Five Quarts_ A Personal and Natural History of Blood - Bill Hayes [45]
Two weeks after she’d first called with her news, my good friend Peter died. This was not unexpected. This wonderful, witty man—a diminutive and Deutsch Oscar Wilde, if you can imagine—had been sick with AIDS and bedridden for weeks at his home, where I and a corps of friends helped nurse him. Even so, I was stunned. This was my first experience of profound loss—something my sister was preparing for, too, I realized in the following days. Shannon, who’d met Peter during a visit to San Francisco, sent a note after she’d heard of his passing. Her words conveyed loads of sisterly love. “As it came time for him to let go of his life,” she wrote, “it is my honor to give birth to a new one,” a sentiment I found genuinely comforting. That she had pulled herself up to a place of such pride buoyed me at a moment when I was sinking. And the idea that her child, girl or boy, might become someone’s joy, as Peter had been to so many, gave me peace.
With four weeks to go, Shannon was diagnosed with acute preeclampsia, a serious condition most often experienced in the last trimester of first pregnancies. As a precaution, she was hospitalized for complete bed rest until delivery. This became, in essence, a forced seclusion. While its precise cause is unknown, current thinking is that preeclampsia is an autoimmune response; the mother’s body suddenly becomes “allergic” to the developing child. This reaction triggers the release of chemicals that can raise the mother’s blood pressure to dangerously high levels, which can then damage blood vessels in the placenta (the organ that transfers oxygen and nutrients from the mother’s blood to the baby’s) and possibly lead to seizures and premature birth. When one of my sisters, meaning well, dropped by to visit, Shannon’s high blood pressure shot up practically two floors. Thereafter, she was allowed no visitors, save for one or two close friends, an arrangement not unlike living behind the grille at a Carmelite monastery. The nurses on staff, like a community of nuns, took care of her. And at the end of June, Shannon delivered a healthy baby boy, whom she privately named Daniel, though this was never entered into any paperwork. She had four days with him in the hospital before a nurse took him away. She never saw his new mother. My sister prayed that her child would have a good life.
Shannon took time off to heal and rest, scarcely venturing from her studio apartment. Two months after the delivery, she finally accepted a girlfriend’s invitation to go out for an evening, her first time out in forever. Before leaving her place that night, Shannon told herself, Tonight I’m going to meet someone I will never give away. And she did. They’ve been together ever since and were married twelve years ago. His name is Daniel.
When I stayed with the two of them in their bright, new Seattle home last year, I noticed a small photo on their dresser of a dark-haired infant, a tiny wrinkled wonder in a bassinet. Shannon stepped closer to me as I picked up the frame. It took me a moment to make the connection: “Is this Daniel?”
“Yeah,” she said, beaming. She’d put it out for a special occasion: The following day would be his birthday. This photo had been taken in the hospital. “He’s going to be fourteen tomorrow. Fourteen—can you believe it?” Her eyes misting, I wrapped her in a hug.
We continued talking downstairs in the kitchen. “Anytime I look back on that situation,” she said