They’d met with Lawrence’s health care team three times to discuss his treatment and prognosis. When JL repeatedly asked the same questions, Kevin became alarmed over her inability to concentrate, and, along with her constant headaches, he was concerned she might be suffering secondary trauma from the plane crash.
At his urging, Charlotte requested a neurological consult and a brain scan was ordered. The scans were clear but that didn’t eliminate the possibility JL was suffering from PTSD. A psychiatric assessment was scheduled. JL agreed to meet with a psychiatrist, but since she refused all medications because she was breastfeeding, she was referred to a psychotherapist. The upshot was that she agreed, without arm twisting, to attend psychotherapy sessions and spend fewer hours at the hospital until she fully recovered from surgery.
That was the hardest part, but she agreed to the strict schedule because she knew firsthand how important her mental and physical health were to her family.
Kevin spent his mornings at the NICU and afternoons with Blane, either bringing him to the hospital for a visit or sitting in class with him. During the evenings Kevin floated back and forth between the NICU and JL at the hotel. Their hotel suite, thanks to Amber Kelly Grant, was stocked with gourmet freeze-dried food.
As for Blane, someone in the family often sent them pictures. In all the photos, he was either laughing or wearing the serious face he used when he read books assigned by Uncle Matt. The man was a godsend, a full-time grandfather and historian. All the MacKlenna men inspired the children, but Matt was gifted at challenging the kids to read, learn, and share.
Two of Matt’s three grandkids were younger than Blane. After Matt added the children’s edition of The Three Musketeers to their reading list, the boys decided they wanted to be musketeers. They constantly quoted the pledge: “All for one and one for all,” but they twisted the words around and chanted: “All for all and one for one.”
“Mommy!”
JL jerked, startling Lawrence, who whimpered at the sudden movement. She kept her hand wrapped around his, hoping to still him, but pulled her other hand out of the porthole and held a finger to her lips. “Shh. The babies are sleeping.”
Blane’s eyes and his O-mouth were huge as he tiptoed toward her. “Sorry, Mommy,” he whispered. Then he turned to the other two moms in the room and apologized, still whispering, “I’m sorry.” Both women smiled.
JL slowly withdrew her other hand and sat back in the recliner. Blane shucked his backpack before climbing up into her lap. His hair and skin smelled of apple and amber and cedarwood.
“Did you shower with Daddy?”
Blane raised his arm and sniffed his shirt. “Do I smell like him? I used his new shampoo and soap.”
She patted the top of his head. “And sculpturing gel.”
“He has more bottles of stuff than you, Mommy.” He sniffed her hair. “You smell different than we do.”
“I smell like hospital and hotel. And those smells don’t come out of a bottle.”
“Next time I’ll bring your shampoo so you’ll smell like you’re s’posed to.” He sniffed her clothes. “Pew-eee. Hospital smell.” He scooted around in her lap, his elbow digging into her belly.
She groaned.
“What’s wrong? You got gas?”
“No, buddy. My stomach’s sore.”
He gently patted her belly. “It’s all squishy in there. It used to be hard. What happened?”
“Lawrence isn’t inside me anymore. Remember the book we read about how babies were born? He’s in the incubator now.”
Blane glanced over his shoulder at Lawrence, then looked back at JL’s stomach, then back to the incubator. “The wrinkly doll in that box with all that stuff is my brother?” He curled his lip. “Will he iron out? Grandpa Elliott doesn’t like wrinkles. I don’t either.”
“He doesn’t have enough body fat yet, but he’ll grow into his skin.” JL wanted to laugh and cry, but she couldn’t do either.
“Daddy told me if I wasn’t quiet I couldn’t come back to see you and the wrinkly guy. I like visiting Aunt Charlotte’s hospital, but I’m not coming back up here until the laundry fixes him.”
JL’s lip quivered. “It’s not kind to talk about the way Lawrence looks or the way anyone looks. You’ll hurt their feelings. Lawrence is a preemie. He didn’t stay inside me long enough to gain weight. But he will, and then he’ll be handsome like you and your daddy.”
Blane’s expression turned downcast. “Is that a sure thing, or a maybe?”
“A sure thing,” she said.
“Okay, I’ll wait for him to get cute like me.”
“We need to work on humility.”
“What’s ‘umility? Like when it’s hot and sticky outside?”
“No, that’s humidity. Humility is having a truly grateful heart.”
He clapped his hand over his chest. “I have a grateful heart. I’m grateful for you and Daddy, and Grandpa Elliott and Grandma Mere, and Pops and Maria.” He glanced at the incubator. “And I’m thankful for my big brother and my little brother. That’s grateful, right?”
She hugged him. “Right.”
Blane reached for his MacKlenna green pack, unzipped it, and whipped out a stuffed white horse with black dots. “Grandpa Elliott took me shopping, and I found this horse. I paid for it with my own money. I named him Stormy, cuz Stormy went on a hard trip and came home skinny, like Lawrence. I want this Stormy to ’spire wee Lawrence to get strong and come home soon to play with me.”
“It’s a cute horse. An Appaloosa, right?”
“They didn’t have a thor-bred like Grandpa Elliott’s horses. I figured wee Lawrence didn’t know the difference yet. I’ll ’splain it all to him when he gets older. He’s goin’ to get older, right?”
JL wasn’t sure how to answer him. Blane was too young to understand life and death. “He’s older than he was yesterday but younger than he’ll be tomorrow.”
“I heard Aunt ’Lizabeth talking to Uncle Matt. She said when Lawrence has his first birthday, he won’t really be one.”
“Well…that’s kinda complicated,” JL said. “Preemies have a chronological age based on their actual birthday, and a corrected age based on when they should have been born.”
Blane held his hand over JL’s mouth. “Stop talking, Mommy. Too comp-e-cated.” Blane pushed away from JL’s embrace, climbed down, and stood next to the incubator. “I washed my hands, so I can touch him.”
“Let’s wipe them off, just in case Stormy has horse germs.” She squirted hand sanitizer on her hands and wiped his between her own. “Now you can touch your brother, but you have to be gentle, remember? Just touch his hand.”
“I won’t make him cry. I’ll touch just his finger. Uncle Matt showed me inca-bator babies on his Google machine.”
“What’s that?” JL asked.
Blane seemed to chew on the answer for a moment. “Well, see… I was eating Cheerios this morning in the big house kitchen. The TV was on, and Mornin’ Joe said to use your neighbor’s Google machine to get answers.” Blane tilted his head. “I should tweet Mornin’ Joe to let him know my iPad has google.”
She couldn’t hold back a smile. “What’d you learn on your Google machine?”
“Uncle Matt looked it up on his iPad. He said when I touch my brother I have to go like this”—Blane made short up and down motions with his hand—“because Lawrence has plugs to keep his blood from running out. You think blood is yucky, so I hope the plugs work.”
“You’re right. I don’t like it.”
“Daddy used to ride in an am-lance, so he ’splained it. The cords—” He stopped talking when Anne paused at Lawrence’s incubator. Blane’s face pinched with concern. He whispered, “Am I too loud?”
She squatted to be eye level with him. “No, you’re fine. It’s Blane, right?”
He cocked his head. “How’d you know my name?”
Anne pointed to a picture of him taped to the side of the incubator. “Your mommy ta
ped a picture of you there. So what do you think of this little guy?”
“I think he’s itty-bitty and wrinkly, and Grandpa Elliott doesn’t like wrinkles.” Blane picked up the horse. “This is Stormy. He’ll teach the itty-bitty guy how to be big and strong. I want to put it in the inca-bator.”
“We have to sanitize it first. Is that okay?” Anne asked.
“I know what that means! You’re gonna take out the vi-lence and dirty words. Uncle Matt sometimes san-tizes his lectures for us kids. But I don’t mind.” He shoved the horse into Anne’s hands. She wobbled and almost toppled over. He grabbed her shoulder. “Be careful there, sweetheart.”
JL rolled her eyes and mouthed, “I’m sorry.” Blane mimicked Elliott’s accent and other male family members’ mannerisms and expressions. When he’d first repeated a four-letter word, they all promised to clean up their language. They still slipped and yelled hell this or damn that now and again, and Blane repeated every cussword.
Blane checked the timer on his watch. Kevin often set it to teach Blane the concept of time and how to count backwards from fifteen. The timer told him exactly how many minutes he had left to watch sports on TV or play a game on his iPad. Soccer was his passion—or, as they called it in Europe—football. He knew all the top European clubs and watched as many games as he could.
“I only have a few more minutes,” Blane said. “Will ye show me how to touch the lad so I can be on my way?”
Anne stood, pressing her fist to her lips to smother a laugh. “Let’s sanitize your hands and I’ll show you.”
“I did that already.” Then he smacked his forehead. “I touched Stormy. He has horse germs.” He turned toward JL. “Hit me again, ma’am.”
JL squirted sanitizer on his hands. “Now do what Nurse Anne tells you, and you can touch his little fingers.”
He stood next to the incubator, carefully following Anne’s directions, slipped his arms through the portholes. He touched Lawrence’s index finger. “My finger is bigger than his foot, Mommy. Hurry up, little guy, and get out of here so we can play.”
Lawrence clasped Blane’s finger. Blane’s eyes were huge when he looked over at JL. “He grabbed my finger. He knows it’s me. Oh, ye’re a cutie, wee laddie. I think ye’ll look just like me. Don’t you think so, Mommy?”
“I think he will, buddy.”
Blane slipped his hands out of the portholes. “That’s all for today, wee laddie.” He looked up at Anne, “Will you tell the doctors to take all that stuff off him, so I can hold him next time? Mommy told me I’ll be able to hold the baby and read to him.”
“All the stuff helps him eat and breathe,” Anne said.
“Mommy said he’ll get milk from her breasts like I did. He doesn’t need all that other stuff,” he said, waving his hand toward the incubator.
“Lawrence can’t suck yet, so we put your mommy’s milk in that tube in his belly.”
“Oh.” For an instant he looked confused, unsure of himself, then he quickly righted to what JL called his O’Grady goofy look.
“Where’d you leave Daddy?” JL asked.
Blane leaned to the right, leaned to the left. “We came in here together, but he’s dis-ta-peared now. Guess he found”—Blane clicked his tongue—“a cute chick in the pod next door and stopped to make her ’quaintance.”
“I’ll see if your dad is out in the hallway,” Anne said. “I’ll let him know you’re looking for him.”
“How come you’re talking like that? Who’ve you been hanging out with?” JL asked. “The twins?”
“Nobody ’cept Uncle Rick. We’ve been FaceTiming. He’s coming to town tonight with Austin.” Blane cut a glance toward the incubator. “Hey, I’ve got a big brother, and so does he. I’m a big brother now. Ain’t that cool!” He lifted his shoulders and pressed down the front of his shirt. “Uncle Rick said he’d take me out for a ride on a Western saddle instead of a sissy hunt one. Daddy wants me to compete in eventing. But I want to be in a rodeo.”
JL’s heart burst to overflowing, pushing aside the fear and anxiety that had consumed her for days. She’d missed Blane’s hugs, his stories, and most of all his bigger-than-life appreciation of the world. “Your daddy is such a good rider he almost went to the Olympics. Don’t you want to ride like him?”
“Sure, Mommy. But I want…you know…to be out there on a branch.”
After a puzzled moment, she said, “Oh, you mean you want to branch out and not limit yourself to just one type of riding.”
“That’s what I said. To be out on a branch.”
She hugged him. “You’re too funny.” She opened a bottle of water and took a long sip. “If you’re going riding with Rick be careful. He’s not the best rider in the family.”
Blane snickered. “I’ve heard the story of how Noah outrode him when they were ’venturing in Colorado.”
They’d never talked to Blane about the family’s time-travel adventures, but it seemed someone had. She didn’t want to talk about it now, so she changed the subject. “I’m glad he’s taking you riding. Are you riding a pony?”
“Ain’t no ponies at Mallory Planation.”
“Please don’t say ain’t. It’s not proper, even if you’re using it to tease me.”
He put his hand on his hip. “Well, shucks, ma’am. I’ll do my best.”
“So, cowboy, who’s going riding? Just you and Rick?”
“No, ma’am. All the O’Grady dudes are going. They’re going to teach me the things they taught Austin.”
“Good grief. I didn’t approve of half the things they taught Austin. Tell Uncle Rick I want to talk to him before he takes you out riding.”
“Uncle Pete said he’d take care of me and make sure the O’Gradys don’t teach me bad stuff.”
She did an eyebrow-hike and watched him closely, half expecting him to jump on the Appaloosa and ride off into the sunset. “Uh…that’s nice of Pete, but I don’t trust him, either, when it comes to teaching my boys.”
“But Uncle Pete’s your partner, Mommy. You have to trust your partner. But don’t worry. They’re going to teach me family songs so I can sing with them. Uncle Connor said I could take your verses of ‘Danny Boy.’ What do ya think of that, sister?”
She chuckled. “I think you’ll make a fine soprano.”
His eyes narrowed, and his hand went to his throat. “Soprano? No can do. That’s a girl’s part. I’ll tell the boys I don’t want to sing a girl’s part.”
“I’m sure they’ll let you do whatever you want. Would you like to sing softly to Lawrence?”
He flashed a look at his brother. “His ears work already? I didn’t know that. Wait ’till I tell the O’Grady boys.” Blane slapped his leg. “Man. They’ll teach me hundreds of songs. I can sing to wee Lawrence till he comes home. But I don’t know what’s ’propriate to sing to a wee lad.” He pursed his lips. “Molly Malone, I guess. She’s got a statue in Dublin, you know. I’ve seen it. It’s big. Turn on your phone and tape me.”
JL pulled out her phone and pressed record. “Okay, I’m ready.”
Blane cleared his throat then began to sing in a clear, high-pitched, perfectly tuned voice.
“In Dublin’s fair city / Where the girls are so pretty / I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone / As she wheeled her wheelbarrow / Through the streets broad and narrow / Crying ‘cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh’ / Alive, alive, oh / Alive, alive, oh / Crying ‘cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh.’”
Anne returned and clapped softly, as did the two moms who were doing kangaroo care with their preemies. JL had a hard knot deep in her throat, but she couldn’t cry right now. Later she’d watch the video and cry her eyes out.
Blane crossed one arm over his waist and the other behind his back and executed a deep bow. “I’ve been singing that to wee Lawrence every night he’s been in Mommy’s ut-ur-us. Haven’t I, Mommy?”
“You sure did, buddy.” She gave his cheek an approving caress.
His watch
beeped, and he tapped the stop button. “It’s time to go.” He looked up at Anne. “Can you take me to find my daddy?”
“Sure. I just saw him. He’s right out in the hall talking to a couple of other dads.”
“Do I get a goodbye hug?” JL asked.
“Sure, Mommy. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He kissed JL. Then he grabbed Anne’s hand and towed her along to find Kevin.
They hadn’t gone more than five feet when the heart monitor went Beep! Beep! Beep!
Anne dropped Blane’s hand, turned back to the incubator. JL stood, unable to breathe. Lawrence was turning dusky blue. She pulled Blane aside and wrapped her arm around his shoulder.
Anne pushed the alarm cancel button then pressed the intercom to the entire unit. “D-3. Code down!”
Blane looked like a woodland deer. His eyes were huge as he swiveled his head, taking in the details of the NICU, the doctors and nurses gathering around Lawrence’s incubator.
JL sat and pulled Blane into her lap, hugging him tightly.
“What’s wrong, Mommy? What’s wrong with wee Lawrence? Didn’t he like my singing?” Blane’s cheeks quivered, and fearful tears clustered at the corners of both eyes.
She didn’t answer Blane right away, only sat there with him curled in her lap. He felt so good, so alive, so fragrant, an apple-scented bouquet of tender limbs tucked into her own. The precious bundle needed reassurance, or he’d be too scared to come up to see his brother again.
The room turned silent around her as her mind pulled back, distancing herself emotionally from the traumatic scene playing out in front of her. Kevin was with her when Lawrence had his last crisis, but he wasn’t there now, and she had to stay strong for both her sons.
Finally, she said, “I don’t know, buddy. The doctors and nurses will make him better. We just have to pray.” She held a shaky hand to her forehead and shivered a little, the way she’d done lately after a long cry, when the fear fled, and she was left with nothing but the knowledge that, sooner or later, it would return and consume her again. A rush of trepidation overcame her, a premonition of something formidable, complicated. Something she didn’t want to face.
The Pearl Brooch Page 30