by Kent, Julia
Everyone murmured, “Amen,” and I snapped my head up to check the clock, the mental countdown still running. Ten more minutes with Finn.
The chaplain signed a certificate and gave it to my mom. He shook everyone’s hands, and I took my turn absently, unwilling to look away from Finn’s face.
Another nurse arrived, and Angilee began pulling the curtain around our space, closing off the view from the rest of the NICU. My belly started heaving, but I was too dehydrated to cry anymore. I finally understood what people meant when they said they didn’t have any tears left.
As the rest of the ward disappeared, the noises inside seemed louder, the endless ch-ch-ch sound of the ventilator. I couldn’t see the clock anymore.
“Corabelle, you sit here in the rocker,” Angilee said. “It’s time to hold your baby.”
I sank into the chair that had become so familiar to me that my body practically molded itself to it, a wooden frame softened with blue cushions tied to the base and the back.
The other nurse flipped several switches and the screen over Finn’s bed went dark. “Just the monitors,” she said. Through the curtains, I could hear the faint sounds of matching beeps of babies who were still being watched, babies who would one day go home.
Gavin stood behind me, hands on my shoulders. I wasn’t sure it was fair that I got to hold Finn. What if he died instantly? I looked up at him and tried to speak, but my throat was too dry. He gazed down at me with understanding, seemingly more worried about my welfare than that of Finn. I just accepted it and waited.
The nurses carefully removed the little discs on his chest. Finn didn’t flinch or move at all. He was so sedated. I wasn’t sure he’d even hear anything I had to say, or if he was even vaguely aware of anything I’d done that day — wash his little head with no-rinse shampoo, read him Goodnight Moon. I tried twice to sing “Twinkle, Twinkle,” but I couldn’t get past the first line.
Eventually they got him down to just the ventilator going into his mouth, the tubes snaking from a complicated connector up to a machine above. Angilee rolled a cart closer to me, holding the tubes in her hand. The other nurse picked Finn up from the bed and wrapped him in a blue blanket.
My parents stood somewhere behind me, but I hadn’t looked at them since the baptism ended. I heard my mom give a little whimpering cry, but I refused to let it set me off. I didn’t want to weep the entire time I held my baby, the only time I held him. That didn’t seem fair. There should be something happy in his life.
The nurse walked to me slowly, letting the tubes shift. Angilee kept them aloft. When they lowered Finn to my lap, I didn’t know exactly how to hold him. He wasn’t like the practice dolls from class, but warm and soft. The nurse laid his head in the bend of my elbow, and I adjusted naturally, lifting that arm slightly and bringing my free hand under his back.
“Perfect,” the nurse said and arranged the ventilator so that the hoses weren’t bent or crimped.
Finn was so much lighter than I’d imagined. He was four pounds at birth, but then he lost some, then he swelled with water weight the last day or two. He had downy hair at his crown, and his little ears lay perfectly flat.
Gavin came around and knelt beside me, cupping his palm at the top of Finn’s head. “He has your nose,” he said.
“I think it’s yours,” I said.
My dad came around and snapped a picture of us, but we didn’t look up, or smile, or try to make this a normal image. There was no way to make anything that was happening seem normal.
“Can I have a turn?” my mom asked, and I looked up at the nurse.
“Of course,” she said and looked to me. “You want to give everyone a chance before we go on?”
I nodded. More time. I wanted all the clocks to stop, for this moment to last as long as possible, even though the pain was excruciating, a tightness in my chest and throat, my head pounding, my jaw aching from trying not to cry. Still, I would take it to keep looking at Finn.
I lifted him a little, and the nurse took him back. Mom and I traded places, and she sat with him for a minute, rocking and humming some little song I remembered from when I was small. After a moment she started sobbing super hard, and the nurse took Finn. My dad sat with him a moment, and then we all looked at Gavin.
At first he shook his head, but my distressed expression must have changed his mind, because he sat in the chair. Of all the moments that were hard, seeing him there, his dark head bent over Finn’s, was the one I thought might break me. I felt light, like I could float, and only when my vision started to go gray did I realize I had to pull myself together. I breathed in several rapid deep inhales and forced myself to calm.
The nurse took the baby from Gavin and said to me, “Corabelle, it’s time.”
Gavin moved out of the way, and I took my place back in the rocker. I accepted Finn, letting his little bottom rest in my lap. The nurse slipped a pillow under him to steady us and bent over him. “First I’ll just remove the adhesive.”
She used a bit of damp cotton that smelled sharply of chemicals to loosen the sticky tape. Finn’s mouth was red and misshapen beneath it. She pressed a wet cloth to it, surrounding the tube.
I couldn’t breathe. The only lifeline for Finn was loose and ready to come out. I wanted to look around the room, to remember everything, but I couldn’t tear my gaze from his face. My shoulder ached but I ignored it, keeping him still, fearful of moving and removing the tube by accident.
The nurse took the cloth away, and his mouth was soft again, pink rather than red. She looked up at Angilee, who nodded. “I’m going to take it out now,” the nurse said and pulled the tube away.
Angilee whisked away the hosing, and I looked down at Finn for the first time without anything blocking my view. My mother whimpered beside me, and Gavin squeezed my shoulder. For the longest time, Finn didn’t move at all, then his belly moved out violently, and he sucked in a breath.
The nurse placed the disc of a stethoscope on his chest in several places. “Heart tones are still there.” She glanced up at Angilee. “Let’s get her a wheelchair.”
“Where is she going?” Gavin asked.
“We have a private room for you,” the nurse said.
I couldn’t stop looking at Finn. I touched his nose and lips and ears and chin. I pushed the blanket aside to run my fingers down his little chest and belly, places that had always been a mass of wire and adhesive.
“Let’s move you into this.” Angilee guided me from the rocker to the wheelchair. “You all can come.”
Dad clicked images as we moved through the ward. I didn’t take my eyes off Finn. His belly still moved a little, not as violently as before, and this reassured me. I imagined that somehow they were wrong, completely wrong, and that he’d keep breathing, start growing, and soon we’d be in our car and speeding home to put him in his crib.
Angilee pushed me out of the NICU and down a short hall. The other nurse opened the door, revealing a room with a normal bed like you’d find at home, covered in a soft blue bedspread. A normal sofa rested against the far wall, and a table held plates beneath silver covers, like at a hotel.
Angilee pushed the wheelchair over to the bed. “You can sit wherever you like,” she said.
I stood and turned to the bed, then realized I couldn’t easily get on it while holding the baby. “Gavin, take him for a second.” I passed him over, thinking this might have been the most natural thing in the world, handing the baby to his father, if it had been any other time.
I crawled across the bed to sit against the headboard. “Okay, I’m ready for him back.”
Gavin returned him to my arms and climbed on the bed next to me.
Angilee lifted a red remote from a side table. “Call us if you need us,” she said. “We’ll check in every fifteen minutes or so.”
My parents settled on the sofa. “I guess it’s just a matter of time now,” my dad said.
I laid my hand on Finn’s belly, feeling that motion, noticing that th
e space between the breaths had already grown longer. Gavin put his hand on top of mine, and for a moment, we could have been any new parents, looking down at our son, marveling at how he was made, how he breathed, how sweetly he slept.
I wished that he would open his eyes, just once. But he hadn’t, and wouldn’t.
His belly gurgled and I had to smile, but when the brief happier feeling passed, grief overwhelmed me so fast that I couldn’t hold the tears back. My body had found more, an ocean of them, and I leaned back so they wouldn’t fall on Finn’s face.
His belly stopped moving, and I panicked, thinking it was already over. I wanted to call the nurses, tell them to resuscitate him. My head clanged with alarm bells, warnings to help him, to do something. Gavin squeezed my arm and said, “Take it easy,” and I realized I was breathing very fast, as if I could somehow make the baby accept my oxygen.
Guilt crashed over me. This had to be my fault. I hadn’t told anyone what I had done in those early days, before I knew I was pregnant. Maybe it would have mattered. Maybe the doctors would have done something differently. My baby was dying for my sins, as if I’d blown the smoke straight into his lungs.
Finally his belly rose again. I forced myself to calm, to stay in the moment. I couldn’t do anything about the past.
“Let’s give the kids some privacy,” my dad said. As much as I might want my own mother there, I felt relieved that he would let us be alone, to have just a little time to have Finn all to ourselves.
Mom started to protest, but Dad took her hands and lifted her to standing. She came over to us and kissed Finn’s head. “I love you, baby boy,” she said before covering her face with her handkerchief again.
When they were gone, I laid my head on Gavin’s shoulder. “Is there something we should say to him?” I asked. “Maybe something easy?”
“Anything you want.”
“We love you, Finn. We wish you could stay with us.” I picked up his hand and extended the fingers topped by tiny fragile fingernails. “Daddy would have taught you how to fix a carburetor.”
“Except that cars have fuel injectors now,” Gavin said. “Mommy wasn’t good at cars.”
I tried to laugh, but it caught in my throat. “Well, by the time you were grown, it might have been hover cars.”
“You still would have to have been home by midnight,” he said, then kissed my ear. “We know all the trouble you can get into after midnight.”
I pulled him higher, closer to my shoulder, so I could lay my cheek on his head.
The nurse came in, silently. “Just a quick check.”
I couldn’t believe it had already been fifteen minutes.
I turned Finn a little, and she laid the stethoscope on his chest.
“It’s a long time between breaths now,” I said.
She nodded. “He still has heart tones.”
“How much time?” I asked.
“Every baby is different,” she said. “But probably before the next time I check.”
“Will we know? Will something happen?” Gavin asked.
“Probably not. It’s a lot like he’s asleep.” She patted me on the shoulder. “Just let us know if you need us.”
When she left, I curled into Gavin. He put his arms around us so that we wrapped Finn up between us. I held my breath as long as I could, waiting for Finn’s belly to rise, but I couldn’t make it. I took in another long breath and waited again. Still nothing.
My chest started heaving and Gavin held me tighter. We waited for the next breath, but it didn’t come. I wondered what death really was, when you stopped breathing, or the silence of the heart? I had thought it would be so definitive, and that I would know.
“His face has changed,” Gavin said.
I looked at him, the tiny nose, the gentle mouth still pink around the edges from the tape. And I saw what Gavin meant. His jaw was loose now, his mouth open.
I yanked him tight against my shoulder, tighter than you should hold a baby. I would not let him go, they could not take him from me. Deep inside my body a wail began, a low sound, completely outside my control. He was gone. He was gone. My baby Finn was really gone.
Gavin clutched at me, and we supported each other on the bed, rocking back and forth, the three of us. I don’t know how long we did that, but eventually a nurse came back in and tiptoed back out without disturbing us.
When I couldn’t sit up any longer, my own body giving out, I slid down on the bed, curling Finn’s body into my chest. Gavin lay down with me, and we stayed that way until a doctor came in, one we didn’t know, and checked Finn’s heart. “He’s gone,” he said, but by then, I already knew, had already ached and cried, and I couldn’t do anymore. He glanced at the clock. “Time of death, 9:03.”
He laid a hand on the baby. “You can stay here with him as long as you want, overnight if you choose. Nurses will check on you. You will not be rushed.”
So we settled back on the bed, the three of us, and even though I didn’t sleep, we let the night fall over us, quiet and deep.
Chapter 35: Gavin
The rough surface of the rock bit into my shoulders. “Corabelle?” I nudged her, still lying across my chest. I thought maybe she’d fallen asleep.
She sat up and swiped at her eyes. “What do you think it is about stargazing that makes us think of Finn?”
I stared up into the night sky, showered with dots of light in a way you never could see in the city. “The infinite. The unknown. The Lion King and the souls of all the kings that came before.”
Corabelle nudged me halfheartedly. “I never was able to finish singing ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ to him.”
I wrapped my arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “That’s all right.”
I thought of all the paths our lives could have taken. The one if Finn had never existed. The one if he hadn’t died. The one if I hadn’t left after the funeral. And this new one, if Corabelle hadn’t come to UC San Diego and signed up for astronomy.
The North Star stood out, brighter than the others. It was definitely easier when you were out here to believe that some great cosmic something was guiding our fate.
“Your stomach just rumbled in my ear,” Corabelle said.
“Then feed me, wench!” It was an old joke born of too many pirate movies.
She smacked my ribs, but still sat up and felt around for the bag. “Where’s that flashlight?”
“Not sure. It’s darker than I figured.”
We both felt around the edges of the blanket until our hands crossed paths. We both stopped, grasping each other. “I’d kiss you but I’m very likely to miss,” I said.
She leaned into me, and now I could navigate the shadow of her, face and hair and arms and waist. My lips found hers and she sighed, sinking into me.
Her mouth was an oasis in the dry air; her tongue made me forget all the grief I’d felt thinking of Finn.
She pulled away with a broken laugh. “Why do I have a feeling I’m going to have bruised knees tomorrow?”
I pulled her down onto the blanket. “Because you are.”
The night was cool, almost cold, so I pulled the blanket around us as I exposed each part of her to the autumn air. I laid my head against the skin of her chest, listening to her heartbeat, still seeing the monitors in my mind, a little jagged line across the screen that told us Finn was with us.
I made my way down to her bare belly, where he’d been, tucked away for seven months. We hadn’t known that this was the best of times, him kicking inside her, none of us having any clue that we should have celebrated every day.
I kissed my way along her hip bone, bringing the jeans down with me. Corabelle sighed and lifted her hips, and I delved into her, feeling her shiver, listening to her sounds, and once again thanked the stars for bringing her back to me.
Chapter 36: Corabelle
A buzzing noise startled me awake later that night, after we’d gone home from the rock. I rubbed my eyes and looked first at Gavin, sprawled a
cross his bed. Then the clock, which read one in the morning.
The noise was persistent, the sound of a cell-phone text message, one after the other.
For some reason I just knew it was Jenny, and Lumberjack had ditched her somewhere, and she needed help. I scrambled across the floor and dug through our clothes, trying to find my phone.
The light of a screen showed through a bit of fabric and I snatched it up.
But when I saw the image, I dropped it again.
I tried to breathe, suddenly feeling like I might hyperventilate. It was probably some mistake. Some porn bot or a friend making a joke.
I lifted the phone again, Gavin’s phone, and swiped it to get past the preview and into the actual message. The image was still there, a naked woman sprawled on a bed, legs wide, fingers spreading herself open.
Below it, the message said, “Miss you, Gavin baby. I need a booty call.”
I meant to set the phone down and crawl right back into bed. If this woman missed him, that means he wasn’t seeing her anymore. So it was fine. He’d delete the messages in the morning, probably relieved I hadn’t seen them. As I tried to bury the phone back in the clothes, another message popped up. “I dumped Jerry. Pimp free, like you said! Give me a shout. I’m good for a freebie.”
I washed cold. Who was this girl? I glanced up at the bed. Gavin was still out. I knew I shouldn’t read any more, but I remembered Jenny at the coffee shop saying, “What do you really know about Gavin, as he is now?”
I scrolled through the messages that woke me up. Her name was Candy, of course. She asked where he’d been lately. Then, “I learned a little rope bondage just for you. Tie up those strong arms.”
When he didn’t respond, she’d sent the picture.
Maybe it was a joke, maybe the picture was random. Maybe this was a friend. I set the phone down, unwilling to spy any more.
But then I thought — is he being careful? We were using condoms now, but we hadn’t been. What if he had been with a prostitute?