by Stacey Grice
“The organ procurement people are all ready to go?” I questioned.
She stepped forward and answered confidently, “Yes, ma’am. We have the full team here on standby.”
“Okay then. Let’s rock and roll.”
The nurse disconnected me from my monitors and tied the back of my gown so I wouldn’t give any other hallway-goers a free show. I asked her to give me a moment with Vaughn, and she walked away after handing me my bag of IV fluids to hold.
I turned to Vaughn and wrapped my arms around his waist, resting my head on his chest. His heart was thumping strong and fast, and it gave me such a calming feeling. I felt safe.
“It’s going to be okay, right?” he whispered into my hair.
“It’s going to be okay.”
“I’m scared.”
“I know. Me too, a little, but we’ve got each other, and Ms. Hattie. Oh! We forgot to ca—”
“She’s here, in the waiting room.”
I turned to the nurse who was patiently waiting in front of us and got her attention.
“I’m sorry, I need to see one of my family members before I go back, please.” Calling Ms. Hattie a family member was a bit of a white lie, but I figured I could get away with it just this once. “Can she come see me for just a minute?”
“Uh, sure,” the nurse replied awkwardly then went to get her after I explained who it was.
Seconds later, Ms. Hattie rounded the corner and her face lit up with joy.
“Sweet girl, I thought they had already taken you back.”
“I was on my way, but…well, do you mind…will you pray with me?”
“Absolutely.”
Vaughn wrapped his arms around me and his foster mother, the three of us forming a sort of huddle in the middle of the hallway, disregarding any passersby, and she prayed for me. She prayed for the anesthesiologist to be confident and steady making me comfortable. She prayed for the surgeons to be skilled and swift. She prayed for the helpers to be of service and have kind and delicate hands to deliver this miracle baby. She prayed for the baby to be safe and to feel how loved she was by all of us. She prayed for Vaughn to be strong and brave for me and for me to feel how supported I was in this difficult decision. She prayed for God to watch over all of us and to welcome this precious gift into Heaven with open arms and a huge birthday party.
“Amen,” we said collectively. She gave me a warm hug, squeezing for a few seconds longer than a normal embrace, and I felt peace.
“Thank you, Hattie.”
“You’re welcome, darlin’. I’ll be here when you come out.”
With a renewed sense of composure and tranquil certainty, I walked the remainder of the way to the operating room, kissing Vaughn one last time before I entered without him.
“Do you know how much I love you, Andie?” he asked as he held me in his arms. “More than anything.”
“More than anything,” I answered.
With that, I entered the cold, sterile room without him by my side.
Things moved pretty quickly from that point on. My spinal went in with ease and they laid me down flat, securing all sorts of tubes and contraptions to me. The warm blankets felt like they’d come straight out of the oven, and the baby reacted to the warmth with some kicks of approval. Once everyone was in place, they called for what as known as a “time out”, confirming who I was and what I was about to have done. We all agreed and I didn’t feel anything when they tested my spinal by pinching my abdomen with sharp instruments, so they called for Vaughn.
He came in and sat on a stool right next to my head. The surgeon in me hated being stuck behind a curtain, unable to see anything, but I supposed it would be strange to watch your own blood and guts exposed and being worked on. It was a bizarre experience, feeling pulling and tugging but not the sharp instruments. Even more off was the smell of the cautery. I knew exactly what they were doing even though I couldn’t feel it. I focused on the steps of the procedure, replaying the entire operation in my mind to help me focus on that, Vaughn gently squeezing my hand and rubbing comforting circles on my arm all the while.
“Okay, Andie and Vaughn, we’re about to deliver your baby girl,” Kiko announced in the middle of my train of thought.
I felt the sensation of something being removed, like a huge weight was lifted off of me, but not in the metaphorical sense. I felt the actual void when they took her out. Someone called out the delivery time and then everything went…silent. I knew there were still things happening, but it was so quiet, as if someone had pressed a mute button in the OR.
Pin-drop silence.
The only sound was that of my heart rate beeping behind me on the monitor.
“What’s happening?” I asked, my voice frantic. “Is she…alive?”
The neonatologist answered me from across the room. “She is!” Her voice was positive, joyful, optimistic.
A collective and audible sigh of relief came next from Vaughn and me.
“We’re just getting her all wrapped up for you to hold her before we take her to the NICU, okay?”
“Okay.” I wanted to see her, to hold her. It was the only thing I cared about.
He brought her over with a hat on her head and her body swaddled in blankets so she looked like a little glow-worm. Only her face was exposed, and she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
Dr. Baxendale helped me situate the curtain in front of my face and they placed her right on top of my chest. Her eyes were slightly open, and the moment I made eye contact with my baby, she let out a whimper. I couldn’t stop the waterworks from flowing like an actual waterfall on my face. I reached out my finger to touch her cheek, the softest skin I had ever felt, and she cried a full cry.
I looked up at the neonatologist with curiosity since I hadn’t expected her to be able to cry.
“It’s okay. Sometimes they can cry.”
“But is she…”
“Yes. Anencephaly is confirmed. We don’t know the exact level of brain activity just yet, but you can feel confident in the diagnosis.”
“How long can I hold her? She could only be here for minutes.” I started to panic. I wanted to hold her in my arms and never let her go. The anguish and need to protect her was overwhelming. I felt a surge of anger that this was all I would ever have with her. This was the only moment I would ever have to hold my baby. With every second I held her against my chest, the bond to her became stronger, the pain more cutting. My heart was both swelling with love and breaking with misery and loss at the same time. With my thoughts racing, I asked God why and allowed the bitter grief to consume me, just for a second. It was the sound of Vaughn clearing his throat that snapped me out of it. I looked at her sweet face, so fragile and beautiful, and knew what I had to do. I had to let her go. I had to trust in my decision and release her to do what God had formed her to do.
“Vaughn, you need to hold her.”
He took her from my chest and held her while the NICU nurse listened to her heart and lungs with her stethoscope. She nodded to the doctor, signaling that we were still okay to hold her.
“I never thought I could love something this much,” Vaughn said quietly. “I love you so much, baby girl. I want you to know that and feel how much we love you,” he whispered down to her face. “You’re going to help so many people.”
Dr. Baxendale took a few pictures of us with her and I started to feel antsy, like we were taking too much time.
“I think you should take her now,” I firmly requested. “I have a bad feeling.”
“Okay,” he agreed. “We’ll take her to the NICU now and get her all settled. Once you get into recovery and are stable, we can wheel you in to see her.”
With that, he took her from us and placed her into the transport crib.
“Dad, are you going to come with us?” he inquired.
Vaughn looked at me, surprised, with an expression that looked like he was almost asking for my permission.
“Go!” I insisted. “Go
be with her.”
With their exit, the room got quiet again.
The anesthesiologist was doing something behind me. I could hear him gathering things together and then he grabbed my IV tubing and said, “I’m going to give you a little something to relax you while we close up.”
“DON’T YOU DARE!” I shouted, making him flinch. “I don’t want any sedation whatsoever. I may only get to spend moments with my baby, and I don’t want to feel foggy.” He looked at me apologetically. “Thank you, but no thank you.”
“Sure. I’m sorry, I just thought—”
“It’s okay. I know it’s the routine, but I want to be awake for everything.”
As they closed me up, my thoughts surprisingly deviated from the baby. I knew she was in good hands. I knew Vaughn was with her.
I couldn’t help but think of my father—what he would’ve thought of all of this, how he would’ve advised and supported me. I got an overwhelming feeling of assurance in knowing he was there with me somehow.
Chapter 59
Andie
“How is your pain level right now?” the recovery room nurse asked.
“It’s fine. I just want to go see her,” I said dismissively. I got it—I needed to be stable—but no amount of post-op pain was going to keep me from seeing her as soon as I could, for as long as I could. I had a profound need to be with her.
The bad feeling I had started getting in the operating room was still lingering. I couldn’t shake it and knew to follow my gut.
“I understand, Ms. Fine, but your blood pressure is still elevated, probably a pain response. I’d like to medicate you with a little fent—”
“NO! I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, just please hear me out. Jessica? Is it Jessica?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Do you have children?”
She hesitated before answering. “Yes. Two.”
“Imagine for a second that you knew with one hundred percent certainty your child was going to die at any minute—wouldn’t you want to do anything you could to be with them? Wouldn’t you want to endure a little pain to be able to spend their last seconds on Earth together?”
“Yes,” she replied, getting choked up. “I would.”
“Please, Jessica, please have some compassion and find it in your heart to take me to the NICU.”
Minutes later, I was rolling down the hall on board my stretcher en route to the neonatal intensive care unit. I still had IV fluids running and was still connected to a portable monitor keeping track of my heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen saturation, but it was a small compromise.
When I entered, I immediately saw Rowan, Ms. Hattie, and Vaughn standing around her with adoring smiles on their faces. They situated my stretcher and angled her bed so I could get as close as possible. She was intubated and on a ventilator, which in a normal situation would’ve probably made parents feel uneasy, but it made me feel better. Despite the normal parental instinct to want to hold her for as long as possible, there was no changing the inevitable fact that she would die. Vaughn and I didn’t want our holding her for an extra couple of minutes to potentially affect what could be a lifetime for another child. I felt better knowing she was alive and wasn’t going to fade away before being able to help so many others. Even though the physical pain of just having had surgery was still there, my blood pressure was going down.
“Have you decided on a name?” Ms. Hattie asked.
“We have,” I answered, looking at Vaughn expectantly.
“Her name is Eva,” he said proudly.
“It means giver of life,” I added.
“That’s beautiful. So perfect,” Ms. Hattie said softly with a huge smile on her face, grabbing my hand and nodding in approval.
We prayed over our baby, Ms. Hattie leading the blessings, and I instantly felt at peace. Even the NICU nurses all joined hands, forming a protective circle around our baby and praying with us. It was unexpected and magical, blowing me away with how much love and support was in that room.
***
Eva Faith Bennett was born at 8:43 AM. I got to hold her and be her mommy for a few minutes. I got to feel her on my chest and hear her whimpered cry. I got to see her beautiful face and see her purse her full little lips. I was able to see her tiny fingers and toes when she was in her incubator, waiting for her mission to be complete. She was perfection. She was mine. She had a name, an identity, a purpose.
She was pronounced dead at 2:17 PM, after the transplant team was able to successfully harvest both of her kidneys, a large segment of her liver, a section of her pancreas, and her heart valves. The remainder of her organs would be used for research, a precious and rare commodity for her condition, and the rest of her body was cremated for us to decide what to do with later. The impact she was able to make in her short life was immeasurable.
There had been whispers around the hospital in my absence, and Rowan was put on administrative leave for five days as a result of slapping a nurse across the face after overhearing her say something along the lines of the reason I was out being that I had grown a baby just to kill her for her organs. Rowan slapped her and schooled everyone around that my baby was terminal and her parents had decided to donate her organs because that was our right as her parents. The nurse resigned soon after and Rowan got to go back to work without significant repercussions.
I took six weeks off to recover from the cesarean section, a perfectly appropriate amount of time to recuperate and grieve. Vaughn was amazing and basically lived with me for the majority of that time. We had grown incredibly close and turned what could have easily broken us into a phenomenal foundation for our relationship. It was sort of crazy to look back on all the little things along the way that had brought us to where we were. We’d met as children in the most unusual of circumstances and took years to come back together, but when we did, we had something no one else could touch. Our bond was unbreakable and stronger than ever. Whenever there was even a hint of things being shaken, we’d sit down and face it. We’d look at each other and remember all we’d been through and how far we’d come. In that eye contact with each other, there was more intimacy and more power than any words could ever say.
In medical school, they taught us how to save lives, fight the darkness, beat death—but death was inevitable, and there was no class on how to go on living. Yet, there I was, thrust into having to navigate just that. With Vaughn by my side, I had hope, and my world wasn’t quite so gray.
Epilogue
Nineteen months later
“Where do you keep your colander, Andie?”
“In the cabinet to the right of the stove, on the bottom,” I replied from the other room. “What are you doing?”
My mother huffed as the cabinet door slammed shut. “I’m washing these grapes off for the cheese board. Nothing makes sense in this kitchen.”
I rolled my eyes. Of course my kitchen supplies weren’t arranged in a way that made any sense to her. If I didn’t pay enough attention, I was sure things would get repositioned and reorganized behind my back. She may have been making huge progress and getting better, but her obsessive compulsive nature still raged on, always present in the background.
After Eva was born, I reached out to my mother, hating how we’d last left things. I hadn’t even told her about the anencephaly. Vaughn and Ms. Hattie got me through recovering from surgery and helped out more than I could’ve ever dreamed, but my heart was the most injured part of my body.
I had opened up to Ms. Hattie one night, her being the easiest person to talk to on the planet. The woman was seriously a saint. She was extremely helpful in giving me advice about healing, the discord with my mother being an enormous void and source of pain. Her unconditional love and non-judgmental nature was exactly what I needed.
When I finally called my mom to tell her what had happened, she was beside herself. She felt awful for the way she’d handled the news of my pregnancy and was tearfully apologetic that I’d had to go throug
h it all alone. I assured her I had great support from Vaughn, Rowan, and Ms. Hattie, and it was only a few weeks later that I felt well enough physically to go see her. She welcomed me with a crying face and a crushing hug, and we aired it all out that day. I learned a lot about her in that visit and in the following months. We made a commitment to each other to heal and get healthy together. With suggestions from some of my colleagues, I hired a new psychiatrist who was amazing enough to come to my mom’s house for in-home therapy sessions. She met with her three times a week at first, and I attended one session with her each week. The therapy helped me more than I ever expected, not only in understanding how my mom ticked and why she was the way she was, but also in gaining understanding of myself. I learned some new strategies for interacting with her in a healthy way as well as some much needed social cues and skills I hadn’t realized were lacking before. I would always be an introvert by nature, but little by little I was learning to come out of my shell and be friendlier and more engaging. The differences at work and in everyday life were dramatically significant, in a good way.
Since the introduction of that new professional, along with balanced out medication, Mom was doing incredibly well, even able to leave her house for short spurts of time to come over to my house as long as I picked her up and drove. She still wasn’t ready for public places with crowds of people, but being able to have her over for coffee or dinner like a normal mother-daughter relationship was huge.
“I swear, Andie, to be so meticulous in other areas of your life, you’d think you’d know how to organize a kitchen.”
“Mom, you organize your kitchen however you want and I’ll keep mine how I want it, okay?” She scoffed as she set a beautifully arranged cheese board on the coffee table in front of Vaughn. “It makes sense to me and I’m the one who has to live here,” I added, popping a walnut into my mouth.
“Get your hands outta here!” she chastised. “Our guest of honor hasn’t even arrived yet.”
Ms. Hattie was due over any minute, and it truly was a magnificent spread my mom had prepared for her—multiple different cheeses, fruits, a few dips for the various crackers and baguette slices, olives, nuts, even salami cuts. My mouth was watering.