Not in 1970, anyway.
* * *
Celeste set me up with a breast pump, although she said it would be a while before Joanna could have my milk—and probably a while before my milk actually came in. “She needs more calories than breast milk can provide, initially,” she said. “But we’ll freeze your milk for when she’s ready.” She helped me figure out how to use the pump, but my breasts were dry as bone.
“Stress,” Celeste said. “Not at all uncommon. You need to go home … go to your hotel … and get a good night’s sleep.”
I protested. I couldn’t imagine leaving Joanna.
“You really have to,” Celeste said. “She’ll be fine and you’ll come back refreshed in the morning.”
I knew she was right. My obstetrician had called in a prescription for a breast pump to the hospital pharmacy, so I picked it up, then headed outside where I blinked against the hot, gold sunlight. It felt strange to be outside among the throngs of strangers again when my whole world was in the hospital behind me. I found a cab and rode back to the hotel. I was disappointed to find that Raoul was not on duty. When I got into my apartment, though, there were flowers—a huge bouquet of them—on the table in the dining area. Congratulations from your admirers, Raoul, Angela, and Ira, the card read. I stared at the enormous bouquet, smiling tiredly to myself. I had friends. I had a beautiful daughter. In that moment at least, I no longer felt alone.
21
The next four days passed by in a blur. I spent them sitting in the recliner next to the isolette, talking to Joanna, holding her hand or simply watching her sleep. The longer I stayed with her, the more aware I became of the discomfort Celeste told me Joanna would experience. Sometimes, she’d screw up her little face behind the mask and tubes as though trying to expel them. My heart broke for her. I couldn’t imagine how it felt to be so trapped. So helpless. When she grew irritable like that, her monitors pinged and beeped as her heart and lungs protested. I hated that breathing was such a struggle for her. I wished I could give her my own breath.
Every once in a while, she’d open her eyes. Not wide, and not with any purpose. She’d open them just enough for me to see her blue-gray newborn eye color, her tiny pale lashes fluttering. I learned how to take her temperature and change her diaper, gingerly at first, afraid of disturbing everything she was hooked up to and setting off an alarm. Now that I could see—from an emotional perspective—past the wires and tubes to her little face, I took pictures of her. I used up all the film in the camera, mailed it off, and bought another disposable camera in the hospital gift shop. Yes, I thought to myself with some delight, I’m one of those parents who can’t stop snapping pictures of her baby. I pumped my breasts at the hotel as well as at the hospital, and my milk finally came in three days after Joanna’s birth. It was being saved for her in the CICU freezer. Meanwhile, Joanna was fed through a tube, her heart not yet strong enough to try the bottle or breast.
I was growing increasingly anxious about the dilation, having made the mistake of Googling the procedure. It was more serious than Dr. Nguyen made it sound. It would take a few hours and there were risks involved. Serious risks. At the same time, it was hardly elective surgery. This needed to happen. On one hand, I wanted Dr. Nguyen to get the dilation over with so Joanna could start down the road to recovery … and the road home to 1970. On the other hand, right now she was alive in front of me. I could see her and touch her. I was so afraid of losing that.
Dr. Perelle stopped by the CICU to congratulate me. He reassured me about the dilation. “Dr. Nguyen is excellent,” he said. “You couldn’t ask for better care for Joanna.”
I asked him how the study was going and he told me that five of the HLHS babies he’d operated on had been born so far. “Three of them, including your Joanna, required the dilation,” he said. “One had to have a different type of surgery. And unfortunately, we lost the fifth baby, who died at three days old.”
“Oh,” I whispered. I appreciated that he didn’t mince words with me, yet I ached for those parents. Joanna was four days old today. I felt safe, as though she and I had dodged that three-day bullet.
On the fifth day, Joanna had a different nurse. Deirdre. She was older, about fifty, with gray streaks in her brown hair, and she was extremely efficient. I felt confident in her care, but she lacked Celeste’s warmth. She reminded me of an older version of Becky from the hotel. Efficiency without warmth. I told myself efficiency was what Joanna and I needed, but I missed Celeste for the few days she was off duty.
* * *
The day before Joanna was to have the dilation, I decided to check out the Gapstow Bridge where I would be stepping off. The first portal was only a week away and it seemed impossible we’d be ready to go. But Deirdre said Joanna would most likely be feeding from the bottle or even the breast once she had her strength back after the dilation. It seemed unimaginable that Joanna would be free of her wires and tubes in a week, but I needed to plan our escape from 2001 just in case. The thought of going home filled me with hope and wonder.
I’d walked to the hospital the last couple of days, now that I felt much stronger. After being cooped up for so many months, I liked the freedom of the walk, although my experience of the city remained limited to those few blocks between the Fielding Residential Hotel and Amelia Wade Lincoln Hospital. If anyone had asked me what New York was like, it was those clean, not-too-congested, tree-lined blocks I would describe to them. I had no interest in the rest of the city right now. I wasn’t there to sightsee.
So on that morning, I surprised Raoul when I turned right instead of left as I left the hotel.
“Hey!” he called after me. “Aren’t you going the wrong way?”
I turned to smile at him.
“I’m just going for a little walk before I go to the hospital,” I said.
“Hey, that’s wonderful,” he said. “Missy must be doing better for you not to rush over there like you do.” He’d taken to calling Joanna “Missy” for some reason.
I nodded. “She has to have a procedure tomorrow, so I’m a little nervous,” I said. “But right now, yes, she’s doing better.”
“Good news, good news,” he said. “You go have a New York adventure now, Little Mama. You deserve it.”
I’d memorized my route from the online map. I walked up East Sixty-seventh Street in the direction of Central Park. The scenery was very much like the walk to the hospital, with the small trees, now lush and green, lining the broad sidewalk. I made a left when I reached Fifth Avenue, then entered the park. In front of me, to my left, stretched a long line of benches. People sat on them reading or talking. Aside from those benches, though, I was surrounded only by trees and shrubs and grass. I had the strangest feeling then, nature all around me. I might have been back in Raleigh. I drew in a long homesick-yet-happy breath and kept walking. The deeper I got into the park, the more that sense of being home filled me with both comfort and longing. I couldn’t believe that this wonderland had been only a few blocks away from me for the past few months and I’d never known it.
I passed people pushing strollers or walking dogs or jogging. Others carried shopping bags or briefcases. I made a turn on the path, relying on my memory of the online map. Then another turn. One more turn, and I knew I was good and lost. I asked a woman who was walking her boxer to point me in the direction of the Gapstow Bridge, and she told me of a few more turns I needed to make. I continued on the path, walking past enormous boulders, dense thickets, and a statue of a dog. Every few yards, I passed a tall cast-iron streetlight. Reassuring, those lights. I didn’t feel the least bit uneasy walking through the park in daylight, but I couldn’t imagine what these confusing paths would be like at night. I’d have to be more certain of my way than I was today.
The entrance to the small Gapstow Bridge finally appeared ahead of me. I slowed my pace as I walked onto the stone bridge, trying to look nonchalant to the few people who passed by me. At the apex of the bridge—the location where Hunter p
lanned for me to step off—I turned and looked into the distance. It was a pretty view. Buildings rose high above the treetops, and below the bridge, a pond was carved into the trees and overgrowth. I rested my arms on the top of the stone wall. It was about chest high. As Myra had said, I would need a stool or ladder to be able to climb onto the wall, but at least the area where I would stand was broad. It was hard, though, to imagine Joanna as she was now, so vulnerable, still tethered to oxygen and feeding tubes and hooked up to too many monitors to count, being able to make this trip in less than a week. Not just hard, I thought sadly. Impossible. There was no way I could take her home using this first portal. But we had others. Plenty of others. We were safe.
* * *
Celeste returned to work the following day, the day Joanna was to have the dilation. I was a wreck that morning, literally sick to my stomach. Celeste asked me what I’d eaten the night before, but I knew my chicken salad sandwich from Ira’s deli wasn’t the cause of my problem. It was nerves, pure and simple. Joanna and I had come so far in so many ways. This final step—the dilation—simply had to be successful.
Celeste wheeled Joanna’s isolette to the Cardiac Catheterization Lab, with me walking beside her. I sat in the waiting room, too nervous to read or do much of anything other than worry. Celeste had returned to the CICU, but after about an hour, she brought me a cup of tea, which was so sweet of her. Two more hours passed, maybe longer, before Dr. Nguyen finally emerged from the double doors, dressed in her surgical gown and cap. I stood up and she smiled at me.
“Everything went very well,” she said. “We’ll be moving her back to the CICU in about thirty minutes, so you can wait there for her. She’ll need to rest quietly for the next twenty-four hours, but we can already see improved heart and lung functioning.”
I couldn’t speak at first, my throat was so tight. I smiled and nodded and finally found my voice. “You can already see it?” I asked. “The improvement?”
“Definitely,” she said. “Breathing should be much easier for her now.”
I started to cry. “It’s been so hard for her,” I said, as though I was telling her something she didn’t know. I blotted my eyes with the tissue I’d been clutching for the last two hours. “How much longer do you think she’ll need to be in the CICU?” I asked.
“We should keep her there at least another week,” she said. “Then she can go to the step-down unit.”
My own heart sank. I hadn’t even thought of the step-down unit. I’d heard other parents talk about how great it was that their baby was ready for less intensive care, but somehow I hadn’t thought about my baby making that transition. How long would Joanna need to be in that unit? I opened my mouth to ask Dr. Nguyen that question, but she was already turning back toward the catheterization lab. I stood there watching her walk away, wondering if Joanna and I would even be able to make our second portal.
22
HUNTER
July 1970
Nags Head
“I’ve got the water.” Patti stood next to the sink in the kitchen, tightening the lid on the thermos. “What else will she need?”
“Nothing right away.” I’d walked into the room carrying my sleepy son. “And please don’t get your hopes, up, babe,” I said for at least the fifth time. “Her arrival today would be the best-case scenario.”
For Carly and the baby to be able to show up this morning, everything would have to have gone perfectly in 2001. The fetal surgery would have been a complete success. The baby would have been born early—or at least no later than Carly’s due date—and she’d have to be healthy enough for Carly to step off with her on the first portal. It had been optimistic of me even to include this portal in the list I gave her. Nevertheless, as Patti and I drove the very short distance through the early dawn light toward Jockey’s Ridge, I felt hopeful. I imagined a joyful reunion with my sister-in-law on the dunes and the relief I would feel now that this grand experiment was over. In my mind’s eye, I saw Patti embracing her sister. Cuddling her new niece in her arms.
For the past few months, Patti had vacillated between anger at me for—as she put it—risking Carly’s life, and excitement over the possibility of Carly having a healthy baby. I never knew which Patti was going to greet me when I walked in the door—the furious, frightened woman or my grateful, loving wife. Patti’s anger was new to me. In the nearly five years we’d been married, I’d never experienced it. But I supposed I seemed like someone new to her as well. I had to remind myself that her anger was born of fear. I didn’t let on that I shared some of that fear. I knew I had to get Carly to 2001. I knew it because that was where I’d met her for the first time, and how could she have gotten there without my intervention? But I wished I knew what happened next. My mother had never mentioned her again after she left our house, and even though I’d liked Carly and all the attention she’d lavished on me, being the self-absorbed kid I was at the time, I’d never thought to ask my mother about her once she was gone.
“Let’s park as close to the dunes as we can get,” I said, maneuvering the car to the side of the road, careful not to get the tires stuck in the sand. “She won’t be feeling terrific when she lands and she’s going to get worn out when she has to walk over the dune.”
“Could she be there already?” Patti asked as we slipped off our sandals and got out of the car. I took John Paul from her arms for the hike up the dune. He was fussy from being awakened so early and he wriggled in my grasp.
“I doubt it,” I said. “I predicted she’d land sometime between six o’clock and seven.”
“I can’t wait to see her!” Patti said, and she quickened her pace as we began to climb. The temperature had to be eighty degrees already, but the sand was cool on our bare feet. The dawn light turned the dune a vivid pink as we climbed. By the time we reached the peak, the rising sun behind us glowed on the sand.
“She’s not here,” Patti said, bending over to catch her breath, the thermos upright in the sand at her feet.
I stood next to her, scanning the broad sandy valley between the dunes. That was where I’d planned for her to land, though I’d known it would be iffy. Working out calculations on living dunes—sand that shifted daily depending on the weather—was dicey at best. My biggest concern was that she might land high on one of the dunes and end up rolling down the sandy slope before she was fully conscious. I hoped she had that baby secured tightly to herself.
I set John Paul down beside me. Giddy at finding himself on five hundred acres of sand, he began crawling and tumbling and giggling. Patti kept a watchful eye on him, trying to prevent him from rolling all the way down the dune. Finally she sat down on the sand and lifted John Paul into her arms.
“Where is she?” she asked, more to the air than to me. A rhetorical question.
“I don’t think she could make this portal,” I said. “It was just too soon.” I sat down next to her, my arm around her shoulders. The sun bored into the back of my neck. “Sorry, babe,” I said. “I know you were hoping this would be the one.”
Patti stiffened. “What if something terrible happened?” she asked. “What if she had an accident up there”—she constantly referred to 2001 as “up there”—“or she didn’t do the stepping off right and ended up someplace else entirely?”
“I told you, everything would have had to be perfect for her to make this first portal,” I said. “She has three left. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.” Though I was thinking: what if I screwed up and Carly was right this minute lying on the far side of the second dune where we couldn’t see her? What if she’d landed beyond the dunes in the sound? I kept my voice calm when I spoke. “Just to be absolutely sure,” I said, getting to my feet, “I’m going to walk to the top of the other dune and take a look around.”
“Should I come?” she asked.
I shook my head. “I’m ninety-nine-point-nine percent sure she’s not there, but just in case. Be right back.” I ran down the first dune, enjoying the rus
h of it even though I knew I was risking a twisted ankle or worse. Then I started the arduous climb up the second dune. By the time I reached the top, the sun was well above the horizon and my T-shirt was soaked with sweat. She wasn’t there, of course. The sound side of the dune was a blank slate of gold sand. I turned around and headed back to my wife and son.
When I finally reached them, Patti was on her feet, the sun pinking her cheeks and John Paul’s arms, and I had the ludicrous thought that I should have asked Carly to bring some 2001 sunscreen back with her. I nearly said as much to Patti, but one look at her face told me she was not in the mood to hear what I was thinking, ludicrous or not.
“When is the next goddamn portal?” she asked. My wife, who never, ever swore.
“Two weeks,” I said.
I waited for her to respond, but she said nothing at all, and that was even worse.
I had the feeling the next two weeks were going to be the longest of my life.
23
CARLY
July 2001
New York
Kangaroo care.
I’d never heard of it—I guessed it didn’t officially exist in 1970. But a couple of days after Joanna’s dilation, Celeste told me to wear a shirt that opened in the front when I came to the CICU the following day. Then, finally, I was able to hold my baby. It took Celeste and another nurse to juggle all the tubes and wires, taping them and clipping them to my yellow gown as they set my sweet little girl against the skin between my breasts.
“Skin to skin,” Celeste said. “This is the best thing for her and for you.” She went on to tell me all the benefits to both Joanna and me of kangaroo care, but quite honestly, I wasn’t paying attention. I was so lost in the bliss of finally holding my little girl. It was magical, the way she settled down against my skin, and I settled down as well. It was as though this was the moment we’d both been waiting for. I could feel her heartbeat against my skin and I imagined she could feel mine. We both felt safe now, I thought.
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