by Grace Palmer
Feeding and changing diapers and tiny bursts of sleep caught wherever she could snag them.
Doctor’s consults and lukewarm meals scarfed down off metal trays and long medicinal terms with menacing auras—surfactant and sepsis, bilirubin and bradycardia, gut priming and gavage feedings and gentamicin.
And the testing. Lots and lots of testing.
Hordes of nurses measured Summer’s mobility, her sleeping, her breathing, her eating. If she cried, they tested it. If she twitched, they tested it.
Eliza felt her heart in her throat every time. Was it bad? Is everything okay?
They always said yes. Of course she’s fine. Of course she’s okay.
She hadn’t yet decided if she believed their answers.
She supposed this was all part and parcel of parenting a newborn. Or rather, of parenting a premature newborn.
The first was familiar to her.
The second was something else entirely.
After Winter was born, Eliza’s entire life shifted. The things she’d counted as important before—work and success and such—now felt insubstantial.
Because, after all—what could matter more than the big eyes that looked up at her? The eyes that trusted her, that depended on her?
What could matter more than giving Winter every opportunity to succeed?
At the time, that felt like a seismic change.
Now, Eliza’s worldview had shifted even more. A new question took to the forefront: what could matter more than giving both her children every opportunity to live?
It wasn’t exactly her first spin on this carousel, though.
Sometime in the last year, Eliza and Oliver had begun to note that Winter’s speaking seemed delayed. Her tongue struggled to move around certain letters. They could see the frustration purpling in her face when she tried to communicate with them and couldn’t.
“Is she too young for speech therapy?” Eliza had asked one night, her eyes strained from the glow of her phone screen in their dark bedroom.
They’d been lying in bed for over an hour, both restless. Oliver was tossing and turning and muttering in half-sleep; Eliza was researching speech impediments.
“That usually starts once they are in school, I think. I’m sure she’ll be tested for it,” Oliver had mumbled. “I wouldn’t worry just yet.”
Eliza knew he wouldn’t worry. Oliver rarely worried about anything. Especially not academics.
Being a musician had been Oliver’s only goal. To the point that he skipped school to take the train into New York City and busk for pocket change on street corners.
His parents had hired tutors and enrolled him in the best private schools. Oliver repaid that investment by skipping college and joining a band.
It worked for him, in the end. It was an unthinkable life for Eliza.
Growing up, school had been everything to her. She’d been the shining star of her family. The model daughter with straight As and a 1590 on the SATs. Everyone was always sure to tell her how smart she was. How successful she’d no doubt become.
“One day, she’ll give us smart little grandchildren, too,” her mom had said once. Not to Eliza directly—Mae was bragging to her friend Lola over glasses of wine on the deck. Eliza just so happened to be walking past and overheard.
She wondered now if her mother had any idea how often that refrain would go on to repeat itself in Eliza’s head for the rest of her life.
When Eliza took Winter to the pediatrician and had to check “no” next to the question, Is your toddler speaking in two- to three-word sentences?, there it was.
Smart little grandchildren should be speaking sentences, she’d think. Smart little grandchildren would get all “yeses.”
Maybe she should have read to Winter more. Maybe they didn’t talk to her enough. Maybe she watched too much television.
Those things had consumed Eliza, day and night.
But now, sitting next to Summer in the hospital, praying she’d keep breathing on her own, Eliza could think of nothing more trivial. Winter could run and play. She could breathe.
She was a loud giggler, screeching whenever Oliver rubbed his beard on her belly or when Eliza dabbed a dot of brownie batter on her nose. And she mostly slept through the night. Eliza didn’t have to peek in her room in the wee hours, anxiously checking to make sure her chest rose and fell as it should.
Winter was healthy. All else paled in comparison.
“Your baby girl is ready to go home,” Ginny said, dropping her stethoscope against her fuchsia scrubs. “She passed the car seat test.”
Eliza blinked and looked up at Ginny’s friendly face. She’d been lost in thought all morning as Ginny bustled about the room. More testing was on the docket, of course.
But today’s test was the last hurdle, or so Dr. Geiger had said. It only required Summer to sit in a car seat for an hour while her vitals were monitored.
“To make sure she can sit in a semi-reclined position for a long period of time,” Ginny had explained. “It’s a standard test for premature babies.”
Eliza looked down at her baby where she sat, car seat propped up on a chair.
After all the poking and prodding the infant had endured, Eliza assumed this would be a cinch. What Eliza hadn’t anticipated was feeling so helpless.
Something about seeing her tiny daughter sitting alone and untouchable, swallowed up by the straps and cushions of the car seat, nearly undid her.
Summer would have to go into a car. Out on the road. Where other drivers and cars could see them, scare them, strike them.
Summer would leave the hospital and be surrounded by strangers who had no idea she was a delicate piece of china. They wouldn’t know how fragile she was. How careful they must be around her.
The reality of the dangers lurking just beyond the hospital doors hit Eliza all at once.
“She passed,” Ginny said again gently. As if Eliza hadn’t heard the first time.
She had heard, of course. But she’d only just begun to process what it meant.
Summer had cleared.
They were going home.
Only a matter of minutes later, it seemed, Eliza and Summer were discharged and being wheeled through the hospital.
Ginny told every nurse they passed the good news, beaming as though talking about her own baby rather than an old high school classmate’s.
“Baby Summer is going home!”
And each one of them cheered, cooed, blew kisses, waved goodbye.
Eliza waved back at all of the nurses, thanking them for their care. Secretly wishing she could take them home with her.
The smiling cartoon teddy bears lining the fluorescent-lit hallways of the children’s wing of Nantucket Cottage Hospital had taken on a sinister edge the longer Eliza had stayed in the hospital. They watched Eliza and Summer leave now, wide eyes hypnotic and unsettling.
If she never saw their fuzzy, grinning faces again, it would still be too soon.
Ginny pushed Eliza through the sliding double doors into a beautiful day.
The golden mid-afternoon light glinted off the asphalt and the cars in the parking lot. Fluffy white clouds floated through the blue sky, promising continued sunshine that wrapped her in a blanket of warmth. It felt like nature’s way of telling her everything would be fine.
Eliza only wished she could take the message to heart.
I’m fine, she said to herself. I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine-fine-fine.
Ginny pushed Eliza to the edge of the curb. Oliver was waiting in the yellow-painted loading zone, engine idling. He hurried over to help her transition from her wheelchair to the passenger seat.
“I’m okay, honey,” Eliza murmured. As expected, Oliver promptly ignored her and helped anyway.
Eliza glanced into the rear of the vehicle as she shuffled down the ledge of the curb. Winter was in her car seat, straining against the fuzzy pink straps to see out the window.
When she saw her mother, she reached out with ch
ubby dimpled fingers. Bright and smiling. Her precious little girl.
But when the door opened and Winter saw Oliver click Summer’s car seat into place, her little hand whipped back like she’d been stung.
“Is someone not too excited about little sister?” Ginny whispered, a hint of amusement in her voice.
“She didn’t want to come pick her up,” Oliver sighed, running a hand through his dark hair.
His waves were normally tousled, but today, they looked unkempt. Rumpled. Exhaustion had pressed dark circles under his eyes.
“I think she blames Summer for keeping Mommy and Daddy away. I’m afraid she may cry at any sighting of her babysitter now, too,” he added. “Julie is an angel, but nothing beats your own mom and dad.”
Eliza had wanted Winter in the hospital with them as much as possible, but a toddler could only be expected to sit by a newborn’s bassinet for so long. She needed to move and play—two things Eliza couldn’t offer from her recovery bed.
So Oliver had been splitting his time between the hospital and home as well as he could, but he’d been stretched thin. Their babysitter, Julie, had been a lifesaver.
Ginny pressed a hand to her heart, lower lip pouted out in sympathy. “Poor girl. Don’t worry; she’ll come around. They always do.”
“You see this a lot?” Oliver asked.
“All the time,” Ginny laughed. “Little kids don’t understand why their mommies are hurting and why everything is different. But a few days at home with a routine will fix everything. Trust me.”
It sounded nice and simple. But Eliza couldn’t decide if she believed that, either.
When her sister Holly was born, Eliza was Winter’s age. Only two years old. She’d no doubt had strong feelings about her sister’s arrival, but she couldn’t recall them now.
She could, however, remember Sara’s entrance to the world.
Eliza was four by then, and she could grasp what it meant to share her parents.
Holly was pigeon-toed, an ailment that was later fixed with braces and insoles. But in the meantime, she tripped over her own feet often. Her lip was split open near-weekly on the edges of tables and chairs. On the cracked concrete sidewalk outside their house. She was carried inside, bleeding and screaming, too many times to count.
Consequently, Mom and Dad hovered over Holly, protecting her from herself. Warning her to slow down. Catching her before she could do any more damage.
Eliza didn’t need the same oversight. They mostly let her be.
So, when Sara arrived, Eliza worried her parent’s time would be even more divided. That she would receive even less of their attention.
Mae still loved to tell the story of how Eliza suggested they give Sara away to a family in need. “She wanted to donate Sara like an old dress,” Mae would chuckle, inevitably wiping away a tear of laughter. “She said, ‘You already have two girls. Some people don’t have any!’”
By now, it was a cute, charming story. Precocious little girl with a precocious little suggestion.
But at the time, Eliza was sure she’d been onto something. And if Winter could express all of her feelings, Eliza suspected she’d be saying something similar.
You already have me, the little girl would protest. What more could you want?
But just as Sara won Eliza over with her belly laughs and sunny blonde ringlets, Eliza knew Summer would win Winter over, too. Perhaps not permanently. Having a sister was, in some respects, a battle that never ended. Goodness knows that Eliza reconsidered her original proposal once Sara learned to talk back and express her (very strong) opinions.
But for the most part, their relationship was good.
Eliza wished the same for her girls. And she trusted it would happen.
They just had to get home first.
As they pulled away from the curb, Eliza started to plan. To parcel up her world into neat, manageable chunks.
Unpack the car.
Set up a diaper changing station.
Sanitize the baby bottles.
Wash the baby linens.
With each box she prioritized and plotted and prepped, she felt better. And as they rounded the final curve to their home, she let out a sigh that had a week of hospitalized anxiety laced through it.
Then Oliver opened the front door and Eliza saw her house for the first time in seven days.
And she realized she wasn’t getting started on her list anytime soon.
“Home sweet home,” her husband murmured. Winter giggled and ran into the house, navigating the maze of clutter and mess and toys with glee.
She hopped from couch cushion to couch cushion, which was made possible by the fact that they were scattered around the living room floor like stepping stones.
Scattered between the cushions were choking hazards like Lego bricks and cat’s eye marbles. The containers they belonged in were overturned and stacked next to the entertainment center—a stepping stool for Winter to reach the power button for the television.
Beyond the immediate chaos, Eliza could see a mess of dry cereal and toast crumbs under the dining room table. Dishes stacked high in the sink. And, visible through the crack in her bedroom door, an overflowing laundry basket.
“Wow.” Eliza was only half-aware she’d spoken the thought out loud.
“The place is a bit of a mess,” Oliver said, hurrying ahead of Eliza to clear a path for her. “I hoped to clean up before you came home, but it all happened so fast.”
Winter cried out as Oliver disassembled the obstacle course she’d been enjoying, stranding her on a cushion without another one to jump to.
“Winter hasn’t been napping very well,” he continued, “which is usually when I clean. And Julie had a big test today, so she let Winter do a lot of independent play yesterday so she could study. Don’t worry; I’ll clean it up.”
Winter grabbed the cushion Oliver had just placed on the couch and returned it to the floor so she could continue her game.
“No, sweetie,” Oliver chided gently. “We need to clean things up for Mommy and baby sister. We don’t want them to trip over the mess.”
Winter responded with crossed arms and a sidelong glance at Eliza and Summer, far more menacing than any toddler had the right to be.
Eliza tiptoed through the room to the worn leather armchair in the corner. “It’s fine. I understand.”
She nestled Summer into the crook of her arm. Oliver said he would clean, and he would. Eliza just needed to focus on her girls.
“Do you want to go find a book to read?” she asked Winter. “Maybe the bear and duck book you like?”
“I don’t like that one,” she said, eyes narrowed.
Eliza winced. That book was Winter’s favorite since the first time Eliza read it to her months ago. They had to carry it with them in the car everywhere they went in case she wanted to flip through the pictures.
Not anymore, it seemed.
“Another book, then?” Eliza sighed. “Any book you want. We can read it to Sissy together.”
Instead of answering, Winter furrowed her brow and ran past Eliza into the dining room. She dropped cross-legged onto the floor next to an empty diaper box bearing a jumbled pyramid of markers. Winter chose a purple one and began scribbling furiously on the cardboard.
“That’s the only thing she’ll do by herself for more than ten minutes at a time,” Oliver muttered. “I’ve learned to take advantage of the window.”
“Speaking of time, it’s almost Winter’s naptime,” Eliza said with a glance at the clock above the extra-wide kitchen door.
The clock had been with Eliza since her very first apartment in New York. One of the few pieces she cared enough to keep through all the moves. When the minute hand broke one day, her dad had whittled her a replacement from a scrap piece of wood. No one could tell a difference, but Eliza knew it was there.
She’d always liked that. A tiny little secret between her and her father.
Oliver sighed and wordlessly pushed himsel
f off the sofa. It took him five minutes to get Winter into her bedroom, twenty minutes to red her two books, and another ten minutes to convince her not to immediately roll out of bed when he closed her bedroom door.
Eliza listened to the whole exchange from the living room. She wanted to help, but Winter clearly didn’t want to be around her right now.
So instead, she tried to clean up a bit. Her stitches pulled when she bent at the waist and her whole body ached from lack of use, but Eliza wanted to help.
No, she needed to help. To do something.
She kicked Legos to the edges of the room, careful not to step on them, and toed the marbles into a pile in the middle of the floor.
Bending down to use a dustpan was out of the question. But she could sweep the crumbs into a pile, at least.
She was in the linen closet reaching for the broom when Oliver came out of Winter’s room and let loose a long, weary sigh.
“I think she might stay in bed. I really don’t know. She’s been afraid to nap the last few days, worried I won’t be here when she wakes up.” Oliver padded across the floor and then stopped, spotting Eliza. “What are you doing? I said I’d clean.”
“I know, but I want to help. The place is a disaster, and—”
“I’ve been a little busy.” Oliver sounded more defensive than he ever had before, his tone sharp and clipped. “I told you, Winter hasn’t been napping.”
Eliza turned around and offered him a sympathetic smile. “I know. I understand.”
“But you’re still cleaning when you should be resting.”
“I want to help. You have your hands full with Winter and—”
“And I can’t handle a kid and keeping the house clean as well as you can?”
Eliza blinked at him. She didn’t know whether it was a question or a statement, but either way, it seemed excessive.
Oliver was usually so easygoing. She had no clue how to handle this flare-up.
She opened her mouth to respond when Winter’s bedroom door opened. Oliver’s shoulders sagged with exhaustion, but before he could turn around, Eliza moved around him.