by Nicole Deese
“As soon as I get these uploaded, I’ll run down to the store in the lobby and get us something to drink.” Jenna scrolled through a group of pictures from dinner, stopping on one that made me laugh despite the pounding in my head. “I still can’t believe how many of those dumplings she put away. She’s so little, and yet she eats like a teenage boy.”
I chuckled again, remembering how she’d gobbled up an entire dumpling, reaching for a second helping before she’d finished swallowing the first. “She definitely doesn’t lack for appetite.” Her wonder over the big and little things made it nearly impossible for me to eat my own dinner, because watching Aria experience the world had quickly become my favorite spectator sport.
“That’s great, though she’ll need her strength for surgery,” Jenna added in a matter-of-fact tone that made my stomach roil. I knew she wasn’t wrong; I’d gone over the medical records and scans with Brian a half dozen times before we left and met with his cardiology team about possible scenarios, but everything felt different now. Because now that I had her in my care, now that I’d rubbed her back and put her to sleep in my bed, I couldn’t imagine handing her over to anyone ever again. Not even Dr. Brian Rosewood.
“Did you see her nails?” Jenna’s question was soft, yet I felt the sting of it in every cell of my body. I had seen them, the bluish hue around her nail bed, and also the violet line around her plum-colored lips. “Brian told me to look for that. It’s a sign of low oxygen.”
I hugged a pillow to my chest. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure the surgery will need to be on the sooner-rather-than-later schedule Brian suggested.” It didn’t seem fair that she’d have to go through another traumatic life event in such a short period of time, but the evidence of her condition was impossible to ignore.
I sighed, ready to focus on one of the positive aspects about our miraculous day together. I scanned Jenna’s laptop screen, where a hundred-plus images were slowly uploading. “Thank you, Jen. For taking all of those. I’m so glad you’re here with me.”
She clicked through several images, then paused on one of me holding Aria just outside her orphanage door as her tiny hand combed through my ponytail. My smile could have spanned the length of China. “This,” she said, pointing to the image. “This is the one you need to send to friends and family. It’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever witnessed. That child is obsessed with her pretty mama.”
Again, the smile I hadn’t taken off all day expanded. “I’m even more obsessed with her.”
“She’s precious, Lauren. Like seriously, seriously precious. I thought my heart was going to crack open so many times this morning. I don’t know how I didn’t start blubbering when she called you Mama for the first time.”
My eyes filled with tears at the memory. “I don’t know how I didn’t, either. I was just so focused on not wanting to frighten her, on earning her trust.”
Jenna scooted back on the sofa, her eyes misting. “You were phenomenal, by the way. I haven’t had a minute to tell you that yet, but really. You handled that meeting beautifully, allowing Aria to take the lead and creating a safe place for her to interact with you. I’ve never been more proud to call you my friend.”
The compliment was so sincere I had to reach out to her, touch her arm. She grasped my hand. “Thank you for letting me be a part of this.” She smiled as a tear nestled in the corner of her lips. “I’ll never, ever forget it.”
For a minute neither of us said anything more, as if we both recognized the need to decompress the high emotions of the day. Of the last several months.
She squeezed my hand before letting it go and opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it again.
“What?” I gently prodded, bumping her sneakered foot with mine.
She puckered her lips, twisting them to the side. “It’s just, I’ve had quite a few texts today—from people asking for updates on how everything went with the meeting. On how you’re doing specifically.”
And something about the way she’d said people revealed she wasn’t just referring to the friends and family who’d requested to join my private Facebook page for Aria’s adoption journey.
“Who?” My heart had already started picking up the pace, had already started down the warm-up track of a race I’d forbidden it to run months ago.
Her internal struggle reflected in the pinch between her eyebrows. “I’ve worked super hard to keep my promise to you, not to bring him up unless you . . . unless you asked about him first.”
The urge to brace myself, to close my eyes and breathe through my nose like a practiced meditation guru, nearly betrayed my feigned nonchalance. “It’s been months now, Jen. You can talk about him. I’m okay.”
“All right . . . well, he’s been asking about you a lot. Ever since we landed in China. He talks with Brian, of course, so he knows we’re here and safe on the ground, but I just feel weird about giving him personal updates without your consent.”
A ripple of well-known heartache swelled inside my chest, but I wouldn’t allow it to reach me. Not here. Not on this day. I had no right to feel the slightest bit of sadness when I’d just watched my little girl say good-bye to her entire world in exchange for one her mind couldn’t even fathom. My life was about her now. We were a team, joined together by God. And I wouldn’t risk that for anything or anyone.
“What do you want me to do, Lauren? I’ll tell him anything you want me to. Regardless of his position with the hospital or his friendship with Brian, you’re my first priority. Always.”
I’d been so lost in thought I hadn’t realized Jenna was still awaiting my response, but my mind had snagged on a phrase I hadn’t heard before now. “His position at the hospital?”
Again, Jenna looked torn. “I didn’t tell you because it all happened on the day we got the travel itinerary, and you were so focused on booking our flights and . . .” She shrugged. “It didn’t feel right to derail you.”
“He got the hospital contract?” My question was so soft it was almost inaudible.
Jenna nodded. “The board was super impressed with him. Their decision was unanimous. They awarded him one of the pediatric grants to begin work on the prototype immediately.”
My lungs filled with microscopic pinpricks. “Wow . . .”
“Yeah, I know. Brian tells him all the time that he’s a genius with the fashion sense of a seven-year-old. I still can’t believe he managed to get him into a suit for the big presentation.”
I shook my head, slightly disheartened at the thought of Joshua presenting in anything other than his faded Anything is Fossil-ble T-shirt.
“He is, though,” I said resolutely. “A genius.” Before my mind could drift too far, I circled back to her original question. “You can update him, Jenna. I don’t want him to worry. He deserves closure, too.”
“Okay.” My friend sat quietly for a few seconds more before she stretched her arms over her head and declared she was heading down to the convenience store in the lobby. “It’s either eat or sleep, and I think the only way we’re going to beat this jet lag thing is to hold out at least another hour or two before we crash. Want a Diet Coke?” She grabbed her purse and riffled through her wallet in search of the yuan we’d exchanged for a few hours ago.
“Sure, thanks.”
She fanned several colorful bills out for display. “I’m also gonna grab whatever chips are not seafood flavor. And whatever looks like it could be dark chocolate.”
I gave her a tired salute of approval and waited until the door latched closed before I lifted Jenna’s computer to my lap. Before I tapped a single key, I paused to listen for any sound of stirring that might be coming from my bed. Nothing.
Okay, I thought. Now what?
But my fingers seemed to be answering that rhetorical question with a very non-rhetorical response.
I clicked through Jenna’s browser, thankful to see our iffy Wi-Fi connection was holding steady—at least for the moment—then logged onto my Facebook account, searching for his
profile the instant my page materialized. True to Joshua’s nature, he hadn’t utilized his page much; in fact, his most recent post was dated over a year ago. I scrolled through his feed, familiar with the handful of nerd-driven memes he’d shared with the public. Several were on fossil discoveries, another few on advances in technology, and one link about how science and intelligent design can coexist. But my favorite part of his page was his profile picture—a simple photograph taken with his niece on what looked to be an Easter egg hunt in years past. She was a toddler then, and she wore a headband with fuzzy bunny ears. Naturally, her uncle wore a matching set. As Joshua smiled for the picture-taker, his niece smiled at him, her expression one that punched me in the heart every time I looked it up, which I’d done on numerous occasions in the past three months. Because this was one of only two pictures I had of him.
It was hard to believe that in the course of our short-lived romance, we hadn’t taken a single picture together other than the one Jenna had snapped after the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving event, where he was an undercooked turkey and I was a frumpy pilgrim. But there were no selfies of the two of us, not even a single hand-the-phone-off-to-a-stranger snapshot. Yet sometimes I wondered what I would have done with such a photo if one had existed. Would I have had the courage to delete it? And if so, what exactly would deleting it have proved?
My heart knew the answer—nothing. We may not have captured our affection for one another on camera, but he’d left an imprint on me just the same, like a handprint pressed into wet cement. The surface was still usable, still solid enough to walk on, but it was forever transformed, forever impressed by a moment in time.
When I reflected back on our months together, it wasn’t the stolen kisses I missed the most or the way he’d search my face before offering a toe-tingling compliment or even the routine call he’d make to tell me good night. It was the absence of his friendship that pained me most. Because more than anything, that’s what he’d been to me from the start—a loyal, selfless friend who’d traded in his desires for the sake of mine.
I stared at his picture now, at his honest eyes and goofy grin.
“Congratulations on your new contract, Joshua,” I whispered. “I’m so, so proud of you.”
Like an echo carried back on the wind, my soul seemed to hear his answering reply. “Congratulations to you, too.”
I glanced over my shoulder, thinking of the freshly bathed child who lay asleep just beyond the pocket door. “I hope you’ll get to meet her someday.” And I hoped even more that when he did, he’d understand what I’d only just begun to comprehend.
That Aria Fei Bailey had been worth it all—every tear, every trial, every heartrending sacrifice.
Releasing a long, contented sigh, I closed the laptop and stood to peer into the darkness at the sleeping form on the right side of my queen-size bed. We had a long road ahead of us: surgeries and recoveries, new languages and cultures, new adjustments to life as a mother-daughter duo. And yet one unshakable, God-fearing truth would remain through it all: Aria was mine, and I was hers.
Forever.
chapter
thirty-two
The vibration of my phone against the knee-high ladybug table on my right silenced every side conversation in the pediatric waiting room. Aria’s small army of support, made up of family and friends alike, all held their breath, awaiting the next text update from Brian’s team.
Only it hadn’t been a surgery update at all but rather another sign-up for the meal train Gail had organized for Aria’s recovery week back home.
I shook my head, my nerves too frazzled to spell out the fact that I knew nothing more than I had three hours ago when they’d wheeled my daughter into the operating room for her five-hour surgery.
Lisa piped up then, twisting in her vinyl armchair to bring her knees up to her chin, as if that might make the seat more comfortable for the hours ahead. “She’s fine. We’d know it if she wasn’t. No news is good news. That’s how these things work.”
“Lisa.” My mother shook her head in that exasperated way of hers.
“What?” My sister continued, “It’s true. I’ve watched a lot of surgical procedures, and that’s always how it goes. If something were really wrong, we’d be hearing about it over the pager system first. Probably as a code red. But in some cases, a code blue. It all depends on—”
“Those medical dramas you watch are not reality,” Mom said as if she were reading a textbook.
“Emergency Room is a reality TV show, Mother. Not a drama. It’s real life, with real people in medical crises.”
My mother rolled her eyes and lifted the HGTV magazine she’d been reading as if it were a shield against my sister’s poor conversational choices.
Gail, ever the peacekeeper, smiled at them as she patted my knee, though I barely registered her touch. My anxiety armor had grown thicker as each minute dragged into the next.
As Jenna came into the room holding a drink carrier filled with everyone’s coffee and tea orders, I took a moment to stretch my legs and wander to the aquarium in the center of the waiting room. My small-talk abilities had expired around hour two, and frankly, I wasn’t sure how I was gonna make it to hour five without doing bodily harm. I stared without seeing into a tank the size of a compact vehicle and tried not to think of my little girl unconscious on a surgical table.
On the other side of the glass, Jenna added a steaming to-go cup to the miniature homestead I’d set up on the ladybug side table: books I hadn’t the capacity to read, a laptop I hadn’t the desire to open, snacks I’d attempted to eat yet couldn’t quite choke down, and a near-dead iPhone plugged into a sunshine-yellow wall.
A clown fish studied me for several seconds, gills expanding and contracting while his eyes tracked my movements. Perhaps he felt as stuck as I did at the moment, a spectacle trapped inside four suffocating walls. I pressed my finger to the glass and slid it to the right, and then to the left. He followed. “You’re a smart one, Nemo,” I muttered. “Too bad you’re trapped in here for life.” Am I really talking to a fish? I’ve reached a new low.
I shook my head and dropped my hand from the tank glass. “I need some air.” My announcement came out in a rush to no one in particular, yet all four women in the room stood, offering me their companionship. Their kindness wasn’t unnoticed by any means, but I assured them that I would be okay taking a few minutes alone. To think. To pray. To fill my lungs with fresh oxygen.
Gail unplugged my phone from the wall and handed it to me.
“I won’t be too long,” I said, careful not to overpromise. I didn’t know how long I would need, but I did know that I couldn’t hold one more conversation about which containers worked best inside a pantry, or the ideal way to organize a laundry room. Nor could I discuss summer vacations, neglected hobbies of the past, or strange weather phenomena happening in the South Pacific. Truth was, the distraction of off-topic conversation had been nice for a time, but even distraction with the best of intentions would never equal comfort.
During the past several weeks since we’d arrived home, we’d become well acquainted with the hallways of Boise Pediatrics Hospital. We’d met with surgeons, specialists, anesthesiologists, and even a geneticist, since Aria’s medical history was limited at best. We’d learned numerous terminologies like syncope and regurgitation and the most obvious of them all, cyanotic: the term for the bluish tint that outlined Aria’s nail beds. Her low oxygen levels had remained steady since our arrival home—not ideal for the long-term, but not as critical as I’d feared during our weeks together in China.
When we’d set her surgery date for the end of June, I’d felt both a sense of relief for the extra adjustment time at home as well as dread for the coming unknown. But that, I’d learned, was adoption in a nutshell, a recipe for all things bittersweet. In the same mixing bowl were often heaping amounts of celebration and challenge, gratitude and grief, hope and heartache.
I pushed out the exit doors leading to the courtyard
and immediately wrapped my arms around my chest. My thin pink hoodie was plenty sufficient for the sunny day, but my internal temperature would take some time to thaw, to feel the penetration of vitamin D.
The cobblestone path wrapped around a garden of several varieties of roses and assorted perennial flowers. For having no sure destination, my stride was anything but meandering, my mind everywhere but on the beauty surrounding me.
Instead, I focused on a succession of memories from earlier this morning: Aria’s brave smile when we checked in at the nurses’ station; the heavily glittered unicorn purse she carried—filled with lip balm, gum, and a mini notebook; the scent of her peach-vanilla shampoo that stirred my emotions as I readied her on the hospital bed, trading her My Little Pony pajamas for a plain indigo snap-back gown. And then there was Benny, who had woken up extra early on his second week of summer vacation to play three rounds of Connect Four with my girl, humoring her with funny faces and unpracticed Chinese phrases, while nurses buzzed around the room like honeybees.
My steps halted at the convergence of two cobblestone paths: a narrow bench made of concrete and stone to my left and the papery trunk of a cherry tree to my right. Delicate roses lined both walkways, their fragrance an overwhelming reminder of Aria’s favorite bubble bath. And so right then and there, shrouded under graceful branches and manicured shrubs, I lifted my eyes to the parting clouds and spoke a prayer that resonated in the marrow of my bones. “Please, God, keep my baby safe. Make her heart whole again and send your comfort and peace to mine.”