Lift - Kelly Corrigan [7]
Dr. Benjamin pulled the needle back slowly, calmly, despite your awful shrieking. “That’s all we need. We’ll take this to the lab and start the evaluation.” He stood and handed you to me. You were hot and whimpering. I held you, heart to heart, your hands around my neck. Although I’d betrayed you, although I’d stood by while people spread and bent and stabbed you, you still wanted me most of all.
“We can start her on antibiotics now. Stephanie will put an IV in,” Dr. Benjamin said.
Our friend Deirdre is a pediatric ER doc in Boston. She told us this thing once, long before I became a parent, that I’ve never forgotten. She said no matter how stark the diagnosis, parents never fall over or scream like they do on TV. They keep breathing and listening and asking very good questions, and minute-by-minute they expand on the spot to take it in. I hoped I was that adaptive. I hoped I was as sturdy as the dad in baggy shorts with his hat flipped around.
I’d been steady and reasonable for both Dr. Benjamin and the nurse, playing to the audience as I do, but after they left, I said to Dad, “This is too—I don’t know. If we get out of here okay, I’ll never have another baby.”
“Fine with me,” he said, like maybe he regretted something.
“Yeah?”
“I don’t know—let’s just get through this,” he said, standing over your metal crib, which looked more like a cage. He shook his head like he was just now internalizing your baby-ness. “This is the first time she’s seemed small to me,” he said. You tricked us by coming into the world so big and loud and strong.
He had to leave. Someone had to pick up Georgia from Shannon’s house.
“Kiss me, Eddy.”
Dad leaned over and kissed me. “She’s gonna be okay, Kel.”
That first day in Children’s, you probably slept twelve hours. Every few hours, I tried to get you to take a bottle, but you didn’t want it. Sister Bernice stopped by to ask if I had any questions about insurance, parking validation, anything at all. Something about a nun going room to room reminded me of old war movies. I started to say, “I just want her to wake up,” but my voice was shaky so I just shook my head no. I didn’t want her to hug me or crack me wide open and do therapy on me.
“Well, if you need me, just ask the nurses to page me,” she said. “All right, dear?” I felt my face flush as I nodded, like I was back in third grade with Mrs. Ford’s necklace in my mouth.
Dad came to sit. He had a report from home—someone had invited us to a black-tie party at a champagne lounge, we got a postcard from the dentist about an appointment next week, Georgia fought to wear her fleece kitty-kat jacket even though it was 75 degrees. I wanted to break in with “How can you possibly care?” but I decided not to. For all I knew, Dad was self-medicating with to-do lists and calendars. I didn’t respond at all, which I knew was a rejection of sorts, a way of leaving him alone, but it was better than lashing out.
Dr. Benjamin came by to check in and assure us they were keeping an eye on the cultures. I asked him when you would get your appetite back. He said maybe the next day, and reminded me that you were being hydrated through the IV and that was the important thing.
Early the next morning, while Dad was home with Georgia, I walked around the hospital. I found myself in the parents’ lounge. There were pens and paper, a fax, a printer, and power strips, so multiple people could plug in while their kids had bone marrow transplants or slept off chemo or waited for their femurs to reset. I picked up a brochure about a summer camp—archery, sailing, crafts—for kids with cancer. I read a poster about Beads of Courage, a program where kids get a new bead for every shot and pill and procedure until, I suppose, their necklaces drape on the ground. At that point, I had no beads of courage myself. Mono, chicken pox, tonsillitis, that’s what I knew of shots and hospitals. It’d be another year before an oncology nurse settled me in for my first bag of chemotherapy.
Next door was a play space for