Happiness--A Memoir

by Heather Harpham

  We began to do this every night: talk about how long it might be until we could return home; discuss families we knew in common; list our rational and irrational fears. If a child was readmitted to the ward, or transferred to the PICU, we talked about it. With agony for the other family. With guilty relief that it was not us.

  We talked and made bubbles.

  The pursuit of the perfect bubble became an obsession. The bigger, the better. We bought special soaps, glycerin, a designated bucket, and complicated bubble wand gizmos, which could also, incidentally, be used as a lasso, a jump rope, or a stick with which to poke your sibling. The kids held their breath each time we dipped the bubble wand into the bucket of suds, lifted it out, and slid the loop open. Mostly what we made were filmy circles of iridescent wavering would-be bubbles, which never quite graduated into spheres. They would quaver and ripple, inflate for an instant. Then pop.

  One night when I opened the loop, a huge shimmering lima bean sprang into the air. It floated briefly upward then descended to hang inches above a dormant rose bush. The kids nearest gave an audible gasp. The bubble was beautiful and unexpected; tremulous but whole. “She made it,” Gracie said, to no one in particular. We held our collective breath; the bubble’s surface swam with swirled color. In a moment it might pop, it would pop, but for this instant, it was our glory.

  * * *

  One night, walking home from bubbles, we ran into baby Varun, recently discharged from the ward. His eyes were full of curiosity and energy, but his body was calm. He had the deeply relaxed affect of a baby whose every need has been fully met, continuously, since the moment of birth. No need to fuss, to fidget. During his first year, Ramya had probably not been away from him for two waking hours, total. And Deepak radiated happiness, like the man from my poster emitting pastels, when he spoke of his son.

  Ramya, Deepak, and I stood and chatted while Varun pounded his chubby fists on the plastic tray of his stroller, pleased and proud of his sounds. We exchanged drug levels and lab results and info about other transplant families. I told them about the bubble spot. “Go there tomorrow,” I said. “It’s nice. We just hang out.”

  “We will come then,” Ramya said.

  The kids were restless. “Let’s gooooooooo,” Gracie said. “The bugs sound scary.”

  The woods that surrounded the complex on three sides teemed with uproarious insect life, a chorus of chirps and buzzing that scared and thrilled the kids. There was the sense that, just past the edge of the asphalt, was a wild, unruly place where anything might happen. The kids wanted to go into the woods. And also, they didn’t. We walked on toward home.

  When the kids were in bed, Brian and I sat out on the porch. He turned to me. “Your point about her working out her fears through her play,” he said, “is taken. Her poor dolls are the most beleaguered, plague-riddled people I know.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I take your points, too.”

  “Which points?”

  “Just, you know, the genial-uncle-denied-pie thing.”

  He laughed. “Go on,” he said. “Say more about this underappreciated uncle.”

  You could never vaguely apologize to Brian. You had to be specific, be real, bring your A game. Which was infuriating. And wonderful.

  * * *

  A week or so later, on another evening walk around the complex, we ran into Ramya and Varun again. Varun was dozing, his enormous dark eyes closed. “He has a low fever,” Ramya said. “I am going to take him in as soon as Deepak arrives home.”

  Later Ramya called. “They have admitted us again.” And the next day there was a message, “We’re in the PICU.”

  I dreaded going to visit the PICU. Its waiting room was the most unloved zone in the hospital and the most hard used. Parents were not allowed to sleep at their children’s bedside in the PICU, so they would stumble out for an hour or two of rest in the waiting room. There were stains on the backs of the recliners from fretting heads tossing left, tossing right. Chairs were pushed together to form sleepless beds. There was always at least one chair askew, angled toward the door, as though someone had leapt out of it, into a sprint.

  The first day I went to visit, Ramya came out to meet me in the waiting room. We chatted, she told me how Varun was doing. It was very up and down. His lungs were in trouble, the ventilator settings were high. They were praying they’d be able to reduce the settings soon. I asked if I could see him. Ramya said, “Please, let’s wait until next time.”

  I could understand, or thought I could. If my child were on a ventilator, I would want to protect their image in other people’s minds. I wouldn’t want anyone to see them unrecognizable. And so I held on to the image of Varun from our last visit, chubby fists pounding his stroller tray, brown eyes sweeping Ramya’s face; glancing at Gracie, glancing at Gabe, but returning, always, to Ramya, his lodestar.

  The next time I visited, Ramya invited me into the room. Varun’s body was obscured by the machines, the tubes. He was a small form beneath the sheet, softly vibrating with the pulse of the vent. His eyes were closed, but the lids moved every so often.

  Deepak was also there. I watched them move around the room, brush against each other, lean over Varun to kiss him or smooth his cheek with their fingers. Deepak laid his palm on Ramya’s back, a casual touch, but conscious. A transmission of support, of tenderness. I was amazed he had the inner resources to give anything to his wife while giving everything to his son. Mother and father in hell, but in hell together. When Deepak put his hand on Ramya’s back, she looked up at him with a recognition of their pain, not feral blame, but understanding. If the gravitational pull of their love was this strong, it would hold Varun in place. It can be done like this, I told myself.

  When, days later, Varun came off the vent, it felt miraculous. We’d yet to witness a child who’d come off the vent. He was sent down from the PICU back to the transplant ward. He was healing. He was free of the horrible, oscillating machine. He smiled and spoke gibberish to his parents. He was still in the hospital, not out of danger, but better.

  49

  We were always at clinic, checking one drug level or another, having Gracie examined, stern to stem. One afternoon, Sue, the nurse practitioner, leaned down to listen to Gracie’s lungs. We’d come to clinic worried; Gracie had a cough. Sue wrinkled her brow, dipped the sides of her mouth, and held up one finger to quiet Gabe, who was pretending my scarf was a parachute, complete with sound effects.

  “Stop that,” I said, pulling the scarf too forcefully out of his hands. And to Sue, “What do you hear?”

  “Just a few crackles. On the left side.”

  Sue ran an RSB test; it came back positive for a common respiratory virus. OK, I thought, this is how it begins, with a few crackles on the left side. A common cold, with uncommon powers. Gracie’s body, unassisted, could not fight off a cold. The one thing all our frantic cleaning and germ avoidance had been designed to protect her from, and she had it.

  Every post-transplant parent worries about the lungs. Anything but the lungs. I called Brian. “She has crackles in one lung.”

  “Which one?” he said.

  “The left.”

  “What are they doing?”

  “An immunity-booster infusion, and Sue said they’d watch it closely.”

  “OK, will they keep you or send you home?”

  “They’re not sure yet.”

  Brian met us at the clinic to take Gabe home. Leaving, Brian gave Gracie a kiss on her head, “Make sure to ask Mom to buy you some treats from the machines.” He and Gabe left for the night. I wanted to go with them—home to dinner, bath, bed, plus red wine, dark chocolate, and mindless television—but Gracie’s med still had another couple of hours to go.

  Gracie was relaxed and placid, watching TV. Every so often she’d emit a sharp bark of a cough. I kept thinking of the family we met on one of our first visits to the clinic, before the transplant. The little girl from Ireland who’d coughed up blood onto her mother’s shirt, w
hose baby brother I’d held while the doctors and nurses huddled around her. I must have given Gracie a dark look in response to a cough, because she said, “Mama, are you mad?”

  “I’m not mad, sweet girl.”

  Close to midnight, her infusion finally finished. As we passed through the lobby, Gracie asked to ride in a wheelchair she spotted languishing in a corner. I didn’t like the idea of her playing sick. But she’d had a crummy day, and I wanted to make her happy. “Fine.”

  She hoisted herself onto the seat with a little wheeze. Come on left lung, keep it together.

  It was late, she’d had no real dinner, she’d spent all day hooked up to a machine doling out medicine, but she was in a purely sweet mood. As we pushed through the double doors into the parking lot, I took in a huge breath of damp, warm, living air, soaked in oxygen by the million exhalations of the countless green things of this Durham spring. Surely this had to be better for her than canned hospital air. Hospitals, what a bad idea. Except when you need them. Above us, a single star struck a pinprick of light in the dark dome of sky. I stopped pushing her wheelchair to say a prayer for her, and for Varun.

  Gracie noticed that we had stopped and wanted to know why. I said I was praying for a boy who was sick and had to spend tonight in the hospital.

  Gracie said, “Who is sick?”

  “A boy,” I said, not wanting to tell her, hoping she’d let it go.

  “Why is he sick?”

  I said there is no real reason, he is just sick, it happens. She wasn’t satisfied.

  “Say why.”

  I reinforced how she, Gracie, was well enough to go home, and we didn’t always know why.

  “That little thing followed us here,” she said, pointing up to the star.

  As we drove home, she said, “Guess what?! It’s magic. That little thing is still following us.” And then later, “Mom, guess what? It was behind a cloud, and then it came out. Isn’t that magic?” I didn’t know what was magic and what wasn’t. I didn’t know why we got to drive home, chatting about stars, while Varun didn’t. I didn’t know what to count on, whether Gracie’s cough might progress or disappear by morning.

  I tried to live with these cohabiting facts: Varun was off the vent but not yet back at home; Gracie had the beginnings of a cough that could worsen; the night sky was as indifferent, as beautiful, as ever.

  The next morning it was, suddenly, spring. The geese, in their elegant dark gray hoods, their sleek feathers, clustered on our porch cooing into each other’s ears like lovesick teenagers. And Gracie was better. She might have gotten worse, that could have happened, but instead she was better. Thank God, thank each and every god.

  * * *

  Varun had been healing, and then all at once he worsened. He was transferred back upstairs to the PICU, placed back on the vent. And then he grew sicker still. I was driving to the hospital to visit him with Gracie in the car when Bobbie called; our plan had been for Bobbie to watch Gracie while I went upstairs to see Ramya. When I saw it was Bobbie calling, I pulled over and parked along the edge of Duke’s forest. Cars sped past. Bruce Springsteen was playing on the radio. In her car seat Gracie was doing hip-hop arm jerks and shoulder drops.

  “Don’t come,” Bobbie said, “go on home.”

  I understood her without wanting to. I knew she was telling me that Varun was gone.

  Which was impossible. But also maybe true.

  “Is Deepak with Ramya?”

  “Yes, they are here together.”

  I could feel a sob rising. Bobbie had likely heard more grief than anyone I knew; and was the most willing to listen.

  But not Gracie.

  “Thank you for telling me, Bobbie,” I said. I hung up.

  “What’s wrong?” Gracie said. “What did they say?”

  I knew it would be wrong to turn around. I knew she would see grief or terror on my face. At the same time, I didn’t want to know this alone. I didn’t want to know it.

  “What’s wrong?” she said again.

  I unbuckled my seat belt. “Please stay in the car, love. I will be right back, I promise. You will be able to see me.” I got out of the car, walked a short ways away, turned around to wave at her. She waved back, unsure of what this was. A game? I walked a few more feet away. Wave, wave. I stepped into the woods.

  I was surrounded by the obscene explosion of life that is southern spring—glossy, nascent, waxy leaves, blooming lilac, the yellow-green lace of weeping willows, the white innocence of opened dogwood. Wisteria in warm filtered light. Veil upon veil of silvery green branches, split by an astringent blue sky.

  This crescendo of life could not contain death.

  I rejected that possibility with every atom; rejected it out of hand.

  Sentinel of trees: pitch pine, scarlet oak, sweet birch, Virginia pine, bald cypress. Every one silent. Agnostic.

  Say why.

  I was far enough from the car that Gracie could not hear me, and far enough that she was worried. I could see her squinting, frowning, in my direction. I kicked the nearest tree. Fuck you. My foot felt strangely liberated from my body. I kicked and kicked. The thwack was dull, unsatisfying. My ankle began to throb. I kept kicking.

  Overhead, a pair of woodpeckers, unperturbed, drilled in and out of the trunk. Two heads bobbed in unison, each with a bright racing cap of red feathers. Get out of here. I waved my arms. They kept on boring their holes. Go! They stayed.

  When my foot was numb, I limped back to the car.

  “What’s wrong?” Gracie asked. “Are you sad or mad?”

  “I am sad and mad.”

  “Why?” She looked at me, a level, direct stare. “Tell me.”

  She was four. There was no way to tell her without pointing to the same possibility for her. She could sense vital information being kept from her.

  “Tell me now.”

  “I will, sweetheart,” I said. “Someday I will tell you.”

  But I wouldn’t. I would tell Brian, my mom. I would tell Kathy, Cassie. I would tell Suzi, who, every time we talked long-distance, said, “Tell me everything.” I would tell her how, the last time I saw him, Varun’s body shook with the oscillator’s vibrations, how I felt his pulse throbbing in his right thumb, about the goo they put in his eyes to keep them moist, the bruises. I would tell her how Deepak touched Ramya’s back.

  I would tell anyone willing to listen how beautiful Varun was, how beaten up by the machines, how loved he was. Is. I would tell everyone, anyone. Except Gracie.

  I felt the inverse of what I’d felt the day the first child, Sam, had died on our ward. Then I’d wanted to understand, to know. With Varun, I wanted to unknow.

  At home Gracie ran to Brian. “We’re not hospital people, we are home people.”

  He picked her up and snuggled her. “You’re home people!”

  “Yes, but Mama was sad and mad.”

  He set Gracie down, and she scampered off to wake up Gabe. He looked at me. I walked into his arms.

  “Varun died,” I said into his ear.

  “My god,” he said. “Sweetheart, I am so sorry.”

  “Me too.” We stood there for a while, and then I pulled away and went into our bedroom.

  I closed the door and lay down on the bed. Brian followed me in and lay down beside me. He took my hand. I rolled onto my side, away from him. He rolled onto his side, to cradle me. I scooted away, and he did the same, to close the space.

  “I can’t,” I said. I wasn’t sure what it was that I couldn’t do. Be a parent whose child had survived when other children had died. Be a parent who would never trust that her child was safe. Let myself feel this much pain. Block this much out.

  “I can’t,” I said again.

  “My love,” Brian said. “I beg to differ. I think you can. You already have.”

  I turned around. He was crying. I was crying. The kids were in the living room watching midnight TV. He put both hands on either side of my face.

  I felt there was nowhere I
could go that Brian would not follow.

  “The world is upside down,” I said. “They are the kindest people I’ve ever met.”

  “They are.”

  “This is not God’s will. Who would will that?”

  “No one, my love.”

  “God has leaves and rivers, molecular structures, whatever the fuck, fields of barley. Half Dome and puffy clouds pretty enough to slice you open. But not will. I don’t believe that.”

  “You don’t.”

  “Humans have will. We can be any kind of way to one another.”

  “We can.”

  I believed in Deepak’s hand upon Ramya’s back in the PICU. In the sanctity, the sanctuary, of chosen tenderness.

  I believed in Brian. Whose love for us was immense, without end or border. My love for him, for the kids, felt the same. All of it was invoked inside our two-person sphere—hand to face, face to thigh, arm to leg, lip to ear, eye to eye—for however long it takes to be reminded of who you are, of who someone is to you. To be recalled to home. Hey, remember me, I’m yours, you’re mine.

  * * *

  The day before they left I visited Ramya and Deepak at their apartment. They were packing to return home. Ramya told me about Varun’s services, how meaningful the rituals had been to them. Deepak kept repeating, with wonder and gratitude, how the funeral director had waived their fees. That Ramya and Deepak had noticed this gesture was the astonishing thing. Grieving my child, I could only imagine being bent on hurting the world. But that wasn’t their way. They were making piles of medical supplies and canned foods to leave for other transplant families. They were casting their eyes around the room, asking me what we could use.

  Most of all, they continued to ask after the other children, after Gracie. How was she? Ramya wanted to know. If anything, Ramya’s concern for Gracie had sharpened.