“I should call Nat.”
“I talked to Naomi a little while ago. Natalie will spend the night at her house. You could call her right before bedtime, maybe.” Ellis willed herself to look into the incubator. “He sure is little, huh?”
“Almost not there at all,” Mary said. “I really messed up this time.”
Ellis wrapped her arm around Mary’s shoulder. “This isn’t your fault, love. Doctor Jenkins even said so. These things just happen.”
Mary slumped against Ellis. “But it was my body he was supposed to grow inside of. I must have done something wrong to make him need to come out so early.”
“Let’s not drag ourselves through that briar patch tonight, okay?” Ellis drew Mary a few steps from the incubator. “Take a break and come sit with me for a while.”
Ellis took Mary from the NICU back to the small room where they’d met with Doctor Jenkins.
“I got you some coleslaw and a cookie, too,” Ellis said as she pulled the contents from the bag. “And some tea.”
“Thanks, babe. I guess I should try to eat a little.”
Mary ate three bites of her sandwich and picked at the cup of slaw. She broke off a piece of cookie and handed the rest to Ellis. “Not much of an appetite. You can finish this.”
Ellis put everything back in the bag and set it aside. “We said we wanted to see the baby before we decided on a name. We promised we’d wait until Halloween to even start discussing possibilities—”
“Why name him? He probably won’t make it through the night.” Mary’s chin dropped to her chest.
Ellis left her chair and knelt in front of Mary. She grasped Mary’s shoulders, then lifted Mary’s head with the palm of her hand. “Don’t talk like that about our son. I know you’re tired, and for sure this is not what we expected, but we’re not giving up on him. Not tonight, not ever.”
“Ellis, he’s half the size of any of the babies in the NICU. You heard what Doctor Jenkins said about all the problems he has.”
“Problems he might have. All we know right now is that he’s premature, he’s had trouble breathing, and he has some jaundice.”
Mary let her head fall back. She stared at the ceiling a long time. She finally looked at Ellis, still kneeling in front of her. “If Gloria took the car, how are you getting home?”
“I’m not going home. I’m staying here with you and our little boy tonight.” Ellis took Mary’s face between her hands. “We’re a family, remember?”
“You never really wanted kids, Ellis. I know that. You just did this because you felt sorry for Nat… and for me.”
Ellis looked Mary in the eye. “You’re right, I didn’t think I wanted kids, but then I got to know you and your daughter. It took me a while, but I finally figured out that what makes me happiest is doing what makes you happy. Maybe I didn’t know what I was signing on for, but one thing I’m sure of—my life isn’t worth a damn without you, and you not only want kids, you need them. So, since I need you, that pretty much looks like a complete circle to me.”
“But this nightmare isn’t the way I wanted you to learn about being a parent. How can I ask you to be a parent to that tiny lump of a person in there? I don’t even know how to be a parent to him.”
“Then I guess we’ll learn together.” Ellis dragged her plastic chair close to Mary’s. “He needs a name, though. I want to call him by name.”
“We were so careful not to let the sonogram techs tell us the baby’s gender. Even though I didn’t say so, I’ve thought all along the baby would be another girl, so I didn’t think much about boys’ names. And we promised Natalie she could be in the delivery room. You know she’d have had a dozen suggestions.” A half-smile played on Mary’s drawn and pale face. “She’s gonna be pissed that she got a brother instead of a sister.”
“She’ll adjust.” Ellis patted Mary’s upper leg. “Besides, Nat and I already discussed this situation, so I’ve got the perfect suggestion for what to call him.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Uh-huh. Let’s call him Joseph.”
Mary’s lower lip trembled. “That was my dad’s name.”
“I know, and it was Nathan’s middle name. Technically, he’s the baby’s father, so Joseph seems like the perfect name.”
Without leaving her chair, Mary fell clumsily into Ellis’s arms. “Joseph Moss. I think my dad would be proud. Well, maybe not exactly proud, since I’m now a divorced woman with a baby by way of artificial insemination, but at least his name will live on.”
“We need to pick a middle name,” Ellis said. “Any ideas?”
Mary righted herself in her chair. “Yep, I do have a suggestion. Let’s name him Joseph Ellis Moss.”
Ellis blinked back tears. “That’s sweet, but won’t it upset your mother and the rest of your family?”
“Maybe, but I don’t care. You said it best just a little while ago. He’s our baby boy. It’ll be up to you and me to take care of him.”
Ellis stole a quick kiss. She offered Mary her hand as she stood. “Let’s go see Joey.”
∗ ∗ ∗ ∗
“But he was doing so well.” Mary’s lament pierced the usually quiet NICU. “It’s like every tiny bit of ground he gained over the past week has been lost again.”
“Preemies rarely progress on a straight line,” Doctor Hill said. “His heart rate fell to a dangerously low level, so we had to put him back on the ventilator. His jaundice worsened, so we gave him another transfusion.” He offered a sympathetic pat to the back of Mary’s hand, resting on an oxygen tank. “I know this is very frustrating for you.”
Mary jerked her hand away. “Frustrating? Dammit, Doctor Hill, frustrating is when you can’t find your car keys or you get caught in traffic. This is well past frustrating.”
Mary had been at the hospital nearly around the clock for the first week of Joey’s life. Two of the babies in the NICU when he was born had been released to go home. None of the other babies in the unit looked a fraction as feeble as her son. Doctor Hill might have great credentials as a neonatologist, but as best Mary could tell, he didn’t have a clue about how it felt to be a parent with a baby in an incubator.
“Well, his condition is stable at the moment. The nurses know to alert me if anything changes.”
Mary scowled at the doctor’s back as he left the unit. She felt the front of her T-shirt moisten. “Wonderful. Time to pump again.” She slipped behind a draw curtain, yanked the breast pump from her tote bag, and affixed it. Every three hours or so, she used the pump, then carefully saved the milk to be fed to Joey through his gastric tube. His tummy was so tiny, though, he couldn’t accommodate all that she was producing, so the milk from every third pumping was thrown away. Pump and dump was one of the hardest things she’d faced. All that wonderful nutrition going to waste while her son had gained only two ounces since birth.
She checked the clock on the wall. She needed to pull herself together. Ellis was bringing Natalie to the NICU for her first visit that afternoon. Thanks to a teacher’s in-service day, Nat had the day off from school. Mary and Ellis had done what they could to describe for Nat the challenges facing her baby brother, but Mary knew all the explaining in the world couldn’t fully prepare an almost-eleven-year-old for the shrunken, tube-laden, translucent-skinned being lying all but motionless in his two-by-two glass prison.
∗ ∗ ∗ ∗
“That ugly thing is not my baby brother.” Natalie flopped onto a chair in the waiting room. Ellis and Mary each claimed a chair on either side of her.
Mary reached to stroke her daughter’s head, but Natalie jerked away. Mary said, “We told you he didn’t look much like the other babies you’ve seen. He’s only a week old, and because he was born too early, it’s going to take him awhile to catch up.”
“I don’t care. I just want to go home.” Natalie squinted her eyes at Ellis. “None of this would have happened if you hadn’t shown up and wrecked everything.”
“Nat, that’s not t
rue, and you know it.” Mary looked at Ellis as she spoke.
“It’s okay to be mad at me,” Ellis said, leaning nearer to Natalie. “I’m mad, too, but I don’t know who to be mad at.”
“What’ve you got to be mad about? You don’t have a freaky monster for a brother.”
“You’re right. I don’t.” Behind Natalie’s back, Ellis motioned for Mary to leave. “Tell me why that makes you mad.”
“Hey, I need to go take care of some things,” Mary said. “How about I meet you two in half an hour?”
Ellis waved as Mary exited the waiting room. Natalie remained mute. “Tell you what, kiddo, let’s go to the Dairy Queen and get an ice cream cone.”
“Okay. I sure don’t want to stay in this stinky, creepy place.”
Out in her truck, Ellis picked up the thread of the conversation. “You were going to tell me why having Joey as a brother makes you mad.” She poked Natalie playfully on the arm. “And you might as well tell me why you’re mad at me, too.”
“I’m not as mad at you as I am at him.”
“Can you tell me why?”
“I wanted a pretty little sister who’d play with me and be my friend. All I got was that wrinkly, ugly boy who can’t do anything.”
“Like your mom said, we need to give him some extra time to grow. It’s not even Halloween yet, and he’s already here. He wasn’t supposed to get here ’til Christmas. Think how hard it would be for you to already be picking out what to wear to the Christmas pageant at school when you don’t even know for sure what you’ll wear for trick-or-treat.”
“I do so know. I’m going to be Gabriella from High School Musical. I want to get my hair done and everything.”
“Okay, but my point is that you can’t expect Joey to be ready for Christmas when he hasn’t even done Halloween yet.”
“But it’s not fair. He’s not cute. He’s not anything I ever want to look at again.”
“How about we make a deal?”
“What kind of deal?”
“You don’t have to go back to the hospital. The next time you see him will be when we bring him home to stay.”
“Which I hope is never.”
Ellis fought off the urge to snarl a reply. She drove a few blocks, jaw clamped shut. What could she say to a child who somehow sensed her whole world was about to unravel? Ellis couldn’t wrap her adult mind around the boggling circumstances Joey’s birth had wrought. How could she expect Natalie to fare any better?
“Is he a sign from God?”
“What?” Ellis jerked the steering wheel reflexively.
“Gramma Anna says it’s God’s way of saying you and Mom shouldn’t have done what you did.”
Ellis choked down the bile in her throat. “Look, Nat, your grandmother and I don’t agree on a lot of things, and this is one of them. But let me ask you a question. Was Joey the only baby in the room?”
“Nuh-uh. There were other babies in those little glass boxes.”
“They’re called incubators. And, right, there have been lots of other babies who were born early, just like Joey, or who were born with something not quite right about them. As far as I know, Joey is the only baby in there who came from a home like your mom and you and I have. To me, that says a baby born too early is just that—a baby born too early. It’s not a sign from God or a sign of anything else, either. It happens sometimes, and it’s the family’s job to love that new baby as best they can regardless of how little he is.”
“Jordan told me her mom says he’ll always be a retard.”
“Jordan’s mom doesn’t know everything.” Ellis turned into the parking lot at the Dairy Queen. “Even the doctors don’t know what’s going to happen to Joey, so there’s no way Jordan’s mom can know that. He might grow up to be a rocket scientist or a rock star.” She shut off the engine. “Just like you might.”
“Uh-uh. I’m gonna be president, like Hillary Clinton.”
Who the hell knew what that child had picked up from the news? “Hillary lost to Barack Obama.”
“Good. Then I’ll be the first woman president.”
Chapter 15
Ellis kept her promise to Natalie about not having to return to the hospital to see Joey. She left Nat in the truck while she dashed into the NICU to tell Mary she was taking Natalie back to Clarkesville.
“She hates me, doesn’t she?” Mary asked.
“Like the rest of us, she’s been knocked on her butt. Give her some time to adjust, babe. In the past eight days, we haven’t been able to make sense of any of this, so how can we expect our daughter to handle it?”
Mary’s eyes misted over. “You’ve never called her that before.”
“Called her what?”
“Our daughter.”
“Well, she is, isn’t she?” Ellis gave Mary a quick hug.
“Will you be back this evening?”
“Of course. I’m going to pawn Natalie off on one of your sisters again, catch a quick shower, make sure the dog and cat are fed and tended, and then I’ll be here to sit with you. I’d better go before Natalie figures out how to hotwire my truck.”
“Do something for me, okay?”
“What’s that?”
“When you leave Nat with Gloria or Naomi, tell her her mom says she’s weird.”
“I’ll go you one better. I’ll tell her we both think so.”
∗ ∗ ∗ ∗
“He’s gained a couple of ounces since yesterday.” The NICU nurse pointed to the entry she’d just made on Joey’s chart. “Looks like that last transfusion helped.” She studied Mary’s expressionless face. “Would you like to touch him?”
Mary’s eyes flew open wide. “Could I?”
“Sure, but you need to scrub up first. Lather all the way to your elbows and use one of the sealed, sterile brushes on your fingernails. When you’re ready, I’ll help you slip your hand inside the sleeve of his incubator.”
Mary did as the nurse instructed, nearly rubbing her hands and forearms raw in the effort. She stood by Joey’s incubator, and the nurse demonstrated how to insert her hand into the enclosure.
Tentatively, she brushed her fingertips across the biggest part of his thighs, barely as wide as two of her fingers held side by side. Tears sprang from her eyes. I love you, little man. I’m sorry I couldn’t keep you inside of me as long as you should have been there. She looked through the glass, seeing her hand hovering above him. She wanted to touch him everywhere, cradle him, explore every finger and toe, every wrinkle, but he was too delicate, too easily bruised. She wrestled with her fear of hurting him, holding those two fingers lightly on his leg. Fight, Joey. Fight for all you’re worth. It might not seem like it right now, but life is worth fighting for. Ellis and Nat and I will be beside you every inch of the way.
“Ms. Moss.” The nurse spoke softly. “I wish I could let you have longer with him, but we need to be so careful about keeping germs away from him.”
“Okay.” Mary pulled her hand back, stealing one more feather-light touch against his cheek as she extracted her hand from the incubator. She looked the nurse in the eye. “Thank you. I needed that.”
The nurse patted Mary’s shoulder. “So did he, Ms. Moss. So did he.”
∗ ∗ ∗ ∗
The next three weeks were a seesaw ride of progress and setbacks. Joey would gain another few ounces, only to have to be put back on the ventilator because of more breathing problems. Or his heart rate would drop dangerously low, and more drugs had to be pumped into him.
At the end of his first month, he weighed two-and-a-half pounds, enough so that for the very first time, Mary and Ellis were permitted to hold him.
“We call this kangaroo care,” the nurse said to them. “He’ll be wearing just his diaper, and we’ll put him against your bare chest, between your breasts, with a blanket over him to help keep him warm and for modesty’s sake.”
Mary went first. She sat in the rocking chair, and the nurse carefully placed him on her chest. “This will
be so good for him. Try not to be nervous. Yes, he’s very small, but you won’t hurt him. He needs to know your scent, your touch, and the rhythms of your speech and breathing. All our NICU babies love kangaroo care.”
Ellis watched in awe as baby Joey nestled on Mary’s bosom. Warm tears tracked down her face, and Ellis didn’t even care.
“If you want his other mother to have some time with him today, we’ll have to keep your session short. We don’t want him out of the incubator too long.” The nurse looked from mother to co-parent.
“No, today is all for Mary,” Ellis said. “I’ll wait until tomorrow.”
“Whatever you say,” the nurse said. “We’ll try to do a few minutes of this every day. It helps maintain his body warmth, and it’s good for regulating his heart and breathing rates. We usually find that as soon as we start kangarooing our babies, they gain weight and sleep better because they cry less.”
“This may help him cry less, but it’s not doing that for me,” Ellis said as she swabbed the moisture from her cheeks. “How does he feel, Mary?”
“Like I’m holding a kitten. I’m afraid if I sneeze, I’ll blow him right off me.”
Mary stroked the sole of Joey’s foot. Ellis rubbed Mary’s back. “Then I’d better let you be the only one who does this. I’d probably do something stupid and set him back a week.”
“You’ll do fine,” the nurse assured her. “After a time or two, it’ll feel perfectly natural.”
“Maybe for someone who’s had practice with other babies. I’m not so sure I’ll ever get it right.”
“Enjoy your little Joey,” the nurse said as she stepped away to check on the baby in another incubator.
“How about that?” Mary asked. “We must be the smartest parents on the planet.”
“Why?”
“They call this kangaroo care, and a baby kangaroo is a joey.” She stroked the top of her baby’s head. “We knew exactly what to name this little guy.”
Detours Page 23