“I don’t like changing horses in midstream,” said Step.
“Neither do I,” said DeAnne. “But that’s the way it goes—if your doctor’s with another patient when your time comes, then he’s not going to drop that baby on its head and come to you.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky,” said Step.
“Maybe that other woman will get lucky.”
They didn’t get lucky. DeAnne was ripe and ready to go, and Dr. Keese was still with the other woman. Dr. Vender showed up, solemnly businesslike—she looked to Step like one of those women who always wore midcalf brown skirts in college and put on little teeny half-smiles if somebody made a joke.
In the delivery room, it didn’t take all that long. DeAnne had had enough babies now that she watched her own episiotomy in the mirror, though Step didn’t think there were enough babies in the world to get him used to the idea, so he didn’t watch. Then, just like clockwork, out popped the head, a little twist for the shoulders, and presto, boy number three. Zap.
“Hi, Zap,” said Step.
“Oh, can’t you let him hear his real name?” said DeAnne. “He’ll want to go back if he thinks he’s going to be Zap for the rest of his life.”
“Hi, Jeremy Zapata Fletcher.”
“Is he all right?” asked DeAnne.
“Twenty digits total, distributed normally,” said Step.
Clip. Snip. The nurse took the baby from Dr. Vender and laid it on the scale. “Be useful, here, daddy,” said the nurse. “Watch the baby and don’t let him walk anywhere.”
“He’s shivering,” said Step. “I think he’s cold.”
The nurses were preparing something over on the side counter. Dr. Vender was taking care of the placenta and stitching up the episiotomy.
“Can’t we cover him or something?” asked Step. “He’s really shivering.”
“Now, don’t worry mama,” said Dr. Vender. “Everything’s just fine.”
Step wanted to snap back at her: Don’t talk down to us like children.
“Here we go,” said the nurse. She took note of Zap’s weight and then dripped something in each of his eyes with an eyedropper. “Oh, I know you don’t like that,” said the nurse.
“This is definitely not normal,” said Step. “He’s shivering and you’ve got to do something about it.”
“What’s wrong, Step?” asked DeAnne.
“Nothing’s wrong,” said Dr. Vender. “Daddy’s just being a worrywart.”
“Can the babytalk,” said Step, unable to endure it another moment. “DeAnne is a grownup and so am I, and we’d both like to know what’s going on with the baby.”
“We’ve already sent for a neonatal specialist,” said Dr. Vender. “It appears that it may be some kind of seizure activity. There’s no proximate cause. There was no oxygen deprivation and no anomaly in any of the baby’s vital signs during delivery.”
Step figured that what he was hearing was the standard disclaimer to avoid a malpractice suit. He also figured that it was probably true. But that still didn’t answer the real question. “Is the baby going to be all right?”
“His vital signs are just fine,” said Dr. Vender. “This isn’t normal, but at the same time it may not be dangerous at all. Please, now, as soon as I know anything more I’ll tell you, but it’s time now for your wife to go into the recovery room.”
Step leaned over DeAnne, kissed her, and squeezed her hand. “Can’t I hold him?” she asked. “Can’t I see him first?’
Step knew what she was thinking: Something is wrong with my baby. I don’t want my baby to the without my having held him when he was alive. “Of course you can,” said Step to DeAnne.
He looked at Dr. Vender, raised an eyebrow. She beckoned to the nurse who had the baby. The nurse brought Zap to DeAnne and laid him in the crook of her arm. DeAnne turned her head to see him. “He’s beautiful,” she said.
It was true. All newborns are squat and red, of course, but Zap was a genuinely pretty baby.
“He really is shivering,” she said. “Don’t be scared, Jeremy. We already love you. You’ve got a wonderful Life ahead of you.”
The nurse took the baby back. Another nurse wheeled DeAnne out of the delivery room, with Dr. Vender right behind.
“I’d like to hold the baby,” said Step.
“The neonate’s going to be here in a minute,” said the nurse, “and we’ve got to get the measurements.”
“He’s not going to grow in the next thirty seconds,” said Step.
“You’re a feisty one,” said the nurse. He could tell that she was not going to say I like that in a man.
“I’m sorry,” said Step. “But this little guy is a lot more important to me than hospital routines, and there isn’t a line of people waiting outside for this room.”
She handed him the baby. Just like the three times before, the first thing he thought was: I never knew that babies could be so small. All his memories of the older kids were from later in their babyhood. The first minutes were always new again. “I think he’s shivering a little less.”
The nurse didn’t say anything.
“Does this happen often?” asked Step. “This kind of seizure?”
“Everything happens,” said the nurse. “And nothing’s ever the same twice.”
Which told Step that she had seen babies like this who died.
She was still measuring when the neonate came, a doctor named Torwaldson. “Why wasn’t this already done?”
“I insisted that she let me hold the baby for thirty seconds,” said Step. “I threatened to break the windshield of her car if she didn’t.”
“I’m done here,” said the nurse. She did not think Step was at all cute.
Torwaldson started taking soundings with his stethoscope. “It’s time for you to go to the waiting room, Mr. . . . Fletcher.”
“Tell me about this kind of seizure,” said Step.
“I’ll tell you about this kind of seizure when I know what kind of seizure it is,” said Torwaldson. “Pheno,” he said to the nurse. “Let’s get this under control.”
Step left. There were times to be assertive and times to get out of the way.
He did not go to the waiting room. Instead he went to recovery, and the nurses there gave him no trouble about getting in to see DeAnne. Apparently she had been asking for him.
“Is he OK?” she said.
“The neonatal physician is checking him out. He said something about pheno. In my mind that seems to go with barbital. I assume that’s something to stop the trembling.”
“Did he seem worried?” asked DeAnne.
“He seemed competent and he seemed confident,” said Step. “How are you?”
“It hurts,” said DeAnne, “but they’re being very nice and pumping me full of drugs. I think they’re going to give me a sleeping pill or something because I’m so worried about the baby. Say a prayer with me, Step. Please?”
Step held her hand and prayed for the doctors to be able to find out what was wrong and to do whatever medical science could do to fix the problem and please let them have a long life with this little boy, they wanted him so much, but thy will be done. “I think he’ll be fine,” said Step. “I really do. They weren’t doing anything dramatic. It wasn’t an emergency.”
In a little while she was asleep, and Step headed for the waiting room to start calling people. But first he saw Dr. Vender in the hall. She waved him over. “I’m sorry if I was a little short with you,” she said. “I was afraid you were worrying Mrs. Fletcher.”
“If I saw something wrong with the baby, Dr. Vender, and I didn’t tell her immediately, she would never trust me again.”
“Well, some people need the truth and some people need anything but,” said Dr. Vender. “I didn’t know your wife or you, and so I did the safest thing. Or rather I tried to.”
“Sorry,” said Step. But he wasn’t sorry, and she certainly knew it.
“Torwaldson is the best in Steuben,” she said. “And
he’s on the phone right now with a neuro in Chapel Hill.”
“Neuro?” asked Step.
“Neurosurgeon,” she explained.
“Yeah, I know what a neuro is. I just wondered what it meant that he was calling one.”
“I would guess,” said Dr. Vender, “that it means he’s run into something he hasn’t seen before, or else he wants a corroborating opinion.”
“Is the baby in danger of dying?”
“As far as I can see,” said Dr. Vender, “no.”
That was when Dr. Keese came bustling out into the hall. “Dr. Vender!” he called.
“This is Mr. Fletcher,” said Dr. Vender.
Dr. Keese held out his hand, and Step shook it. “Nice to see you, I met you when I poked my head into the labor room, remember?”
Step shook his head. “Must have been before I got there.”
“No, you were there,” said Dr. Keese. “But I think you only had eyes for DeAnne. Sorry I couldn’t be in there, but I can assure you that Dr. Vender did everything I would have done, and probably better.”
How nice, thought Step. Doctors covering each other against a lawsuit.
“Mr. Fletcher,” said Dr. Keese. “Dr. Torwaldson and I and Dr. Vender all agree that we need to stop the seizure activity, and for that we’re giving your baby phenobarbital. We’ve given a fairly massive dose, for his body weight, but we’ve got to stop the seizures. Once we’ve got that under control, we’ll step the dosage down to the minimum for maintenance. He’s going into intensive care now, but I truly don’t think he’s in any danger of losing his life. So I urge you to go home. It’s after midnight and you’ll want to be up here in the morning. We’ll know more then, and DeAnne will want to see you. All right?”
What choice did he have? He waited until he knew what room DeAnne was assigned to and where to find Zap the next morning, and then he went out to the car. He was just getting into the Datsun when he realized that there was no reason to leave the good car at the hospital. DeAnne wasn’t going anywhere for a while. The rusty old two-door could keep its vigil here tonight. As he drove home, he couldn’t stop thinking: My baby was born having a seizure and the doctors have never seen it before. Something’s wrong with my youngest child, and I can’t do anything but pray, and I can’t think of a single reason why God should exclude the Stephen Fletcher family from the normal vicissitudes of life and so I don’t think my prayers are going to be answered. Not my real prayer, anyway. The “thy will be done” part will certainly be answered, but the part about “Make this all go away so that nothing is wrong, so that the doctors say, I can’t understand it, there was a seizure last night but now there’s not a trace of a problem, and he’ll definitely be brilliant and healthy and live to a hundred and four”—I don’t think God’s going to adjust his plan for the universe to make room for accommodating that particular prayer.
When he got home, DeAnne’s mother, Vette, met him at the door. “Oh,” he said. “I hoped you’d be asleep.”
“And I hoped you’d call from the hospital,” she said.
He had forgotten to call. “There were problems. They sent me home. I decided to call from here.”
“Problems?” She looked stricken.
“DeAnne is fine. But the baby seems to have something wrong and they don’t know what it is. He was trembling. They called it a seizure. Well, actually, they called it ‘seizure activity.’ But they said it didn’t look life threatening.”
“Oh, I hate this,” said Vette. “I hate not knowing.”
“You and me both,” said Step. “I guess I ought to call everybody now. It’s only eleven P.M. in Utah, right?”
“Also Mary Anne Lowe said to tell you to call her no matter how late.”
“OK,” said Step. “I’ll call her first.”
He went into the kitchen and suddenly found himself surrounded by tiny whining insects. He brushed his hands around his head but they wouldn’t go away.
“Oh, aren’t those gnats awful?” asked Vette. “I found a can of Raid and I’ve been spraying them, but new swarms just keep turning up. Do you get them all the time?”
“Never,” said Step. “Where’s the Raid?” The gnats all seemed to want to zoom right into his ear. “This is all I needed.”
“I think they’re coming from the laundry room,” said Vette. “I haven’t found any in the kids’ rooms yet.”
“We have this weird bug thing,” said Step. He went into the laundry room and started looking around for where the gnats might be getting in through. As he looked, he told Vette about the crickets and the June bugs. “We don’t have any regular bug problem, I guess,” he said. “It just comes in waves. Every couple of months or so some group of insects decides that our house is ready to go condo.”
He found that the dryer hose had come partly away from the outdoor vent. He tried to push it tight, but the pressure jostled it and it fell completely away. Suddenly another swarm of gnats arose. Only they didn’t come from the vent—they came from the hose. As if they had been spawned somewhere inside the dryer.
“Here, give me the Raid,” he said.
Vette gave it to him, and he first sprayed the swarm that was orbiting his head. Then he sprayed up into the dryer hose and then out through the vent and when he thought he had dosed them enough, he slipped the hose back over the vent and then got a screwdriver from the laundry room cupboard and tightened the collar over the hose so it wouldn’t slip away again.
“What are we doing in this house?” he said, when he got back into the kitchen.
“Getting by,” said Vette. “Doing what you must for your family.”
“We never should have left Vigor.”
“Step, you know that I think you never should have left Utah! But you are not having problems with little Jeremy because you moved to North Carolina.”
“How do you know? Maybe the doctor did something wrong. In Salt Lake they have a billion babies every year, they’ve seen everything. Out here there just aren’t as many babies and so they’re learning on Zap.”
Vette winced. “Do you really call him Zap?”
“Well, the first thing Robbie said when he heard the name Jeremy was ‘Germy, Germy, Germy,’ so maybe Zap’s the lesser of two evils.”
“Step, things go wrong sometimes no matter where you live, and sometimes things go right, and you know something? Most things that happen aren’t anybody’s fault at all, so it’s really kind of vain of you to think that your moving to North Carolina caused your newborn baby to have a seizure. You didn’t do a single thing to cause it. For all you know whatever problem he has was determined at the moment of conception.”
“Yeah, well, I was there for that, too.” Then he was appalled that he had said such a thing. He and DeAnne’s parents got along really well, but still, you don’t talk about the conception of your children to your wife’s mother.
“Better call people,” said Vette. “I’ll keep watching for the gnats.”
Step called Mary Anne first. It took longer than such calls usually did, because he mentioned that the baby was in intensive care and then he had to answer, “We don’t know yet” to about fifty questions. It went that way with every call, but he couldn’t very well not tell them the baby was having trouble, or when they found out they’d be deeply hurt. Besides, if prayer was going to be of any help in this situation, he wanted all the people praying that he could find.
He didn’t finish the calls until nearly three. He had already sent Sylvette to bed, persuading her to go by pointing out that she’d be needed to take care of the kids in the morning while he went up to the hospital, and then she’d take her shift at the hospital while he stayed home with the kids—she’d need her sleep.
“So will you,” Vette retorted.
“Yeah, but I can take a nap while I’m driving back and forth to the hospital.”
She laughed and let him pull out the sofa bed, which DeAnne had already made up for her mother that morning. Then he moved his phone op
erations into the bedroom. When he finished the calls and took his last patrol through the house, she was asleep.
He looked in on each of the kids. Betsy, cuddled up to the stuffed Snoopy that—for reasons passing understanding—she had named Wilbur. Robbie, holding his real-fur stuffed bunny, which had been named Mammalee since his infancy. And Stevie, holding on to nothing.
You’re all safe here in my house, Step thought silently, and yet I really can’t keep you safe at all, can I? Because there’s that new one, not six hours old yet, and his life is in danger and I’m not even there because I’m completely useless. And here you are, asleep, safe in your beds, only something’s going on inside your head, Stevie, and I can’t reach in and find out what’s happening and make it get better. I can plug up one hole and sweep the crickets out, but then the June bugs get in somewhere else, and then the gnats. Even when you have a perfect child, nothing stays perfect. Something always gets in. The good things are always, always at risk.
In the bedroom, undressed and ready for bed, he did what he hadn’t done in years, though DeAnne did it every night. He knelt down beside the bed, the way he had done on his mission, the way he had done as a child. He poured out his heart and asked for mercy for his new baby. Let him live. Let him have a good life. If it’s within the power of my priesthood to heal him, then let me heal him when I give him a blessing tomorrow. I don’t want to lose him. I want all my children, this one as much as any of the others, and all the children yet unborn that you might have for us. Don’t take him away from us. Whatever he needs, we’ll give it, if we have it to give.
Later, lying in bed, it occurred to him that he might have been praying for the Lord to grant him and DeAnne sixty years of caring for an invalid child. That perhaps what was wrong with Zap was so severe that it would be cruel to keep him here if the Lord was willing to take him home. So he re-entered the prayer that he thought he had closed, and added the phrase that he had deliberately left out when he was on his knees: Thy will be done.
DeAnne had recovered enough to go home, but she didn’t want to. “I’ve never left the hospital without my baby,” she said.
“You’ll see him every day,” said Dr. Keese. “And so will Step. And so will your mother. But you’re not on insurance, I understand, and this is going to eat up your savings. You need whatever money you have to take care of Jeremy.”
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