by Cronk, LN
I wanted to say thank you, but the words stuck in my throat.
“I’m very sorry for your loss, sir,” she said. And then, in a whisper, she said, “I’ll be praying for you.”
I hoped our call wasn’t being recorded for “quality assurance purposes” because I was fairly certain that she’d get fired if anyone heard her saying that to me.
“Thank you so much,” I whispered back and I was glad that the words didn’t get stuck in my throat that time.
~ ~ ~
SUNDAY, TWO DAYS before we were to fly out, Mike came to say goodbye – it was the only chance he was going to have before we left.
After he’d talked with us for a while and hugged Laci, he nodded his head toward the door so I walked him out and stood with him in the driveway next to his car.
“I just wanted to talk to you about something,” he said. “It’s none of my business, but . . .”
“What?”
“I just . . . I just want you to keep an extra careful eye on Laci,” he began. “I mean, I know you will anyway, but I want to make sure you understand that she’s at high risk for developing clinical depression . . .”
I crossed my arms and leaned back against his car. “Fantastic,” I said, nodding my head. “That sounds exactly like what we need to have happen next. That’s just great.”
He looked at me as if uncertain whether or not to continue.
“Go on,” I sighed.
“You’ve heard of postpartum depression,” he said, waiting for me to nod, which I did. “Well, she obviously has some level of risk because of that . . . but anytime someone loses a child they’re at risk for depression. Laci has two strikes against her . . . I just want you to really watch her.”
“What do I watch for?”
“It’s hard to say,” he said. “Both of you are going to be grieving and it might be hard for you to tell what’s normal and what’s not. I’m talking about a biochemical imbalance . . . something she won’t have any control over. You’re going to have to really pay attention to her and you’re going to have to listen to your gut if you think she’s not doing all right.”
“Okay.”
“Just call me,” he said. “You know I’ll help you any way I can . . .”
I nodded and could feel tears spring into my eyes.
He hugged me and patted me on the back.
“I’m really sorry,” he said.
I hugged him back and nodded again.
The next night – Monday night – the night before we were to leave, God talked to me for the first time in my life. Maybe He speaks to some people regularly . . . but me? It was something I’d never experienced before.
Like I’d told Charlotte, God had led me before . . . guided me, spoken to me through Scriptures or songs . . . stuff like that. But I’d never had anything like this happen to me. It wasn’t a voice, but it was more than a feeling. I just somehow knew that it was God and that He was telling me something.
It was overwhelming.
Laci was packing in the basement and I was upstairs in the living room, flipping through the newspaper, when it happened. My eyes fell on an ad for an adoption agency.
It was called Adoption Alternatives and it was an agency that specialized (according to their ad) in open adoptions – adoptions where the birth parents and the adoptive parents get to know each other and can stay in touch after the baby is born.
I was looking at it and idly thinking that if I was ever going to adopt I certainly wouldn’t want the birth parents sticking around afterward and being a part of our lives. That’s when I suddenly felt God telling me something: You need to call them.
I looked over at Chris who was reading a magazine. He seemed totally unaware of what had just happened. I looked back at the ad.
I did not want to call them. I did not want to adopt a baby and have the birth mom (and maybe the dad) visiting on birthdays and at Christmas.
Maybe God was telling me we were supposed to adopt . . . but through Adoption Alternatives in Cavendish? I didn’t think so. I mean Laci worked at an orphanage . . .
Call them.
Okay. Now that was very clear. Wow . . .
The fact that God was clearly telling me something was so powerful that I completely forgot that I didn’t want to have a birth mom visiting her biological baby in our home and I forgot that we had non-refundable tickets to fly to Mexico the next day. I jumped out of my chair and bounded down the steps to the basement.
“Laci!” I said, thrusting the newspaper in front of her. “Look!”
She put a shirt in her suitcase and took the paper from me.
I pointed at the ad. She read it and frowned.
“I want to have my own baby,” she said, looking at me with dismay.
“We need to call them!”
“No!” she said, almost shouting. “Even if I was going to adopt I wouldn’t adopt some white baby from Cavendish when there are hundreds of kids in Mexico who need us.”
She said the word white with such venom in her voice that I almost felt ashamed that I was white.
“I cannot believe you’d even suggest this,” she said, throwing the paper onto the bed and starting to cry.
“No, Laci,” I said, wanting to explain. “We just need to call them . . .”
“NO!” she said. “I told you I don’t want to call them! I don’t want to adopt a baby! What is wrong with you? We just lost Gabby! How can you even think about doing this?”
She was crying harder now and the excitement I’d felt from having God tell me something was slipping away fast.
“I just . . . I just wanted to call them . . . please don’t cry, Laci. Please stop.”
She didn’t stop.
“I’m sorry,” I went on. “We don’t have to call them. I made a mistake . . . I’m sorry. I don’t want to call them. Please stop crying.”
“I just want to go back to Mexico and try to get on with our lives,” she sobbed.
“Me too,” I said, wrapping my arms around her. “I’m sorry I said anything.”
By the time she stopped crying all the exhilaration I’d felt was gone and I’d convinced myself that God did not really want me to call them after all.
And after that, He didn’t talk to me again.
~ ~ ~
ABOUT TWO MONTHS after we returned to Mexico I called Mike.
“Hi, David,” he said. “What’s up?”
“Am I catching you at a bad time?”
“No,” he said. “This is a good time actually . . . I’ve got about seven minutes.”
Tight schedule.
I got right to it.
“How do I know when Laci’s bad enough to make her go to the doctor?”
“Well,” he said, “just the fact that you’re calling me and asking me that tells me that things have probably already gotten to that point. What’s going on?”
“She’s not happy. Anything sets her off. She cries all the time. She goes and works with those little kids everyday and it use to make her so happy, but now it just makes her sad. I mean, I’m sad too, but I’m getting better every day . . . I don’t think she is.”
“Take her,” Mike said. “Make her go. It’s treatable . . . they can do something about it . . .”
“She’s not going to want to take any medicine,” I said. “She wants to get pregnant again . . .”
“There are so many things out there now,” he said. “A lot of them she can take when she’s pregnant. Plus, sometimes you just need to be on them for a few months to get your serotonin levels back where they need to be and then you can go off of ’em and be fine . . .”
“Okay,” I said.
“And David?”
“What?”
“If the first thing they give her doesn’t work don’t give up. There’re a lot of different options. It may take a while to find the right thing . . .”
“Are my seven minutes up?” I asked.
“You need anything else?”
“No,” I said. “I just wanted to say thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” he said. “Anytime.”
I sat her down and told her that I was worried about her and I told her everything Mike had said. She cried some more, but she nodded. I think she knew she needed help.
We went to see Dr. Santos. He prescribed something for her and I called Mike as soon as we picked up the prescription. He didn’t answer so I left a voice mail and told him the name of the medicine and asked him to let me know what he thought. I wouldn’t let her take the first pill until Mike called me back a few hours later and talked to me in English.
“I think it’s a good one to start with,” he said. “I talked with Dr. Jacobs on staff here and he said it’s a common first choice.”
I let Laci take her pill.
After about three days her tears dried up, but she complained that her heart was racing at times and she couldn’t sleep at night. We gave it two weeks, but decided it wasn’t the answer so we went back to Dr. Santos.
The next one he prescribed for her did the trick, and I slowly saw my old Laci coming back to me. She started smiling more often, she got excited about going to work every day, and when we passed a trash can that had a Happy Meal container laying on top she looked at it, but didn’t burst into tears.
“Are you sure it’s going to be okay for her to be on this if she gets pregnant?” I asked Mike when I called him at the end of the summer.
“I’m positive,” he answered. “Are you trying?”
“I guess so.”
“Good luck.”
In the meantime we got back into what had been our normal routine before we’d gone to Cavendish to have Gabby. While we’d been gone, Aaron had located another church that was willing to take in the youth group kids, so Laci and I got our house back except for the two days a week when the kids from the landfill came.
Dorito was doing great. He’d seemed so happy to see me when I came back from Cavendish . . . running to me and throwing his arms around my legs. I scooped him up and turned him upside down.
“You haven’t forgotten your English, have you?” I’d asked him. He just smiled at me.
“Who am I?” I asked, pointing at myself.
“Day-Day.”
“Who are you?” I asked, turning him right side up again and tickling his stomach.
“Dorito,” he giggled.
“Good boy,” I said.
I kissed him on the top of his head and set him back down.
I started picking him up two or three mornings a week so we could do the exercises that Sonya gave us and then we’d go to McDonald’s for lunch afterwards. We were usually able to get there before the lunch crowd and often had the play yard all to ourselves. The ball pit was his favorite part of the entire day.
“Come here!” he called one day, only his head sticking up from the brightly colored balls.
I hated the ball pit.
“What?” I asked, walking over to the black netting that kept him and all the balls inside. He stuck a bare foot into the air.
“Where’s your sock?” I asked. He tried to part the balls with his hands, looking for his sock.
“Oh, brother,” I said, crawling into the pit.
“Oh, brother,” he repeated.
I reached down through the balls, feeling the bottom of the pit. Finally I felt something made of cloth and I pulled up a black sock that almost could have fit me. The next thing I found was a pair of pink underwear with white unicorns printed on it.
“This is disgusting,” I said. “Come on, we’re getting out.”
“Why?” he asked.
“We’re going shopping . . .”
“Why?” he asked again.
“We’re going to buy you some new socks.”
~ ~ ~
IN EARLY NOVEMBER, Laci came into my office and looked over my shoulder. I was checking the weather in Cavendish.
“What’s it doing today?” she asked.
“Nothing too much,” I said. “They might have a few flurries tomorrow night.”
The high in Mexico City that day had been seventy-seven.
“Oh,” she said. She sat down on the couch. I twirled in my chair to look at her.
“What’s going on?”
“I think maybe I’m pregnant,” she said.
“You think?” I asked. “Maybe?”
She nodded.
“Haven’t you taken a test yet?”
She shook her head.
“Why not?”
“I’ve got one,” she said. “I’m going to take it in the morning. You’re supposed to take it in the morning . . .”
“You didn’t take it in the morning before . . .”
“I couldn’t wait before,” she said. I got out of my chair and sat down next to her, putting my arm around her shoulder.
“I was excited before . . .”
“You’re not excited now?” I asked.
“I’m scared.”
“I know,” I said. I was probably supposed to tell her to not be scared . . . that everything was going to be all right. But I was scared too, so I just pulled her closer and kissed the top of her head.
In the morning she crawled back into bed with me and nodded. She put her head on my chest and I wrapped my arms around her, kissing the top of her head again.
“I feel so guilty,” she finally said. “No matter what I feel it isn’t the right thing. If I’m happy about having another baby then I feel like I’m forgetting about Gabby. If I’m not happy then I feel like I’m cheating this baby.”
“I know,” I said.
“And I’m so scared,” she whispered.
“I know,” I said again.
We laid there quietly for a long time and I prayed for God to bring us both comfort and to let us be able to be happy and to enjoy this pregnancy the way we were supposed to. I prayed for Him to take care of this baby and to let it be healthy and for Laci not to have any problems.
But I didn’t feel anything or hear a reply back from God . . . I never did when I prayed anymore.
Ever since I’d disobeyed Him and not called Adoption Alternatives in Cavendish, God had been silent. I knew that He was there – I just couldn’t feel Him.
I didn’t let that stop me from praying to Him though. I just kept reaching out to Him, hoping that one day He’d reach back.
And I wasn’t mad at Him – I knew this wasn’t His fault.
I was well aware that I was getting exactly what I deserved.
~ ~ ~
DR. SANTOS WAS able to see us in two days. We figured that Laci was already about eight weeks pregnant so he did an ultrasound and we saw the baby’s little heart beating. Laci squeezed my hand and smiled.
No spotting . . . no bleeding. Laci translated what Dr. Santos told her at the end of our visit.
There’s no reason not to expect a completely normal pregnancy and a healthy baby.
Three weeks later though she started bleeding and a rushed trip to see Dr. Santos confirmed what I think we both already knew.
Not this time.
A week after Laci’s miscarriage we went on a somber shopping trip together to buy Christmas presents for the orphans. Two weeks after that she told me that she wanted to go off her medication, so I called Mike.
“You really need to talk to her doctor,” he said, “but she might do just fine without it now.”
“She thinks that’s why she lost the baby.”
“I don’t think so,” he said, “but if it’s worrying her than it’s probably worth trying to get her off of it.”
Dr. Santos apparently felt the same way and told her she could stop. After she quit taking it she became weepier than normal, but not as bad as before and I felt that she was handling everything pretty well.
She’d been off of it for four months. The weather website said that Cavendish was experiencing one of the hottest, driest springs on record. You couldn’t tell from where we were . . . it always seemed the same.
~ ~ ~
BY SUMMER, THE bowing of Dorito’s legs was barely detectable, but he was probably going to need one more set of orthotics before it was all over and I still came and picked him up from the orphanage at least once or twice a week. I brought him to the house to do his exercises and then we’d usually go to McDonald’s. I convinced him how much fun it was to go down the tornado slide in the play yard, but the ball pit was still his favorite thing.
We didn’t know for sure how old Dorito was, but (based on the other kids I could compare him to) I figured he must be close to three. He could speak to anybody in English or in Spanish now and I was glad. We went online together and I downloaded educational programs for him that we both agreed looked good.
Dorito was smart and I really didn’t see any reason why he shouldn’t start trying to learn how to read. Sometimes after we finished his exercises we worked on the computer until he got tired of it. Then I’d print off alphabet letters for him so he could lie on the floor of my office and trace them while I corresponded with clients from Argentina to Seattle.
I taped his papers on the wall at eye level for him to look at – underneath all of my snow pictures of Cavendish.
One August morning, Sonya told me that Dorito really didn’t need to come see her anymore.
“Keep him active, get him involved in sports . . . you can keep doing the exercises at home if you’d like, but he really shows no signs of deformity at all. I think once he’s through with his last set of braces he’s really going to take off.”