I have never been more serious about anything in my life. If my child dies without me I will damn you to hell for eternity.”
Des looked at her for only a moment before he said, “I’ll go get the car and pull it around to the front. Then I’ll come back up here and put your coat on and wheel you down. You’ll have to carry your I.V. bag yourself. I’ll be right back.”
* * *
It was odd how she instinctively knew exactly where Kay Kay was before Des could even wheel her to the right isolette. He had purloined a wheelchair and an I.V. holder in the emergency room and they had arrived unannounced at the N.I.C.U. Within minutes the chairman of neonatology had been summoned, Allison and Des had been robed and scrubbed down and they were heading toward a row of babies in the dimly lit, silent, peach-colored room.
Her first reaction was horror when she saw her daughter’s tiny naked body splayed out with what seemed like hundreds of needles and tubes and wires coming out of every part of her. Allison could almost feel the punctures in her own skin, wanted to feel them instead of having her child have to endure them.
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sp; Every fiber of her being overwhelmed her with the need to touch and hold her baby. Her breasts began to throb and she reached out to the isolette and put her face up against it, almost pawing in her desperation to get at Kay Kay. She could hear herself make what was almost a panting noise. Kay Kay’s eyes were closed, sleeping, Allison told herself. She looked so calm and peaceful and healthy. She was such a big baby, plump and pink and gorgeous. It was impossible to imagine there was anything wrong with her even with all the monitors and alarms and flashing lights and beeps and needles and tubes.
“Would you like to touch her?”
The doctor had opened a small hole in the isolette where her hand was and Allison stuck her fingers in. When she gently touched the soft smooth skin of her newborn baby she thought she had never felt such joy and such pain in one moment. She began to stroke Kay Kay with her finger and croon under her breath to her, “Mommy’s here. Mommy loves you. Mommy’s right here, Kay Kay. Mommy will never leave you. Mommy’s here. Mommy loves you.”
She felt Des put his arm on her shoulder, heard him choke back a sob. She kept on speaking to Kay Kay in a quiet calm voice. Somehow she was unable to cry. She couldn’t, wouldn’t let Kay Kay know that she was sad or depressed. If her baby was going to survive she would have to use all her strength, her optimism, her power to make it happen. Crying would be for later. She couldn’t think that way now. Now all she could think about was that Kay Kay was going to live. She was going to be fine. Anything else was unthinkable, unbearable, unacceptable.
* * *
She spent the night at Sibley Hospital. They had given her a sedative, and the combination of that and emotional exhaustion helped her to sleep straight through.
She felt stronger the next day and not in as much physical pain as she had been. She went back to Children’s the next morning after they had removed her I.V. Des stayed a while but she insisted he go to the office and leave her there alone. She needed to be by herself with Kay Kay.
She sat in her wheelchair dressed in one of her corduroy maternity dresses, the only thing that felt comfortable over her incision. It was slightly chilly in the room and she pulled her sweater closer around her. She had worried that Kay Kay might be too cold with nothing on, but the nurses assured her that she was warm enough. She just sat there and stared at her, all of her senses taking in everything about her daughter that she could. Memorizing. The smells of alcohol, the tubes taped to her mouth, taped to her feet, such perfect little feet. The way her breath was coming in short little takes, up and down, up and down. Allison tried doing it for her… just in case. The machines were all functioning. She didn’t know what they all meant. There were lights blinking and a blue box over her with bags hanging from it. Somewhere she heard the faint sound of light rock Christmas carols coming from a radio at the nurses’ station. How weird. She had no sense of Christmas at all. Yet now that she thought of it there were Christmas decorations around the unit. Subtle, subdued, but still there. Christmas was what, a week away? A few days? There had been Christmas without Mama, then Christmas without Nana, then Christmas without Sam. Would this be Christmas without Kay Kay? A nurse had put on a yellow robe to administer to a baby nearby. A doctor appeared and turned on a bright light over another isolette. Down the row there were several people conferring over a baby. What looked to be a social worker and a nun. The mother was crying. There was a crack baby in one of the isolettes wearing minuscule dark glasses to protect its eyes from the light. Several deflated balloons floated from one of the isolettes. A tiny pair of blue boxing gloves from another. Des had commented on those the day before and he had had a hard time controlling himself when he’d seen them. There was the tinny sound of a baby crying in the background but most of the babies were too sick to cry.
Allison looked up at the clock. It was 2:30 in the afternoon. She would have had no way of knowing. She didn’t want to know the time. Each hour that passed would be ticking away Kay Kay’s life. But she couldn’t think that way. The clock made time seem unrealistic, just a bunch of irrelevant numbers. In this spaceship of a room, humming away, they could easily be hurtling through the universe. It was so quiet and calm and restful.
All there was was Allison and the baby and the slight whoosh of the air pressure and the silence. She felt safe and secure there, and she had the sense that this would never end, that she would never leave, simply stay there forever in this giant isolette, just her and Kay Kay, and everything would be all right as long as they were there together.
* * *
She hadn’t wanted to hear it, hadn’t wanted to deal with it. The longer she put off the talk with the doctors the longer she could have Kay Kay. She was making Des crazy, making him talk to the doctors, literally putting her hands over her ears when he tried to talk to her. It was so unlike her, denying the truth. It was against everything she had ever been. But this time the truth was too hard and she didn’t want to face it until she had to.
She had seen Kay Kay have a seizure, seen how they all rushed to her, wheeling Allison out of the way as they worked over her. She could read their body language, see the worry on their faces, and worse, see the sympathy in their eyes. If there was one thing she couldn’t stand it was to have people feel sorry for her. Anything but pity. It was repulsive, to be avoided at all cost.
The social worker had been hovering around.
“How’s Mom?” she had asked in a tone Allison felt was extremely patronizing.
“Get her out of here,” she had told Des fiercely. “I don’t need her help and I don’t need her sympathy. I just want to be left alone with my baby.”
She had managed to shake Tamsin Cooper. But now the neonatologist insisted on talking to them. Together. It could not be avoided any longer. Either the meeting would be there, out in front of everyone, next to Kay Kay. Or privately in the parents’ consulting room. She didn’t want Kay Kay to hear any bad news. She chose the private room.
Des came to get her. He had brought Kay Kay a present. A tiny pair of pink ballet slippers, which he hung on the edge of her isolette. He cried. This time openly. He didn’t even try to hide it. Not Allison. She would not cry. They were not going to make her cry. She gave Kay Kay’s tiny hand a squeeze before she left. She hadn’t yet had a response from her of any kind. Kay Kay had never opened her eyes, never cried, never grasped her finger. But she breathed. There was that. She hadn’t stopped breathing.
Allison was walking now. She walked into the small conference room and sat down. There were several books on the desk. She glanced at them and quickly looked away. The Saddest Time, Our Baby Died. Why?, Children Die, Too, Dear Parents. Letters to Bereaved Parents, You Are Not Alone.
Wrong. Nobody could know what it felt like. Nobody could understand the excruciating pain that she was feeling now. No matter how many times the doctors and nurses and social workers and nuns had seen it, they had never been through it so they didn’t know. And Des was the father. He couldn’t know either. Only a mother could feel this anguish. She was a mother. She was a mom. Only she could know.
Dr. Farmer, the chairman of neonatology, came into the room with them and sat down at the desk. She was very crisp and clear. She was slim and young-looking with a shiny brown page boy and long slim fingers with short immaculate nails. She was sympathetic in the way that doctors are, withholding in order to protect themselves from too much emotional involvement, from the relentless parade of pain that passed by them every day.
Allison sat next to Des on the chair, but she was so numb that she was hardly aware of his presence. She was trying very hard to concentrate on what the doctor was saying, but all she heard were words. Some of them made sense, some did not. Mostly they seemed disconnected.
“The baby has seizures that are hard to control…. She has an abnormal EEG. She has gasping respiration. There is every indication that she has sustained severe brain damage. But even when there is severe damage to the brain…” she had glossed over the phrase “brain damage” so quickly that it too
k a moment to sink in. “Severe brain damage.” What was she talking about? Not Kay Kay. It couldn’t be possible. She knew Kay Kay was in trouble but not this.
“… there is room for a decision. What is in the baby’s best interest and the parents’ best interest. If we wait too long the cerebrum could be much more sturdy and the baby will breathe and suck but the EEG will be flat. The baby will be brain dead, there will be cessation of all functions, including mid-brain, but the baby will not be dead. Time is limited, therefore, to make the decision, and this is the hardest decision you will ever make in your life.”
Allison couldn’t speak for a moment. She was trying to assimilate what this woman had been saying to her. She leaned forward and squinted at her as if that would help her understand. It didn’t work.
“What are you telling us?” she asked.
Dr. Farmer looked at Allison and realized that she was not taking it all in.
“Kay Kay is a very beautiful baby,” she said. “I know how hard this is for you.”
For a brief moment Allison saw behind her eyes, felt that she knew what Allison was feeling. Then she shut it off.
“We know she cannot do well in the long run. If you take her off the ventilator she will be a ‘no code,’ which means that if she decided to die we would not resuscitate.”
“How long,” Des began, then cleared his throat. He reached for her hand. It was freezing cold and limp. He grasped it and held it tightly but she did not respond. “How long will, uh, would it take?”
“Sometimes a few hours, sometimes a few days.”
“What if we didn’t? I mean, what if we let her live? Is there any chance that she might… that she might, uh, recover?” asked Allison.
Dr. Farmer looked very sad. She shook her head.