The Lucky Few

by Heather Avis

  I prepared for the meeting with the cardiologist, believing that God wanted the same things for me that I wanted for myself. Our prayer made sense to me because I didn’t see how God could want us to step into a no-good-news situation. I had placed him—the one true, omniscient, omnipresent, powerful God—on the same level as myself. I was forgetting that not only does God want my life to be greater than I can even begin to plan for, but he is the coach and writer and director and everything. He is everything!

  My phone rang as we pulled into the hospital parking lot. It was Lindsey.

  “Heather, there’s been a slight change in plans. Everyone is running way behind, so the baby is still here. She hasn’t even had her echocardiogram yet.”

  This was a big change in plans. We were scheduled to see the cardiologist after he got the results of the baby’s echocardiogram—an ultrasound that would examine the condition of her heart.

  “If you want to come up, you can meet the baby and her foster mom and hear what the doctor has to say, or you can come back when they’re done. It’s totally up to you.”

  Meeting the baby was risky. Our social worker had set the appointment for after the baby’s testing was finished, because in her professional experience she knew that often all bets were off once the baby, who had existed for the adoptive parents only on paper, was seen as a living, breathing, adorable human. Even knowing that, meeting the baby was still a no-brainer for me. Josh agreed.

  “Yes! We’ll come up.”

  We trusted our ability to separate our logic from our emotions. As we stepped into the hospital, what was going to be a simple meeting with a cardiologist turned into the day we met our daughter.

  When the automatic doors at the children’s hospital opened for us and we stepped into the foyer, we had no idea how familiar this place would soon become. Directly in front of us was an information desk with a kind-eyed woman sitting behind it. Large waiting areas flanked either side of the entrance. Lining the walls were brightly colored seats and benches full of people waiting to hear about their loved ones in surgery. The elevators faced a gift shop full of toys, books, and a huge bundle of get-well balloons at the entrance. Near the elevator we saw Lindsey wave at us.

  “The baby is here with her foster mom,” she told us as we rode the elevator to the second floor. “They’ve been waiting for over an hour and should be called back soon. Sorry this is taking so long.”

  “It’s no problem,” I said. “I’m excited to meet her.” But as we turned the corner, I felt that all-too-familiar feeling of those African fire ants marching, marching, marching. The waiting area was packed with babies in strollers or on their parents’ laps. Children swarmed a plastic playhouse in the corner, while a few kids in wheelchairs watched cartoons on the TV. I scanned the room, anxious to see the baby who brought us there in the first place. We followed Lindsey to a lovely blond woman holding a baby who had an unnatural amount of crazy brown hair.

  “Josh, Heather, this is Sandy, and this”—she leaned down and held the hand of the crazy-haired baby—“is Arpi.” The Armenian name given to her by her birth parents.

  “Nice to meet you, Sandy.” I smiled at the foster mom and then shifted my attention to the baby in her arms. “Hi, sweet girl.”

  “Do you want to hold her?” And just like that, this baby I’d been so terrified of was in my arms, and she wasn’t scary at all.

  I would love to tell you that I knew right then she was my daughter. I would love for our story to be one of love at first sight, but I think those stories mostly happen in the movies. Truth was, I was in protection mode. My heart had been through so much thus far, and so I didn’t want it to fall for the scrumptious baby peering up at me with almond eyes and a button nose. I was thrilled to meet her, and she felt so good in my arms—arms that had been empty for far too long. But I did not feel like her mother at that moment. I wouldn’t let my emotions get the best of me, for logic seemed the most, well, logical response, given the situation.

  Sandy interrupted my thoughts. “She’s such a sweet girl.”

  “She’s adorable,” Josh said. He stood by my side, holding her perfect and tiny hand.

  Within minutes of meeting this beautiful baby girl, a nurse came and called her back for her echocardiogram. Sandy invited me to go in with her for the procedure. Only two adults were allowed at the bedside, so my husband graciously stayed in the crowded waiting area.

  The procedure room was dimly lit and included a hospital bed, a huge piece of equipment with buttons and lights and a screen, and an ultrasound wand that would let us see through her skin and bones to her sick little beating heart. Sandy laid Arpi on the bed. She undressed the baby down to her diaper, and then the technician did a tricky blanket maneuver that swaddled Arpi’s arms but left her bare chest exposed. At that point, the technician began applying stickers with tiny knobs to Arpi’s chest and abdomen and squeezed a big gloppy squirt of the gel used to help the ultrasound wand glide over her tiny chest.

  This whole time, I stood by the bedside with the baby’s tiny fingers wrapped around mine. I had a million questions but tried to ask only a few. The procedure was painless, they explained. I watched the technician’s every move and tried to breathe in this new world of tubes and hospital beds and complicated machines. I felt the urge to act as this baby’s mom but knew Sandy had been playing that role for almost three months. I wanted to respect her and not step on any toes.

  Still, I watched the wand move around on Arpi’s tiny chest and wondered if she could be mine. Josh and I knew we would name our first child Macyn. As the baby dozed off to the hum of medical machines, I gazed at her precious round face and rosebud lips and wondered, Could she be a Macyn? Is she my Macyn? And while I had vowed to let logic control this day, I found myself leaning over the hospital bed and gently whispering in her ear, just to see what it would feel like.

  “Hello, Macyn.”

  When the echocardiogram was complete and the technician had gotten all the necessary pictures of her heart, all of us walked from the children’s hospital wing to the heart institute in the main hospital, where we would meet with the cardiologist, Dr. Kuhn.

  My husband and I held one another’s sweaty hands tightly now. We remembered the prayer we had prayed the night before, and we were trusting and believing the news the cardiologist was about to share with us would confirm whether we should say yes or no to adopting this baby girl.

  Sandy and Arpi saw Dr. Kuhn first, and then it was our turn.

  “We have to go now,” Sandy said with kind eyes and a sweet smile before we went in. “I have to pick my daughter up from school.”

  Josh and I each gave her a big hug. Then we looked down at the baby peering up at us from her stroller. I gently brushed her soft cheeks with the back of my hand.

  “Bye, sweet girl. It was so nice to meet you and hold you.” I leaned down and kissed her forehead, and then we watched them walk away.

  Josh and I timidly entered Dr. Kuhn’s office. He was younger than I expected and super cool. He could have been in his late forties or early fifties, but his face looked youthful, and he had a small diamond earring in one of his ears.

  I am a friendly person. I like small talk, and when I meet others, I would rather give them a hug than shake their hand. As we entered this doctor’s office, I was hoping he felt the same. I wanted a warm and fuzzy meeting about how wonderful this baby was and how wonderful we were for thinking about adopting her. I wanted him to put his arm around our shoulders and tell us that, although she was very sick right now, everything would be okay.

  But it wasn’t, and he didn’t.

  “Hi, come on in. Have a seat.” He motioned toward the only two chairs in the room. Then he got down to business. He pulled out a notepad with a drawing of an anatomically correct heart on it.

  “This is what a heart is supposed to look like.” Then he opened a pen and began to draw on the paper. “This is what Arpi’s heart looks like.” The differences were apparent.
“There are a few things going on here. She has a hole that will need to be fixed called an atrial septal defect.” He circled part of the picture of the heart. Josh and I listened and watched.

  Dr. Kuhn continued. “This hole is causing high pressure in her lungs, because the oxygenated and nonoxygenated blood is not going where it should. This can cause pulmonary hypertension, which Arpi has.”

  Pulmonary hypertension was the nasty and terrifying condition we read in her medical file and had been trying to learn more about. It occurs when the blood flow that leaves the right side of the heart faces an increased pressure. Sometimes there is no obvious cause; other times it can be caused by certain types of congenital heart defects. While it can be treated with oxygen and a variety of medications, there is no cure for pulmonary hypertension.

  “Oftentimes, pulmonary hypertension is a secondary condition caused by the hole in one’s heart,” the doctor explained. “This is not the case for Arpi. The levels of pressure in her lungs are so severe I’m not sure if patching the hole will help at all.”

  The fire ants began their march.

  For the millionth time since we started this adoption journey, I felt sick. This was bad news. I took a deep breath and found the words to ask him a question, “So if you think the surgery will not help much with the pulmonary hypertension, what can be done to fix that? What kind of life are we talking about for this baby girl?”

  With a solemn look, he spoke the words I had been dreading. “Honestly, there is nothing that can be done for pulmonary hypertension. If the heart surgery doesn’t fix the problem—and with levels as high as hers, it most likely will not—then you are looking at quality-of-life care. She may live to be five, maybe as old as eight. It’s really hard to say.”

  I have little memory of what happened after that. As Josh and I left his office and the automatic hospital doors ushered us outside, all I could think was, She may live to be five, maybe as old as eight . . . maybe as old as eight.

  As soon as we got in the car, Josh spoke up. “I know we told God bad news would mean we wouldn’t adopt her, but I can’t say no. No just cannot be the answer.”

  I nodded my head in agreement but still lacked the words to join the conversation.

  We left the hospital and silently drove to Costco to pick up a few items. By the time we pulled into the parking lot, we were both in tears. Tears of fear, pain, and frustration. Tears of longing, and even a few tears of joy at having met Arpi that day. We sat there in the car weeping and trying to make sense of it all. So much about the situation was, once again, out of this control freak’s control. I remembered I could say no.

  I can say no!

  Then a whisper. A vision of sorts. I looked at my husband in the driver’s seat of our car. Josh wore his sunglasses, but I knew behind them his eyes were swollen with tears. I grabbed his hand.

  “What if God is giving us a gift?” I said. “I feel as though God has handed us a package wrapped up in sparkly paper topped with ribbons and bows. I see us opening that gift and looking at it with disgust and then handing it back to God, telling him it’s not what we asked for and we don’t want it. Josh, I see us handing a gift that God has given us back to him. Back to God. Who does that? I think this baby is our gift, and I think we would be fools to hand her back.”

  And with those words, I felt a flood of relief. Saying no to adopting this baby always made the most sense. She was sick, really sick. She might not live long. She required high levels of medical attention and care. Oh yeah, and she had Down syndrome. No was a perfectly acceptable answer.

  We had spent weeks creating formulas to help us make this difficult decision. We had prayed about it and sought wisdom from loved ones we trusted. But rather than offer our whole hearts to God, we were giving him ultimatums. Rather than simply saying, “Yes, God! I want what you want,” we were telling him how to fix the situation so it would look a certain way before we could join him in it.

  There in that parking lot, God was showing me she was a gift. Not just any gift, but one handed to us by God himself, wrapped in sparkly paper, for goodness’ sake. He was showing us this baby girl was not a no. He was beginning to teach us that difficult decisions could be answered with, “We want what God wants. We say yes to him.”

  We called our social worker.

  “Lindsey, it’s Heather. We’re going to adopt Arpi.”

  4

  Coming to Grips

  When we first began our journey toward parenthood, I dreamed of the moment when I would reveal my positive pregnancy test to my whole family and close circle of friends. I would gather everyone around and begin my big reveal with, “Guess what, everyone?” I imagined we would all jump up and down with tears of joy as loved ones wrapped their arms around my neck and rubbed my soon-to-be bulging belly. We would begin to talk about baby names and whether we’d prefer a boy or a girl. Before a bump would even show, we would gather new furniture, paint walls, assemble cribs, and hang tiny clothes on tiny hangers. We would watch my belly grow as we attended baby showers thrown for us by friends and family. I had it all planned out.

  By the time Josh and I called our social worker and said yes to adopting this crazy-haired baby girl, I had let go of my dream of holding up a positive pregnancy test and sharing the news with the world. It pained me to let go of the moment I could see so clearly in my head, a moment I had anticipated over and over. A moment that would never come to be.

  As we began our adoption journey, I was able to replace my desire to announce a pregnancy with a new hope and vision. Instead of a positive pregnancy stick, I would have a phone call from our social worker telling us about the birth mother who had just chosen us to parent her child. I imagined ending that call and excitedly calling everyone I knew to share the great news. I would start with my parents, of course: “Guess what, Mom and Dad? You’re going to be grandparents!” Everything else would proceed as planned: the jumping up and down, the tears of joy, the furniture, the clothes . . .

  When Josh and I sat in the Costco parking lot, our eyes full of tears, once again my ideas of how I would announce my motherhood were taken from me. True, I would make the phone calls and let everyone know we were going to be parents, but the news did not end there.

  Josh and I abandoned our shopping plans and drove across the street to a coffee shop. Josh stayed in the car and called his parents from his phone. I got out, sat on a bench outside the shop, and dialed my dad’s office.

  “Hello, this is Kim.”

  “Hi, Dad. It’s me.”

  “Elizabeth!” My dad often endearingly calls me by my middle name. “How was the doctor’s visit?”

  My parents had been our biggest supporters and the two people Josh and I went to the most often for wisdom and prayer. They were aware of everything that had led up to our visit with the cardiologist.

  The news I had expected to shout from the rooftops came out as a faint, weepy whisper. “Well, you guys are going to be grandparents.”

  Dad’s phone was on speaker, and my mom chimed in. “What happened?” She knew me well enough to hear the sorrow and confusion in my voice. The tears I cried then were not tears of joy.

  “It was all bad news. There was no good news. She’s really sick.” I took a deep breath to help me regain my composure. I did not want this moment to be shadowed by any kind of sorrow. “But we really believe she is a gift from God, so we are saying yes to her.”

  “Well, Heather”—my mom sounded confused—“you don’t have to, you know.”

  “Mom!” I got up from the bench and began to pace. “I really just need your trust and support here.”

  “You have it, Heather. You have my support, but can you tell us what the doctor said?”

  “It was a lot. I’d rather talk in person. Can we come to the office?” I had a feeling defending our decision to adopt this little girl was going to be exhausting. “How long will you guys be there?”

  “We’re here as long as you need,” my dad said. “Come
anytime.”

  It was only a five-minute drive to my dad’s office, but somehow time played tricks on me, and the drive seemed to take hours. When we walked into the building, I did a little shoulder shake and put on a big smile in hopes of injecting a positive tone into our situation. I needed a smile. I deserved a smile, for goodness’ sake. Josh held my hand, but holding tight to my other hand was somberness, the kind of thing that cannot be hidden from one’s parents. We turned the corner and stood in the doorway of my dad’s office.

  After years of trying in vain to become a mother, I found myself at the water’s edge, but the water before me was not the calm stream I believed I deserved. It was a raging ocean. Rather than jumping in with abandon, I thought I had to dodge the waves.

  I would soon learn the need I felt to defend our decision and convince people of our future daughter’s worth came from within myself. In the days that followed our big scary yes, I was the one who needed the most convincing that we’d made the right choice.

  I made eye contact with my mom, and the tears began to flow again.

  “Oh, Heather!” She ran to my side with a mother’s embrace. Arm in arm we walked to the old orange leather couch and sat down. I grabbed a throw pillow and hugged it to my chest, searching for comfort in any form. Josh and I took deep breaths and began to retell everything we had just learned about this baby girl with Down syndrome.

  “I just don’t want you to feel like you need to rescue this baby,” my mom said. “Heather, I know your heart. You’ve always wanted to rescue the underdog, but this is different. This is a really big deal.”

  “I know it’s a big deal.” I was feeling irritated by her pushback. “I need you to trust who you raised me to be. I need you to trust that Josh and I understand the magnitude of this decision.” I felt my throat begin to close up and my eyes well with tears.